The Crisis, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

#Roman #Empire #Crisis #endof"Writing around 411 CE St Jerome, one of the great early Church Fathers, a writer who framed elements of Christianity for centuries to come, described an immense event he had just recently heard about. Jerome lived in Bethlehem in the Roman province of Palaestina Prima, where he had moved decades earlier to live in the land where Jesus Christ had once ministered. Even here, though, news had quickly reached him of this event. Far to the west, on the 24th of August in the year 410 CE, an army of Germanic warriors led by Alaric the Goth, mostly of a group called the Visigoths, had sacked the city of Rome. It was the first time in exactly 800 years that a foreign power had managed to enter and sack the Eternal City. Reflecting on the news Jerome wrote “The city which hath taken the whole world was itself taken”. It was a momentous event, one which begs a number of questions. First and foremost, how had the capital of an empire which covered most of the known world and which had conquered nearly all its enemies over many centuries been sacked? In answering this, the wider question of how Rome’s crisis, decline and fall came about arises.
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