Why did the Roman Empire end? "Death of the Empire 1"

In 476 AD, a barbarian general named Odoac slowly stabbed the last sword into Rome, the eternal city of Europe's civilization.

Rome, the heart of European civilization, has finally calmly stopped beating after nearly a hundred years of shock, robbery, and hammering.

In human history, there are few cities like Rome, with a long history, which has become a typical symbol of the life cycle of civilization and nation.

Fewer cities, like Rome, once buried, become a symbol of the end of an era of civilization.

The complete collapse of the Eternal City was the end of the Western Roman Empire and the end of the ancient history of Europe, and the beginning of the long Middle Ages.

Although the Eastern Roman Empire, which separated the Adhetic Sea, would still stand for a thousand years, she was only the remnant of the great Rome. A Western civilization that has become Orientalized, a heartless empire that has lost the soul of culture, a soft giant that has been hammered repeatedly in the past thousand years.

No matter how much there is debate in history, in 476 AD, when Rome welcomed its first barbarian king, Odoac, a civilization came to an end and an epic came to an end. The fall of the city of Rome became a sign of the defeat of the Roman Empire.

The glorious era that belonged to the Romans was over. In a thousand years, the Romans, starting from the historical fringes of the Apennines' hinterland, stepped into the center of the Western historical stage step by step, becoming the most brilliant and dazzling superstar protagonists on the stage of Western civilization and even human history. Now, the era of the protagonists of Rome, is over.

Why would a great empire that, in a thousand years of time, constantly conquered, advanced, invaded, and completed the first unified form of the Western world, finally be ruthlessly decapitated and dismembered by history in 476 AD?

Where there are rivers and lakes, there are abandoned children, in this issue of "The Fall of the Roman Empire", we will explore the mystery of human history, the fathers buckle 1 on the car, and the people who get on the car are the fathers.

I. [1] Died in geographical theory

Some say that Rome lost to space. At the height of the Roman Empire, his territory covered what we now know as Britain, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Serbia, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Androgo.

Because of such a vast territory, it is difficult to achieve effective unified management under the ancient level of governance. Therefore, there is a general view that Rome's defeat was too great.

But the question is, if these areas are difficult to manage, how did Rome achieve difficult conquest in the initial stages? Conquering areas that he cannot manage, what is his motivation for conquest?

Moreover, Rome used a system of provinces. During the period of Roman decline, although the frontier provinces began to gradually disintegrate, Rome had ruled over Afrika, Gaul and the British Isles for more than hundreds of years. If vast land cannot be managed, what does the previous centuries of rule prove?

Obviously, a simple sentence of ancient governance level can not control so much territory, it is difficult to stand.

So there is a second view that Rome was defeated by "geographical openness."

For example, China, afraid of the territory is open. Unlike China, which is bordered by the sea in the east, the Great Wall in the north, the desert in the west, and the mountains in the south, it is a closed territory.

The Mediterranean region, especially greece and Asia Minor, the center of late Roman rule, was the transportation circle of human civilization and the thoroughfare of all nations.

Assyria, Hittites, Pochy, Egypt, Carthage---- countless ancient peoples came and went here, or passed by, or came to the door, or settled down. Each time is a cruel and passionate drama of the human nation for the sake of living space and its right to rule.

When Rome occupied the central communication roundabout of mankind and the wider area, it was inevitable to bear the impact of the emerging peoples that followed, that is, the barbarians in the Roman population.

But Rome began as a city of seven hills, first unifying the Apennines, then conquering Spain in the west, dominating the Mediterranean in the south, and Serving Syria in the east, from a closed inland state to becoming a conqueror of the radiating world.

But didn't Rome always grow from small to large, from weak to strong? Why was it that the relatively weak Roman Republic was not affected by the impact of the open geographical environment, but in the era of becoming the world's number one giant, it could not withstand the impact of the open geographical environment?

Hence the third point of view.

II. [2] The City of God in debauchery

The third view says that Rome was defeated by extravagance and lasciviousness, as in the history of our country. In the early days of the founding of the country, the character of hardship, diligence and martial struggle will be gradually consumed by the social atmosphere of comfortable and hedonistic pleasure in the next era of shouye.

The same was true of the Romans, a social ethos of pleasure and indulgence,[3] which made the invincible Romans the defeated Romans.

According to this view, the corruption of the ruling nation was the root cause of Rome's failure.

But people seem to have forgotten that the Romans were never a closed concept. From April 21, 753 BC, the day the abandoned wolf boy Romanus founded Rome on the banks of the Qitai River, the Romans continued to absorb and melt and conquer the surrounding tribes to become part of the Romans.

Indulgence, the desire to regard human instinct as a natural desire, and the further deification of worship and reverence have always been a basic connotation of Greco-Roman culture.

In the genealogy and divinity of the Roman gods, the Greek gods. From Zeus to Aphrodite, from Jupiter to Venus, it is clear that one can see the hedonism and divine blessings of human hedonism in Roman and Greek times. Discovered in 1748, Pompeii was discovered, and a large number of bath murals, hedonistic urban infrastructure, shook the people who were bound by religious moral concepts from the senses, and people were amazed by the openness of the moral behavior of the ancient Romans and the naked expression of life. The age of Pompeii was the era of the Three Giants of Rome, the era of the Steaming Up of the Roman Republic. It was also the era of indulgence and indulgence of the Romans, desperate conquest, desperate war, and desperate pleasure constituted the main theme of Roman life.

This is very similar to the ancient Chinese Mencius who went to see the King of Qi and persuaded the King of Qi to do a great cause of conquering the world, but the King of Qi said that the widow has a disease, the widow is lustful, the widow has a disease, and the widow is a good commodity.

