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The real reason for the fall of Rome? Climate change

2 December 2017

9:00 AM

2 December 2017

9:00 AM

Why did the Roman Empire collapse? It’s a question that’s been puzzling writers ever since Edward Gibbon wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century. One classicist — a German, inevitably — bothered to count up all the various hypotheses for the fall, and came up with 210.

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