Roman Empire DBQ

638 Words2 Pages

The Roman Empire lasted for 500 years from the rise of Julius Caesar when he was named dictator for life by the Roman senate, to the last Roman emperor in AD 476. It controlled a vast amount of land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, including northern Africa, western Asia and southern Europe. The society was prosperous, but as the empire continued to expand, citizens and subjects were faced with many elements that lead to the fall of the Roman Empire; which ceased to exist because of inconsistent leadership, poor military decisions and its sheer geographical size. Roman leadership was inconsistent. Multiple leaders were assassinated or killed in battle; from A.D. 235 to 285, there were 22 emperors and 13 of them were assassinated (Document …show more content…

The borders of Rome extended around the Mediterranean Sea, and this geography promoted the spread of major plagues and diseases, which affected a large portion of the Roman society. Soldiers would get sick making it almost impossible for there to be any recruits; this obviously declined the protection Rome was able to provide (Document 9). The major decrease in the number of soldiers able to serve in the army largely affected Rome’s ability to stand up against incoming attacks, especially because the empire was so large. Since Carthage invaded Rome multiple times during the span of 400 years, this shows that although the military helped with some protection near the heart of Rome, invasions throughout the rest of the empire did not go uncommon (Document 5, map similar to Doc 5). Aside from invasions, the Roman Empire proved to be too large for only one leader, causing Diocletian to split the empire into two halves in AD 284 . The two halves had to be co-ruled by two emperors, which proved to cause further difficulties when trying to govern the empire as a

More about Roman Empire DBQ

Open Document