by John Devera

Created on: April 04, 2008

The very likely reason for the fall of the Roman Empire is that it really ran out of new frontiers. As it grew more complex and more advanced, the Roman Empire required more resources in order to function. Think about it. You need bureaucrats, academics, politicians and middle management to run an Empire. The larger the Empire, the more of these kinds of people you need to support. But Rome had limited resources. Only a certain amount of land could be exploited. So what do you do? Of course, you conquer new lands and exploit them. But by doing so, you now need more of those bureaucrats, academics politicians and middle management. So you conquer more land. As you can see, eventually you run up against a point where it consts you more resources to conquer new lands than you can possibly get from those new lands.

But this all presupposes you understand some basics. And this is only one possibility of many for why the Roman Empire collapsed.

Here's the least you need to know about the technical part of this question. The Roman Empire succeeded the Roman Republic when Julius Caesar was appointed perpetual and permanent dictator in 44 BCE. There are some other dates which may be offered as the true beginning, but the idea of a single ruler of the Roman conquests surely can be traced back to this event.

The end of the Roman Empire is often dated to the deposing of Romulus Augustus in 476 CE. He was not replaced, and so the Western Empire came to an end. But herein lies the crux of the situation. You see, the Roman Empire had already split into two pieces before this. Diocletian, in 305 CE was the last ruler of an undivided Roman Empire, but those two halves are both the Roman Empire. So, after Romulus gets the boot, the Empire still continues! The Byzantine Empire still exists until 1453 with the crushing siege of Constantinople in the war against the Ottoman Empire. But usually, when we talk about the Roman Empire, we are talking about the Western Roman Empire.

Now the causes for the fall of the Western Empire are many, but they all revolve around the Visigoths and Vandals who decimated Rome time and again. The real problem was that German mercenaries in the Empire wanted more than the Emperors were willing to give. They rebelled and their diplomatic and military victories left the Empire in pieces.

Now, WHY did the Western Empire fall, now that we know the how. Well, there are many possibilities. The Romans had weakened their ability to defend themselves militarily

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