When you hear the phrase "the fall of Rome," it's easy to imagine a single grand and terrible battle that brought an arrogant city to its knees. The city of Rome was conquered by invaders in 476 CE, but the empire's loss of power was a more gradual process, a slow but steady decline lasting many years before and after the city of Rome itself was sacked.
What role did Rome's love of riches and luxury play in its decline? Some of the causes explained in this Hidden Answer activity may sound similar to issues you hear people discussing today when they talk about money and its relationship to power. Click on the Roman solution to reveal how each item contributed to the fall of Rome.
| The Problem | The Roman Solution | How did it contribute to the Fall of Rome? |
| Rome ran out of lands to conquer. | The emperor raised taxes and/or debased the Roman currency. | As long as the Roman empire continued to expand, the emperor could plunder the wealth of conquered lands to pay the army, run the government, and build public buildings and monumental architecture. When Rome ran out of lands to conquer, no money was coming in, and that led Roman emperors to make some damaging decisions. |
| Constantine had no cash coming in from conquered lands. | He looted Rome’s own temples. | When Constantine ran out of lands to conquer and plunder, he plundered Rome’s own temples to build his capital city of Constantinople. The donations people had made to the gods went to glorify the emperor, which angered people and further depressed the Roman economy. |
| Pagans from northern Europe attacked the fringes of the western Roman empire. | Many Roman peasants joined their attackers. | By the 5th century CE, the borders of western Rome were shrinking back toward modern-day Italy, chased by pagan tribes who had once been under Roman rule. Heavily taxed Roman peasants often joined these pagans in attacking Roman cities. They resented their oppression by the wealthy elite and were given more freedom by the pagans than by their own government. |
| The western Roman empire was crumbling. | Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I conquered the West and expanded it. | Justinian was successful in re-taking lands from the pagans, but he could not make his gains last. Three years after his death, the pagan Lombards conquered most of Italy. The heavy taxes Justinian levied to pay for his campaign only strained the peasants more, increasing their resentment of the wealthy, and the stage was set for the fall of Rome in the West. |
| The western Roman empire finally collapsed. | The Roman people broke down into small, regional bands. | Without a strong central government to inspire trade, the Roman people lost their advanced way of life. Coins were few, as the people moved back to subsistence farming, working land owned by pagan landlords. They bartered in a moneyless system and lived hand-to-mouth in small villages. |
Question
Emperors used their armies to appropriate wealth, or seize it for their own use. How might this practice of plundering your own empire lead to its downfall?
