Political Corruption

Political Corruption.

It's the most (painfully obvious) reason for the fall of the Roman Empire.

Rome was doing great, yeah - with the world at your very fingertips, life is pretty darn great.

Until people start winding up dead.

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Rome was already greedy - they seemed to conquer new lands almost every other month, it seemed. And when you're a highly respected military leader or a valuable member of the Senate party, you really are looking pretty green. But when you start turning on the people you are supposed to defend, your role loses all of its weight and bragging rights.

It started at the very beginning of the Roman empire, in fact - they were so caught up with advancing their empire to make it bigger and better that they completely forgot about their decaying subjects. Not everybody supported the empire, despite all it promised. Why, you may be thinking? Because they could see what the other imbeciles around them couldn't foresee - their cruel edge of greed that dulled their so-called perfect, shiny empire.

People slowly, very slowly started to realize their great, sudden decline in overall morals. Yet when they attempted to warn their military leaders of their rotten behavior, they blatantly ignored them. So the pathetic Romans did the only thing, in the only way they knew how; Rebel.

Though this so-called 'rebel' wasn't necessarily a... well, rebel, it could be counted as one. Think of it as a soft rebel, if that makes sense - and what I mean by that is though the Romans didn't attack (right away), they stopped listening to their military leaders, Senate party candidates and even emperors altogether. As they found out that the gold in their coins didn't equate to the same amount they used to due to their wealthy emperor's hunger for greed and power and money, they abandoned that currency system altogether.

What the people of Rome didn't realize was that abandoning their government into an all-out purge into decaying, endless darkness meant that they'd be plunging themselves in as well. At first, the government couldn't care less about their citizens' downfall; but when plague and wars and such swept through their beloved country, they jumped onto their fat feet, aghast. 

But when they tried to take action...

...Rome collapsed into a horrid, twisted nothingness, the golden memories of a once-beloved empire crumbling to dust along with the empire, never to be surfaced ever again for thousands of centuries to come.

political corruption
by Sydnie Bush