Download The Fall of Rome

The Rise of Christianity
 Jesus lived in a society marked by resentment
against Roman rule, which had inspired the belief
that a Messiah would arise to liberate the Jews
 When Jesus sought to reform Jewish religious
practices, the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem turned
him over to the Roman governor for execution.
 After the execution, Jesus’ disciples
continued to spread his teachings;
they also spread their belief that
Jesus had been resurrected
 At this point, the target of their
proselytizing was their fellow Jews.
 Christianity grew slowly for two centuries,
developing a hierarchy of priests and bishops,
hammering out a commonly accepted theological
doctrine, and resisting the persecution of Roman
officials
 By the late third century, Christians were a sizeable
minority in the Roman Empire.
 The expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire
came at a time when Romans were increasingly
dissatisfied with their traditional religion
The Rise of Christianity
The Spread of Christianity
The Decline of Rome
• From the third century
B.C.E., Rome began a
gradual decline.
• No more major territorial
conquests were made after
the time of Trajan (ca. 117
CE)
• Rome decided instead to
play defense (see right)
• Culturally and socially,
apathy and decadence
were widely decried by
observers
Below: Hadrian’s Wall
ECONOMIC
REASONS
• The Roman economy was partially based
on constant expansion.
• This brought new land, new money, new
treasure, new slaves, and new taxes.
• Once the empire stopped expanding,
that influx of goods stopped, and Rome
simply wasn’t used to such stasis. It
was a shark: it had to keep moving to
survive.
• Without the influx of goods and money from expansion, rampant
inflation started setting in as the currency started to be worth
less.
• The value of coinage was based on how much gold or silver
was in the coin.
• Without the conquering, less gold was coming into the
empire, but there was still a lot leaving the empire as it was
being spent of foreign goods.
• With less gold and silver to go around, less was put into the
coins. Nice, but that meant the coins were worth less to those
who used them. Merchants accordingly raised their prices to get
paid the same value in gold as before.
• Grain production also decreased due to over-farming.
• This meant feeding people became more difficult.
• Not keeping up with the times.
• The Romans were marvelous engineers, but they
relied too much on human and animal labor
instead of building machines.
• Since they weren’t conquering new people,
they also weren’t adapting as much new and
different technology (poor Borg).
• They especially relied too much on slave labor
which meant a lot of unemployed folks that
strained the economy.
SOCIAL REASONS
• The aforementioned unemployment.
• Being a public servant had become costly and so
most qualified, competent people just didn’t want to
do it.
• Morals and work ethic
• Many Romans had become accustomed to the
easy life of bread and circuses.
• It’s said that when the Vandals sacked
Carthage, most of the inhabitants were
watching the chariot races.
• These were also done at state expense, which
drained the public treasury.
• The rise of Christianity
• Many Romans blamed Christians for Rome’s problems
because they weren’t honoring the Roman deities.
• Maybe not that, but the ideology may have played a
role. The Romans succeeded through aggressive
ruthlessness and a concentration on secular, worldly
matters.
• Christianity, especially early on, was pacifist and
absorbed with the hereafter. As the religion spread,
it weakened Roman resolve.
• Feedback loop
• People saw bad things happening to the empire, which
lowers their morale, which enables more bad things to
happen to the empire.
POLITICAL
REASONS
• The problem with political office being undesirable.
• Imperial Succession
• One big problem with the Roman imperial system is
that there was never an established method of passing
the crown to another upon the emperor’s death.
• This meant that it was up for grabs.
• The best case scenario is that one person is most
powerful or can quickly take control.
• The worst case scenario is that there are many
powerful people and they fight in a civil war.
• Since most legions were stationed on the borders,
they were distanced from Rome and loyal to their
generals.
• Thus, the generals would take their armies and
war amongst each other for the throne.
• Most wound up dead during the fighting or
were assassinated or overthrown soon after
taking “power.”
• Sometimes, the crown went to whoever bribed the
right people.
MILITARY
REASONS
• This is a big cause.
• Long borders
• As the empire expanded, so did its borders.
• Maintaining those borders against enemies became a
massive and expensive endeavor.
• Military spending took a significant chunk of the
treasury and took money away from many public
projects.
• Mercenaries
• Rome also began hiring mercenaries. These guys
worked for cash, not loyalty, and could be highly
unreliable. They also cost more exacerbating the
above problem.
• Invasion
• Barbarians started invading the empire and the legions
couldn’t stop them.
• Some just wanted the good Roman life or merely land
on which to settle.
• Others were pushed into Roman territory because the
Huns were pushing them west.
• It didn’t help that some legions were pulled from the
borders into Italy to fight in civil wars or that some
barbarian forces were led by men who had fought in
the Roman army and so knew the Roman tactics and
strategies (both how to use them and how to fight
against them). That and the Germanic tribes were
never tamed or conquered. Oops.
