Kaitlyn,+Andrew

The Fall of the Roman Empire
===Our theroy is that all of the little things added up caused the fall of the Roman Empire. There would be revolts,border wars, the citzens got taxed more often, and there was too much slavery and poverty. One of the worst things that happened was when their army became weak and invaders came from the north.This caused roads and coasts to be unsafe, pirates hijacking ships, theives then held up travelers, collecting taxes was harder, and the empire was too big to control. So the emperor Diocletian split the Roman Empire in half! This made the whole empire angry.===

===We think some other reasons caused the empire to fall like political problems, military problems, and economic problems. The political problem were when the Senate became completely corrupt and crazy emperors were elected and the Plebians suffered as a result. We also found out that the fall of Rome took longer than a century. It's military problems were that they didn't have enough man power to defend the borders. One of the economic problems were that their money was worth nothing becaise of inflation.===

===Rome was becoming less important when Diocletian split the empire. The Roman empire was then becoming more vulnerable because some parts of the empire was becoming more powerful.Then before a battle Constantine saw a sign in the sky in the shape of a cross. So he told his soldiers to paint crosses on their sheilds. They then won their battle and Constantine saw that as a sign from God. The reason I am telling this story about Constantine is because he is the person who put the empire back together but only focused on the eastern half.===

===Another theroy is that there was too much slavery in the empire. This caused plebians to have no jobs even thought they were already poor. This is because the slaves would do the jobs for free and the plebians wanted and needed money. The citizens used the slaves when they were at war to keep their businesses going. So the slaves did all the hard work but there was too many of them.===

===Some other reasons causing Rome's fall was that there were different emperors ruling each side of the empire, making it fall. That probably happened because each ruler had different ideas.But if they worked together maybe it wouldn't have fallen.There also was too many emperors to work together. The emperors also didn't think you can't make people angry and not expect your empire to fall.===