Essay/Term paper: Why rome fell (a condensed version)

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Philosophy

Why Rome Fell (a condensed version)


The sun had long ago set, the newborn moon peeked out from behind a
scattering of thin, high clouds. From a vantage point atop one of seven hills I
could see glimpses of how this great city must once have looked. The mammoth
buildings seem to shed their long years and are once again as they were; huge,
awe inspiring, it is as if a portal in time had opened and I am afforded a
glimpse into what was Rome. What could have caused this once master of all
cities to fall? This paper will attempt to describe some of the explanations
generally accepted, or should I say argued, and possibly shed some light on what
could have caused the fall of what was, unquestionably, the most powerful empire
in history.
I feel that I must begin with the explanations given by Edward Gibbon.
While few agree entirely with his logic, his Decline and Fall on the Roman
Empire is certainly unavoidable in a paper such as this. His work could be best
summed up by the word confusing. According to David Jordan, "the causes for
Rome's fall march across the pages of the Decline and Fall, seemingly without
pattern, and seemingly unrelated to each other. This quote taken from the
seventh chapter of Jordan's Gibbon and his Roman Empire sum up my feelings
concerning the work; however, I will attempt to show some of Gibbon's Causes for
this decline.
Two of Gibbon's causes are the political blunders of its emperors and
their search for personal glory. These are especially obvious in his chapters
on Constantine. In them Gibbon accuses the emperor of destroying Rome for his
own personal glory. Another cause would have to be the anti-Roman nature of
Christianity. Gibbons argues that the "insensible' penetration of Christianity
was fatal to the empire by undermining the genius of a great people. On a
pessimistic note, Gibbon also lists as a "causes' the inevitable collapse of all
human institutions, some arguments on the corrupting nature of luxury, and some
detailed reflections on the vanity of human wishes. While the arguments
presented are lengthily backed, they seem to fail in explaining the true nature
of the fall.
Others, many others disagree with Gibbon's explanations and proffer
their own for approval. One such author is David Woomersley who in his work,
The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , openly attacks
Gibbon's work calling it "a blunt instrument with which to dissect these
centuries.' That quote, taken from chapter sixteen, is one of many which show
the violent disagreement of the two ideas. A few pages later Woomersley refers
to Gibbons works as a stumbling block to historians and again later refers to
Gibbon himself as a poet historian, caught up in the moment and unaware of the
true history of the situation. The problem is that in the mist of these attacks,
Woomersley fails to bring to light any new and exciting information concerning
the fall of Rome and is seen as simply relying on the old standby that the cause
was the corrupting nature of luxury and power. Woomersley argues that the
Romans became so content in their superiority that they forgot how to fight and
forgot what made them great.
Another who disagrees with the premises of Gibbon is author and
historian David Jordan. In his work, Gibbon and his Roman Empire, Jordan states
that Gibbon imposed himself on his materials and in doing so distorted the
history he was attempting to record. In Jordan's opinion, the main cause of the
decline was internal decay. Rome had taken the "known' world and held it for a
very long time. He compares society to a living organism in so much that if it
does not grow, it dies. While it was the Germanic tribes who eventually leveled
Rome, it was Rome's own arrogance which destroyed it long before any "enemies'
entered the city.
This reasoning certainly seems logical and fits with the political
situation of the times. At the time of the fall, state was "overawed' by the
soldiers who were simply mercenaries. Leaders were murdered by their own troops
for the wealth they had accumulated. The "stubborn commons' had been eliminated
by the Augustan settlement and it seems that every reign of the latter emperors
finished with the same cycle of treason and murder. The ladder history of Rome
seems to play like a badly scratched record, frozen into a groove.
One fact which stands out in my mind is that Rome was greatest before
the monarchy. Once power became centralized, Rome was doomed. In reverse
order, England did not become a world presence until a decentralization of the
power occurred, i.e. the Parliament. The problem seems to be who takes control
when a monarch dies. It is the internal struggle which uses up so many
resources and divides a nation. It is the losers of such a struggle which
generally cause the break up since while people who oppose a particular ruler
may be forced to live with it, they will never like it. I believe it is this
inherent flaw in monarchy which lead to the continuos cycle of betrayal and
murder which marks the ladder history of Rome.
As I hope this paper has shown, the issue of what caused the fall of the
Roman empire is a complex one and will most probably remain unsolved for the
foreseeable future. People build on the foundations of others; patterns form
themselves. Perhaps someday we will know the true reasons for the fall and be
able to use that knowledge to prevent the same fate from destroying our American
"empire.'

Works Cited

Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: Random House.

Jordan, David P. Gibbon and his Roman Empire. Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1971.

Woomersley, David. The Transformation of The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.