Meaning, I have a problem, I like women and I like money, I can't do big things. Mencius, on the other hand, said, "Don't get in the way, these small sections don't prevent you from doing something big."

Desire, only in the religious age of abstinence, was seen as evil and shameful. But in both the classical period and modern society of mankind, desire for pleasure has in fact become a "human catalyst" for the prosperity of human society. Do you agree?

Without desire, there is no prosperity, and without desire there can be no progress for humanity as a whole. This is true for individuals, and it is also true for nations.

The Roman view of defeat to pleasure is the most popular view. And the fundamental reason why this view has been popular in history is that, in addition to a certain degree of rationality, is that a great man wrote a great book, Augustine's "City of God".

In 410 AD, Rome experienced the greatest catastrophe since the founding of the city, and the Ostrogoth Aryaque, leading barbarian soldiers, sacked Rome. In order to explain why the religion that had been indoctrinated did not bless the city of Rome, Augustine proposed that the debauchery of Rome was the source of the suffering of the Romans.

In the Middle Ages, when religion ruled, this view of religious position became the most widely known and accepted view in history. In fact, it is to throw the pot.

III. [4] The Power of the Barbarians

There is also an intuitive answer to the defeat of Rome: the barbarians defeated the Romans.

This is the most obvious fact. After the founding of the empire, Rome was always faced with the challenge of a border crisis. The Germans in the north of winter, the Persians in the east of quicksand, the Vandals in the south of the Mediterranean, the Celts and Saxons in the far west, and the Goths and Huns who killed obliquely from the northeast.

Every brilliant Roman emperor was, to a greater extent, Emperor Wu, not Emperor Wen, but an outstanding commander who was on horseback and swept wildly. The rulers who accompanied the women of the deep palace were synonymous with mediocrity and incompetence in the reputation of Rome at that time and in later generations.

And the more obvious and intuitive fact is that Rome was conquered by barbarians. Both Ariac, who brought a fatal catastrophe to Rome, and Odoac, who ended Rome, are a superficially obvious barbarian hunting mark.

And is history really like this? If history, from the most superficial events alone, can draw the most fundamental conclusions, then history will not be called profound. So, that may be a superficial answer.

And there is one of the most important flaws in this answer: whether it is Odoac or Ariak, in addition to their apparent barbarian identity, there is another identity -- mercenaries employed by Rome, nominal subjects under Roman rule.

They were half barbarians, half Romans, they were the future Romans who were moving toward Romanization, not barbarians who were completely offshore.

The reason why history is profound lies in the fact that under the superficial events, there are deeper basic laws of human social development, survival, victory and defeat.

So, the more fundamental reason for the defeat of the Romans, there is another theory.

Fourth, the Roman nation that died prematurely

So what is the fundamental law of the rise and fall of all nations and the rise and fall of hundreds of nations in human history?

Dynasties, states, regimes, societies, these are all superficial forms of human life together, dynasties will change, countries will rise and fall, regimes will change, societies will transform, and a concept that is more permanent and stable under the expression of this social set is the nation.

The most fundamental protagonist and participant of the race for survival is the nation. The nation is the concept of time but beyond time, the concept of space and beyond space. It is the concept of human life but continues from generation to generation, beyond life and death.

Only when there is an immortal nation can there be an immortal history. Only when there is an evergreen nation can there be an evergreen civilization.

One of the fundamental reasons for the defeat of the Romans was that over the course of a thousand years, they conquered, they absorbed, they assimilated. They turned enemies into friends, they annexed the Mediterranean, they unified the West.

They created the great City of Rome, the great Roman Empire, the great Roman civilization. In classical human society, they created the social identity of "I am a Roman", which has the most glorious and dignified sense of identity.

When Caesar went on an expedition to Gaul and declared the barbarians to be friends of the Romans, it meant peace and shelter. When Paul of The Eastern Region of Asia Minor proclaimed himself a Roman, it meant that he would be under special protection by law and society.

From kingdoms, to republics, to empires, over a thousand years, the Romans were increasing in number and status. Becoming a Roman meant having bread and a circus. The Romans, as a social and political identity, meant some degree of privileged citizenship.

But Rome did not continue to develop a Roman nation. Without a territory of 60 million people, further cultural cohesion and common destiny further integrated the original Roman and Newland populations into a great Roman nation.

The vast land needs a giant family, and the history is long and great. This may be the fundamental reason why our nation, although there have been ups and downs for five thousand years, has always stood on the long river of human history. At the beginning of the founding of the Roman Empire, the East was the Eastern Han Empire. When the Western Roman Empire fell, the East was the era of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. When Eastern Rome was conquered and disappeared, we were the Ming Empire era founded by Hongwu The Great.

It can be seen that the history is long for thousands of years, and only the nation will last forever.

The Western Romans, because they lacked the ability to create a nation, lost and lost. To this day we have not found a complete follow-up to the Roman nation. The Chinese nation, on the other hand, is still majestic in the East, and has prospered through hardships.

This is the root cause of the defeat of the Romans, the reason for their disappearance in the long river of history - they did not form a great nation.

If this video gives Ning some insight into why Rome fell, please put "I Understand" on the public screen.

Of course, while lamenting for Rome, please be proud of being born in China, and be proud to be a member of the Chinese nation!

After 2,000 thousand likes in this issue, I will open a "Death of empire" series, which will take a look at the great empires in human history such as Persia, Arabia, Ottoman, Tsarist Russia, Han and Tang Dynasties, and Yuanming.

Pay attention to the abandoned son, the empire is not dead, see you in the next issue~