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The Fall of Rome, the Short form:

Basically, the mean temperature world wide dropped significantly, causing crop failures and marginal land to stop producing. This led to economic problems in the Roman Empire. Small farms and businesses failed and food prices rose. People fell off the tax rolls due to poverty. People gave up and in large numbers went to be bandits, giving up on citizenship and thus the system that held the civilization together. More and more children were exposed, speeding up the trend towards depopulation. The tax burden shifted more heavily onto the shrinking Middle Class just as the empire needed more funds to deal with the Barbarians who were on the move due to food shortages on the steppes caused by the same climitary shift. More and more of these were forced to give up and the cycle continued until the Empire was too weak to continue outside of the prosperous Eastern holdings.