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The fall of the Western Roman Empire, also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome, was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was divided among several successor polities.
Romulus Augustus was deposed as Western Roman Emperor in 476 while still young. However, Julius Nepos continued to claim the title of Western Emperor after his deposition. The decline of the Roman Empire is one of the traditional markers of the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the European Middle Ages.
With Rome's great military victories, vast numbers of slaves were imported into Italy. [28] Significant mineral wealth was distributed unevenly to the population; the city of Rome itself expanded considerably in opulence and size; the freeing of slaves brought to Italy by conquest massively expanded the number of urban and rural poor. [29]
The six volumes cover, from 98 to 1590, the peak of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and its emergence as the Roman state religion, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, the rise of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and the fall of Byzantium, as well as discussions on the ruins of Ancient Rome.
[2] [1] Montesquieu states that the Sack of Rome and downfall of the Western Roman Empire irreparably destabilized the region. He also concludes that the rise of Christianity and the desire of the citizenry for the opulence of Rome's most prosperous period directly precipitated the fall of the Greek Empire (Eastern Empire).
In the view of the Greek historian Cassius Dio, a contemporary observer, the accession of the emperor Commodus in AD 180 marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron" [9] —a famous comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire.
The rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. [166]
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman civilisation from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD) until the fall of the ...