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Fall Of The Roman Empire Essay

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The Fall of Rome cannot be pinpointed to one specific event, as it was facilitated by numerous events that led to an inevitable decline of the Empire. The timeframe in which these events occurred was not simply a couple of days, but hundreds of years. After all, they say that Rome was not built in a day, and the same can be said of its fall. Money, the root of countless historical problems, was the seed that laid the downfall of Rome. The Empire, for the most part, relied on taxation to fill the treasury to fund all facets of government. In an ideal system, economic troubles should be accounted for and expected when policies of overspending and currency debasing slip into place. However, the Roman Empire did not handle the economic hardships that they faced very well. The multitude of economic factors that Rome experienced, as a whole, led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
To get the money that Rome needed to pay the military, fix roads, construct monuments and buildings, the Senate started a system known as tax farming. People, who were …show more content…

Inflation in Rome was a huge problem that caused many other problems in its civilization. First of all, a big reason for inflation in the Roman Empire was war. “The soldiers' pay rose from 225 denarii during the time of Augustus to 300 denarii in the time of Domitian, about a hundred years later.” (Peden). In another hundred years, the pay of soldiers in the Roman Empire had been raised up to 750 denarii. This was because Roman coinage was becoming less valuable, and so, soldiers would have to be paid more. The government did not have enough money to pay the soldiers, so they taxed citizens to gain more money. As well as taxing citizens, soldiers were also given commodities alternatively to pay so that the government could get enough money to support other causes. “They were literally given food, clothing, shelter, and other commodities in lieu of pay.”

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