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218-697: The fall of the Western Roman Empire , also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome , was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire , a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was divided among several successor polities . The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces ; modern historians posit factors including

436-508: A caste system , and land fell out of use in the East just as it had in the West. Yet the East stood its ground in the fifth century, fought back in the sixth, and even recovered some territory in the seventh. The East had only one apparent advantage: geography. It was less vulnerable, strategically, than the West. The narrowest sea crossing to its core territories was protected from the northern barbarians by

654-526: A "Dark Age" that set Europe back a millennium. In contrast, German and English historians have tended to see Roman–Barbarian interaction as the replacement of a "tired, effete and decadent Mediterranean civilization" with a "more virile, martial, Nordic one". The scholar Guy Halsall has seen the barbarian movement as the result of the fall of the Roman Empire, not its cause. Archaeological discoveries have confirmed that Germanic and Slavic tribes were settled agriculturalists who were probably merely "drawn into

872-602: A "primeval urge" to push into the Mediterranean, the construction of the Great Wall of China causing a "domino effect" of tribes being forced westward, leading to the Huns falling upon the Goths who, in turn, pushed other Germanic tribes before them. In general, French and Italian scholars have tended to view this as a catastrophic event, the destruction of a civilization and the beginning of

1090-465: A Fall of empire. Like other Enlightenment thinkers and British citizens of the age steeped in institutional anti-Catholicism , Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden, superstitious Dark Age. It was not until his own era, the "Age of Reason", with its emphasis on rational thought, it was believed, that human history could resume its progress. He began an ongoing controversy about

1308-512: A Roman invasion. King Gaiseric tried to negotiate a peace with Majorian, who rejected the proposal. In the wake of this, Gaiseric devastated Mauretania , part of his own kingdom, fearing that the Roman army would land there. Having regained control of Hispania, Majorian intended to use his fleet at Carthaginiensis to attack the Vandals. Before he could, the fleet was destroyed, allegedly by traitors paid by

1526-555: A West continued, as happened after the deaths of Constantine and Theodosius I . The Roman Empire was under the rule of a single emperor, but, with the death of Constantine in 337, the empire was partitioned between his surviving male heirs. Constantius , his third son and the second by his wife Fausta (Maximian's daughter) received the eastern provinces, including Constantinople, Thrace , Asia Minor , Syria , Egypt , and Cyrenaica; Constantine II received Britannia, Gaul , Hispania, and Mauretania ; and Constans , initially under

1744-483: A breakdown in society. For centuries, Theodosius was regarded as a champion of Christian orthodoxy who decisively stamped out paganism. His predecessors Constantine , Constantius II , and Valens had all been semi-Arians , whereas Theodosius supported Nicene Christianity which eventually became the orthodox version of Christology for most later Christian churches—his Edict of Thessalonica described Arian Christians as "foolish madmen". Therefore, as far as Ambrose and

1962-614: A candidate of their own, Julius Nepos , magister militum in Dalmatia . With the support of Eastern emperors Leo II and Zeno , Julius Nepos crossed the Adriatic Sea in the spring of 474 to depose Glycerius. At the arrival of Nepos in Italy, Glycerius abdicated without a fight and was allowed to live out his life as the Bishop of Salona . The brief rule of Nepos in Italy ended in 475 when Orestes ,

2180-497: A central Roman rump state ; in 271, Rome abandoned the province of Dacia on the north of the Danube . The Rhine /Danube frontier also came under more effective threats from larger barbarian groupings, which had developed improved agriculture and increased their populations. The average stature of the population in the West suffered a serious decline in the late second century; the population of Northwestern Europe did not recover, though

2398-545: A collapsing field army, and the Empire divided between the warring ministers of his two incapable sons. Goths and other non-Romans became a force that could challenge either part of the Empire. Further barbarian groups crossed the Rhine and other frontiers. The armed forces of the Western Empire became few and ineffective, and despite brief recoveries under able leaders, central rule was never again effectively consolidated. By 476,

