defeated and taken by the barbarians making it considerably easier for them to conquer Rome. In order to ensure their loyalty, the wages of the soldiers were doubled and they were often promised discharge payments such as land or money. The military also spent loads of money on the transport of food and grain to ensure their soldiers were fed, horses were also vital, the roads and bridges needed to be repaired constantly and weapons also needed to be manufactured. The Romans believed that luxury interfered with discipline and failed to see that the soldiers would begin to live a more lavish lifestyle with the money they were promised. When the Romans spent their gold and silver in order to expand they failed to conquer any lands that would replace their depleted mines.
Another main cause leading to the demise of the Roman Empire was the dependency of the use of slave workers. The number of slave workers increased dramatically during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. Rome’s dependency on slave labour led not only to a decline in morals, values and ethics but also the stagnation of new machinery to produce goods more efficiently and productively. The Romans were never short of slaves and treated them very sadistically which caused the slaves to revolt leading to a string of conflicts called the Servile Wars, the most famous one being the charge led by the gladiator slave, Spartacus. Common farmers who had to pay their workers could not afford to produce their goods at low prices and slavery was an ideal way to lower expenditure which saw a rapid increase in unemployment. During the last few centuries of the Roman Empire there was a massive rise in Christianity and the attitudes of slaves were changing and they were becoming socially accepted. Many of the slaves that Rome depended on were being freed lowering the production of goods and weapons, forcing the government to hire workers to be paid for a lot less work. The dependency of slave labour led to the Romans technology becoming inferior for the last 400 years of the Empire. They ultimately failed to provide enough goods for their increasing population and troops. They also failed to discover new ways of developing their technology or add to their income when invading other lands.