Pax Romana

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During the period of Pax Romana, the Roman Empire was in a time of peace and prosperity. Beginning with the rule of Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C.E, Pax Romana lasted until 180 C.E. A decade later came the rule of Diocletian, and in attempt to make the empire easier to rule, he split it into two. Clearly, this tactic failed, and Constantine, the ruler after Diocletian, tried to unite the halves, but failed, as the Western Roman Empire was already declining. The Western Roman Empire fell for three main reasons. Politically, which includes overexpansion, a weakened military, and corrupt leaders. Economically, which includes the mass of unemployed men, heavy taxation, cease to expand, and inflation, The last reason for the fall of the Empire were…show more content…
Christianity diminished the Roman’s desire for warfare, and, as Historian D explains, “Until Christian religion came along, Romans were strong and vigorous fighters. Christianity made them weak, “love thy neighbor” types. It took the fighting spirit from the empire.” Historian D is more or less saying that if Christianity had never been introduced to the Western Roman Empire, the Romans would be willing to fight and still have a desire for warfare. In the excerpt The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, he states “ . . . The introduction . . . of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire.” According to an excerpt from the textbook The Course of Civilization by Strayer, Gatzke, and Harbison (Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1961), “The basic trouble was that very few inhabitants of the empire believed that the old civilization was worth saving . . . ” The Western Roman Empire’s main problem was that if the people of the Empire did not believe the old civilization was worth saving, who would put in the effort to save it? The few people of the Empire who had believed it was worth saving could not bring back the old civilization by themselves. Disease was another major reason that the Western Roman Empire fell. In the late 100s C.E, the soldiers that had returned from the Middle East brought what might have been a smallpox epidemic, which severely depleted the empire’s population from one million to twenty-five thousand. In later years, measles and the bubonic plague would do have the same effect. [Barron’s AP World History, Edition 6] A final social issue that caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire were the barbarian invasions that occurred from the mid 300s-mid 400s C.E. According to the map that shows the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire prior to 476, the

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