The Barbarians Research Paper

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Pages: 4

The Barbarians played a major role in the decline of the Roman Empire. The fall of the Roman Empire was more of a decline than a fall and it was described as a “Noiseless fall of an empire.” The decline started just after the Battle of Adrianople in 378 which the Romans lost to the barbarians. After this battle Rome lost possession of much of its empire, and it took the Roman emperor Theodosius I many years to regain the territory. In 395 the empire split into a Western and Eastern empire, governed by his sons Honorius and Arcadius. The East withstood barbaric invasions while the West quickly collapsed. Once Romulus, the last of the Roman emperors in the West became king, the barbarians started to increase their invasion. Romulus was overthrown …show more content…
The Huns were pushing barbarians west leading them into Rome. Rome’s first emperors had an open and relaxed attitude towards outsiders. They were welcomed and even achieved high positions in government. The process, “Romanization”, was “changing the behavior of barbarians into behavior that matched or at least closely resembled that of Romans themselves—usually succeeded, and Romans were surprised when it did not.” Barbarians could live in Rome, but they did have specific laws they had to follow. They were not to rebel, disrespect Roman Gods, and had to pay proper respect to emperors. This gradually changed as more outsiders entered Rome changing the daily lives of citizens, by rebelling. Rome did not provide food and supplies for the outsiders and treated them like beasts and because of that they began to rampage. The Roman emperors thought the outsiders wanted to come into Rome to help the country by becoming farmers and soldiers. Romans had a big ego, thinking that they were far more superior than everyone else and because of that the barbarians rebelled. During the early years almost everyone was a foreigner and all of them were moderately becoming enemies of Rome. Soon enough, any foreigner who entered Rome was considered a barbarian. The Barbarians significantly impacted the decline of the Roman Empire, by invading and attacking Rome, making the citizens feel