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2616-551: A common identity and ancestry. This was the Romantic ideal that there once had been a single German, Celtic or Slavic people who originated from a common homeland and spoke a common tongue , helping to provide a conceptual framework for political movements of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism . From the 1960s, a reinterpretation of archaeological and historical evidence prompted scholars, such as Goffart and Todd, to propose new models for explaining

2834-530: A demoralized army, began his brief reign (363–364) while trapped in Mesopotamia without supplies. To purchase safe passage home, he had to concede areas of northern Mesopotamia , including the strategically important fortress of Nisibis . This fortress had been Roman since before the Peace of Nisibis in 299. The brothers Valens ( r.  364–378 ) and Valentinian I ( r.  364–375 ) energetically tackled

3052-443: A financial account, Valentinian suddenly leaped from his seat and declared that he would no longer be the victim of Aetius' drunken depravities. Aetius attempted to defend himself from the charges, but Valentinian drew his sword and struck the weaponless Aetius on the head, killing him on the spot. On 16 March the following year, Valentinian himself was killed by supporters of the dead general, possibly acting for Petronius Maximus. With

3270-530: A former secretary of Attila and the magister militum of Julius Nepos, took control of Ravenna and forced Nepos to flee by ship to Dalmatia . Later in the same year, Orestes crowned his own young son as Western emperor under the name Romulus Augustus . Romulus Augustus was not recognised as Western emperor by the Eastern Court, who maintained that Nepos was the only legal Western emperor, reigning in exile from Dalmatia . On 4 September 476, Odoacer , leader of

3488-449: A gradual Romanization . While the predominantly Greek culture of the East and the predominantly Latin culture of the West functioned effectively as an integrated whole, political and military developments would ultimately realign the Empire along those cultural and linguistic lines. More often than not, Greek and Latin practices (and to some extent the languages themselves) would be combined in fields such as history (e.g., those by Cato

3706-473: A great increase in the purchasing power of gold, two and a half fold from 274 to the later fourth century. This may be an index of growing economic inequality between a gold-rich elite and a cash-poor peasantry . "Formerly, says Ammianus, Rome was saved by her austerity, by solidarity between rich and poor, by contempt for death; now she is undone by her luxury and greed (Amm. xxxi. 5. 14 and xxii. 4.). Salvianus backs up Ammianus by affirming that greed (avaritia)

3924-617: A large regular army with logistics and training. The cursus honorum , a standardized series of military and civil posts organised for ambitious aristocratic men, ensured that powerful noblemen had the opportunity to become familiar with military and civil command and administration. At a lower level within the army, connecting the aristocrats at the top with the private soldiers, a large number of centurions were well-rewarded, literate, and responsible for training, discipline, administration, and leadership in battle. City governments with their own properties and revenues functioned effectively at

4142-478: A large and powerful group as Christians had now become. Julian prepared for civil war against Constantius, who again encouraged the Germans to attack Gaul. However Julian's campaigns had been effective and only one small Alemannic raid, speedily dealt with by Julian, resulted. Constantius died before any serious fighting and Julian was acknowledged as master of the entire Empire. He launched an expensive campaign against

4360-518: A lasting peace with the Parthians. The Parthian Empire would be succeeded by the Sasanian Empire, which continued hostilities with the Roman Empire. Controlling the western border of Rome was reasonably easy because it was relatively close to Rome itself and also because of the disunity among the Germans. However, controlling both frontiers simultaneously during wartime was difficult. If the emperor

4578-402: A local level; membership of city councils involved lucrative opportunities for independent decision-making, and, despite its obligations, became seen as a privilege. Under a series of emperors who each adopted a mature and capable successor, the Empire did not require civil wars to regulate the imperial succession. Requests could be submitted directly to the better emperors, and the answers had

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4796-500: A long-term territorial and official base, but was never able to do so. Stilicho tried to defend Italy and bring the invading Goths under control, but to do so he stripped the Rhine frontier of troops and the Vandals , Alans , and Suevi invaded Gaul in large numbers in 406. Stilicho became a victim of court intrigues and was killed in 408. While the East began a slow recovery and consolidation,

5014-482: A major centre for Jewish unrest. Nevertheless, it remained a culture based on an early subsistence economy , with only ineffective inklings of a germ theory of disease . Despite its aqueducts , the water supply did not allow good hygiene. Sewage was disposed of on the streets, in open drains, or by scavenging animals. Even in the Roman Climatic Optimum , local harvest failures causing famines were always

