I got a history question for all of you.

what do you think would have happen if the romans did not lose the battle of Teutanberg forest and were able to push to the Elbe frontier instead of holding at the Rhine? do you think they could have survived longer than the late 5th century? the border would have been shorter and they would have had a Romanize Germany

I think it was more politics is what caused the fall of the Roman empire then some battlefield loss .

It seems clear that no single battle caused the decline of the Roman Empire in the west.

I not saying survived but lasted a bit longer. the romans only ever met one of there natural frontier the Atlantic ocean. but if they could have shorten the boarder I just cant help but feel they may have lived for another 100 to 200 years

The battle in Germany was anti-climatic for the end of the Roman Empire. Sure, it may have hastened the decline in the Western part of the Empire, but the Empire was doomed hundreds of years before that. Simply because it was too big to unify and control. Political infighting did more to reduce the empire from within.

Nope Rome fell from the inside-out, I doubt Rome would have lasted any longer even if it's borders where shorten.

As others said, Rome fell from within. The Empire was too large for it to be able to sustain itself, there were multiple revolts, etc.

IIRC, the Roman Empire actually split in half, with the Eastern Roman Empire turning into the Byzantine Empire while the Western Roman Empire basically just turned into a bunch of marauding states. This happened over the course of centuries, though; it wasn't like it was this one big huge event where one day, all of a sudden, the Roman Empire is gone.

Thing you need to know is that Rome basically ruled all of Europe and bits of Africa and the Middle East at its height. You know how difficult it must be to ship supplies and soldiers to the far reaches of their borders to maintain the peace? Eventually, something had to give and with a weak military, Rome couldn't stop the collapse. I also recall Rome being sacked by barbarians a time or two, which likely devastated the morale of the troops and citizens of Rome.

But again, it was a gradual decline, over the course of centuries.

Am I correct? Roman history isn't my thing.

Pretty much, what took them hundreds of years to build, took hundreds of years to take down.

The one thing the Romans did have going for them, and probably contributed to the longevity of the Empire, was they would assimilate rather than conquer. They would use the existing power structures and work with them. The people, for the most part, don't really care who their government is, as long as they stay out of the way of life. In this case, there was not a lot of grass roots rebellion that you would get with most empires. Most of the things that happened to cause the decline was caused by the leadership of the Empire, or rather, the incompetent leadership of the latter part of the Empire. In particular how they reacted to the outside attacks.

I'm not disagreeing with you guys in fact I am agreeing. I had to write several term papers on Rome when I was in grad school. did you know the roman state never directly collected tax's? the nobles would buy the right to go to province X to collect money. it was a lottery of sorts really. say I pay Rome 500 gold to be a tax collector for Gaul. I than go to Gaul and order the peasants to pay there "tax's" in the end I end up collecting and keeping mind you 750 gold and only paying 500. a net win of 250. dose any one here see why Rome fell yet? they had less then 100 bureaucrats running the empire at its height. compare that to china who had thousands and were able to survive multiple "dark ages" that lasted only around 200 years at most.

The Roman Empire was too far spread out, crippling their logistics capability. While they were fully capable of feeding their populace throughout the empire, it wasn't enough to ensure that the frontier troops in Germania were at full-strength for any extended period.

That, and multiple wars in the East forced emperors to send frontier legions into Mesopotamia thus leading to a weakened frontier. The weakness of the Rhine and Danube frontiers was exposed during the Marcomannic Wars, leading to the strengthening of the frontier outposts. This only added to the burden that Rome had to bear.

So in effect, the fall of Rome wasn't because of a single battle but a gradual decline within.