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Subject: Why Rome Fell?
Commander    3/24/2005 6:45:20 PM
I believe the cause of Rome's fall was because the Romans were to comfortable. They had many slaves to do their work for them and they were surronded by a continues flow of weak emperors. It also is the fact that the fall was the continues assasinations made by the Praetorian Guard. It is widely known that a comfortable man is a dead man. While the people of Rome was getting weaker the babarians were getting stronger.
 
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Pars    RE:Why Rome Fell? Huns, Goths and Battle of Adrianoble.   6/25/2005 7:46:22 PM
As Gratian himself iniated the battle, he should not be severely outnumbered. In fact if the Visigoths have outnumbered Romans they would not defend behind the Wagon Lager. It is the unexpected arrival of Goth cavalry that turned the battle.
 
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Caesar Maximus    RE:Why Rome Fell? Huns, Goths and Battle of Adrianoble.   6/26/2005 7:40:28 PM
Some texts i've read say he was considerably outnumbered (by about 40,000). Of ocurse sources for details on this battle are somewhat thin, so no-one knows for sure. The Goths may have retreated simply because the army b4 them was still large, and it was Roman. Remember the Goths didn't initially want to fight the Romans, and Valens' subordinates had defeated the Goths in battles the previous year. Yes the return of the Gothic cavalry was important, but they had already returned by the time the battle commenced.
 
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Thomas    RE:Why Rome Fell?   11/1/2005 9:31:46 AM
Generally: The Roman Empire was under pressure from 2 direction in more or less 400 years: The Goths in Europe and the parthians in the east. This - if nothing else - served to strain the concept of unity of command. In that period the enemies of Rome learned steadily from Rome - especially organisation. Another factor - very often overlooked - was that the benefits to the members of the empire gradually fell. The internal trade actually fell, as every city/hamlet aquired the skills, so trade was superfleous. The economy also suffered from the very lack of technological development, and benefits of scale of production. If you needed to double the production of pottery, you had to build two potteries, which due to the increased societal organisation is actually a drawback of economy of scale.
 
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Thomas    RE:Why Rome Fell?   11/1/2005 9:56:30 AM
Actually did the Roman Empire fall???? The Imperial administration continued in the Catholic church. I admit they have a goth emperor at present, but fall....
 
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longrifle    RE:Why Rome Fell?   11/21/2005 12:19:21 AM
Well, although I really suspect it was because they started putting sugar in grits and cornbread, I'll take a stab at a non-southern answer. The Biblical answer, found in the book of Daniel, is because the God of heaven and earth establishes and destroys kingdoms according to his soverign will and purpose. And it is not always granted man to know the purposes of God. Don't like that answer either? Well although I really believe that's ultimately the bottom line, I aknowledge that God works through things like empires overextending themselves, greed, complacency, easyliving, decadence, and invaders, just to name a few. In short, from a humanistic viewpoint, a lot of things contribute to an empire falling, be it Roman, Mongol or any other. I suspect that many things working together contributed to the decline of Rome, some more than others, but that no single defining cause ended the Roman Empire. Of course, by now you know who I believe controls those many things working together.
 
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CJH    RE:Why Rome Fell?   11/21/2005 4:15:22 PM
One interesting thought. The late Dr. J. Vernon McGee whose Bible teaching messages are still broadcast on the radio and on the internet said in reference to the prophesies in the Book of Zechariah that the Roman Empire, not having been subject to the conquest of another empire as the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian or Macedonian empires were, only fell apart and will simply reconstitute itself at the time of the tribulation in the future. Maybe Rome dissipated rather than fell.
 
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Pars    RE:longrifle   11/21/2005 7:23:44 PM
"Why Rome fell?" is not a religious question. Everything comes from the God including the air we breathe. OK but that is not the answer of why. To ask "Why" is a way to understand the things that happen. You can not understand if you do not ask why. In fact the question "Why" is the reason that we have science and technology.
 
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Pars    RE:CJH   11/21/2005 7:26:14 PM
So, according to this theory of falling apart; what did Franks, Goths, Vandals have done? As long as I know they conquered the Roman Empire. Even the city itself.
 
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Carl S    RE:Vandals in the streets   11/21/2005 10:15:55 PM
Yes I always thought the Goths had something to do with the sack of Rome.
 
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longrifle    RE:longrifle   11/21/2005 10:51:16 PM
>>"Why Rome fell?" is not a religious question.<< You are correct that it was not asked as a religious question. But since I believe it to be the truth I chose to answer it that way. There are lots of opinions on this board that not everyone thinks should have been inserted into the discussion. >>Everything comes from the God including the air we breathe. OK but that is not the answer of why. To ask "Why" is a way to understand the things that happen. You can not understand if you do not ask why.<< I think I did answer "why" with examples of worldly circumstances. I just prefaced and followed up the worldly circumstances with a refrence to Divine manipulation of said circumstances. I'm not doubting the role of the Goths and Vandals, one of the circumstances I mentioned was invaders wasn't it? I think the other circumstances I mentioned played a part as well i.e complacency and decadence make it easier for invaders.
 
