Hello, super-explorer Noah Matricciani speaking. For over 500 years, I've been exploring the life of the ancient Romans, but sadly, this magnificent empire is coming to an end. Ever since the last of the "good emperors", Rome has been in a slow decline and it is now on the verge of breaking apart completely.
It all started when Marcus Aurelius, the last of the "good emperors", died. Thus his son Commodus took over. Commodus was a very violent ruler who loved to see bloodshed and he spent a large amount of Rome's money on bribing the soldiers to support him. When Commodus died, he was followed by multiple bad rulers who were great generals, but horrible politicians. These rulers kept on stealing from our treasury just to spend it for themselves and on the army. These emperors have plunged this economy further into a hole and the senate had lost his emperors. Rome also has no stability, for example, from the years 180 to 284 A.D., there were 29 Roman emperors and most were murdered.
The army has also lead to the fall of the Roman Empire. Before, Roman soldiers fought for the glory of their land and were ready to defend it at a moments notice. However, the Roman soldiers refused to fight unless they got paid an incredulous amount. Thus the Roman government had to hire a mercenary army to defend it. However, this mercenary army was very untrustworthy and would constantly change sides in the middle of battle.
Another flaw in the Roman Empire was its vast size. Since the Empire was so big, Rome needed separate governments to rule certain sections of the empire which just divided Rome. Also, with all this land the Romans needed someone to defend it but without the soldiers, Rome was, and still is constantly being attacked by tribes from all different borders of the Empire. Now that the Empire was so large, Rome couldn't conquer anymore land so its main source of income is gone. Thus putting the Empire into a serious economic recession.
With the economy in ruins, people couldn't buy enough food, thus the government produced a lot more coins. However, since the government wasn't getting its silver or other valuable minerals from other nations, with every new coin that Rome produced, the value of the coin became lower. Eventually this inflation became so uncontrollable that the Roman coin became virtually worthless.
However, Rome wasn't done yet, or else I would be long gone by now to a different time period. But the Roman emperor Diocletian decided to divide his empire into two sections. The east and the west. Diocletian decided that he would rule the more wealthy east side, so he then appointed a co-emperor to rule over the west. When Diocletian retired in 305 A.D., the emperor Constantine took his place. After claiming that he saw the Christian God in the midst of a battle that he won, Constantine allowed freedom of religion in his empire. Thus the newly found religion of Christianity flourished. In his 25 years of ruling, Constantine constantly worked on strengthening the Church. He even moved the capital of Eastern Rome to Byzantium, where it was renamed Constantinople in his honor.
However, although Constantine was trying so hard to keep the empire intact, he eventually couldn't stop the waves of barbarians that kept on trying to invade Rome. The last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, was eventually captured by the barbarians and sent to work on a farm.
However, although Rome was lost, the former Eastern empire moved on to became the Byzantine Empire which lasted another thousand years.
