The Partition of the Western Empire by Romulus Augustus
In AD 474, the Emperor Leo (I) of Constantinople recognized Julius Nieppo as co-emperor of the Roman Empire and appointed him as the ruler of Rome, but shortly after Julius Nieppo fell ill and took advantage of this opportunity. In .475, a Roman nobleman named Flavius Romulus Augustus revolted against Niepo. Niepo somehow escaped from Rome with his family and was saved. Romulus Augustus took control of Rome and its surrounding areas, but some areas still remained under the control of Niepo.
Orestes, the father of the new Roman ruler Romulus Augustus, had been the secretary of the Hun invader Attila. Sometime later, Romulus came into the service of Julius Niepo. Romulus Augustus ruled Rome from 31 October 475 to 4 September 476, but the Emperor of Constantinople recognized Julius Niepo as the Emperor of Rome until AD 480, ruling over what is now the fragmented part of the Western Roman Empire.
The Emperor of Constantinople was unable to foresee the threat of foreign barbarian tribes to the Western Roman Empire. He was so engrossed in his arrogance that he did not consider it appropriate to recognize Roman blood feudator Romulus Augustus as the emperor of Rome. For this reason, in no time the Goths entered Rome in a hurry and they destroyed the chain of rulers of the ancient Roman blood dynasty from Rome forever.
The Power of Rome by Odowecker
In AD 476, the Goths entered Rome and their general, Flavius Odoacer (Odoacer), defeated Romulus Augustus and captured Rome. This was the officially miserable end of the ancient Roman Empire. The prestige of Rome had saved him till now, but the hollowness within him was now exposed to the whole world.
In AD 480, Emperor Leo (I) of Kustuntunia died and was replaced by Zeno as the king of the Eastern Empire. During this period the Roman Empire was completely divided into two parts. Rome was the capital of the Western Roman Empire and Constantinople the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. The territories of Rome, Italy and Western Europe remained under the Western Roman Empire, while the regions of Constantinople, Greece, Anatolia and Byzantine remained under the Eastern Roman Empire. Many historians prefer to call the Eastern Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire.
Murder of Odowaker
Flavius Odowecker held Rome under his control for 17 years. He was an Arian Christian but did not interfere much in the affairs of the Catholic Church of Rome. In AD 493, by order of the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno, Theodoric, a feudatory of the Eastern Roman Emperor, invaded Italy. He was also the head of a Goth tribe in Germany, but was considered to be a very reliable and right-hand man of the Emperor Zeno of Kustuntnia.
There were many wars between Flavius Odowecker and Theodoric. In the end, a treaty was made between the two, under which both divided the territories of Italy and the ancient Roman Empire in half. A festival was organized to commemorate the signing of the treaty.
During the celebration, Theodoric took out his sword and slit Odowekar's throat. Odowecker died and Italy was ruled by Theodoric. He appointed two and a half million soldiers in Italy and laid the foundation of the kingdom of the Ostrogoth dynasty in the city of Ravenna, Italy. Theodoric made friends by marrying the daughters of Burgundian and Vandal chieftains ruling small territories in northern Italy. Thus ended the rule of the old Roman rulers from Rome, the capital of the Great Roman Empire, and the reign of foreign barbarians began.
Causes of the Fall of the Great Roman Empire
The Great Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century. It was one of the largest empires in the world. It expanded to Southern Europe, North Africa and Anatolia. Its rival was the Persian Empire, which was located east of the Euphrates River. Different languages were spoken in different places in the Roman Empire, with Latin and Greek being the main ones.
There were many reasons for the defeat of Rome. The biggest reason was the violent and selfish tendencies of Roman princes, princesses, queens and generals, which did not allow any Roman emperor to rule peacefully. Roman generals and bodyguard armies were so corrupt that they would kill their emperor by taking money from anyone.
Anyone could buy the allegiance of the emperor by hesitating his bodyguard armies. This was the reason that there were very few rulers of Rome who died of natural death. Death and murder, blood and violence had entered the nature of the Romans, so they considered these things very natural.
The Roman nobles and their young sons became luxuriant and drunken and were no longer able to fight by joining the armies. He left this job to slaves captured from African shores. Along with the wealthy feudal lords, the middle-class society of Rome had also become accustomed to breaking the free loaves given by the government.
Whereas the life of Roman farmers and workers was so bad that they did not care who was ruling them! As for the Roman armies, their condition was the worst. The best soldiers and generals of the armies were with the Eastern Roman Empire. The armies of the Western Roman Empire were filled with African slave soldiers and barbaric tribal soldiers from northern Europe. What was the use for them in risking their lives for such a dilapidated and decaying state?
