mical problems among the empire combined with a fourth problem to cause a dreadful situation. The climate and rainfall patterns were changing and becoming unstable. The weather began to alternate between hot droughts and cold rainy seasons. This resulted in decreasing crop productivity, and the Romans began conducting large irrigation projects. These projects required water to be stored in large reservoirs where it became stagnant and attracted mosquitoes, those of which carried malaria. Since Rome was experiencing a very severe financial difficulty, the people in the cities were forced to live in cramped houses very close to one another (the cities could not afford to have all of the luxurious homes and estates as it had in the past). People were forced to drink the infected water, and because everybody lived so close to one another, the malaria spread quickly and infected much of the population. As a result, approximately 1/3 of the population of the empire died from the malaria plague. This plague was extremely devastating to Rome because the people whom had died from it left their jobs unoccupied, and there were no people to occupy them. Malaria deeply affected the growing and manufacturing of produce and goods necessary to the existence of the empire, causing a decrease in growth of approximately 25%. This made a bad economy even worse, and the empire regressed drastically. If the leaders of Rome had been able to save and budget the currency wisely throughout the empire when they first noticed that the source of most of their intake of money had been blocked (their source of money was primarily expansion), the economy of Rome probably would not have been so poor later on that people had to be living in such crowded conditions and drinking infected water. This would have prevented, or at least significantly diminished the spread of the plague among the empire, and many thousands of lives could have been spared. It seemed that by thi...
