Research Related to Comparing Mesopotamia and Rome

Mesopotamia rose due to geography. Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, was a very fertile region, and as archaeology had established early humans had at least a working understanding of agriculture. They understood that plants placed in the ground would grow. Therefore, this meant that Mesopotamia was a good place for civilization to rise, where people would have more than enough food to eat, and also have leftover food to participate in trade. Other reasons that led to the rise of Mesopotamia include; the rising population, which triggered the need for a better administration and trade, complex social life determined the social stratification, which included farmers, craftsmen, tradesmen, clergy and military aristocracy, and lastly, the rising complex social interaction.

Taxes and trade brought up the most important invention, writing.

As to its collapse, Mesopotamia suffered from severe flooding, which meant there was a limit to its power (because like their river civilization they rose and fell, rose and fell). Also, Mesopotamia is surrounded on two sides by mountains, one by the ocean, and one by desert, while itself being both wealthy and flat.

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Mesopotamia being conquered by nomadic people from the mountains was actually fairly common, but normally these people would be absorbed into the Mesopotamian cultures. This ended with the Persians, yet another originally nomadic mountain folk. They took over the Median Empire, and then Mesopotamia. After being conquered by the Persians the Mesopotamian civilization gradually fell. This is not however to say that when the Assyrians were invaded by the Persians that this was a tragedy.

They were already warring against each other, past their glory days and ruled by others. The Mesopotamian people were treated with a great deal of respect, but there wouldn't be another native Mesopotamian empire again afterwards.

The Roman empire was able to rise into power through many different ways. First was that they extended their citizenship rights to the colonies they colonized. This ensured that they gained more support from the colonies they had conquered, and because the Roman empire was a superpower, with so many colonies, this meant that a lot of people would consider themselves as part of the Roman empire. Better organization and geographical reasons also helped Rome. Rome was a huge city with high population, allowing a great army and great resources. Meanwhile, the Alps mountains gave Rome protection from invasion and position in the center of mediterranean sea was important. Roman citizens traditionally each held a plot of land that they worked on. The best of the republic was the concept of the agrarian state where every man grew his own food and had his house. This concept of the agrarian state pulled people out of Rome into the Roman empire, as this was seen as a promise to the people to always have food and land to make a living on. This however led to the overpopulation of Rome.

As Rome’s wars took her legions away from Italy, for extended periods of time, the land belonging to those citizen soldiers went unused. Once they returned home, they found it impossible to compete with massive slave run estates operated by the rich and therefore found themselves selling their land for a reasonable amount of money to keep them sustained. Rome became overcrowded with poor ex-landowners trying to find work. This was all illegal too as a Roman wasn't allowed to possess land larger than 500 acres. The rich were ignoring this law and Tiberius Gracchus, the Roman emperor at that time aimed to strengthen it. His idea was simple. Repurchase the illegally held land and distribute it to the poor. Tiberius responded by forcefully removing the Tribune from office (highly illegal) thus vetoing every single proposal and action taken by the Senate. Thus Tiberius got his way and his land proposal went through but the value was too high. Tiberius had broken 2 major laws and abused his powers. To top this off he decided to endure a second term as Tribune, which was illegal and therefore the furious Senate marched out and killed Tiberius Gracchus.

Some of the reasons for the fall of the Roman empire include; Rome was invaded: The Roman Empire faced invasions by the Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Saxons, and many more. At first, they tried to settle these people on Roman land but that failed completely. In addition to that, The Romans failed to assimilate the new Germanic arrivals: Rome’s greatest strength was assimilating new people into the empire making them loyal subjects. In the end of the Empire, they failed to do this and outright abuse these new immigrants. Rome settled these new arrivals on unfertile land and forced them into the army. It is reported that these people were so hungry that they sold their children for dog meat. Eventually, these people revolted and even sacked the city of Rome.

There were multiple tribes of people who fled into Roman lands and instead of assimilating them Rome just sorta granted them land in the empire. By the time of the collapse in four hundred seventy six, most of Gaul and Spain was divided into a bunch of Roman vassal states that paid little more than lip service to the emperor in Revanna or Milan. Rome also split into two parts, East and West. When one empire becomes two, one becomes weaker than the other, and they begin to do their own thing, which in the end could lead to disagreements when it comes to methods of ruling. These two parts that the Roman empire split into ran out of money: The East was rich with food, resources, population, and trade routes while the West was not. Cut off from these resources the West could not support itself.

In addition to that, the legions became a joke. Romans no longer wanted to join the army at all. So the legions were staffed with immigrants. When there were not enough immigrants to man the legions the Roman paid for Mercenary armies to do their fighting. The troops Rome did raise were poorly equipped, not at all loyal to Rome, and poorly paid as a result of Rome’s money issues. The mercenaries were also cut-rate troops and were leagues behind the hardened barbarian tribes they were facing. The Roman army was no longer a feared force and could not hope to match the flood of hostile tribes. Lastly, Rome ran out of good men. There were a couple of good emperors that served in the end for short periods of time, but overall the Roman Emperors of the final years were terrible, paranoid, and clueless. When all the power is in one man’s hand and this one man is responsible for such a large group of people, especially with no helpers to help him make political decisions, things typically go wrong. This was what led to the fall of the Roman empire.