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End of the Empire. When Augustus Caesar took control of Rome it was the beginning of the Roman Empire. For the next 200 years Rome experienced a period of relative peace. This period of Roman history is called the Pax Romana or Roman Peace.
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When Augustus Caesar took control of Rome it was the beginning of the Roman Empire. • For the next 200 years Rome experienced a period of relative peace. This period of Roman history is called the Pax Romana or Roman Peace.
Augustus and the emperors who followed after him expanded the territory that Rome controlled. • Rome produced many of the goods that they needed but the items that they didn’t have but needed they imported from the lands that they controlled. • It was during the Pax Romana that Rome’s population grew and trade increased. This made many Romans wealthy.
At its height the Roman Empire included all the land around the Mediterranean Sea up to Britain in the north down to Egypt in the south. • In the west it began at the Atlantic Ocean and stretched all the way to the Syrian Desert in Mesopotamia.
But the empire didn’t stay large for long. • It was beginning to become harder and harder to rule over such a vast area of land. • Also, the empire was starting to be invaded by Germanic tribes in Europe and Persians in the east.
With the invasions from the Germanic tribes in the north the people who lived there were very nervous and soon fled south to be away from the fighting. • Because the farmers left their land in the north the Romans needed someone to grow the crops. So they invited the Germanic tribes to settle the land in the north. These were the same people who had earlier been attacking them.
Gradually these Germanic people built up towns and communities. They elected their own leaders and basically ignored the Roman emperors.
Other problems began to sweep through the empire. • A disease began to spread in the empire killing many people. • The government was forced to increase taxes to pay the armies to defend the empire.
The Romans needed a strong leader and found on by the name of Diocletian. • Diocletian realized that Rome was too large for one person to rule, so he divided it in half. Diocletian ruled the eastern half and named a co-emperor to rule the western half.
After the rule of Diocletian a new leader rose to power. His name was Constantine. • He reunited the two halves of the empire for a short time and had a new city built in present day Turkey and named it Constantinople. • It was here that he ruled the empire. No longer was the power in Rome but in Constantinople.
It was during the rule of Constantinople that the official religion of the empire became Christianity. • In our lessons we discuss the push and pull factors that have an effect on people’s movement or migrations.
The reason for the Germanic tribes invading the northern parts of the empire was because of a people called the Huns. The Huns were fierce warriors from Central Asia. One of the groups that the Huns invaded were the Goths. Attila the Hun
The Goths were made up of two groups: Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Unable to defeat the Huns they fled into Roman territory. • The Goths initially fled into the Eastern Roman Empire but were defeated by the armies there. They were forced to move westward into the Western Roman Empire territory.
The Romans paid the Goths not to attack but they couldn’t keep up the payments and the Goths eventually attacked the city of Rome. • Other groups were inspired by the success of the Goths and they too began to invade the Roman Empire.
The groups were the Franks from Gaul, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Vandals. • The Western Roman Empire fought hard but was unable to keep the invaders out and in 476 AD Rome finally fell. The last Roman emperor of the western Empire was named Romulus. • It is at this time that most historians consider the end of the Western Roman Empire.
There were several factors that led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. • One was its vast size. Communication was difficult during times of conflict. It was just too big to govern effectively. • Political crisis also contributed to the decline. By the 400s the values of the people of Rome and its leaders had begun to decay. Politicians were seen as corrupt and they used their positions to issue threats and bribery to achieve their goals. They didn’t care about the common people.
Rome’s population began to decrease, its schools closed, taxes and prices of goods soared leaving many Romans poor.
Despite the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the empire in the east was still powerful and wealthy. • A leader named Justinian was one of the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire. He had a desire to reunite the two halves of the empire.
He also got rid of any un-christian and out of date laws and created a new code of law. • This new code of law is called the Justinian Code. It simplified the old Roman law and helped guarantee fair treatment for all.
Even though he did many good things for the Eastern Roman Empire he still had many enemies. • There was once an uprising that threatened to drive Justinian from Constantinople. • However, his smart and powerful wife, Theodora, convinced him to stay and fight. Taking her advice he crushed the riots and ruled effectively for the remainder of his reign.
After Justinian’s death the eastern empire began to gradually decline. • Over the next several hundred years the empire shrank in size. • Finally in 1453 the empire was invaded by the Ottoman Turks. They captured Constantinople. • This brought an end to the Eastern Roman Empire and a beginning to the Ottoman Empire.
The society of the eastern empire was called a Byzantine society. Sometimes the eastern empire is called the Byzantine Empire. It was named after the city that Constantine renamed after himself. The original name for Constantinople was Byzantium. Where the Western Roman Empire had a Roman culture based on Latin, the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) was based on the Greek culture.
