After the murder of Pertinax on 28 March 193, the Praetorian guard announced that the throne was to be sold to the man who would pay the highest price. Titus Flavius Claudius Sulpicianus, prefect of Rome and Pertinax’s father-in-law, who was in the Praetorian camp ostensibly to calm the troops, began making offers for the throne. Meanwhile, Julianus also arrived at the camp, and since his entrance was barred, shouted out offers to the guard. After hours of bidding, Sulpicianus promised 20,000 sesterces to every soldier; Julianus, fearing that Sulpicianus would gain the throne, then offered 25,000. The guards closed with the offer of Julianus, threw open the gates, and proclaimed him emperor. Threatened by the military, the Senate also declared him emperor. His wife and his daughter both received the title Augusta.

The “Fall of Rome” conflates a lot of different events, covering over a thousand years:

• The end of the Republic
• The Crisis of the Third Century
• The fall of the western empire
• The fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade
• The capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire

The one most usually thought of is the fall of the western empire… and while it was preceded by some stupid policy decisions, they weren’t notably more stupid than many other decisions the empire made over the previous five centuries. From an institutional perspective, it was actually a relatively boring period.

(Many of the other comments here are pointing to things that were pretty much constants for most of the empire’s existence, so if you want to blame them for the fall, you need to explain why the empire didn’t fall 500 years earlier.)

Yeah probably. Successive emperors selfishly fighting among themselves for power, weakening their Nation, destroying the Foundation of their state, making alliances with people that cannot be trusted, all that’s a Hallmark of the fall of Rome. Both Falls actually.

Just as an aside I don’t know why my voice to text is capitalizing certain words in that paragraph but I’m too lazy to fix it.

Kind of.

Mostly yes. As others have written, it involved some money issues. There were also problems with logistics and agriculture, Rome had an absurdly high population for that time. That stuff just has to be managed and managed well.

And also you had some external factors.

And also the religious shift from the old greek gods to christianity, were suddenly a whole bunch of stuff was “against god” the way you would think it is now. It is unclear how much knowledge was lost and exactly why, but the facts remain that you have relatively skilled military doctors in one century and then that disappearing into thin air in the next.

The thing you can observe at the moment, the question of loyalty from universities, into giving positions to loyal or just compliant people over skilled people is roughly the same process. Not the same, because obviously they didn’t have our modern universities, but replace it for any other system of education and actual skill and merit based system and you get the gist of what happened.

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

-Marx

Incitatus was more competent than most of Trump’s cabinet.

Full on clown shoes.

I mean they were killing each other every opportunity they got so, maybe…

Absolutely. There are soooooooo many similarities, just with a futuristic twist. Rome refused to change with the times and other city states that modernized and welcomed new people did swimmingly. You can’t force everyone to conform to your ideology unless your ways are obviously better and easier to incorporate other influences into your own society. Look at the fall of Chinese dynasties. They tried so hard to stay isolated but (right or wrong how it happened) if they opened up and simply took the parts they needed (guns, boats capable of traveling oceans, and trains.) they would have done much better. Kinda like Japan. Japan messed up by picking a fight with the country they were learning from.

…are you really comparing the fall of the great Roman Empire to what that joke of a ‘country’ called the separated states of Muricah?

This is sacrilege

The fall of which Rome?

I still contend that this isn’t equivalent to the fall of the Empire. It’s equivalent to the fall of the republic and the rise of the empire.

The US isn’t dealing with Astragoths and Huns pillaging their cites. They’re dealing with an exceptionally stupid version of Caesar trying to usurp power and proclaim an empire.

Buckle up, America. If you don’t take care of this now, your in for about 437 more years of this shit.

Are you talking about the Fall of Rome the city or Rome the Empire?

Say what you will about the modern day, but at least we don’t have a slave revolt so vicious and organized that it threatens the entire country

No, definitely more stupid than this. This is only slightly stupid.

Some pop philosophy for you:

https://youtu.be/XHqHhoi6ErU https://youtu.be/A4YK3oioThc https://youtu.be/WXpw0SURjaQ