The combined result of all this was that no one came forward to fight on the side of Rome whose tutti spoke throughout the world. By the fifth century AD, the Pope had also become a major power in Rome, but he too could not protect Great Rome. The Great Roman Empire collapsed.
Most of Rome's wealth and power went to Constantine along with Emperor Constantine. So the real Rome had become very weak, but the Western Roman Empire continued to be proud of its old and original capital Rome as before. He didn't even realize his real situation. The result was that the people whom the Romans had been calling barbarians, now the same barbarians entered Rome. There were several infamous tribes of barbarians, of which the Goths and the Franks predominated.
A historian named Alexander Demont has given many reasons for the decline of the great Roman Empire. Many historians see the seeds of its decline in the first century AD, while some believe that the signs of the decline of the Roman Empire began to appear from the third century AD. Roman armies could not stop the terrible invaders such as the Vandals, Goths, Visigoths and Huns, while these powers had been a threat to Rome for several hundred years.
The expansion of the Roman Empire reached its peak during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan (AD 98-117), but since then the territories of the empire started to shrink. Between AD 235-84, the Sassanid Empire expanded rapidly on the eastern frontiers of the Roman Empire and the Sassanid armies began to attack Rome.
Between AD 268 and AD 270, civil war and plague weakened both the numbers and the corpus of the Roman army, and the Roman Empire was divided into three parts, the Gallic, the Palmarian, and the Roman. In AD 274, Aurelius reunited these three divisions, but after that the great Roman Empire again got engulfed in civil war and it again broke into two parts.
In the fourth century AD, Diocletian and Constantine re-established the unity of the Roman Empire. Aurelius (AD.270-75) and subsequent Roman rulers forgot the old Roman tradition in which the rich-landlord class shared power.
Aurelian and subsequent emperors called themselves 'domes et des' i.e. 'Lord and God' started saying, due to which the relationship between the king and the subjects became like that of master and slave. By the time of Diocletian's reign, the period of direct contact between the emperor and the subjects almost ended.
The emperor used to get information about the happiness and sorrow of the people through his courtiers. Due to this, cruelty, strict collection of taxes and corruption prevailed in the governance system. Because of this, now the people did not make any difference as to who was ruling them!
The wealthy senator families of Rome, taking advantage of the weakness of the rulers, became free from taxation. His attention completely shifted from serving the state and subjects and he started conspiring to get wealth and position. Rome's large farmers used cheaply purchased slaves to work in their fields. When taxes were increased on the peasants, they had to give up their slaves in large numbers. Due to this the number of unemployed Negroes in Rome greatly increased.
After Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperors stopped expanding their empire and the boundaries of the Great Roman Empire continued to shrink. Due to this the production of gold in the empire decreased. Due to this the amount of gold in Roman-currencies was reduced, which reduced the value of Roman-currency. On the one hand the boundaries of the state, the revenue of the state and the gold-production of the state were decreasing, but on the other hand huge military expenditure still remained and the work of construction of huge buildings in Italy was not taking the name of stopping.
Due to this, the funds of the Roman emperors began to flow rapidly. In the early centuries of Christ, the Romans were great engineers from the point of view of civil engineering and were used to building huge buildings. Most of the income of the rich people continued to be spent on this work and other types of industries were neglected. Due to this new sources of revenue and tax collection could not be developed for the kings.
When Diocletian became the king of Rome in AD 284, he divided the empire into four great provinces and started the system of two Augustus and two Caesars and the next ruler Constantine moved his capital from Rome to Byzantia. These decisions accelerated the pace of division and decline of the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine followed the Pagan religion.
According to some historians, he was forcibly converted to Christianity on his deathbed. After this Christianity was recognized as the state religion. Christianity rejected the beliefs of the king being a deity and being endowed with divine powers. Due to this, people's faith in the king decreased even more.
The people of the Western Roman Empire spoke Latin and converted to Catholicism, while the Eastern Empire's language was Greek and became adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church. So the distance between the two parts of the empire kept increasing. After the fall of the western part of the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire continued to exist as the Byzantine Empire for hundreds of years.
Therefore the fall of the Great Roman Empire actually refers to the passing of the western half of the empire into the hands of foreign powers. The rest of the Roman Empire now survived as the Byzantine Empire. He also called himself the Roman Empire and considered himself great in the same way as the monolithic Roman Empire at one time called itself the Great Roman Empire and called Rome the master of the world.
The illusion of the greatness of the Roman Empire
The Romans called Rome the 'Mistress of the world' was considered. The Romans believed that the whole world was under Rome's Caesar. The Roman Empire was so large that the Romans of the capital believed that there could be only one 'Emperor' of the world at a time. For this reason the Roman Empire was called the Great Roman Empire. Whereas the reality was that the Roman Empire was confined to the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean. In the east, its border never extended beyond Iraq.
