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The Collapse of the Roman West Jenga! Notes 1.3
Make careful note of the reasons we remove a brick from our Jenga tower of Rome.
Brick 1: _________________________________________
Death of Honor- Fewer Romans honored the old ideals of _____, courage, and ____________.
Many government officials took _______. As problems increased, talented people often
________ to serve in ______________. Many wealthy citizens even ___________ paying ________.
Death of Education- Fewer people attended ___________, and a large number of the empire’s
people were now __________. Wealthy Romans supported slavery because it was a ______ way
to get _______ done.
Brick 2: _________________________________________
As government weakened, _______ and order ________ down. ________ and bridges
were _____________, and trade routes became ________. Information could not be sent
quickly across the __________, and Rome’s _______ could no longer organize quickly
enough to drive out _________. Roman soldiers and invaders seized ________ and
destroyed fields. Farmers grew ______ food, and ________ began to spread.
Brick 3: _________________________________________
As the economy ___________, people purchased fewer _______. Artisans produced
______, and shopkeepers lost ________. Many businesses closed, and the number of
workers _________ sharply. Many workers left jobs and serve in the army.
Rome also began to suffer from inflation (ihn • FLAY •shuhn), or rapidly __________
prices. Inflation happens when money _________ its value.
How did this happen? The weak economy meant fewer _______ were paid. With less
money coming in, the Roman government could not afford to _________ its territories
and had to find a way to pay its _________ and officials. One way for the government
to get the money it needed was to put less ______ in its coins.
By putting less gold or silver in each coin, the government could make extra coins
and pay for more things. People soon learned that the coins did not have as much
gold in them, and the coins began _______ value. Prices went __, and many people
stopped using money altogether. They began to barter (BAHR •tuhr), or exchange
goods without using money.
Brick 4: _________________________________________
Meanwhile, invaders swept into the empire. In the west, _____________ tribes raided
Roman farms and towns. In the east, armies from ________ pushed into the empire’s
territory. As fighting increased, the government could no longer enlist and _____
Romans as soldiers. It began using Germanic warriors in the army. However, these
Germanic soldiers were not ______ to Rome.
What Were Diocletian’s Reforms?
Emperor Diocletian worked to boost the ________. To slow inflation, he issued rules that set
the ______ of goods and the ________ to be paid to workers. To make sure more goods were
generated, he ordered ___________ to remain at the same jobs until they died. Diocletian’s
reforms ________. The people ignored the new rules, and Diocletian did not have enough
power to make them obey.
Brick 5: Diocletian splits the empire in half to try to manage it better.
The Darker Side of Diocletian
For Diocletian to make his reforms work he tried to use his _______ religion to give
himself more legitimacy. He wanted people to see his authority came from the
_______. He did not just want to be their representative; he wanted people to treat
him as a god himself. His decision to be treated as a God and, unlike Augustus
Caesar, be _________ other Romans, meant that any revolts against the state were
now ________ rebellions too and that meant they were even more serious. Pagans in
the empire accepted the changes but the Roman Empire had a fast growing
__________ population that could not accept Diocletian’s claim of divinity.
Christians had been ____________ before but their religion provided them hope. Christians
refused to sacrifice to the Emperor. Diocletian had to punish these rebellious subjects. He
made a law that refusing to sacrifice to the emperor would be punished by ________. This
caused churches to be destroyed, writings to be _________, and thousands of faithful
Christians to be arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Diocletian’s attempts to destroy
the religion were hopeless and many pagan citizens felt sympathy with the Christian people
they had been living side by side with for centuries.
New Role of Christianity in Imperial Politics
In A.D. 305 Diocletian retired from office. Constantine was a general and had been declared
the new ____________ by his men and marched at this time on Rome. Constantine now had
the job to fight the growing unrest in Rome. Maxentius, the man ruling the ______ of Rome
and the western half of the empire with Diocletian, had been misusing public funds causing
revolt. To put down the revolt Maxentius had killed thousands of civilians and was very
unpopular. Now Constantine had to fight to reunite and settle unrest in the west.
Before the battle between Maxentius and Constantine’s armies both looked for________
guidance. The practice of pagan Romans was to call on _______________ and magicians to try
see what the outcome of the battle would be and to get favor for their army from the gods.
Constantine also was looking for divine support. Constantine knelt down in prayer and as he
told the story later saw a vision of a _______ and the words “In Hoc Signo Vinces” which
meant, “____________ by this sign”.
This story Constantine told and his great victory allowed Constantine to fuse the Roman
state and the ever-growing Christian church. The new Emperor issued an ________
(declaration) of toleration, stopping the persecution of Christians by the state. He wanted to
use Christianity to support his regime, almost as Diocletian had used paganism, but he
wanted to be seen as a benevolent leader, so he did not make Christianity the official
religion of the Empire.
