Rome's fall wasn't a conquest — it was a slow hollowing out, as fiscal collapse, porous frontiers, and fractured loyalties unravelled the world's greatest administrative machine. This episode traces the structural forces behind the Western Empire's long decline and the ambiguous, negotiated end that followed.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Here's the question that never quite goes away when you study Rome's long decline: how does an empire that built the most sophisticated administrative machine the ancient world had ever seen end up unable to defend its own borders? Not conquered.
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