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Another husk
The Roman Empire is known for its construction of Roads that stretched throughout the Empire and through other trade routes even connected as far as the [[Silk Road]] and China.
The Roman Empire is known for its construction of Roads that stretched throughout the Empire and through other trade routes even connected as far as the [[Silk Road]] and China.
The causes of the decline of the Roman Empire are controversial. Many posit that [[immorality]] and [[homosexuality]] so weakened spirit of the Empire that it was unable to stand firm against the Barbarians. Certainly poets such as [[Catullus]] and [[Juvenal]] describe many unnatural practises that may well have contributed to the final collapse just four hundred years later.
== The Fall of the Roman Empire==
The causes of the decline of the Roman Empire are controversial. Many posit that [[immorality]] and [[homosexuality]] so weakened spirit of the Empire that it was unable to stand firm against the Barbarians. Certainly poets such as [[Catullus]] and [[Juvenal]] describe many unnatural practises that may well have contributed to the final collapse just four hundred years later. However, this theory was sensationalized by the (at the time) popular British writer [[Edward Gibbon]], who wrote the influential ''[[Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]''. Gibbons, though, was highly biased, in his attempt to analogize between the fall of Rome and what he saw as a lessening of moral strength in his own [[England]]. This theory is widely discounted by modern historians.
One influential writer theorized that the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire are simple - it never was strong. Rather, it simply had no strong enemy prior to 300 A.D.<ref>Edward N. Luttwak, ''The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire''</ref> Prior to this time, a complicated system of "buffer states" and sedentary provincial legions could hold such a vast territory - however, with the advent of the first comparable military unit, the [[Visigoths]], led by [[Alaric the Visigoth|Alaric]].
== After "the Fall" ==
Accounts of the Roman world's immediate descent into poverty have been greatly exaggerated. Rather, rulers such as [[Theoderic the Ostrogoth]] and his followers (the [[Amal]] clan) ruled from [[Ravenna]] in the Roman style, maintaining much of Roman life and infrastructure.<ref>Peter Wolfram, ''The Goths''</ref> Theoderic even employed Romans to ensure this continuity and sense of Roman stability. One example was [[Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator]] (or just Cassiodorus), who, writing as Theoderic, famously urged all Romans to "clothe themselves with the morals of the [[toga]]" - i.e., retain your Roman ways, in spite of the "barbarian" rule.
This twilight period was finally cut short by the reconquest campaign planned by the [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantine]] emperor [[Justinian I]], led by the general [[Belisarius]]. In a bloody war, both sides reduced the Italian countryside to nothing, with the Byzantines finally inheriting a ravaged husk.<ref>Procopius, ''the Gothic Wars''</ref>
== References ==
<references/>
See [[World History Lecture Four]]
See [[World History Lecture Four]]