Draft Weekly 7

Once Rome was split into two different sections, they faced many problems with invaders and war. Both sides of the Roman Empire were decreasing slowly, but surely. Finally, both sides of Roman territory had been over-powered by different empires, and the Roman Empire was now nothing but a memory. The Roman Empire wasn’t transformed into a new domain; Rome slowly weakened and fell to the end of its rule. The Roman Empire was transformed into a new domain; Rome didn’t slowly weaken and fall to the end of its rule.

            Once Diocletian came to power, he changed and transformed the government into something Rome had never seen before. “He established the tetrarchy (293A.D.), naming Maximianus as co-Augustus, and Galerius and Constantius as two subordinate Caesars. This experiment in power-sharing lasted only a short time. Constantius' son, Constantine (the Great), with dynastic ambitions of his own, set about defeating his imperial rivals and eventually reunited the Western and Eastern halves of the empire in 324A.D” (Lightfoot 2000 para. 7). Diocletian thought he was doing the right thing by turning the Roman Empire into a tetrarchy, when he clearly wasn’t. He had too many people in power, and eventually someone was going to tear apart the new form of government. Constantius’ son soon decided to rebel against the tetrarchy, and reunited the two sides of the Roman Empire that Diocletian had established not long before that. Also, how come it was that easy for Constantine to reunite the Roman Empire and rebel against the tetrarchy? No man can overthrow the Roman tetrarchy unless they have a strong source of power, or the Roman tetrarchy was extremely weak. This shows that either Constantine had gained power because his father was already favored in the Roman government, or that Diocletian’s Roman tetrarchy wasn’t even strong enough to keep itself together.

            After Constantine had established the new form of Roman government and moved the capital, things began to fall downhill when certain people within the Roman Empire started to form their own opinions and plans. “Driving many of the Germanic tribes—including the Visigoths—into the Roman provinces. What began as a controlled resettlement of barbarians within the empire's borders ended as an invasion. The emperor Valens was killed by the Visigoths at Adrianople in 378A.D., and the succeeding emperor, Theodosius I (r. 379–95A.D.), conducted campaigns against them, but failed to evict them from the empire. In 391A.D., Theodosius ordered the closing of all temples and banned all forms of pagan cult. After his death in 395A.D., the empire was divided between his sons, Honorius (Western Roman emperor) and Arcadius (Eastern Roman emperor)” (Lightfoot 2000 para 8.) Once again, the Roman Empire couldn’t control the people inside the empire. As soon as the Germanic tribes killed the emperor, it showed other tribes that, they too, could over rule the Roman Empire. Also, when Theodosius I thought he was controlling everything by starting campaigns against the Visigoths and didn’t make them leave the empire, he made them more upset when he closed the temples and ended pagan cults. When he did this, it didn’t fix anything; he just made the people more upset because their freedoms and worship places had been banned. This also played a huge part in the fall of the Roman Empire.

            Finally, the last factor that brought Rome to its fall was constant conflict and attacks. “In the west, constant attacks from German invaders such as the Visigoths broke the struggling empire down piece by piece until Italy was the only territory left under Roman control. In 476, the barbarian Odoacer overthrew the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, and Rome had fallen” (History para. 2). The Visigoths continuously tore down the Roman Empire in the West until there was nothing left except for Italy. While the West was getting attacked, the barbarians overthrew Romulus Augusta in the East. Roman was completely helpless and now there was nothing left of them. Romulus Augusta would be the last Roman Empire in history.

            The Roman Empire was completely destroyed by 476. New tribes and cultures had taken over what used to be the Roman Empire, and turned it into their own territories and small empires. Rome lasted as long as it possibly could, trying to fight invaders and wars endlessly. But, eventually Rome couldn’t fight any longer and the Roman Empire had ceased to exist.

Byzantine Empire. (2011). The History Channel website. Retrieved 9:30, April 12, 2011, from

http://www.history.com/topics/byzantine-empire.

Lightfoot, C. (2000, October). The roman empire (27 b.c.–393 a.d.). Retrieved from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roem/hd_roem.htm