Roman Empire Research Paper

858 Words4 Pages
The Roman Empire is considered to be one of the greatest empires in human history. So the question that needs to be raised is, how did this great empire collapse? Many factors contributed to the demise of the Roman Empire, but the most important factor was economic problems within the Roman Empire. To begin, the economy of the Roman Empire mainly consisted of an agricultural base that was taxed in order to provide the majority of the income for the Roman Empire. This system eventually caught up to the Roman Empire because the taxation on agriculture placed a large burden on the Roman citizens. Due to the burdensome placed on the citizens by these taxes, the economic foundation in Rome was slowly eaten away. Taxes were a large problem for…show more content…
For example, in the early A.D 270s Emperor Aurelian gave the citizens of Rome a free daily ration of bread and pork. Aurelian decided to adopt this practice because he wanted to be popular among the Roman citizens. By giving out these rations, Emperors after Aurelian were forced to adopt the same polices because a precedent had been set in Rome. This practice of giving daily rations increases the amount of money being spent and is taking away from the money that can be used to run the Roman Empire. Spending money on policies that Emperor Aurelian implemented was a poor decision because he was using funds that were not benefiting the Roman Empire in a productive way. This practice was not productive because it showed the citizens of Rome that they could be more dependent on the government instead of themselves. As more citizens become more dependent on the government, more money has to be used to provide for these citizens instead of being spent to run the Roman Empire. Since Emperor Aurelian set a precedent, the Roman Empire had new expenses to undertake. Along with Emperor Aurelian other Emperors set precedents as well. For example Emperor Vespasian built the colosseum in A.D 70 for entertainment and the Emperors who followed him were expected to keep this entertainment going. To keep this entertainment going, the Roman Empire was forced to use their funds on providing the resources for this entertainment. Going along with the idea of providing entertainment, building projects were a major expense throughput the Roman Empire. Infrastructure was needed to provide the buildings necessary for this entertainment. Emperors of Rome were known to go all out on their projects, which is a burdensome on the Roman Empire because the material that were used were expensive and hard to find. For example Emperor Augustus found “Rome a city
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