Reorganizing the Empire: Plan A
1
3
2
1.
Constantius
2.
Maximian
3.
Galerius
4.
Diocletian
4
Reorganizing the Empire: Plan B
•
•
•
Constantine established a second “Rome” at Constantinople (modern(modern-day
Istanbul) (red star).
Later, Valentinian divided the Empire, kept the West, and gave the East to his
brother, Valens.
The Western capital is moved from Rome to Milan (blue star).
• The barbarians proceed to run rampant over Roman
territory.
• In 410, Rome itself is sacked by the Visigoths.
• By 444, the Huns themselves, under the leadership of
Attila (“the wrath of God”) run at will over the empire
and threaten to destroy Rome itself.
• The pope, Leo I, negotiates with Attila and he
withdraws his forces.
• Really, Attila likely withdrew because of food and
manpower issues and because winter was
approaching. And Leo I bribed him to leave. Leo,
though, plays it up as divine intervention and uses
it to strengthen the power of the early church.
The Sack of Rome, 410 CE
• The sack of Rome by Alaric’s Visigoths meant that
from here on out, the “Roman Empire” is actually
the Byzantine Empire.
Rome Lives On—
On—in the East
•
•
The empire’s political structures, as well as its culture, survived the Germanic
attacks in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Renamed the “Byzantine Empire,” this political / cultural / religious structure
endured for another millennium, until being overtaken by Islam.
The Byzantine Empire
During the Reign of
Justinian
Decline and Fall of Ancient
Rome
MURDER,
SUICIDE, OLD
AGE, OR
INEVITABLE?
Murder?
Pressure from Parthians and Sassanids in the east
(modern-day Iraq and Iran)
2) Provincial revolts, especially Jews in 66-70 and
131-33 CE (AD)
3) Pressure from barbarians along the Rhine and the
Danube
4) Increasing military sophistication of barbarians as
a result of contact with
Roman armies
1)
Murder?
Roman defeat at Adrianople, 378 CE (AD)
6) Sack of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth, 410
7) Invasion under Attila the Hun, 455
8) Overthrow of emperor Romulus Augustulus by
barbarian mercenaries under Odacer the German,
476
5)
Suicide?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Latifundia problem-plantations worked by slaves replace
independent farmers
The Roman mob-former farmers become unemployed
slum dwellers in the cities, especially in Rome
Bread and circuses-the Roman mob, dependent on
government-provided jobs, food, and entertainment
Frequent civil wars, especially during the 200s CE, due
to military interference in Roman politics
Increasing tax burdens based on costs of controlling
urban mobs and military defense
Suicide?
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
Increasing dependence on barbarian mercenary
troops, similar to problems of Chinese military
defense
Overextended borders, similar to ancient China
Overdependence on slave labor
Conflict between traditional Greco-Roman
religion and a spreading Christianity introduced
from the east
Destruction of library at Alexandria by a
Christian mob, 415 CE
Old Age?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
General wear and tear of long-term imperial
administration and defense
Increasingly rigid social class structure and
declining opportunities for advancement
Exhaustion resulting from ever-increasing taxes
Abandonment of traditional Greco-Roman
religion for Christianity; people place their hopes
in life after death
Increasing pessimism about life on earth
Inevitable?
Plague of 165-66 CE kills half the Roman
empire’s population
2) Roman mines run out of gold and silver, starting
in 160s; Roman emperors forced to cut gold and
silver content of Roman coinage
3) Declining value of Roman coinage forces ruinous
inflation. Roman currency almost useless as a
medium of trade by 280s CE
4) Rome collapses into a barter economy by 280s
CE
1)
Inevitable?
5)
Climate change in central Asia (colder and drier)
starting in 160s leads to increasing barbarian
migrations and pressure on empire’s borders
Something to Think About
Do these causes work in isolation, or reinforce
each other?
2) Which causes do you think are most important?
Why?
3) In spite of all these difficulties, why did ancient
Roman civilization last as long as it did? What
legacies did Ancient Rome leave to humanity’s
future?
1)
The Roman Empire: Summary
• Octavian “Augustus” restored order after the second civil war
•
•
•
•
•
and succeeded in maintaining a delicate balance between
republican illusion and imperial reality.
Augustus was followed by a string of emperors—
emperors—good, bad,
and mediocre—
mediocre—under whom the Empire grew and prospered,
prior to 200 CE.
At the Empire’s height, culture and massive feats of
architecture flourished.
After 200 CE, structural crises and failures of leadership led
Rome into serious decline—
decline—both socially and politically.
Various emperors tried to reverse this decline by restructuring
the Empire and its institutions, but to no avail.
The western half of the Empire fell to Germanic invaders in
476 CE, but Rome’s institutions and legacy survived in the
Byzantine Empire, based in Constantinople.