Roman Empire Dbq

Rome was a tremendous civilization that we got many ideas from. They eventually fell, but left their mark in the list of great civilizations. They had three main reasons of why they fell and those were foreign invasions, weak military, and weak leadership.
To begin with, Rome had many foreign invaders that conquered their territory. In the document of the map of all the foreign invasions, it shows how all of the civilizations were coming to Rome at the same time because they knew that they were weak and they would be painless to attack. It also shows how Rome was right in the center of all the civilizations so it was not very difficult to get to Rome because none of the civilizations had to go through water because Rome was not surrounded by any water or mountains. Also, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman Historian, the Huns were very easily able to take over Rome. It was difficult for the Romans to fight off the Huns because they fought on Horses so the Huns were way faster, and stronger than the Romans so they could easily overpower them in a battle. Finally, according to Priscus, a Roman ambassador to the Huns, he explains that the Huns took over the rule of

Rome and made it become a fair empire again. Before the Huns the taxes in Rome were very severe, if a wealthy person broke the law, they would not be punished, but if a poor person broke the law they would have a punishment.
Next off, Rome had a weak military, which allowed foreign invaders from other civilizations to come in and attack them.

According to the brainpop it says that the Roman army was paid to be loyal and fight. Even though the Roman army would have been loyal even if they did not pay them. So they were just wasting money on the army when they would not even wear their armor. Also, according to Vegetius, it says that the Roman soldiers became very lazy so the armor became too heavy for the soldiers to wear. Therefore, since the army did not wear any armor when they fought in the Goths they had no body armor to protect themselves. So, they were often beaten by archers in the head and other military weapons.Without any armor the soldiers would instead of fighting the battle, just run away from the

enemies.
Lastly, the biggest reason why Rome fell was because of their weak and terrible leadership. First off according to various sources, it shows that 22 emperors were killed in a very short time. They were killed because of Rome's weak way of picking a reliable leader. The leaders that were usually picked were very poor at their job so they were assassinated by another person in the Roman empire that wanted to be the emperor. In that short time span of the killing of emperors 0 of the emperors were killed by natural death. They were all killed by assassination and not just of old age death. Next according to the brainpop it says that the government in Rome changed from having many people govern Rome to just having one leader control Rome. This probably upseted the people because they probably liked having the freedom of being able to make their laws, but instead now with just one leader the people are not able to make their laws but, instead they have listen to one all powerful leader.Lastly, also according to the brainpop it says that the leadership became such an issue that they had to split Rome into two. They had the eastern half of Rome and the western half of Rome. After splitting into two the western half was not successful at all while the eastern half flourished and did really well.
Rome was one of many civilizations that became a very big empire and in the end they fell because they could not control of the territory. But, if they did not have all these problems, especially weak leadership, they might have been able to stay successful as an empire.