Reasons Why the Roman Empire Fell:
- Rome split into Eastern and Western empires governed by separate emperors
- The rise of Christianity, a new religion
- Political and Military difficulties
Some would argue that the initial break up of Rome cause the empire itself to fall. Rome was split into Eastern and Western Empires, and it was ruled by different emperors. These two empires were set up very far away from one another with capital cities thousands of miles away from each other, one in Italy and another on a peninsula near Romania. This distance and separation caused Eastern and Western Rome to be against one another in almost every aspect of life. The western empire was Roman Catholic and spoke Latin, while the eastern empire spoke Greek and worshiped under the Eastern Orthodox branch of the Christian Church. The west troubled and declined, while the east thrived. The western empire finally fell.
An unfamiliar religion called Christianity was beginning to rise in Rome. The Roman emperor, Constantine the Great brought the idea of monotheistic religion into Rome and introduced Christianity to Rome. He made Christianity the official state religion of the empire and ended all persecution to Christians. So Christianity was spread all over the empire. Before these monotheistic beliefs were brought into the Roman empire, Romans thought of the emperor as a god. But since Romans only believed in one god now, they didn't consider the emperor a god anymore, which made the emperor's authority very weak and not very credible. This weakened the empire and essentially caused it to fall.
Rome had endured some political and military difficulties in the time leading up to the fall of the Roman empire. The emperors that were in power before the fall of Rome had no clue what they were doing and didn't take their job seriously. Army generals dominated the emperor ship, and the government was very corrupt. The military transformed into Germanic soldiers fighting for Rome, so they had no true loyalty to Rome and didn't care about their jobs. These Germanic soldiers ended up being assigned to protect Rome against their fellow Germanic tribesmen, so they obviously didn't do their job like they were supposed to.
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