Why did an Empire that was about half the size of the United States in ancient

times fall? The Roman empire fell because of their loss of values, corruption and
instability in government, and barbarian tribes constantly attacking. All of these reasons
would be enough to at the very least cause in an empire. But Rome was not able to
address all their problems at once by their own fate by not addressing these problems
fast and as a unified nation and therefore caused the fall of the vast empire. They had
already bitten off more than they could chew and their problem only got bigger as they
continued to grow. According to the background essay after getting lucky for too long
and easily taking what they wanted and other countries lands when they wanted the
goal of getting to the top seemed to be achieved and people got too relaxed.

The most important reason for the causes of Rome’s downfall that I listed earlier
was the loss of values in Rome. I feel this way because out of the three this one caused
the most overflow onto the other Roman problems. The loss of values was largely
because of the rise of Christianity. Once the edict of Milan passed and Christian were
permanently tolerated, many Romans made the switch to Christianity. This hurt Rome
because Christianity valued God and the religion succeeding far more than Rome
succeeding. While in Roman religion being good meant helping Rome survive as a
country. This can be seen in Document B with soldiers becoming lazy and only doing
what they absolutely needed to. The soldiers were basically only serving their country
for the money, and not for the good of their country. This leads back to my point about
the loss of values affecting the other reasons why Rome fell. Because of the soldiers
not being committed enough to serve their country (even for money), and Barbarians
attacking at the border. With fewer citizens volunteering to help serve in the military
Rome had no choice but to pay german citizens to guard their border for them. This led
to an economic problem because Rome didn’t have enough money to pay them all. And
lead to corruption and instability in the government with unhappy citizens. This is just
yet another way the loss of core Roman values and the rise of Christianity struck Rome
so deep.

Another important reason why Rome fell was because of the barbarian attacks.
Because Rome was such a large empire it also made it an easy target. Barbarians were
constantly at many points around Rome’s borders (Document C). This caused the
Roman government to have to pay for the military because even without a major war
going on if they didn’t have people protecting their borders at all times they would
quickly get pushed in from all sides. Because of the economic strain, there was rapid
inflation which led to an unpleasant society for Romans. This made people mad. To put
in perspective the Huns were some of the most brutal and savage human beings
(Document D). But still when they took a city one of them reported later that his life with
the most barbaric of barbarians was better and more just for everyone (Document E).
 The last of the three most important reasons why Rome fell was because of
instability and corruption in the government. This reason is important but not quite as
much as the others. For one it doesn’t cause any extra problems for Rome. And two a
lot of the reason Rome was unstable was because of the other causes. For example
between 235-285 CE, there were 19 turnovers of power (Document A). This shows the
instability of government, but when you look closer 13 of those turnovers were because
of assassinations. These assassinations were most likely caused by unhappy citizens or
riots. But why was the living situation so bad? Well, Rome was paying many soldiers
from Germany to guard their border. So there was no extra money to fix potholes, or
build parks. The plague also killed rulers which caused instability. Many of Rome’s
emperors were only trying to get ahead for themselves. Some of Rome’s instability was
caused by other things but the instability and frequent changes of power were
detrimental causing weak military with bad leadership, and they appeared vulnerable.
This is why it is one of the three most important reasons why Rome fell.

It wasn’t just their fault, they were experiencing natural disasters like destructive
earthquakes and multiple plaques over the entire empire at the time (Document F). But
they did mess up in some of the most important ways and those ways also happened to
make the perfect storm of destruction and chaos. And it's not simple either as trying to
explain exactly what caused what. But they all help each other out with the rise of
Christianity taking the first place prize for if it had to be chosen what took down this
glorious emperor.