The Fall of Rome.
There never was such a thing. That is putting it bluntly. But no contemporary historian uses such a phrase. It is another of the fables of history which need correction. To the Italian the sending of the imperial insignia from Rome to Constantinople meant no more than the Rhode Islander understood when Newport ceased to be one of the capitals of his State. There was no longer need for an emperor at Rome; that was all. The Goth who was in control there had been so for a generation, and considered himself just as good a subject of the emperor at Constantinople after the deposition of Augustus as he had been before.
In teaching children it will be hard to treat the subject in the way just indicated. Probably a little analysis of the causes of this “fall of Rome” will seem logically necessary. Some such outline as the following might be tolerated. But let the teacher bear in mind that no historian has yet succeeded in giving such a set of reasons for this fall as will satisfy any other historian. The child mind, however, is not critical, and may be helped by a catalogue of forces.
A. As political causes:
Failure to govern justly.
Growth of militarism.
Lack of home rule, and of representation.
The administrative division of the empire.
B. As social and economic causes:
Steady decline in population, resulting from vice, war, pestilence and Christian asceticism.
Slavery, as depicted in the preceding article, and now grown still more dreadful.
Taxation, so oppressive that a Christian writer says there were more collectors than payers of taxes.
C. As military causes:
The cessation of military service by Italians and the use of Germanic soldiers.
D. As moral and religious causes:
The vice fostered by a corrupt court.
The general decline of morals among a weakened and disheartened people.
Over against all these are to be set the numbers, the virility, the comparative freedom from civilized vices, of the sturdy barbarians; and most of all their capacity for absorbing the worthiest things among the people whom they conquered.