#and then hed have the audacity to wonder why no one fucking likes him

[wetterroomba]

It's so fucking funny in retrospect thinking about all of my father's tantrums about there being shoes all over the house when my mom, myself, and my brothers only owned 1 pair of shoes at a time.

He'd start bitching about it over text when he was the only one home. You know, when everyone else was wearing their one pair of shoes.

[clockworkkatana]

why did rome fall (I already asked your girlfriend but wanted to compare notes - no cheating guys)??

constantinople

i mean, okaythere isnt one specific reason by any means - rome wasnt built in a day and neither did it fall in one - but rather a whole host of them, all incredibly complex and nuanced and im going to be here for fucking hours arent i but mostly its constantinople and the audacity of naming a city after yourself and instantly moving there and declaring it the new capital of your empire and when i say that i mean actually just splitting your empire in two because you wanted a change of locale

also full disclaimer i prefer classical antiquity to the constant teenage deathdrama of late antiquity if your teen angst bullshit included political intrigue, murder plots, assassination by stabbing, assassination by poisoning, assassination by strangling, assassination by decapitation, assassination by the praetorian guard, forced abdication, forced abdication and execution, forced abdication and mutilation, forced abdication and blinding, torture, exile, and im literally still just listing ways emperors were deposed do you potentially see a possible trend and/or theme that could possibly be indicative of a federal fucking issue with regards to the roman political theater: a circus, or rather, the panem et circenses of every history major who ever thought it was maybe a little telling that “murdered roman emperor” is its own fucking category on wikipedia with subcategories to spare

also second full disclaimer im qualifying ‘fall of the roman empire’ as ‘fall of the western roman empire’ because byzantine is its own thing and im not particularly interested either in that portion of it or typing up a whole new dialogue just on the eastern roman/byzantine/ottoman empires because its too far removed from the prelapsarian concept of rome and the aesthetic ideal of the roman empire to count in my opinion

anyway

we begin, as a great deal of roman history lessons begin, with a murder(there are diatribes i could go on about how really when you think of it all of roman history begins with a murder - romulus to remus - so is it any wonder her demise begins the same way but im not even started yet so thats a bad idea just on general principle)march 19, 235. mogontiacum, the citadel that would become the city of mainz in germany. a tent flap is thrown open, and forth strides a young man in a fury like one possessedhe is severus alexander, 26, emperor of rome, and hes fucking pissedwhy so upset? enter a man named maximinus thrax, a barbarian from thrace and a goliath of a manmostly illiterate, but then soldiers never cared for literature, and it was soldiers who rallied around maximinus, soldiers who murdered severus and his mother for choosing diplomacy over open war, soldiers who proclaimed a barbarian from the black sea the new emperor of rome, and soldiers who legitimized that claim in the senate

thus begins the crisis of the third century, a fifty-year period that sees no less than 26 claimants to the imperial throne (the empires youngest emperor reigns during this time, gordian iii, who took the throne at 13 and ruled for six years before his death and was, by my account anyway, a nice kid), the fracture of the empire into the competing factions of roman, gallic, and palmyrene, a great deal of plague, a slew of invasions from the north, and some good old-fashioned economic depressionso basically a tuesday

i wont get too into the brunt of everything because im gonna be here all night as it is but while, yes, the crisis was indeed averted and the empire restored by diocletian in the early 284, the crisis of the third century marked a huge shift in the history of the empire as a whole (from augustus to severus alexander was 26 names and 262 years, from maximinus to diocletian was 23 names and 49 years) and is actually the turning point from classical antiquity to late antiquity, which i mean is telling in and of itself but frankly its only due to diocletians reforms that rome managed to survive the next 150 years as it did but im getting ahead of myself

diocletian was, by all accounts, a good ruler: he came up from nothing, the son of a peasant farmer who rose up through the legion ranks before being declared emperor after the deaths of carus and numerian he only reigned a single year as the sole emperor - he appointed his friend and fellow soldier maximian as augustus of the west, and from there he delegated further, appointing junior co-emperors called caesars (romans had a thing for titles based on previous rulers - part of the imperial cult, in a sense) to create a tetrarchy, a rule of four which actually worked out for him? with maximian and constantius dealing with germanic tribes in a scorched earth campaign along the rhine and galerius fighting the sassanids to the south, diocletian was able to secure the border (didnt even have to build a wall, fancy that) and focus on much-needed imperial reform, though perhaps his greatest achievement is that he was the first in the history of the empire to abdicate and retire peacefully and voluntarily, living out the rest of his days in the small town of spalatum (now split in croatia)

without diocletian, things, as they tend to, go to shityet another roman civil war burns itself out for the next 8 years or so before we get constantine the great, who takes a bunch of diocletians work and either rolls with it or upends it based on whether or not it suited him at the time, and its with constantine where the empire really starts hemorrhaging

personally i think constantine gets too much credit there are like maybe three people in history who deserve the title of ‘the great’ and just because you got venerated by the dominant religion in all of western civilization doesnt mean youre great it just means youre not a fan of persecution and i mean thats cool but im not a fan of persecution and im certainly not so titled, no i just get dubbed ‘the pure’ because i dont hit on every maiden from here to camelot listen lance buddy gwen was better off with arthur and you just need to get the fuck over yourself alreadythis turned into a roast track for lancelot all of a suddenanyway constantinea lot of it is because of the whole religion thing which ill go over briefly but likeyes he pulled off a lot of reform that did a lot of economic and social good and he stopped the persecution of christians which i mean yes is a good thing and yadda yadda yawn listen he fucked up big time with constantinople alright you could narrow down a lot of this answer to just the word ‘constantinople’ and frankly youd be the better for not reading and having forced me to write what has to be like at least a thousand words by now but all in all constantinople in my mind marks the period where shit really starts tanking because up until then - with the crisis and the tetrarchy, etc - the empire had been divided but never so explicitly and finally separated. this is a major turning point for the empire as it actively splits the whole of rome pretty much down the middle - diocletians tetrarchy had done this before, yes, but not nearly as callously nor as resolutely: once every great while a strong emperor would reunite the west and east under one ruler but eventually hed die and it would be civil wars all over again until we came back to east and west

from constantine it was a slow march towards the grave for rome - the crossing of the rhine, a constant plague of invasions and failed wars that slowly chip away at her lands and resources and put considerable strain on her already absolute shite economy (turns out an economy dominated by slavelabor and conquest isnt feasible when you lose all your wars and your empire is splintering before your eyes)

the last “true” emperor of what i, anyway, consider rome - and even that is up for debate - is romulus augustulusonly 14, and his claim disputed everywhere beyond italy, but it seems fitting, to me: named for romes founder, called ‘little augustus’ after her first emperorhe is deposed - but not killed, exiled to a seaside castle where he disappears from historical record - by odoacer, who becomes the first king of italy, as there was no more empire to rule, and with the death of the office of emperor so dies the state of the empire

this is a vast oversimplification of a lot of things and you should also read radias answer which is probably better than this one - i summarize a lot in my theses and probably need to work on thatbut yeah pretty much there you have itblame constantinople