The life in roman times?

Question

The causes for the fall of Rome can be divided into four categories: political, military, economic, and social. Using the information you have read, identify one cause in each category and explain how it contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.

Answer 1

homework hu???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_...

This should give you some good information

Answer 2

Political: The Roman government became bloated by its bureaucracy, which was very expensive. The government unmanageably complex, and the matter was made worse by the fact that many of the members of the bureaucracy were corrupt. Also, the Emperor, under the Dominate phase of the government, had almost absolute power, and though some Emperors used this effectively, there were many incompetent ones who made a mess of things.

Military: Endless civil wars sapped the strength of the Empire. As the Army became more important to maintaining power and defeating rivals, the soldiers made excessive demands, became spoiled, and neglected discipline. Also, as a result of the lack of available manpower, the Empire turned to barbarian federates to serve in the army, but many of these barbarians were not loyal to the Empire.

Economic: As the army became more expensive to maintain, the Emperors had to raise taxes and debase the currency. As a result, there was an economic collapse in the Third Century. Though the empire recovered, currency was replaced by the barter system in tax collection. This is very inefficient (requires extensive channels of trade to get the necessary provisions to the necessary places). Also, many farmers were ruined by the taxes and stopped being farmers, letting their lands go fallow. This led to food shortages.

Social: As a result of the economic problems, Diocletian and other Emperors contributed to the creation of a caste system. They thought that by tying workers to their jobs, and farmers to the land, they could make the economy more efficient and prevent land from being left fallow. However, as a result, many citizens became little better than serfs and became disinterested in the fate of the Empire and sometimes saw it as an oppressor. They were far less welling to fight in its military (they sometimes resorted to cutting off their thumbs to avoid service), and even fought at times for the barbarians.

Ultimately, as you can probably tell, these categories are all interconnected and its hard to separate the economic from military from political, ect.