What caused the great Roman Empire to finally collapse after one thousand years of prosperity? Although we have gone over this question many times in class, I feel it’s important to reiterate that there really wasn’t a “fall” of the Roman Empire, but a gradual decline and then transformation. Through this transformation, the empire would continue for hundreds of years. That said, I think there are many explanations to that decline, and many things that could have been done to stop it.
In his book Are We Rome?, Cullen Murphy says that “Part of the problem of explaining "decline" is that, like "rise," it doesn't happen everywhere at the same rate or in the same way(1).” There are literally hundreds of different theories that point to Rome’s decline in the 3rd to 5th centuries. In 1980, a German historian set out to catalogue all the explanations for the fall of Rome ever proposed and actually cited 210 theories (Murphy 1). In my opinion the decline of the empire can be narrowed down to two key issues: the weakening of military forces in the west and their subsequent inability to respond to the encroachment of barbarian tribes on Rome’s borders.
The cause for the weakening of military forces can be attributed mostly to one thing: after hundreds of years of war and conquering, Rome’s legions were having an increasingly harder time replacing lost soldiers from a dwindling population. This made it necessary for the legions to integrate the very barbarians they had conquered into their forces to replace what Rome could not send. This also went some way to appease the hostility of the tribes as Roman emperors would often integrate whole tribes into the army and allow them to settle within Roman borders (Kishlansky 179). Eventually the imperial army was made up of mainly barbarian tribes. This was not a terrible thing as the barbarians were strong and loyal fighters; however the Roman Army now lacked the ability to turn away hostile Barbarian forces. The sac of Rome...