From the fall of the Republic to the Sack of Rome, that's 450 years.....a lot can happen in 450 years. 450 years ago today is 1570, which is a New World turned barren by disease and war, few European colonists, bad firearms and excellent medieval weaponry, star fortresses, the Ming Dynasty, and the Battle of Lepanto at sea between western Europe and the ascendant Ottoman Empire. The printing press had only been around 130 years at this point.

In these 450 years, a lot changed for Rome. Mary Beard's book, SPQR, focuses on the shift in attitudes and values of the republic through to Emperor Caracalla, and specifically, his decision to grant citizenship to all freemen of the empire. Her book outlines the changes that Roman society underwent leading up to that decision. During the Punic Wars, Rome was conscripting men from all over Italy, often from newly conquered Italian regions. By no means had Rome conquered the whole country yet. In fact, when Hannibal went on his rampage in Italy, much of his work was trying to convince Italian towns to turn on Rome. Rome won out in the end, and the spoils of their new lands fueled fantastic wealth into the hands of the leading men of Rome. With this, the built roads and aqueducts and made life generally better all over Italy. However, it was difficult for many people to obtain "Roman citizenship," which conferred obvious and fantastic benefits to you and your family should you achieve it. The dream was in Rome, the money and jobs were there, and you worked hard to achieve it: the army was a typical route. The incentive of citizenship was a big one up until 212AD, when Caracalla just gave it away to everyone to increase the tax base.

By the time you get to Caesar's time, the leading men of Rome were by modern times multi multi billionaires. Caesar, Crassus, Clodius, Pompey, and before them, Marius and Sulla, were all beneficiaries of Marius's reforms to personally attach men in the army to their leading, sponsoring general. So, not only could you get citizenship in the army, your general might make you pretty rich in the lands they conquered (if they don't get you killed). Crassus got all his men killed: Caesar returned from Gaul with the wealth of the entire country in his hands, culminating in his civil war that ended the Senate. So all in all, you had plenty of supply of men, and the demand for army service stayed pretty high in order to get citizenship.

Skip ahead to Augustus, who succeeded Julius Caesar, inherited all his money, and also inherited his legions. Augustus expanded the army, continued to build the empire, and also created a bureaucracy for his own regime to run everything: the equestrians (knights). Augustus was the biggest man in town and needed loyalists to function in important roles, carrying orders around the growing empire and administering it effectively. The Senate in Rome was beginning to be sidelined.

If you look at the Year of the 4 Emperors after Nero's suicide, the army was beginning to discover it was the true power in the empire: they could make Emperors. That year ended in the legions of Vespasian crushing the opposition and instilling a new dynasty. After his last son, Domitian, was assassinated, the Senate took it upon itself to select Nerva as Emperor, but at the behest of the power of the army, he quickly adopted a successful general, Trajan, as his heir. The army stayed a very important influence in Roman politics through all the 5 Good Emperors (up to Marcus Aurelius).

Then skip ahead to Caracalla's father, Emperor Septimius Severus. In his bid for power, he fought one of the largest battles in European History at Lyons (Lugdunum), where 150,000 Roman soldiers fought each other between 2 rival emperors. Severus won, Albinus was killed, and the legions were badly damaged. Civil wars like this are costly and the coinage was manipulated to ill effect, weakening the Roman economy. Higher taxes were levied, but even that was not enough. By the time Caracalla, Severus's son, became Emperor, he had little choice but to grant citizenship to everyone in order to increase the tax base. Incentive for citizenship now gone, people no longer sought out the army as a viable career option.

However, Rome's army was still very powerful, and would spend much of the 3rd century battling itself among dozens of pretend Emperors. During this crisis, raids from Germania and elsewhere were hitting the empire everywhere, even reaching as far as Athens. The army was the ultimate power in the empire, even if that empire was crumbling apart amongst squabbling power seekers.

