Title: Divorce and Decline: The Division of East and West Roman Empires | History Hit
Headings: Divorce and Decline: The Division of East and West Roman Empires
Divorce and Decline: The Division of East and West Roman Empires
Colin Ricketts
East weakening west
The fall of Rome
The West crumbles under its own weight

Content: Despite their advanced network of roads and bureaucratic mechanisms, word simply could not travel fast enough for the Empire to grow and change as a whole. When Constantine decided to move the capital to the old city of Byzantium — a strategic and lucrative position — to found Constantinople, the western parts of the Empire were the furthest from the economic stability and defensive power of the leaders of Rome; easy picking for the barbarians beyond the borders. This depicts the Empire’s territories at its height in the second century AD. Its downfall followed just a few centuries later; the sheer size of it a contibuting factor to its collapse. The splitting of the Empire and the loss of the West was the end of what many see as Ancient Rome, as the Eastern Empire developed the old traditions were left behind and a new entity emerged, the Byzantine Empire — a nation that would last another 1000 years.