5232-537: A major part in the fall of the West". The Roman Empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Trajan (r. 98–117), who ruled a prosperous state that stretched from Armenia to the Atlantic Ocean . The Empire had large numbers of trained, supplied, and disciplined soldiers, drawn from a growing population. It had a comprehensive civil administration based in thriving cities with effective control over public finances. The literate elite considered theirs to be

5450-446: A master-slave relationship. An elaborate court ceremonial developed, and obsequious flattery became the order of the day. Under Diocletian, the flow of direct requests to the emperor rapidly reduced, and soon ceased altogether. No other form of direct access replaced them, and the emperor received only information filtered through his courtiers . However, as Sabine MacCormack described, the court culture that developed with Diocletian

5668-461: A matter of years, the East–West administrative division would endure in one form or another over the coming centuries. As such, the unofficial Western Roman Empire would exist intermittently in several periods between the 3rd and 5th centuries. Some emperors, such as Constantine I and Theodosius I , governed, if briefly, as the sole Augustus across the Roman Empire. On the death of Theodosius in 395,

5886-601: A partial list of its consuls still survives. It maintained Roman religion, language, and culture, and was far more concerned with fighting the Germanic tribes , fending off Germanic incursions and restoring the security the Gallic provinces had enjoyed in the past, than in challenging the Roman central government. In the reign of Claudius Gothicus (268–270), large expanses of the Gallic Empire were restored to Roman rule. At roughly

6104-427: A particularly large and unexpected crossing of the Rhine was made by a group of Vandals , Alans and Suebi . As central power broke down in the Western Roman Empire, the military became more important but was dominated by men of barbarian origin. There are contradictory opinions as to whether the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a result of an increase in migrations, or if both the breakdown of central power and

6322-405: A possibility. And even in good times, Roman women needed to have, on average, six children each in order to maintain the population . Good nourishment and bodily cleanliness were privileges of the rich, advertised by their firm tread, healthy skin color, and lack of the "dull smell of the underbathed". Infant mortality was very high, and diarrhoeal diseases were a major cause of death. Malaria

6540-462: A progressive Romanisation of barbarian society, but also an undeniable barbarisation of the Roman world." For example, the Roman Empire played a vital role in building up barbarian groups along its frontier. Propped up with imperial support and gifts, the armies of allied barbarian chieftains served as buffers against other, hostile, barbarian groups. The disintegration of Roman economic power weakened groups that had come to depend on Roman gifts for

6758-468: A reduced tax base. The business of subduing barbarian warbands also demanded substantial gifts of precious metal. At least one extra levy provoked desperation and rioting , in which the emperor's statues were destroyed. Nevertheless, he is represented as financially generous as emperor, though frugal in his personal life. By the end of the 380s, Theodosius and the court were in Mediolanum , and northern Italy

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6976-433: A result of such an accommodation and were absorbed into Latinhood. In contrast, in the east, Slavic tribes maintained a more "spartan and egalitarian" existence bound to the land "even in times when they took their part in plundering Roman provinces". Their organizational models were not Roman, and their leaders were not normally dependent on Roman gold for success. Thus they arguably had a greater effect on their region than

7194-516: A series of puppet emperors who could do little to halt the collapse of Roman authority and the loss of the territories re-conquered by Majorian. The first of these puppet emperors, Libius Severus , had no recognition outside of Italy, with the Eastern emperor Leo I and provincial governors in Gaul and Illyria all refusing to recognize him. Severus died in 465 and Leo I, with the consent of Ricimer, appointed

7412-586: A single emperor to govern the entire Empire was institutionalized by emperor Diocletian following the disastrous civil wars and disintegrations of the Crisis of the Third Century . He introduced the system of the Tetrarchy in 286, with two senior emperors titled Augustus , one in the East and one in the West, each with an appointed subordinate and heir titled Caesar . Though the tetrarchic system would collapse in