Constantine also was not a very ________ Christian. His mother had been a Christian but
Constantine used it more for ______________ reasons. In his rage he had one of his sons and
his wife executed, breaking Christian commandments not to _______. He also did not get
baptized into the Christian faith until close to his death so that he could do bad things and
pay for them later, which goes __________ standard Christian philosophy.
Constantine’s Reforms
Constantine (KAHN • stuhn • TEEN) became emperor in A.D. 312. To aid the
economy, Constantine issued several orders. The sons of workers had to _________
their fathers’ trades, the sons of farmers had to work the land their fathers worked,
and the sons of soldiers had to serve in the army.
A Shift to the East
Constantine’s changes did not halt the empire’s _________ in the west. As a result,
Constantine moved the capital from Rome to a new city in the east. He chose the
site of the Greek city of Byzantium (buh•ZAN•tee • uhm). There he built a _______, an
amphitheater called the Hippodrome, and many palaces. The city became known as
Constantinople (KAHN • STAN •tuhn •OH• puhl). Today, Constantinople is called
Istanbul.
Western Rome Crumbles
Brick 6: _________________________________________
Both Diocletian and Constantine ________ to save the Roman Empire. When
Constantine died in A.D. 337, fighting broke out again. A new emperor called
Theodosius (THEE • uh • DOH•shuhs) finally gained control and ended the fighting.
Ruling the empire proved to be difficult. Theodosius decided to completely divide
the empire after his death. In A.D. 395, the Roman Empire split into two separate
empires. One was the Western Roman Empire, with its capital at ________. The other
was the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at _______________.
Did Rome Really Fall or Did It Just Fade Away?
There is an old saying the Rome was not built in a _____. The same is true of the fall
of Rome, it did not fall in a day. There was no one single day on which Rome
disappeared. More like a seaside cliff Rome eroded away bit by bit until it was
unrecognizable. In the early years of the empire there was a clear distinction
between Rome and the __________ on the frontiers, but over time as Rome spread
out and came to include more and more people these barbarians became more and
more Roman.
Rome had spread itself very thin and started to need the help of barbarian
neighbors. The fear of new enemies had cause barbarians to be invited into Roman
lands to create a buffer between Rome and _________ dangers. Later when those who
invaded Rome itself came they did not decide to change Rome much but they
stepped into the already existing system and governed it themselves.
If we had lived in the Roman empire at the time, while it would have been sad to us
that such a great city had been invaded it would not have made us feel our way of
life was about to disappear because the empire was still there, governed by the
Emperor in the East, Constantinople.
Historians look at many factors when they study migrations of people as happened
with the Goths and the Vandals. One factor causing migrations may be __________
change another may be population growth. Migrations also cause other migrations,
when one group is forces to move they displace another group, in the way that
dominoes push other dominoes when they fall.
As Rome declined, it was no longer able to hold back the Germanic tribes on its
borders. Many different ____________ groups existed—Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks,
Vandals, Angles, and Saxons. They came from the forests and marshes of __________
Europe.
In the late A.D. 300s, the ______ entered Eastern Europe and defeated the Ostrogoths
(AHS •truh • GAHTHS). The Visigoths, fearing they would be next, asked the Eastern
Roman emperor for protection. He let them settle just inside the empire’s border. In
return, they promised to be _______ to Rome.
Before long, trouble broke out between the Visigoths and Romans. The empire
forced the Visigoths to buy food at very high prices. The Romans also kidnapped
and _________ many Visigoths.
Finally, the Visigoths rebelled against the Romans. In A.D. 378 they __________ Roman
legions at the Battle of Adrianople (AY • dree • uh • NOH• puhl). After that defeat,
Rome was forced to surrender land to the Visigoths inside Roman territory.
The Germanic tribes now knew that Rome could no longer defend itself. More and
more Germanic warriors crossed the borders in search of land. In the winter of A.D.
406, the Rhine River in Western Europe froze. Germanic groups crossed the frozen
river and entered Gaul, which is today France. The Romans were too weak to force
them back across the border.
In A.D. 410 the Visigoth leader Alaric (A•luh •rihk) and his soldiers captured the city
of Rome. They burned records and looted the treasury. Rome’s capture shocked the
empire’s people. It was the first time Rome had been conquered in 800 years.
Another Germanic group known as the Vandals overran Spain and northern Africa. They
enslaved some Roman landowners and drove others away. Then the Vandals sailed to Italy.
In A.D. 455 they entered Rome. They spent 12 days stripping buildings of everything
valuable and burning them. From these attacks came the English word vandalism, which
means “the willful destruction of property.”
Abandoned Frontiers
Roman legions had to abandon their European provinces to protect their Mediterranean
power bases. As they did they left the people they had governed to fend for themselves
and years of instability followed in places such as Britain, which had been on the outer most
frontier. Later writers would write of the time after the Romans had abandoned their
frontiers as “The Dark Ages”. The term is much disputed by modern historians but it can be
useful in describing the stark difference between life in an organized and protected Roman
world and the chaos that followed Rome’s withdrawal in many parts of the former frontier.