History question; Roman Empire?

Question:What brought about the end of their era? Did they just run out of money or good leaders? One century they were doing great the next they were gone

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: What brought about the end of their era? Did they just run out of money or good leaders? One century they were doing great the next they were gone

By the 4th Century CE the Roman Empire was far spread out and the Empire was difficult to maintain. It was as if the Empire had become like butter spread over too much bread. It's army legions were everywhere and the cost was massive.
A lot of the Emperors themselves were power crazy megalomaniacs who emptied the coffers and never filled them up again, money was squandered on pointless massive building projects and months and months of games at the Colosseum.
Rome was bankrupt and heading for a fall, both politically and financially.
Alaric, King of the Goths from Austria attacked Rome, so did the Visigoths and Attila The Hun. put paid to what was left. Rome was sacked, it's people raped and murdered and it's buildings burned to the ground.
It was decided that the far flung legions should be called home to protect what little was left. In the year 410CE the Roman Legions left Britain, never to return. This happened all over the Empire, it shrank and shrank until virtually nothing was left of the Western Empire.
In Constantinople, (Byzantium) Rome in the East, was a different story. It's success carried on until the 15th Century until it met it's end at the hands of the Turkish Sultans of the Ottoman Empire.

The formal end of the Roman Empire corresponds with the time in which the Empire and the title Emperor no longer had value.
The Empire's collapse was caused by a diminishing marginal return on investment in complexity, a limitation to which most complex societies are eventually subject.

The Roman Empire is the phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire succeeded the 500-year-old Roman Republic (510 BC – 1st century BC), which had been weakened by the civil wars of the Late Republic, and continued as the Byzantine Empire until 1453. Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus. (January 16, 27 BC).

The Latin term Imperium Romanum (Roman Empire), probably the best-known Latin expression where the word imperium denotes a territory, indicates the part of the world under Roman rule. Most of the people living there called themselves Romans[citation needed], and lived under Roman law. Roman expansion began in the days of the Republic, but reached its zenith under Emperor Trajan. At this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled approximately 5,900,000 km2 (2,300,000 sq mi) of land surface. Because of the Empire's vast extent and long endurance, Roman influence upon the language, religion, architecture, philosophy, law and government of nations around the world lasts to this day.

The end of the Roman Empire is sometimes placed at 4 September 476 AD, when the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus, was deposed and not replaced. Before this date, however, the Empire had been divided into Western and Eastern halves, Emperor Diocletian, who retired in 305, having been the last sole Emperor of an undivided Empire. The Western Roman Empire declined and fell apart (see Decline of the Roman Empire) in the course of the 5th century. The Eastern Roman Empire, known largely today as the Byzantine Empire, preserved Greco-Roman legal and cultural traditions along with Hellenic and Orthodox Christian elements for another millennium, until its eventual collapse with the conquest of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1453.

Development of Imperial Rome:

Traditionally, historians make a distinction between the Principate, the period following Augustus until the Crisis of the Third Century, and the Dominate, the period from Diocletian until the end of the empire in the west. According to this distinction, during the Principate (from the Latin word princeps, meaning "first citizen") the realities of absolutism were formally concealed behind republican forms; while during the Dominate (from the word dominus, meaning "master" or "owner") imperial power was clearly shown, with golden crowns and ornate imperial ritual. More recently, historians have established that the situation was far more nuanced: certain historical forms continued until the Byzantine period, more than one thousand years after they were created, and displays of imperial majesty were common from the earliest days of the Empire.

The first emperor:

No definitive answer exists regarding the identity of the first emperor of Rome. Under a purely technical point of view there is no clear "first emperor", as the title itself was not an official post in the Roman constitutional system—rather, it was an amalgam of separate roles.

Julius Caesar was a Dictator Perpetuus (dictator for life), which was a highly irregular form of dictator, an official position in the Roman Republic. By law, the rule of a dictator would normally never exceed six months. The form created by Caesar was therefore quite contrary to the basic principles of the Roman Republic. Nevertheless, officially his authority rested upon this republican title, however irregular it might have been, and therefore he is considered a republican official. Several senators, among them many former enemies who had been pardoned by him, grew fearful that he would crown himself and try to establish a monarchy. Accordingly, they conspired to assassinate him, and on the Ides of March, 44 BC, the dictator perished under the blades of his assassins.

Octavian, his grand-nephew, adopted son and political heir, learned from the mistake of his predecessor and never claimed the widely feared title dictator, disguising his power under republican forms much more carefully. All this was intended to foster the illusion of a restoration of the Republic. He received several titles like Augustus—"the elevated one", and Princeps—translated as "first citizen of the Roman republic" or as "first leader of the Roman Senate". The latter had been a title awarded for those who had served the state well; Pompey had held that title.

In addition, Augustus (as he was named thereafter) was granted the right to wear the Civic Crown of laurel and oak. Officially, however, none of these titles or the Civic Crown granted Augustus any additional powers or authority; he was simply a highly honored Roman citizen who held the consulship. Augustus also became Pontifex Maximus after the death of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in 13 BC. He also received several additional and extraordinary powers without claiming too many titles. In the end, he only needed the authority itself, not all the titles.

The traditional answer is Bread and Circuses, by the fall of the Roman Empire the Romans had 1/3 to 1/2 of the year devoted to holidays and ceremonies. Add to that the elevation to near despotic godhood of the Emperors and the lack of actual ruling ability, the degridation of the Legions, and the encroachment of formerly subjigated Barbarian tribes and you pretty much have the short version of an answer.

They over stretched themselves. Short but true.

One interesting thing that led to the Roman demise was the switching of state sponsered religions. Christian, Jewish, Polytheistic, and back again. They were ruled somewhat as a dictatorship in that they had a figure much like a king that had power over the people. One king would declare a religion, everyone would revolt. It is a never ending cycle of greed for power and domination coupled with a lust for expansion.

Some say the expansion is what killed them. At one point the roman empire covered more than half of Europe. Many say that this led to the downfall of their centralized government, and therefore they could no longer pass and sustain laws in their empire. Of course this would be much easier now because of enhanced communication, but 2000 years ago it was hard to tell someone in England to do something from what is now Italy. They over extended themselves to the point where they could no longer sustain their empire and it kinda of collapsed.

When you say they were just gone, this is a misstatement, as the people still existed, but in reality what occurred is when the centralized government of Rome collapsed, it just gave rise to each individiual nation to choose a local goverment, cause the fractioning of the empire, and a new dynasty to form closer to home.

Here are some reasons why the Roman empire fell:

-rebellion (they raise taxes to support armies, people rebel, and they have to raise taxes again and the trouble just keeps getting bigger).

-Financial crisis (Ran out of gold and silver to make coins; ended up making bronze coins tipped with silver which started mass inflation)

-The Stirrup (near the time the Roman empire got wiped out, an invention called the stirrup (the thing when horse riding, you push your feet against to maintain balance entered Europe from Asia. The Germanic barbarians were able to adapt to it quickly; the Romans didn't adapt to it quick enough and ended getting all their horseman slaughtered by superior enemy weapon swing)

-Barbarians rising (Romans ended up getting outnumbered like hell and they were eventually crushed because of this)

-Bankruptcy (not enough tax revenue to feed the poor in the city of Rome itself/mass taxing not sustainable enough to continue to import luxury products that rich Romans wanted to buy)

The empire came under attack from barbarian hordes who conquered europe, Goths, Vandals, Saxons etc. The romans withdrew their troops from countries that they felt were stable enough to do without them, like Britain, but the barbarians were too much for them.