What caused the declince of the roman empire?

Answer 1

The struggle for power was what led to the Roman civil wars. If you look at the last three civil wars of the republic, you will see that they are contests for power. Marius and Sulla, Caesar and Pompey, Octavian and Antonius, were all contestants in the power struggle with the winner taking the supreme power.

Answer 2

The original answer here, "Octavian defeated Marc Antony and became the first emperor", is like saying the cause of death was that he stopped living

There were social issues that culminated in Caesar's attempted grab at power and, following his death, Augustus' actual final coup

The issues were social mobility, land reform and political reform. Caesar was a noble but he was a populist and wanted to grant more powers (more show than actual) to the plebeians.

Another problem was Rome had many enemies and wars were breaking out. But, in order to prosecute these wars, money had to be raised. Roman tax farming ensured that, while taxes were very high, tax income was not

There was social upheaval - Spartacus' uprising had frightened Romans and the possibility of barbarian invasion remained

With all these factors pulling Rome apart, voices grew for someone to do something. First up was Gracchus. Powers that be ended that (knife-itty-knife-knife). Now the champion of the common folk was dead, nobles demanded entrenchment of their positions but they lacked the strength to simply impose order on the willful Romans

Another View:

The civil wars actually strengthened the Roman Empire.

The social structure was weakened after the Punic Wars when the resultant flush of Carthagininian and other slaves replaced the small-farmers, who were also the backbone of the Roman army and social structure. The Gracchi brothers tried to reverse this, but the Germanic invasions of the late 2nd Century BCE needed a great increase in the army and the unpropertied class was recruited to meet the army demand.

These soldiers when demobilised had no farms to return to, and turned to their generals to provide it. This gave the generals large client power bases which they exploited. Sulla as dictator tried to control this but it returned when he retired after a couple of years. Later, Caesar learnt that lesson and took on Dictatorship for life to keep the nobility under control, but of course that was an open invitation to end that life.

Augustus, after ending the civil war, learnt from the Sulla-Caesar failures and avoided making himself a target by taking on a variety of underlying powers which gave him control of the army and veto powers, but left the Senate in apparent control (his Propaganda: 'The Republic restored') but within his tight guidance as 'First Citizen'. He also did not pursue expansion, rather he established defensible frontiers.

This solution to the civil wars ushered in a two-century period of relative peace, prosperity and strength, not a decline of Rome, but its peak.

Answer 3

barbarians were attacking, the population was high, citizens were fighting for jobs, and the government was corrupting