The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [37]
Childless Augustus died in AD 14 choosing Tiberius as his successor. Not a great choice, but Tiberius made an even worse choice for his successor, Caligula. Caligula spawned horrendous crimes, including killing his grandmother and engaging in sex with his three sisters. He also dissolved the Senate, making everyone angry in the process. Somehow, through it all, the Roman bureaucracy held on and held the empire together. After Caligula decided he was divine the Praetorian Guard decided to test that out and killed him, showing that being divine is not easy; thereafter, Claudius became emperor. After yet another round of murders and conquests, mostly in Britain, Claudius adopted Nero as his heir. Nero was 16 when Claudius died, and he was a poor leader. Nero drank, ran around with women endlessly, and raised taxes (sounds like most modern politicians). He also engaged in a hideous persecution of Christians.[45] After a life of killing people for no reason, including kicking his pregnant wife to death, the Praetorian Guard put Nero to death. Rome rejoiced.
Their followed a series of emperors rejecting rejoicing, but they held things together: Galba (AD 68), Vespasian (AD 69), Titus (AD 79), Domitian (AD 81), Nerva (AD 96), Trajan (AD 98), and Hadrian (AD 117). In AD 138 Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius took over, ran a good administration, and then, adhering to Roman tradition, named Marcus Aurelius as his heir. Too bad, because Marcus Aurelius broke the long tradition of awarding power to the most worthy man. Marcus gave the empire to his son Commodus, a worthless man who murdered one of his sisters and slept with another. Commodus, his mind filled with filth from the start, was terminated by a conspiracy of his personal whores in AD 192. Civil War followed, and a rapid succession of emperors that were unworthy of the post.
A group of very poor leaders was at the helm as the empire declined.[46] The empire was not able to hold on to its far-flung territories. Just as before, in the early empires of the Middle East, barbarians from the east and north began to pound the frontiers of the western Roman world. Slowly at first, the empire pulled back, still trying to defend on the boundaries of the great rivers the Rhine and the Danube. Nothing the Western Empire could do stopped the invasions of the barbarians; thus, Western Rome disappeared from history.
Diocletian, who became emperor in AD 284, split the empire into two parts, east and west, to better govern the whole. However, the real economic strength of the Roman Empire was in the east. In my opinion, the Eastern Empire was stronger because it enjoyed a connection to Asia through the Silk Road, and was better able to trade and build its wealth through these contacts. When Constantine became emperor, he moved the capital to Byzantium and renamed the city after himself—Constantinople (is this typical of a politician or what?). Slowly, the two halves of the empire stopped supporting one another, and the west grew ever weaker until it could no longer defend its boarders from the barbarian tribes attacking from the east. As the Western Roman Empire fell, the invaders settled into Gaul, Spain, and Italy itself. Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire would last until defeat by the Turks in AD 1453. The west fell in about AD 455 after numerous sacks of the city of Rome.
It was during the Western Empire