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CJH    RE:CJH   11/24/2005 3:01:27 PM
"So, according to this theory of falling apart; what did Franks, Goths, Vandals have done? As long as I know they conquered the Roman Empire. Even the city itself." Well, IIRC from my history, The Franks (rendered "Free Men"), who were not originally an ethnic group but rather were an assembly of men from different Germanic tribes, raided across the the German border into the province of Gaul. When the west empire fell, the Franks set up a kingdom in Gaul around Paris with Paris as their capital. The Vandals, who were thought to have originated around the Baltic coast, migrated at the time of the collapse in the west, through France, Spain and North Africa to Carthage (Tunisia) which they made their own seat of power. From there they took to the sea and dominated it. In 405 AD they sailed across the Mediterranean and sacked Rome. This was the first time since 386 BC when Rome fell to a barbarian invader. Before that 386 BC sacking Rome had only been the chief city of the Latin league. It lost that status in the immediate term but by about a century later it controlled all of Italy to its south. There were numerous invasions by the Goths in the third century AD before the empire was divided. The second Emperor Claudius, who was a Flavian and therefore a descendant of Vespasian, conducted a long and difficult but successful military campaign against the Gothic invaders. The threat of Gothic inroads ceased after this until the time of the invasion of north Europe by Huns when Goths and other Germanic bands fled south into Italy. Some when into southern France and some stayed around Italy and as the western empire government weakened, they gradually took over and established the Gothic kingdom of Italy in 475 AD. Of course earlier Goths also received sanctuary in the eastern empire but later made war on the eastern empire and won the battle of Adrianople (in 379 or 378 AD?). Your "Why?" pertains to the question "Why Rome Fell?". My comment was intended to examine the premise of the question "Why Rome Fell?" which is that Roman empire ceased in the same way that say the Inca Empire did after Pizarro or the Aztec Empire after Cortez or the Graeco-Macedonian after Rome. My comment was to venture the possibility that a distinction may be needed here between the empire falling by being permanently terminated and the empire simply decomposing into constituent components which allows for a recomposition at a future date, into an empire again. That's all. If you look at the EU today you see a kind of shadow of the Roman Empire. McGee's comment as I understand it looks forward to a future date when the same nationalities and the same territories will again be part of a superstate that will dominate the world if not rule over the entirety of it.
 
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CJH    RE:Pars   11/24/2005 3:18:12 PM
"In fact the question "Why" is the reason that we have science and technology." Did you know that Sir Isaac Newton wrote more treatises on theology than he wrote on physics? The original why is "Why are we here?". Without that line of inquiry, we would not have universities, sciences or technology, banking, insurance or industry.
 
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CJH    RE:Pars   11/24/2005 5:15:22 PM
(This is the same as a previous response which had been named RE:CJH) "So, according to this theory of falling apart; what did Franks, Goths, Vandals have done? As long as I know they conquered the Roman Empire. Even the city itself." Well, IIRC from my history, The Franks (rendered "Free Men"), who were not originally an ethnic group but rather were an assembly of men from different Germanic tribes, raided across the the German border into the province of Gaul. When the west empire fell, the Franks set up a kingdom in Gaul around Paris with Paris as their capital. The Vandals, who were thought to have originated around the Baltic coast, migrated at the time of the collapse in the west, through France, Spain and North Africa to Carthage (Tunisia) which they made their own seat of power. From there they took to the sea and dominated it. In 405 AD they sailed across the Mediterranean and sacked Rome. This was the first time since 386 BC when Rome fell to a barbarian invader. Before that 386 BC sacking Rome had only been the chief city of the Latin league. It lost that status in the immediate term but by about a century later it controlled all of Italy to its south. There were numerous invasions by the Goths in the third century AD before the empire was divided. The second Emperor Claudius, who was a Flavian and therefore a descendant of Vespasian, conducted a long and difficult but successful military campaign against the Gothic invaders. The threat of Gothic inroads ceased after this until the time of the invasion of north Europe by Huns when Goths and other Germanic bands fled south into Italy. Some when into southern France and some stayed around Italy and as the western empire government weakened, they gradually took over and established the Gothic kingdom of Italy in 475 AD. Of course earlier Goths also received sanctuary in the eastern empire but later made war on the eastern empire and won the battle of Adrianople (in 379 or 378 AD?). Your "Why?" pertains to the question "Why Rome Fell?". My comment was intended to examine the premise of the question "Why Rome Fell?" which is that Roman empire ceased in the same way that say the Inca Empire did after Pizarro or the Aztec Empire after Cortez or the Graeco-Macedonian after Rome. My comment was to venture the possibility that a distinction may be needed here between the empire falling by being permanently terminated and the empire simply decomposing into constituent components which allows for a recomposition at a future date, into an empire again. That's all. If you look at the EU today you see a kind of shadow of the Roman Empire. McGee's comment as I understand it looks forward to a future date when the same nationalities and the same territories will again be part of a superstate that will dominate the world if not rule over the entirety of it.
 
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Pars    RE:Pars   11/25/2005 9:48:16 PM
Rome was much differant than Europe. Rome had the South Europe, Middle-East and North Africa in itself which contributed much to the collective culture of the Empire. On the other hand Central and North Europe was not part of the Empire. Today only Catholic Church is the surviving part of the Empire. In everything else in Europe it is the succesor states cultures (mostly German) that is dominant effect. So your theory of "simply decomposing into constituent components which allows for a recomposition at a future date" looks unrealistic to me because german culture was not part of the Empire.
 
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CJH    RE:Pars   11/25/2005 10:33:43 PM
It is true Germany proper was not conquered by Rome. However, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany west of the Rhine were part of the empire. Cologne, Germany, a Roman colony, was named Colona and was a spa for Roman soldiers. Also, Germany proper could not exist as a neighbor of the empire without being exposed to Rome's influence and effected by its pretensions and mores. Consider the fact that the later Holy Roman emperors, who were German, styled themselves the inheriters of the mantle of the caesars. From Charlemagne through Bonaparte to Hitler, strong men and adventurers have had ambitions to rule a Europe united under them. And even the rulers of Russia called themselves czars in imitation of the caesars.
 
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