During the period of the Roman Empire and hundreds of years before that, huge empires were established in China and India, which were much more cultured, powerful and larger than the Roman Empire, but the people of the western world were different from the empires, peoples and their cultures of the eastern world. were ignorant. For them the world was limited to the extent of the Roman Empire.
The Rulers of Rome 'sense of being the master of the world' Arrogance prevailed. He believed that he was ruling the whole world. Therefore they are invincible. Whenever there were signs of the decline of the Roman Empire, this arrogance made them very active and saved them from destruction. Even when the Roman Empire was destroyed and its shadow gave the impression of being the Roman Empire in some form, Rome still thought that it was ruling the whole world.
The coastal trade of Roman merchants with India was at its peak during this period. The Kushanas were ruling in western India at this time. A Kushan ruler sent his ambassador to the court of the first emperor of Rome, Augustus Caesar. Trade was done by land-route and water-way in these two countries.
भारत से रोम को इत्र, चंदन, रेशम, विभिन्न प्रकार के मसाले, मलमल, जरी के कपड़े, कीमख्वाब तथा जवाहरात भेजे जाते थे। इसके बदले में रोम का सोना भारत आता था। प्लिनी नामक एक रोमन लेखक के अनुसार इस काल में रोम भारत से प्रतिवर्ष 10 करोड़ स्वर्ण मुद्राओं की विलासिता की सामग्री खरीदता था।
क्या रोमन साम्राज्य वास्तव में महान् था? रोम का यह दावा उस समय धराशायी होने लगता है जब हम देखते हैं कि महान् कहे जाने वाले रोमन साम्राज्य में एक के बाद एक करके तिनकों की तरह राजा अवतरित होते थे और शीघ्र ही अपनी अंग-रक्षक सेना द्वारा, या जन-सामान्य की भीड़ द्वारा या सीनेट के सदस्यों द्वारा या रोमन गवर्नरों द्वारा मौत के घाट उतार दिए जाते थे। ई.पू.27 से लेकर ई.455 तक सम्राटों की हत्याओं का यह सिलसिला तब तक जारी रहा, जब तक कि रोम की महानता का दावा पूरी तरह धरती पर नहीं आ गिरा।
भारत के प्रथम प्रधानमंत्री जवाहर लाल नेहरू ने अपनी पुस्तक विश्व इतिहास की झलक में रोमन साम्राज्य के ध्वस्त होने पर टिप्पणी करते हुए लिखा है-
‘बहुत लम्बे समय तक रोम का रौब ही उसकी ताकत थी। उसके पुराने इतिहास से प्रभावित होकर लोग उसे सारी दुनिया का शासक समझने लगे थे और उसकी इज्जत करते रहे थे। रोम का डर करीब-करीब अंध-विश्वास बन गया था। इस तरह रोम प्रकट रूप में शक्तिशाली साम्राज्य का स्वामी बना रहा किंतु वास्तव में उसके पीछे कोई शक्ति नहीं थी। बाहर से शांति थी और उसके नाटकघरों में, बाजारों में और अखाड़ों में मनुष्यों की भीड़ लगी रहती थी किंतु वह निश्चित रूप से पतन की ओर जा रहा था। सिर्फ इसलिए नहीं कि वह कमजोर था, अपितु इसलिए भी कि उसने जनता की गुलामी और संकटों की नींव पर धनिकों की सभ्यता का महल खड़ा किया था।’
रोम के पतन के साथ ही अमीरों की तड़क-भड़क और विलासिता का भी अंत हो गया। रोम का विनाश इतनी भयावह विधि से हुआ था कि उनके द्वारा सदियों से संचित ज्ञान भी नष्ट हो गया। इस समय जर्मन जाति ‘गोथ’, ‘विसिगोथ’ एवं ‘वाण्डाल’ कबीलों के रूप में तथा फ्रैंच जाति ‘फ्रैंक’ कबीले के रूप में अर्धसभ्य एवं लड़ाकू समूहों की स्थितियों में जी रही थीं। रोम जैसी महान् सभ्यता के नष्ट हो जाने के बाद इन्हें अब अपने बल पर सभ्यता की सीढ़ियां चढ़नी थीं।
