He was the first Roman emperor to actually die in battle with the barbarians. It was another Balkan general, Diocletian — , who brought stability not through claims of renewal, but wisely through economic and administrative reforms.
In the fourth century, Constantine the Great — used persuasion to unify the empire under the new Christian religion. But decades after his death, the rhetoric of decline once again led to disaster. Theodosius — proceeded to attack Arian heretics, Jews, and pagans in the name of preserving the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, but at his death the empire was divided between his sons — never to be reunited.
The sack of Rome provoked a torrent of attacks on Christianity and Christian apologetics in response. The most famous was St. It was followed by continual disasters until when a Germanic chieftain deposed the last Western emperor, the year-old Romulus Augustulus. The Senate sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople. There was an Italian recovery from to — the Golden Age of Theodoric — but that king was in fact a Goth. But the cost was enormous; the Western imperial capital Milan was destroyed and its people enslaved with renewed persecutions of both Jews and pagans.
That celebration was part of the repeated cycle of renewal and violence. Arab armies had begun to chip away at Byzantine rule in Egypt, as did the Persians with their conquest of Syria and Jerusalem.
When Watts turns to the devastating effect of the Iconoclastic movement, he does not emphasize its Old Testament antecedents e. The iconoclastic violence in the East was paralleled by the philosophical treatises in the West like Augustine. By CE, when Odoacer deposed Emperor Romulus, the Western Roman Empire wielded negligible military, political, or financial power and had no effective control over the scattered western domains that could still be described as Roman.
While its legitimacy lasted for centuries longer and its cultural influence remains today, the Western Empire never had the strength to rise again. It is important to note, however, that the so-called fall of the Roman Empire specifically refers to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, since the Eastern Roman Empire, or what became known as the Byzantine Empire, whose capital was founded by Constantine, remained for another 1, years. Theodosius was the last emperor who ruled over the whole empire.
After his death in , he gave the two halves of the empire to his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius; Arcadius became ruler in the east, with his capital in Constantinople, and Honorius became ruler in the west, with his capital in Milan, and later Ravenna.
Although the eastern half still survived with borders essentially intact for several centuries until the Muslim conquests , the Empire as a whole had initiated major cultural and political transformations since the Crisis of the Third Century, with the shift towards a more openly autocratic and ritualized form of government, the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, and a general rejection of the traditions and values of Classical Antiquity.
The reasons for the decline of the Empire are still debated today, and are likely multiple. Historians infer that the population appears to have diminished in many provinces especially western Europe , judging from the diminishing size of fortifications built to protect the cities from barbarian incursions from the 3rd century on.
Some historians even have suggested that parts of the periphery were no longer inhabited, because these fortifications were restricted to the center of the city only. Gibbon has expressed it in this way:. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.
The story of its ruin is simple and obvious. Recently, environmental factors have also been attributed to the decline of the Roman Empire. This theory attributes both the rise and fall of Rome to ecological factors. The growth of the Roman Empire coincided with the environmental prosperity of the Mediterranean basin from the 3rd century BC until the middle of the 2nd century AD. The proponents of this theory state that environmental conditions started to deteriorate around AD.
The climate became cold and dry, which had adverse effects on agriculture. At the same time, epidemics like the plague had struck the empire, further reducing the size of the economy and population. The last straw was the increase in global volcanic activity from the 5th century to 8th century AD.
Different factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. There are several contributing factors, some of which were taking place within the empire itself. Severe financial crisis caused by wars and overspending had led to over-taxation and inflation. This in turn saw Romans fleeing to the countryside as a way of avoiding the taxman. Agricultural and commercial production declined as a result, which in turn affected trade. A series of weak emperors from the second century had seen more than 20 men on the imperial throne in just 75 years, thanks in part to the Praetorian Guard — bodyguards to the emperor — which was using its power to decide to promote, or kill off, would-be emperors.
The Senate, too, was rife with corruption and was unable, or unwilling, to rein in the excesses of its rulers. The people began to lose faith in its leaders.
0コメント