From city to Republic
According to Roman tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BCE, but that date comes from legend. Archaeology shows a small settlement on the Tiber that grew over time and was ruled by kings. Around 509 BCE, in Roman tradition, the last king was expelled and a republic established, governed by elected magistrates called consuls, a Senate of elite men and popular assemblies. Conflicts between rich patricians and poorer plebeians led to reforms that gave common citizens more say.
Over the next centuries Rome expanded, first across Italy, then through the Punic Wars against Carthage in the 200s and 100s BCE, and then into Greece, Spain, North Africa and the Near East. The conquered lands brought wealth, slaves and ambitious generals. By the first century BCE, political violence and civil wars were common. Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE, and a further round of conflict ended with Octavian, Caesar’s adopted heir, defeating his rivals.
The principate and the peak
In 27 BCE Octavian took the title Augustus. He kept republican forms but held real power, and he is considered the first Roman emperor. Rome now began what historians call the Pax Romana, roughly two centuries of relative stability inside the empire’s borders, though there were still frontier wars and occasional crises. Roman power reached its largest extent under Trajan in the early 100s CE, when the empire stretched from Britain to the Persian Gulf region.
The empire had features that are still admired: roads, aqueducts, harbors and concrete buildings, a legal tradition, and a Latin- and Greek-speaking administration. Cities like Rome, Alexandria and Antioch were large for their time. The Mediterranean world was knit together by trade, and Roman citizenship was gradually extended, eventually to nearly all free inhabitants in 212 CE. Roman glass making, for example, reached a high level of skill and spread widely.
The empire was also built on conquest, taxation and slavery, and many conquered peoples suffered under it. Its prosperity was uneven, and most people were poor farmers.
Strain in the third century
Between 235 and 284 CE, the empire faced what is often called the Crisis of the Third Century. Many emperors held power briefly, often killed by their own troops. At the same time, the empire fought pressure on its borders, civil wars and economic problems such as debased coinage. Parts of the empire temporarily broke away. A serious epidemic also occurred around the 250s, though its scale is uncertain.
Emperor Diocletian (ruled 284 to 305) restored order by dividing administration and creating a system of shared rule, and he reorganized taxes and the army. Constantine (ruled 306 to 337) reunited the empire, favored Christianity, which had been legalized earlier, and in 330 dedicated a new capital at Byzantium, renamed Constantinople.
The western end
During the 300s and 400s, the empire was generally divided into western and eastern halves. In the west, groups such as Goths, Vandals, Franks and others moved across and settled inside the frontiers, sometimes as allies of Rome, sometimes as enemies. In 410 the Visigoths sacked Rome, shocking the Mediterranean world. The Vandals took Carthage in 439, and imperial authority weakened further. In 476, the general Odoacer deposed the young emperor Romulus Augustulus, and the date is traditionally used for the end of the Western Empire. At the time, few people would have felt that a clear break had come; Roman law, language and institutions continued in many places under new rulers.
The eastern empire, often called the Byzantine Empire by modern historians though its people called themselves Roman, lasted until 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans.
Why did the west fall?
This is one of the most debated questions in history. Historians offer a range of explanations, usually in combination.
- Military pressure and migration. Repeated invasions, plus the loss of key provinces and tax revenue, weakened the western army.
- Political instability. Civil wars and frequent power struggles drained resources and attention.
- Economic strain. Heavy taxation, reliance on slave labor, inflation and disrupted trade may have contributed.
- Disease and environment. Epidemics such as the one in the sixth century that struck the east, a forerunner of the Black Death in its cause, along with shifts in climate, have been proposed as factors. Researchers are still working out how large the effects were, and the evidence is hard to interpret.
- Internal changes. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon suggested that loss of civic spirit and the rise of Christianity played a role. Many modern historians reject strong forms of this claim.
- Eastern success. The wealthier east survived, which suggests the causes were not simply “the empire was doomed.”
Some scholars prefer to speak of transformation rather than collapse, noting continuities in law, language and religion. Others stress real violence and decline in living standards in the west. The question is not fully settled.
Common myths
Popular ideas, such as that lead pipes poisoned Rome or that the empire fell in a single day, are examples of ancient history myths that don’t hold up well. Lead was used in plumbing, but the idea that it brought down the empire is not supported. The empire’s story also differs from the long arc of Greek civilization; the contrast seen in Egypt and Greece shows Rome as an inheritor of earlier cultures, borrowing Greek art, religion and philosophy and sharing in traditions like the ancient Olympics, which continued under Roman rule until late in the fourth century.