Title: The Decline and fall of classical civilizations
Headings: 
China
India
Rome

Content: As the empire started to weaken, farmers and laborers clustered around powerful regional landowners to whom they surrendered full allegiance in return for military protection. Thus people looked to their local landlords rather than to the Empire for protection and stability. As this decentralization took place, the vast Mediterranean trade routes fell out of Roman hands. The Emperor Diocletian tried to stop this decentralization. He reformed the system of administration and persecuted Christians whose allegiance to God he blamed for the weakening of Roman civil life. Then the emperor Constantine, who converted the Christianity, used his religion to try to unify the Empire spiritually. He created a new capital, Constantinople. However, neither of these Emperors could save the crumbling Empire. The last Roman Empire in the west was displaced by Germanic armies in 476. Mediterranean culture, which had been put together by the Hellenism of Alexander and the Roman Empire itself, was fragmented.