7630-466: Is a German word, borrowed from German historiography, that refers to the early migrations of the Germanic peoples. In a broader sense it can mean the mass migration of whole tribes or ethnic groups. Rather than "invasion", German and Slavic scholars speak of "migration" (see German : Völkerwanderung , Czech : Stěhování národů , Swedish : folkvandring and Hungarian : népvándorlás ), aspiring to

7848-504: Is a vice common to nearly all Romans". However, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi (consul 133 BC) had already dated the start of Rome's moral decline to 154 BCE. Within the late Roman military , many recruits and even officers had barbarian origins. Soldiers are recorded as using possibly-barbarian rituals, such as elevating a claimant on shields. Some scholars have seen this as an indication of weakness. Others disagree, seeing neither barbarian recruits nor new rituals as causing any problem with

8066-519: Is partly documented by Greek and Latin historians but is difficult to verify archaeologically. It puts Germanic peoples in control of most areas of what was then the Western Roman Empire . The Tervingi crossed the Danube into Roman territory in 376, in a migration fleeing the invading Huns . Some time later in Marcianopolis , the escort to their leader Fritigern was killed while meeting with Roman commander Lupicinus . The Tervingi rebelled, and

8284-470: Is sometimes used to mark the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages . Odoacer's Italy and other barbarian kingdoms , many of them representing former Western Roman allies that had been granted lands in return for military assistance, would maintain a pretense of Roman continuity through the continued use of the old Roman administrative systems and nominal subservience to the Eastern Roman court. In

8502-621: Is widely regarded as the invasion of Europe by the Huns from Asia in about 375 and the ending with the conquest of Italy by the Lombards in 568, but a more loosely set period is from as early as 300 to as late as 800. For example, in the 4th century a very large group of Goths was settled as foederati within the Roman Balkans , and the Franks were settled south of the Rhine in Roman Gaul . In 406

8720-469: The Völkerwanderung may illustrate such [a] course of events, but it misleads. Unfolded over long periods of time, the changes of position that took place were necessarily irregular ... (with) periods of emphatic discontinuity. For decades and possibly centuries, the tradition bearers idled, and the tradition itself hibernated. There was ample time for forgetfulness to do its work. Völkerwanderung

8938-674: The Baltic Sea , moving up the Vistula near the Carpathian Mountains . During Tacitus ' era they included lesser-known tribes such as the Tencteri , Cherusci , Hermunduri and Chatti ; however, a period of federation and intermarriage resulted in the familiar groups known as the Alemanni , Franks , Saxons , Frisians and Thuringians . The first wave of invasions, between AD 300 and 500,

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9156-559: The Battle of Mursa Major and committed suicide, a complete reunification of the whole Empire occurred under Constantius in 353. Constantius II focused most of his power in the East. Under his rule, the city of Byzantium – only recently re-founded as Constantinople – was fully developed as a capital. At Constantinople, the political, economic and military control of the Eastern Empire's resources would remain safe for centuries to come. The city

9374-472: The Battle of Samarra against the Sasanian Empire and was succeeded by Jovian , who ruled for only nine months. Following the death of Jovian, Valentinian I emerged as emperor in 364. He immediately divided the Empire once again, giving the eastern half to his brother Valens . Stability was not achieved for long in either half, as the conflicts with outside forces (barbarian tribes) intensified. In 376,

9592-687: The Brittonic chieftains (whose centres of power retreated westward as a result). The Eastern Roman Empire attempted to maintain control of the Balkan provinces despite a thinly-spread imperial army relying mainly on local militias and an extensive effort to refortify the Danubian limes . The ambitious fortification efforts collapsed, worsening the impoverished conditions of the local populace and resulting in colonization by Slavic warriors and their families. Halsall and Noble have argued that such changes stemmed from

9810-456: The Domain of Soissons ) also recognized Nepos as his sovereign and the legitimate Western emperor. The authority of Julius Nepos as emperor was accepted not only by Odoacer in Italy, but by the Eastern Empire and Syagrius in Gaul (who had not recognized Romulus Augustulus). Nepos was murdered by his own soldiers in 480, a plot some attribute to Odoacer or the previous, deposed emperor Glycerius, and