Diocletian initiated a significant reorganization of the state, and with that, started setting about regional capitals that were more relevant for the administration of the empire by an increasing number of bureaucrats and tax collectors. This is where Rome truly became sidelined: it was in a bad spot geographically to be directing military policy, and much of the regions of the empire could simply trade with each other and cut Rome out of the middle. The emperor regimes could be based near the threatened borders of the empire. The problem, however, is that now you had 4 legitimate emperors, 2 senior Augusti and 2 junior Caesars, who themselves could now contend with each other. Diocletian's system was falling apart even as Diocletian was retired, culminating in the megalomaniac Constantine winning out.

Constantine is definitely an enigma. We know him as 'The Great' for both his acceptance and support of the Christian religion, but also his massive capital building on the spot where his opponent's military forces gave him horrific trouble: Byzantion. Ever the general, Constantine saw the superiority of that site as nearly unassailable and also geographically as being an extremely important linchpin in naval and land trade routes. How did he pay to relocate the capital of the Empire here and build a new city practically from scratch? He taxed the hell out of everything. The registers records of Constantine were notorious for quantifying every olive tree, by quality and age, on a particular plot of land on a small island in the Aegean. He squeezed, and he squeezed hard. He had an army to pay for, a bureaucracy to pay for, massive construction bills for Constantinople, and also big outlays for Christian churches, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as one example.

So now every inhabitant of the empire has citizenship, but guess what? What does that get you? A tax collector up your ass all the time, practically extorting you for everything. People were 'elected' to town council and instructed to always provide the tax rolls to the Emperor(s). These obligations became hereditary, and so became the start of a feudal system in Europe. The military regime was so ungainly and so expensive, the Roman economy truly suffered. The western provinces (except Italy) were always poorer than Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, and especially Egypt. So when your populace is overtaxed, ruled over by the military, and unable to become entrepreneurs, your citizenship doesn't look so good. In fact, you wish for better circumstances. You certainly don't join the army. So the army looks for new recruits. Foreigners looking to become (or already are) Christian and want to live in the Empire look pretty attractive.

The big bust for the Roman Empire (for me) is in AD 378, at the Battle of Adrianople. Emperor Valens wouldn't wait for help, and attacked yet another annoying band of Goths raiding over the borders. Emperors had been doing this for hundreds of years now, defending against the Germans and winning most of the time. So Valens thought he would win the glory, and instead saw his cavalry massively outclassed and then his infantry surrounded and killed. He died along with many senior officials. The army was effectively shattered, and the Goths destroyed the arms factories on the Danube and tried to siege cities. General Theodosius became Emperor, but with the army in pieces, he had to accept the Goths as allies, and according to Lars Brownworth, they became the power behind the Emperor's throne. The Goths were never assimilated: they retained their identity, and lived within the Empire.

So when a powerful military force can call shots and a shattered army isn't able to easily recruit, train, and recover, what happens? You hire more foreigners as military muscle! The Germanic tribes were on the move, so the crisis continued to get worse: in order to deal with foreign invaders, you enlist foreign invaders to help you with the only money you've got left. Theodosius died and split the empire between his two boys. Honorius got the west, and basically oversaw the destruction of the Emperor regime in the west by ambitious foreign warlords and palace intrigue from Ravenna (the newest western capital). The eastern part of the empire at least had a lot of money. They too needed to throw off their Germanic powers behind the throne, and eventually, they found a tough crowd of Isaurians from south central Turkey to kick out the Germans. Where you see the story of the Western Roman Empire falling to the tribes, you also have a story of the Eastern Empire booting them out of their vicinity and 'inviting' them to go to Italy.

Alaric sacked Rome in 410, then it happened again in 455 by the Vandals, and by 476, the military warlords were tired of the charade: Odoacer deposed the last western emperor. Later on, the eastern emperor asked the Ostrogoths to go to Italy and depose Odoacer, and then Theodoric the Great took over. Rome in his time still had the stadiums and races, with a happy population. Rome wouldn't truly suffer and die until Justinian's Gothic Wars in the 6th century, when the aqueducts were cut and the city traded hands between fires and soldiers over and over again.