Part one of term paper
"If," writes Roman historian Edward Gibbon in his A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the world when the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of ...

Part two of term paper
... Huge tracts of country were devastated. The middle-class were squeezed out of existence. Farmers and laborers were transformed into serfs. When in 285 A.D. Diocletian pulled the empire together again, there was but little left of the prosperity of the Pax Romana. This shows that the causes of the collapse must, like hidden cancers, have been developing during Gibbon's period of happiness and prosperity. Some of the symptoms, at least, can be recognized. Many financial (economical), social, and polit ...