by Gary Watson

Created on: July 27, 2010

Edward Gibbon is indeed the primary place to go to research this topic. The fall of Rome was a long and drawn out decline, indeed Gibbons use of the word ‘decline’ is key as this is precisely what it was a decline to a fall. It did not fall sudden and abruptly as that was not the way Rome was as a civilisation; it had grown through adaptation and through decentralisation, a republic of great moral values and self- belief. It then later fell literally to pieces with many different Rome’s that had come to exist. Free or moral it was a highly centralised empire but rotten at the core and with little of its old values left and as a result no sense of itself, it survived only as a concept and as a church.

The beginnings in fact lie back some four hundred years and more before the last sacking of Rome by the Goths and the deposition of the last emperor (whichever this may be it depends on which sources you believe another later emperor is recorded as having been assassinated). Julius Caesar heralded a new kind of leadership based on popular support and the support of proletarian army. From this point onwards Rome struggled with itself it was no longer the aristocratic republic. It went from ruler to ruler uneasily with no succession that was smooth and it was only much later that ‘the return of the republic’ ceased being whispered in dark corners. The war machine was pressed to far and to the extreme it needed a new source and that would lead to political problems for Rome from a political army. The Romans became decadent and utterly corrupt replacing wealth and greed with their earlier staunch morals and state-belief.

This complexion was changed somewhat during the reign of Constantine and the rise of Christianity as the state religion. There are varying degrees of agreement as to how far Christianity played a part in Rome’s decline, certainly it took the focus and soul of Rome from its original values, but they had however already been lost. What the new religion did give was a new dimension from which many of the surviving values could continue after the fall of the empire, it also allowed the language and much of the history to remain in the hands of Romans keeping their civilisation at least alive if not their empire.

By the time of the ultimate fall the church had become a separate and powerful force, with the emperor almost sidelined. However the factors that had heralded the empire still remained and the generals and

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