The Roman Empire fell because of political weakness, but this was not the only factor involved. The Roman Empire stood in great power for many decades. Rome was considered the center of civilization for years. Even though it attracted many invaders, the city was well protected by its surrounding walls and powerful army. Some people believed that the Roman Empire would last forever. .
Under the rule of Diocletian and later Constantine, the empire was split into Western and Eastern parts of Rome. The emperors said that the reason for this was to make it easier to govern. The emperor chose to govern and build the capital in the Eastern part and gave the Western part to a co-emperor. The reason for that might have been that the Eastern part was much richer in resources and had better lands for farming. There may have been other reasons for that such as the Eastern part did not produce enough food for both parts of the empire and by separating them they"d have to produce their own food and depend upon themselves. This was the beginning to a long struggle of the Western part that was now basically left alone. Many reforms came in to law to keep the empire together, such as toleration of Christianity to avoid their rebellion since there were a lot of them. In 313 A.D. the Church started taking part in government, which slowly took power away from the emperor. More reforms, like fixing prices and giving more freedom of worship, kept the empire together, but definitely would not last long. This is so because these reforms were made to fit the people by taking away from the emperor, but the reformers never thought of what would happen after the emperor did not have anything left to give. Which would occur very soon if things were going down as fast they were. There was no one to take matters into their hands so the empire was left to the people themselves to govern.
