Widely considered one of the strongest of the ancient empires on Earth, the Roman Empire lasted more than a thousand years. Through its humble origins along the Tiber River, Rome expanded through almost perpetual aggression to become the dominant force throughout the Mediterranean, Europe, North Africa, and the Near East for nearly a millennium. As the empire aged, he thought, its focus also changed. Once wealthy and prosperous, the Western Roman Empire, and the city of Rome itself, eventually became useful only as a namesake, their wealth and prestige long gone, and with them, the power of the Roman Empire. West. Meanwhile, Rome, as a whole, shifted its attention to the prosperous east, which had continued to prosper despite the Empire's ongoing economic struggles. At this time, Constantine I created a new capital in Byzantium, renaming the city Constantinople. Once Constantinople was established as the center of the empire, the West was mostly forgotten, both by the people and the emperor. Most of Rome's citizens and wealth now came from the east, so the Western Empire was soon treated as a fringe element by the Eastern Empire and slowly fell into further decline. Many historians would name a specific event or chain of events that marked the end of the western half of the Roman Empire, but I would argue that the Western Roman Empire did not collapse suddenly due to a single event, rather, it collapsed slowly over time . over several decades due to a multitude of failures. No one body was entirely responsible for the collapse of Rome, instead a combination of a decaying political structure, infighting, a continually weakened economy, and continued assaults by Germanic tribes eventually caused the... middle of paper... hyperinflation after the unfortunate period between the Severan dynasty and the crisis of the third century. Beyond that, the West desperately needed a standing army at all times to defend itself against enemies on virtually all fronts, enemies who would happily watch the Empire collapse. To pay for its already unstable standing army, Western Rome was forced to raise taxes on an already tax-burdened population who simply did not have the money to do so. In conjunction with the perpetual siege of the Germanic tribes, the severe lack of stable and strong leaders in the Western Roman Empire caused not only casualties against the Germanic tribes, but also the regular outbreak of civil wars. Combining all these factors together, one can clearly see that Western Rome had entered a spiral, a spiral from which it could not escape, a spiral that slowly made Western Rome disappear from existence...