रोम के पतन से यूरोप में अंधकार युग का आगमन
यद्यपि जवाहर लाल नेहरू ने रोमन साम्राज्य के अंत को साम्राज्य का ध्वंस न मानकर ‘रोम’ नगर का ध्वंस माना है क्योंकि रोमन साम्राज्य तो कुस्तुंतुनिया के नेतृत्व में तब भी जीवित था तथापि यह रोमन साम्राज्य के ध्वंस से भी बड़ी घटना थी। ‘रोम’ जैसी रहस्यमय एवं अद्भुत शक्ति का उत्तरी यूरोप की बर्बर जातियों के हाथों पतन होना, निश्चित ही समूचे यूरोप, समूचे प्राचीन रोमन धर्म एवं समूचे ईसाई धर्म के लिए एक बड़ी राजनीतिक एवं सांस्कृतिक घटना थी।
क्योंकि रोम और यूनान के प्राचीन दार्शनिकों के चिंतन से बनी वह पुरानी दुनिया लगभग पूरी ही नष्ट हो गई थी। इन अर्थों में यह एक महान् युग का अंत था। कहा जा सकता है कि जो सभ्यता एक हजार साल से भी अधिक समय में अंकुरित, पल्लवित एवं पुष्पित हुई थी, अचानक ही पककर मुरझा गई थी।
यह एक आश्चर्य की बात थी कि रोम वासियों द्वारा धर्म, दर्शन, अध्यात्म, चिकित्सा एवं अन्य विषयों के सम्बन्ध में जो ज्ञान अर्जित किया गया था, वह भी काल के गाल में समा गया। यद्यपि यूरोप के बहुत से देशों में रोम का संचित ज्ञान फुटकर रूप में याद रखा गया और आगे बढ़ाया गया किंतु उसका अधिकांश हिस्सा भुला दिया गया। निष्कर्ष रूप में यह निर्विावाद रूप से कहा जा सकता है कि रोमन साम्राज्य के पतन के बाद यूरोप में अंधकार का युग लौट आया।
रोम के पतन में ईसाई धर्म की भूमिका
बहुत से आलोचकों का मानना है कि रोमन साम्राज्य के पतन एवं यूरोप में अंधकार के युग के आगमन का कारण ईसाई धर्म था। अब यह वह धर्म नहीं रहा था जिसका प्रचार ईसा मसीह ने अथवा सेंट पीटर आदि शिष्यों ने अथवा प्रथम शताब्दी ईस्वी के ईसाई संत पॉल ने किया था अपितु यह राजकीय ईसाइयत थी जो एम्परर कॉन्स्टेन्टीन के ईसाइयत स्वीकार कर लिए जाने के बाद पश्चिम में फैली थी।
चौथी शताब्दी ईस्वी में सम्राट कॉन्स्टेन्टीन के ईसाइयत स्वीकार कर लेने के बाद यूरोप में एक हजार वर्ष का एक ऐसा युग आरम्भ हुआ जिसमें मनुष्य के ‘विवेक’ को जंजीरों में जकड़ दिया गया तथा ‘विचार’ को गुलाम बना दिया गया।
इस कारण इस काल में ज्ञान और विज्ञान ने कोई उन्नति नहीं की। ईसाइयत में पनपी इस प्रवृत्ति के कारण न केवल अत्याचार, कट्टरपन एवं असहिष्णुता ने ही जोर पकड़ा अपितु इससे लोगों के लिए विज्ञान और बहुत सी बातों में आगे बढ़ना कठिन हो गया।
इस युग में मनुष्य का चिंतन एवं विज्ञान जब भी ऐसी बातें कहने का प्रयास करते थे जो बाइबिल में लिखी बातों से अलग होती थीं तो धर्म एवं विज्ञान में संघर्ष उत्पन्न हो जाता था जिसमें प्रायः विज्ञान की पराजय हो जाती और धर्म जीत जाता। इस कारण कुछ लोग यूरोप में अंधकार छा जाने के लिए ईसाइयत को दोषी ठहराने लगते हैं।
जबकि कुछ अन्य लोगों का मानना है कि उस अन्धकार युग में ज्ञान के दीपक को जलाए रखने वाले ईसाइयत और ईसाई पादरी तथा पुजारी ही थे। उन्होंने कला और चित्रकारी को जीवित रखा, अत्यंत महत्त्वपूर्ण पुस्तकों को सुरक्षित रखा और उनकी प्रतिलिपियां तैयार कीं।
वस्तुतः यूरोप में अंधकार के युग के आगमन के लिए ईसाइयत को दोषी ठहराना उचित नहीं होगा, इसके लिए तो रोम की वह प्राचीन विलासिता पूर्ण संस्कृति ही जिम्मेदार थी जिसने नवीन ज्ञान उत्पन्न होने के सारे मार्ग अवरुद्ध करके भोग-विलास को ही जीवन का एकमात्र सत्य मान लिया था!