Editing Roman Empire (section)

===The Collapse of the Imperium===
Rome's fall can be attributed to any number of reasons, and any self-styled amateur historian would be more than happy to explain to you his opinions on the subject, but it's widely agreed that there were a number of contributing forces, including but not limited to:
* Even under the reign of Julius Caesar and the early emperors, cracks were starting to form. Population decline had already begun, especially in the cities where death rates routinely outpaced birth rates; [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/892aud/augustus_is_said_to_be_worried_about_the_low/ in part because of archaic Roman society rules, lead poisoning, urbanization], and all of the wealthy landowners having seized up all the good land in Italy and leaving behind a growing unskilled urban population that needed the state to take care of them. This was what partly fueled the Roman war machine, land and funds needed to support Roman's citizens, but of course they couldn't go conquering forever, so once Rome's borders stalled, and the state's costs increased, something was going to give eventually. And even today we all know that a big, dense urban landscape is not a healthy environment for raising large families economically.
* Increased logistical sluggishness of maintaining a sprawling empire, such that it had to split itself into two because it had become too large for a single Emperor to rule on his own. This solution solved that problem but created new ones down the line, as the Western and Eastern halves of the empire (which were ruled by separate emperors that rarely if ever got along) tended to go to war with each other over petty rivalries. 
* The various Legions becoming more loyal to their generals than the Imperium; throughout Rome's history, the Empire had always struggled with the fact that the Roman legions trusted their allegiance more to their local generals than the will of the Senate (although by the time the empire started to collapse, the senate had virtually no power anyway) or the Emperor. Said generals frequently followed Caesar's example and got it into their heads to make themselves Emperors; some of them turned out to be pretty good at work, but far more tended to be better at leading armies than ruling over an empire. 
* Said Legions being unable to adapt to new arts of warfare. Footslogging, fortification building, shortsword-and-javelin bearing turtles made of tower shields may have been enough for wild Gauls with no discipline. But when entire tribes of highly mobile horsemen and rapid-moving swarms of densely populated Eastern empires are fought against, it's an entirely different matter. Note that Byzantium, a.k.a Eastern Roman Empire survived for another millennium ''exactly'' because it adapted to its neighbours arsenal, raised its own horse archers named Hippotoxotai after inviting a "barbarian" general or two on how do I shot web, heavy cavalry named Cataphracti (based on Persian Clibinarii), and lightened the legions into rapid deployment.
* Economic and famine crises as Roman farmers were out priced by foreign imports; Egypt and Carthage completely shifted the wheat production to the east, and fields in the Western empire were converted to fruit and vegetable orchards, which were quite perishable. It was not until hardy crops from the Americas (like potatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes) reached western and northern Europe several centuries later that said regions developed sufficient food stability to ensure steady population growth. By contrast, the Eastern half of the empire did just fine since they were the half with all the valuable land. Said wealth from food stability and trade enabled the Eastern Empire to bribe off the Germanic and Slavic migrants (until they lost their breadbasket provinces to the Arabs). 
* A disastrous combination of heavy urbanization without understanding germ theory led to events like the [[Wikipedia:Antonine Plague|Antonine Plague]], which killed about 10% of the empire's population.
* [[Barbarian|Germanic barbarians]], who were fleeing from the Huns and usually rebelled after being constantly treated like shit by the Romans despite being responsible for fighting most of the Romans' wars on their behalf. In hindsight, forcing the migrant Goths to sell their children into slavery for just enough dog meat to avoid starvation was a real dick move. And while all of them paid lip service to the Emperors (both Western and Eastern) as vassals in names, they were more than willing not to fight if their people’s’ interests were ignored.
* [[Game of Thrones]]-style court intrigue: Emperors killing emperors, perpetual backstabbing between dynasties, trading places like it's fucking musical chairs, made even worse by the fact that the Empire never had any kind of consistent succession rules at any point during its history. At least the [[Adeptus Custodes|Praetorians]] were ready to off an aspiring Emperor if they believed he was too insane to hold office...or if they felt they weren't getting paid enough, or if they thought they could get more benefits from someone else. On one occasion the Praetorians even sold the position of Emperor to the highest bidder; the "lucky" buyer didn't even last three months before getting overthrown and executed by a rival claimant. This had another side effect of letting the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) lose the recipe for a primitive flamethrower (royal family hid the instructions separately, only for everyone who knew where they were to die in one of the many coups) and get dog piled by Muslims.
* Lead poisoning from widespread use of lead-sealed pipe and pewter-ware; however, this is balanced against them having comparatively clean water for such large cities.  
* Terminus, God of Borders asking Dream to speak to Caesar Augustus in a vision, to let the empire die so he may live on. The alternative was to let Rome conquer the world and the universe, effectively destroying Terminus. (Yes, we are comic nerds.) 
* The rise of the Christian faith to political dominance, which resulted in A: a mass transference of manpower from the military to the priesthood (this was LONG before Christian monks and priests were required to practice celibacy & austerity, so the average young Roman man decided that it was way easier, safer and more comfortable to join the clergy than the army), forcing an ever-increasing reliance on mercenaries (always a bad thing, for an empire), and B: the ever-increasing drain of funds away from infrastructure maintenance to pay this increasingly bloated priesthood to do nothing but sit around, give sermons, and hold councils arguing over theological trivia like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" (all of them) and "was Mary still a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus?" (yes-ish). Note that this contribution is highly [[skub]]by, and people argue '''bitterly''' over whether it's true or not (not helped by the fact that at least some of the historians who championed this theory had a clear bias against Christianity that led them to play fast and loose with facts, such as Edward Gibbon).

Heck, even the cooling solar cycle that made the Huns break out in two, one to Europe, another to India, is said to be the driving force in its collapse since before them came every other tribe that wanted to get the fuck away from [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|the teaser trailer of a certain swell guy's antics]]. The East splitting off didn't do the Western lands any favors either, especially when said wheat and exotic produce was utterly cut off. Eventually, the barbarians got all the way to Rome, sacked it (in 410, not in 476, though it had not been the actual capital for about 200 years by that point anyway), deposed the Emperor, and made one of their own the king of Italy. This is the part where most experts say the Western Roman Empire was well and truly dead.