Why was power shifting from the Western to the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire under Diocletian and Constantine? What effect did this have on the West?
In 284 A.D., Diocletian became emperor. He believed the empire had grown too complex for one ruler. He decided to divide the empire into the Greek speaking East (Greece, Anatolia, Syria and Egypt) and the Latin-speaking West (Italy, Gaul, Britain and Spain). He took the eastern half for himself and appointed a co-ruler for the West. While Diocletian shared authority, he kept overall control. His half of the empire, the East, included most of the empire’s great cities and trade centers. Diocletian focused on making the East as wealthy as possible, while the West fell into poverty. After Diocletian died, a new emperor named Constantine (ruled 306-337 A.D.) would move the capital of Rome to the Greek city of Byzantium, which became known as Constantinople (he named it after himself). Thanks to its location on the Bosporus Strait, Constantinople became a major trading center. Like Diocletian, Constantine focused on making the East as wealthy and well-protected as possible (he built massive walls around Constantinople) and left the West relatively unprotected and open to attack.
Meanwhile, around 370 A.D., Germanic tribes like the Franks, Goths, Visigoths and Ostrogoths began to invade Roman lands in the West. They were fleeing a powerful group called the Huns that had conquered their traditional homes in Central Asia. The Western Empire was no longer wealthy or powerful enough to raise the armies necessary to stop them, and throughout the 400s, these tribes slowly but surely took over more and more of the West. Eventually, the Huns were united under the fearsome Attila the Hun and also threatened both the Western and Eastern parts of the Empire. This threat was eliminated when Attila died in 453 A.D., but the German invasions still continued. The Western Roman Empire fell for good in 476 A.D. The Eastern Empire continued on for another 1,000 years as the Byzantine Empire
