Western Civilization
18 October 2015 History has seen numerous great civilizations come and go as time has progressed, and many have faded into obscurity. Yet others, such as the Ancient Greeks and Romans, have not been forgotten, and have greatly impacted the modern western world. The modern day would not exist as it is, if it were not for the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Its destruction was instrumental in the formation of the western world and heavily influenced humanity as a whole. The Western Roman Empire’s collapse was brought on because of Barbarians, the Greed of Powerful Romans, and the Roman’s loss of identity. The Western Roman Empire had over the centuries successfully conquered and integrated many cultural groups into their Empire, but many different groups of “barbarians” always seemed to surround the empire. Salvian points out that ill-treated Romans “would rather endure a foreign civilization among the barbarians than cruel injustice among the Romans,” showing that the corrupt and self-obsessed Roman society had become so unjust that their own people were fleeing. This aided in the barbarians taking, and migrating into much of the Western Roman Empire because they now had certain Romans aligned …show more content…
While, the barbarians would carry on many of their ideas, the Empire’s destruction was also finalized by these cultures. The loss of identity for the Roman people, as well the Greed of the Romans truly weakened the Empire enough to the point where the barbarians could “finish it off”. Without the fall of the Western Roman Empire, history as it is today, would not be the same. For its fall paved the way for the western world and more specifically Europe to develop, which in turn would lead to the establishment of America, which is the newest of the world’s spheres of