Fall Of The Roman Empire Essay

Words: 1285
Pages: 6

For hundreds of years, The Roman Empire was the most powerful empire in existence. At its peak, The Roman Empire, stretched over a large part of Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. They were extremely great conquerors with a very disciplined and well-organized military that expanded their rule even further by accepting the citizens of the conquered territories and making them Roman citizens. They had advanced technology, flourishing trade and commerce, unmatched culture, and strong leadership. All those factors made them a force to be reckoned with. So, how did such a vast, seemingly sound, and strong empire come to fall? Rome did not fall in a day. It was the steady decline of Roman population, over taxation of the public, coinage, …show more content…
People were in light of all the civil war so the empire was attempting to combat that by redeveloping and attempting to assure people of their safety. The redevelopment of new and old provinces after civil war had broken out plunged the empire into a deficit which was covered by increased tax revenues upon lower class citizens. The government tried to make the civilians believe they “were overtaxed to pay greedy soldiers” however the truth was that they were funding the greed of the upper class. Those apart of the lower class were referred to as humiles and were used heavily for slave labor and even sometimes subjected to capital penalties. They were not respected in society. The upper class did not care about them and neither did the government which was extremely corrupt. The value of the humiles was measured in what they did to help those of higher standing reach even higher whether that be by providing labor, paying taxes, or adding to the trade market. The slaves were another marginalized group that was taken advantage of in this age of crisis. With the growing deficit slave labor dependency began to increase heavily because they could no longer afford to pay people to do their labor. The collective lower class began to realize how unfairly they were being treated and uprisings began to break