lwarmonger

I agree with you Caddy. While there were one or two exceptions (such as the heresy in Egypt making it more ripe for Muslim conquest), for the most part Christianity acted as a strength for the empire to rally around, not a weakness. It was another centralizing factor in an otherwise desparate and far flung empire.

Praxus

You missing a fundamental point. The Roman Empire had a population of over 80,000,000 (At the least 10,000,000 men of military age). Despite this massive population comparitive to modern Republics, they never had a military larger then they did at the second punic war, when just Rome and her Italian allies raised an army of over 25 legions. I will say that Christianity is not the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. The lack of good Emporers after Marcus Auralius is. They had no recourse like they did under the Republic, they were stuck with a bad Emporer, baring some assasination by members of the Senate or Pratorian Gaurd. On top of the Emperors fear of the military, it made for a bad combination.

This being said, if Rome raised an Army of say 35-40 legions (250,000), which they were more then capable of recruiting from just Italy itself, they could have pushed the Germanic tribes far into Eastern europe and discourage them from attacking Rome. In fact when Rome did attack the Huns and managed to push them out of the Empire, they didn't again attack for over 100 years.

Christianity did weaken the Empire. Greek and Roman religions were very much this worldly and natural. They viewed the gods as part of reality, not the creaters of reality. They lived very much for this life. To live a happy life. Christianity however is not this worldly, its primary focus is on death. It teaches that you must live because God calls you to, and so you can get into heavan, not because it is good to live. So it philosophically helped to destroy the Empire.


It did have an affect (a negitive one).

lwarmonger

It was unwilling to raise those troops however, because they were too often used against the current emperor. Your scenario assumes that all the Germanic tribes could be defeated (difficult for an already overstretched Roman Empire), and that such a large number of armies could be kept from civil war over a long period of time. Also, the border of the Roman empire was too long, and the population base was declining too much, in order to completely prevent barbarian incursions.

How? Do you have anything concrete to support that the Christian world view was detrimental to the "philosophical" well being of the Empire? And in what concrete way did that contribute to the empire's decline?


Which was? Direct causes of the decline of the Roman Empire are easy to see. Indirect ones need to be connected to direct causes though, in order to be provable.

Praxus

Ideas are what make and break a civilization. You just can't ignore the fact that Rome didn't begin to decay until the spread of Christianity throughout the Empire. This attached with the fact that the Emperors didn't/couldn't trust the Army and that many of the Emporers were corrupt and could not be replaced because of the Overthrow of the Republic. Thus, the causes of the fall of Rome are: The Destruction of Republicanism, Bad Emperors that could not be thrown out without force(a symptom of the first), and the Rise of Christianity.

alton987

What about...

If Empire is having control/influence on the rest of the world wouldn’t the U.S be an empire. I think you could argue none of the Empires listed had as much influence on the world as the US does today. Although MOST of the time the U.S doesn't do it with guns as traditional empires but with dollars...



I know the US is not old enough to be considered with the Empires above but just curious about options....

__________________
For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. ("Coda" 1979)

Praxus

Tell me, whom have we conquered with money?

alton987

The Soveit Union? If you don't believe me go eat at McDonalds in Moscow...

lwarmonger

Agreed.

Debatable, and possibly coincidence.

While I don't agree that the distruction of Republicanism caused the fall of Rome, it is debatable. I agree with the bad emperors (and would add that no concrete method of succession was a big problem too... that often led to civil war), however all you have done to link Christianity to Rome's decline was point out that they kind of coincided. Rome was already suffering the problems of overextension long before the Rise of Christianity to dominance(hence it's division into halves, and the use of barbarian satellites along the border), and other occurances that led to decline (like depopulation of the countryside, causing successive emperors to allow Germans into the empire) can also hardly be related to the rise of Christianity. What I'm looking for is how did Christianity weaken the Empire? If it's ideals and beliefs did so, in what way were they related to the Empire's decline? Just that they happened at roughly the same time (a period of two to three hundred years at that) really doesn't explain much, nor is it concrete.

FlyingCaddy

The End of Roman Republicanism occurred some 430 years prior to the collapse of the empire, how can you say that there is such a strong correlation between Republicanism's fall and the Empire's collapse???

What do you mean by decay and what do you mean the spread of Christianity? The 3rd century and the barrack emperors? The Rise of Constantine? The Edict of Milan? The death of Julian the Apostate? Theodosius proclaiming Christianity the state religion?

Bad emperors were as much a flaw of the Selection process as the pool of candidates themselves. The line of poor emperors comes fromthe fact that most of the talent began to concentrate in the east while the few Roman nobles who wanted power were surrounded by predominatly German courts. Look at Odocaer the man was a member of the Emperors court, the Western Empire's death blow came from within.

lwarmonger

You are correct. I was actually indirectly making reference to the reasons behind keeping the Roman army small. With no clear process of succession, many generals decided to try and make a grab for power. A big reason why there was so much civil war, even at the empire's height.

deadkenny

In fact, if Byzantium is considered a 'Roman' empire, then add approx. 1000 years.

Also, again in reference to Byzantium, Christianity was 'co-opted' and became a force helping to support the regime, rather than working against it.

Within and without actually. The Western Empire was definitely much weakened from within - but there had been a lack of external 'challenges'. Most of the strong opponents had been in the East. When the West was hit with successive waves of Barbarian invasions, it finally toppled the weakened empire. It probably would have fallen earlier if it had been subjected to those external pressures earlier. On the other hand, it probably could have continued for some time it not for the invasions.

lwarmonger

Well, that is true of pretty much every institution. Very few government organizations will collapse without some kind of ourside influence (even the Soviet Union's fall was linked to an arms race with the United States which gradually dealt the death blows to their centralized economy... The Shogunate in Japan lasted for many years however, until outsiders forced their way in), and the empire wouldn't have split apart without the outside challenges, there being no other permanent replacement. That being said, those outside challenges were tere, but they wouldn't have been able to topple the Roman Empire without the inner weaknesses. Taken by itself, the Roman Empire was stronger than all of it's foes collectively. It was simply never capable of fielding that strength in a decisive manner for two reasons. First, the enemies were barbarian tribes, extremely decentralized, and very difficult to conquer in their vast wilderness. Also, actually conquering them merely ment moving the frontier forward, and having the same problems with a new set of barbarians. Second, the ever present risk of civil war meant that when the Roman's actually did mobilize armies, they were more often used against one another than their barbarian opponents. This crippled the empire a number of times, at crucial points when the very integrity of the Empire was being challenged. This internicine conflict continued with the Byzantine Empire, and proved to be the cause of it's decline and fall as well (the crusaders merely sped that process up a little).

FlyingCaddy

I can sum up the Byzantine internal problems in one word, Manzikert.

lwarmonger

I must confess my familiarity with the road to decline of the Byzantine Empire is substantially less than that of most other areas of history.

Anon

Why is the United States not on this list?

The US is clearly the most powerful empire in the history of the world.