OUR CHANGING VIEWS ON ROME’S FINAL DAYS
Mar 02, 2020
1 minute
rom Gibbon to the 1960s, the crisis in the third century was thought to herald the end of the Roman west. Apart from and by Persia, , laws attempted to tie peasants until two strong emperors – Diocletian and Constantine – pulled it back from the brink, if only temporarily and at great cost. Higher taxes paid for a larger army but, in the long term, crippled the economy, while landowner allegiance was now commanded rather than voluntarily given. The fourth-century empire never recovered from the third-century crisis, or so long-held wisdom decreed, and in the fifth century was simply waiting to collapse.
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