What if western roman empire survived

After a particularly chaotic decade, Decius — , a military man from the Balkans, proclaimed renewal. He added the name of Trajan as part of his program of nostalgia and combined his promotion of traditional religion emphasizing the cult of emperors with brutal persecutions of Christians whom he blamed for the earlier decline. Neither saved him from defeat at the hands of the Goths. 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. The long reign of Constantine V — promoted iconoclastic ideology with persecutions — even the humiliating public torture and execution of the patriarch of Constantinople. This was the dark side of a quest for purity, renewal, and orthodoxy. The Huns push other groups westward, eventually into Roman territory.

Christianity was less tolerant of other cultures and religions. The split of the empire into two parts weakened the empire. Roman soldiers were loyal to their military leaders, not necessarily the emperor A failing economy High taxes Romans became lazy and comfortable Romans hired barbarian mercenaries to guard the borders The fall of the city of Rome and the Western Empire did not put an end to the entire Roman Empire.

The Eastern Empire survived for another thousand years. Greek was the main language in the Byzantine Empire, not Latin. Disclaimer: It is not the intention of the Penfield School District to promote specific commercial interests.

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He wrote: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness Giotto's Site Penfield. Mister Giotto's Home Page. Class notes. Giotto's Online Textbook.

The Stone Ages. Ancient Mesopotamia. Green, Mr. Green, who's that pretty lady? That lady, me from the past, is Emperor Justinian, we'll get to him in a minute. But first, let me introduce you to the traditional view "Barbarians at the Gates. I wanna be really technical about it, the city of Rome was conquered by bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, barbarians in CE.

There was a last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, who ruled the empire for less than a year before being deposed and sent into exile by Odoacer, who was some kind of barbarian, we don't know for sure, Ostragoth, Han, Visigoth, [Vados], they all looked the same to the Romans.

Rome had been sacked by barbarians before, most notably by Alaric the Visigoth in Is it Alaric or Aleric? But anyway, after CE, there was never again a Roman emperor in Rome. Then there's the hipper anti-imperialistic argument. That's nice, but if you really wanna go full hipster, you should probably deny that you're being hipster.

Exactly, which goes like this:Rome was doomed to fall as soon as it spread outside of Italy because the further the territory is from the capitol, the harder it is to govern; thus, imperialism itself sowed the seeds of destruction in Rome.

This was the argument put forth by the Roman historian Tacitus, although he put it in the mouth of a British chieftain. That sounded dirty, but it's not. It's all about context here on Crash Course. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert, and call it peace. There are two ways to overcome this governance problem. First, you can rule with the proverbial topaz fist. That's not the proverb? Really, Stan? It's an iron fist? But topaz is much harder than iron; don't these people know their Mohs scale of mineral hardness?

Regardless, the Romans couldn't do this, becuase their whole identity was wrapped up in an idea of justice that precluded indiscriminate violence. The other strategy is to try to incorporate conquered people into the empire more fully. In Rome's case, to make them Romans. This worked really well in the early days of the Roman Republic, and even at the beginning of the empire, but it eventually led to barbarians inside the gates.

The decline of the Roman legion started long before Rome started getting sacked. It really began with the extremely bad decision to incorporate Germanic warriors into the Roman army. Rome had a long history of absorbing people from the empire's fringes into the polity, first by making them allies, and then eventually by granting them full citizenship rights.

But usually these foreign citizens had developed ties to Rome itself; they learned Latin, they bought into the whole idea of the aristocratic republic.

By the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, though, the empire had been forced to allow the kind of riff-raff into their army who didn't really care about the idea of Rome itself, they were only loyal to their commanders.

As you, no doubt, remember from the historical examples of Caesar, Pompey, Marius, contemporary Afghanistan, this is not a recipe for domestic bliss. So, here was Rome stuck with a bunch of expensive and bloody wars against Germanic peoples who were really good at fighting, and then they had a great idea:Why not fight with these guys? So, they essentially hired them, and soon the Roman legions were teaming with these mercenaries who were loyal mostly to gold, secondarily to their commanders, and not at all to Rome, which was a place that very few of them ever even saw.

Why would they even give a crap about the health and well-being of the Roman Empire? Am I allowed to say crap, Stan?