The Waning of the Western Empire

It was really sad that the Great Roman Empire fell, but really for me, or as it said in the handout, it was brought down by the western part of Rome. The west struggled with their economy, and that they had a hard time developing as the East did. By the fifth century, the great cities that once stood, were now hiding in the shadows, looking back at what they once were. Only a limited amount of people had enough money to actually had enough money to manage the economic disaster of the Western Empire. And those wealthy people abandoned their townhouses and moved to big estates, and pay a few soldiers to make a private army, so that they could avoid the tax collectors. This thing that i read in the handout was really stupid. The Western Empire hired or got Germanic tribes, so that they could defend the West from other Germanic Tribes. Kind of ironic really. They got enemies to protect them from other enemies.

Reading this handout actually made me think, it made made think that what if the Western Empire didn't fall? Would we have everything we had now? Or maybe better? Maybe we'd all be muslim, and our technology would be Tony Stark-ish. It's really something to think about.