The Fall Of The West (COMPLETED)

Epilogue: The underlying problem

The Western Roman Empire did not fall from foreign invaders. Throughout its entire history, there was no nation in Europe, Africa or Asia that could bring it down single-handedly. Carthage, the Greeks, and the Gauls had all been subdued in Republican times. All the empire had to do was defend its borders with its enormous reserves of manpower and resources. There was just too much infrastructure in place for it to be felled by a single foreign power. The biggest foreign threat to the empire would have been the Sassanid Empire, which did inflict many defeats on the Romans. At one point in time they managed to penetrate into Antioch, and their king bathed in the Mediterranean waters. But even the Sassanids could not pose a great threat to the Romans. They had many other enemies to contend with, such as the Arabs, Huns, and the Gupta Empire in India, and they suffered a lot from their own internal conflicts. There was no possibility of a Persian army landing on Italy.

The 5th century marked the beginning of the Migration Period, and the Roman Empire saw a great number of tribes abandoning their lands and moving into Roman territory. The most obvious cause would be the Huns, who drove them into Roman territory by fear. But this still does not explain why entire tribes uprooted themselves and fled. Those who stayed with the Huns ended up in good hands.

Another factor would be climate change. Europe suffered a mini ice age during this period. Reports show that the sky seems to have darkened considerably during the 5th century, possibly caused by the eruption of a volcano on the scale of Krakatoa, sending huge amounts of dust into the air and blocking out sunlight. In turn, the global temperature was decreased, causing the northern parts of the world to experience longer and colder winters. This made the soil infertile, and thus the pre-existing communities had to move south in search of more fertile soil.

However, the migrators should have faced resistance when they tried to get through the Roman borders. Instead, nothing seems to have been done about this. Roman emperors generally welcomed the foreign aid, settling them in certain regions and recruiting them as warriors to bolster the army's size. This foreign aid was made more and more important as the army decreased in size, cut down by economic problems and civil wars.

Why did the army decrease in size in the first place? This leads to the underlying reason beneath the fall.

Throughout this guide we see a lot of power-mongering and political backstabbing, instead of policy-making and good governance. We see emperors plotting with their generals to get rid of rivals, or senators plotting with generals to overthrow an emperor. The toxic political climate was largely caused by a need for an emperor to feel safe. Because of the ever-present danger of being eliminated by a rival, an emperor surrounded himself with men only he could trust. This made the men around him extremely powerful, and thus they exerted a lot of influence on the court. More often than not, they then diminished the influence of the man they were supposed to protect, and over time the emperor became irrelevant because he had no real power at all. The actual political power went into the hands of high-ranking members of the government, such as the magister militum, as we have seen many times throughout this guide. A lot of times it was the military men who possessed supreme command, and it produced a lot of resentment among members of the government as no one could agree on who should get the supreme command.

Then to those who know more about the Romans, the question comes as to how power suddenly became concentrated in the hands of the military men.

The Roman Empire was created by Octavien, who tried his best to veil his military dictatorship behind a facade of Republican senatorship. His era was called the Principate, as he was known as the "leading citizen", implying that he was still an equal to the people. Nevertheless the Senate's importance reduced drastically. In Republican times we see men taking on titles that had both military and administrative responsibilities, such as praetorian prefect or consul. However, with the creation of the Principate, there was a need to specialize commands. Having men that wielded both responsibilities was a grave danger to the emperor. The empire was also too large for such men to have both military and administrative command, and thus the two were separated. Offices like the praetorian prefect ceased to have any military responsibility, while generals enjoyed full military command, and were able to have their own large armies at their disposal. By separating the military from the administrative, the bureaucratic process was made smoother, at the expense of having to hire more people to run it. Office-holders could concentrate on only one aspect of their job. This also meant that with all the bureaucratic infrastructure in place, one did not have to do his job exceptionally well. He just had to do it fairly competently to make the entire empire function as it should.