Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
End of the Empire
Invasions and Divisions
Objectives
• To what city did Constantine move Rome’s capital?
• What effect did Roman farmers’ fear of raids have on the empire?
• Who was Attila the Hun?
• Why did the Goths move into the Roman Empire?
• Name two of Justinian’s major accomplishments.
• Name two ways that the Byzantine Empire was different from the Western Roman Empire.
Terms and People
• Diocletian was the emperor that split the Roman Empire in two.
• Byzantine Empire was the east part of the empire after the Roman Empire split.
Byzantine Empire
West Roman Empire
• Attila the Hun was a Mongolian warrior that invaded Europe.
• Corruption is the decay of people’s values.
• Justinian was an emperor that passed a code of laws and tried to reunite the empire.
The Roman Empire collapsed by internal and external problems.
The Internal Problems
In many ways, the Roman Empire has become just too large to manage.
The Romans depended on slaves to get things done.
When a culture does their own work, they often find easier ways to get the job done.
The empire could depend on the work of slaves, they didn’t need to invent new things.
Romans feasted until they vomited.
The Romans’ love of violence increased.
Slaves were tortured for entertainment at dinners.
Assassination became common; an emperor was
lucky to last five years.
The Romans had never developed rules governing who would become emperor next.
Since any powerful man could become emperor, the empire fought amongst themselves too often.
This instability inside leaves them too weak to deal with:
The External Problems
Goths and other Germans invaded from the north.
Roman farmers living near the borders experienced raids. They tended to move toward the empire’s interior.
Their farms were often taken over by the Germans.
In 9 AD, a German leader named Arminius attacked a pompous Roman named Varus who thought he could tame the Germans as Rome had done to the Celts.
Arminius had been a Roman soldier and used the training he received against them in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
In 9 AD, Arminius lured the Romans into a narrow area between a forested hill and a bog.
Then the Germans charged out of the wooded hill and attacked the Romans.
The Roman legions were destroyed by German armies.
The Romans were stunned. They had thought the legions were invincible.
In 410, the Germans came to Rome.
The Germans sacked Rome.
This means they murdered the men, looted the goods, and did what they wanted with the women.
One reason the Goths invaded Rome was they had the Huns behind them.
Tribes were invading over and over.
Although it is clear that the Barbarians overthrew Rome, not everyone agrees why they were able to overthrow Rome.
According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions because its citizens lost their sense of duty.
One of the greatest historians of the Roman Empire was Edward Gibbon.
Romans, he believed, had become effeminate, unwilling to live a tougher, manly military lifestyle. They hired barbarian mercenaries to defend their Empire instead of doing their duty. The barbarians then became so numerous that they were able to take over the Empire.
