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.