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The Western Roman Empire

This research examines whether and to what extent the Western Roman Empire can be said to have "fallen" over the course of the third to fifth centuries AD and how the West fared vis-à-vis the Eastern Empire over the same period. The research will discuss how the Eastern Empire responded to the conquest patterns of Islam from the seventh century onward, as well as the role of Christianity in the fate of both the East and the West.

Gibbon's narrative of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire begins essentially from the death of the last of the so-called five good emperors, Marcus Aurelius, in AD 180. Gibbon goes on to provide the precarious histories of a number of emperors, some good, most bad--and almost all assassinated. But under Diocletian, Rome in AD 286 underwent a civil and administrative restructuring that had major long-term consequences for the status and fate of the Empire. It was a practical response to the administrative and military contingencies created because Roman civil and military apparatus stretched thinly from Britain to North Africa to the eastern Mediterranean, frontier commanders could threaten civil war abroad and create anarchy at home. A pious believer in the old Roman religion and civic virtues, Diocletian mistrusted and therefore persecuted the troublesome Christian cult. German barbarians were also perpetually threatening to invade southward. Diocletian split imperial rule into Eastern and Western divisions, selecting a general, Maximian, as co-emperor in Milan while he located eastward, at Nicomedia, adjacent to Persia; Rome remained titular capital, but no ruler was there.

The controlling idea appears to have been to stabilize and secure the Empire. In AD 293, by which time he and Maximian carried title of Augustus and status of god, Diocletian assigned himself and Maximian each a so-called caesar, sited geostrategically, in Gaul and what is today known as the Balkans. The administrative apparat...

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The Western Roman Empire. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:43, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1683070.html