Roman Empire

3 Pages 858 Words

The Roman Empire stood in great power for many decades. Rome for a period of time was considered the center of civilization for years. The empire was beautiful and even though attracted many invaders, was very well protected by the walls surrounding the empire and of course the powerful army. Some people believed that the Roman Empire would last forever.


Political Causes

Under the rule of Diocletian and later Constantine the empire was split into Western and Eastern parts of Rome. The emperors said that the reason for that was to make it easier to govern. The emperor chose to govern and build the capital in the Eastern part and gave the Western part to a co-emperor. The reason for that might have been that the eastern part was much richer in resources and had better lands for farming. There may have been other reasons for that such as the Eastern part did not produce enough food for both parts of the empire and by separating them they’d have to produce their own food and depend upon themselves. This was the beginning, to a long struggle of the Western part that was now basically left alone. Many reforms came in to law to keep the empire together, such as toleration of Christianity to avoid their rebellion since there were a lot of them. In 313 a.d. the Church started taking part in government which slowly took power away from the emperor. More reforms like fixing prices and giving more freedom of worship kept the empire together but definitely would not last long. This is so because these reforms were made to fit people today taking away from the emperor but they never thought of what’s going to happen after the emperor does not have anything left to give. Which would occur very soon if things were going down as fast they were? There was no one to take matters into their hands so the empire was left to the people themselves to govern.


Social Causes

The people of the Western empi...