Roman Empire Research Paper

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The topic of rise and fall of the Roman Empire has always fascinated me. It is considered as one of the world’s most impressive empires in the history of mankind. The Roman Empire stretched from Syria to Scotland and from the Black sea to the Atlantic, spanned in three continents. In addition to the great territory, something that makes this Empire even more interesting is its organization complexity which allowed remarkably long life, lasting for more than 500 years. However, it fell! Many reasons have been brought by historians and different scholars tackling the issues of the fall of the Roman Empire. To illustrate the complexity of this issue, I will mention a survey which took place years ago when a historian lists no less than 210 various …show more content…
There was a very strong army united and loyal to a single individual whose ambitious are guided by further expansion of the territory or in some cases asserting his empire within the existing boundaries. The best example to illustrate the centralization of power, is the emperor Octavian (27 BCE – 14 BCE) who put a lot of efforts on centralizing the power to a sole authority, the emperor. Yet, this was easily achieved by Octavian since majority of the army, in the center and periphery, consisted of citizens of Rome. Among many reforms brought by Octavian, perhaps the one that is relevant for the political and military issues is the limited tenure of provincial governors aiming to reduce the ties between them and the military against the Emperor himself. This allowed him to spread the “Roman Ideology” easily and at the same time avoid potential threats from the uprising political opponents. Yet, this was destined to change. The composition of the army changed drastically due to lack of incentives for the Roman citizens to be part of the army. New open frontiers in the west and east, but also within the empire (rebellions) required more soldiers and this led to extension of army service from 15 to 25 years. In addition, once the only way to prominence was through military, while later the glory gained from military service was not the only necessary condition to achieve success in politics. Among other reasons, these changes reduced the willingness of the Roman people to become part of the army and as a consequence, by the late third century, only less than 2% of the army consisted of Roman Citizen while the rest were coming from provinces. This allowed the Roman generals and governors to settle in provinces for longer time and eventually the loyalty of the army shifted from the center to periphery, namely to the local rulers or governors. Military power created the political
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