What were the major reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire?
What will be an ideal response?
Historians have argued about the reasons for the fall of the empire, but there is no one single reason. A few possible reasons are that the empire was overextended; its political organization was not sufficient to manage an empire of that size; there was significant difficulty incorporating the diverse peoples of the empire and maintaining loyalty in the dominate period; there were several economic crises in conjunction with the political crises of the third century; and there was political fragmentation in the sense of localization taking priority over the centralized, urban lifestyle of the empire at its prime. Some historians argue that Augustus's demobilization of military forces in the first century had depleted the army of the strength necessary to fend off barbarian tribes; others argue that Christianity had a weakening effect on the overall unification mentality of the Roman Empire.
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Which of the following was not among the regional groups that formed the solid political base of the Republican party in the late nineteenth century?
a. Immigrants living in the large Northeastern cities. b. Union Civil War veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. c. Southern black freedmen d. Midwestern farmers and small merchants. e. Rural and small-town Northeast residents.
All of these were responses to Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist "witch-hunt," known as McCarthyism, EXCEPT which of the following?
A. The Supreme Court blocked many of McCarthy's attempts to punish communists and protected their right to free speech. B. The Democratic Party launched its own search for communists at home by reviving HUAC. C. The FBI investigated civil rights groups for communist connections under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover. D. Public support remained in favor of McCarthy until televised committee meetings showed him verbally bullying uniformed officers and making wild accusations against the nation's military leaders.
President Ronald Reagan argued that the Strategic Defense Initiative would
A. bring an end to communism. B. enable the United States to make a successful "first strike" anywhere in the world. C. protect all of the United States' allies. D. bridge the "missile gap" with the Soviet Union. E. make nuclear war obsolete.
The elaborate civilian bureaucracy established by Constantine included four praetorian prefects, twelve vicars, and almost a hundred provincial governors. The system was corrupt despite __________.
A. steady pay and good benefits B. spies and secret informants C. the freedom granted each bureaucrat D. the use of paper money