Rome fell because (in the end) it could not field armies to fight off the encroaching barbarians. It has been theorized that this was due to a combination of demographic decline and Roman’s not having the will to defend themselves anymore.
Sound familiar?
“Rome fell because (in the end) it could not field armies to fight off the encroaching barbarians. It has been theorized that this was due to a combination of demographic decline and Roman’s not having the will to defend themselves anymore.
Sound familiar?”
What’s more familiar to us 21st Century Americans is politicians bankrupting the nation by bleeding the treasury dry to fatten their own estates. Any of that in Roman history?
From what I understand the Romans came to be dependent upon the dole. That saps ones will to adapt to disaster and destroys ones ability to innovate. It also creates a dependency upon the state for personal protection.
My question is not “Why did Rome fall, but how did they expand and sustain the empire so long? Remarkable for a city to have such an expansive empire for so long.
IIRC the empire was split and they had paid non-Italians for decades to provide an army on the boundaries of the empire. As the barbarians had their own demographic expansion and needed land and wanted a taste of the good life, their southern and western expansions became inevitable. Don’t know how long you can keep your guards at the fence of the property when they want the good life up in the main house.
Recurring emergencies in the East from the Sassanids, and in the west and eventually south from the Huns, limited Rome's options in the latter decades of the Empire.
Eventually, the Huns migrated all the way across the Rhine, through France and Spain, across Gibraltar, and back east towards Tripoli. Finally, the Huns began to take over the agriculturally prime lands on the African coast that had served as the Empire's breadbasket.
Once that happened, the end was at hand.