[bholdr]

three things:

-the emperor Trajen was in power as rome reached it's territorial zenith... To the point of his conquests in eastern europe, aspiring roman leaders financed their rise to power through conquest. his successor, hadrian, actually gave up some territory in order to create more defensable borders. he realized that rome, due to mainly logistical and economic factors, couldn't continue to grow indefinitly... there was hardly anything else of value left to plunder... of course:

-the brutality of roman sport was, in part, designed by the rulers to keep the people of the city strong and conditioned to war and bloodshead, and those sports generally trailed off as and because christianity became more powerful... but, also,

-Ceaser, Octavian, Trajen, Hadrian and a couple others were gifted, brilliant generals, on a level with kublai kahn, tamerlane, cao cao, napolean (R.E Lee, too, imo) etc... maybe it was a lack of military talent, coupled with complacency and more advanced/skilled/numerous enemies that all came together to destroy the empier. nobody really knows, and though christianity may have played a part in the fall, imo it was definitly not the dominant factor.


just a thought: you wanna learn about an empire that's survived all of the last 2200 years, learn about china... by the time of ceaser, chinese generals had assembled armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands... china was greater than rome by almost any objective measure.