10028-521: The First Jewish–Roman War . To ensure a commander's loyalty, a pragmatic emperor might hold some members of the general's family hostage . To this end, Nero effectively held Domitian and Quintus Petillius Cerialis , Governor of Ostia , who were respectively the younger son and brother-in-law of Vespasian. Nero's rule was ended by a revolt of the Praetorian Guard , who had been bribed in

10246-617: The Gildonic War . Stilicho managed to subdue Gildo but was campaigning in Raetia when the Visigoths entered Italy in 402. Stilicho, hurrying back to aid in defending Italy, summoned legions in Gaul and Britain with which he managed to defeat Alaric twice before agreeing to allow him to retreat back to Illyria . The weakening of the frontiers in Britain and Gaul had dire consequences for the Empire. As

10464-506: The Huns . They were exploited by corrupt officials rather than effectively relieved and resettled, and they took up arms and were joined by more Goths and some Alans and Huns. Valens was in Asia with his main field army preparing for an assault on the Sasanian Empire. Redirection of the army and its logistic support would have required time, and Gratian's armies were distracted by Germanic invasions across

10682-658: The Mongols also had significant effects (especially in North Africa , the Iberian Peninsula , Anatolia and Central and Eastern Europe ). Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany to the adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward (pushing the resident Celts west to the Rhine around 200 BC), moving into southern Germany up to

10900-468: The Muslim conquests represented a decisive break with antiquity. The more recent formulation of a historical period characterized as " Late Antiquity " emphasizes the transformations of ancient to medieval worlds within a cultural continuity. In recent decades archaeologically based argument even extends the continuity in material culture and in patterns of settlement as late as the eleventh century. Observing

11118-548: The Ostrogoths , led by Theodoric the Great , who settled in Italy. In Gaul , the Franks (a fusion of western Germanic tribes whose leaders had been aligned with Rome since the 3rd century) entered Roman lands gradually during the 5th century, and after consolidating power under Childeric and his son Clovis's decisive victory over Syagrius in 486, established themselves as rulers of northern Roman Gaul. Fending off challenges from

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11336-464: The Parthian Empire in the East presented the greatest threat to the Empire. The Parthians were too remote and powerful to be conquered and there was a constant Parthian threat of invasion. The Parthians repelled several Roman invasions, and even after successful wars of conquest, such as those implemented by Trajan or Septimius Severus , the conquered territories were forsaken in attempts to ensure

11554-565: The Roman Empire and Europe as a whole. The period is traditionally taken to have begun in AD ;375 (possibly as early as 300) and ended in 568. Various factors contributed to this phenomenon of migration and invasion, and their role and significance are still widely discussed. Historians differ as to the dates for the beginning and ending of the Migration Period. The beginning of the period

11772-592: The Roman Republic , controlling a smaller area than the western Empire, had been able to reconstitute large regular armies of citizens after greater defeats than Adrianople. That war had ended with the near-extermination of the invading barbarian supergroups, each supposed to have more than 100,000 warriors.) The final Gothic settlement was acclaimed with relief, even the official panegyrist admitting that these Goths could not be expelled or exterminated, nor reduced to unfree status. Instead they were either recruited into

11990-512: The Roman Senate . Though supported by the Gallic provinces and the Visigoths, Avitus was resented in Italy due to ongoing food shortages caused by Vandal control of trade routes, and for using a Visigothic imperial guard. He disbanded his guard due to popular pressure, and the Suebian general Ricimer used the opportunity to depose Avitus, counting on popular discontent. After the deposition of Avitus,

12208-580: The Second Tetrarchy . The Tetrarchy collapsed after the unexpected death of Constantius in 306. His son, Constantine , was declared Western emperor by the British legions, but several other claimants arose and attempted to seize the Western Empire. In 308, Galerius revived the Tetrarchy by dividing the Western Empire between Constantine and Licinius . However, Constantine was more interested in conquering

12426-591: The Senate sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno . While its legitimacy lasted for centuries longer and its cultural influence remains today, the Western Empire never had the strength to rise again. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine , Empire, survived and remained for centuries an effective power of the Eastern Mediterranean , although it lessened in strength. Additionally, while

12644-573: The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus . The severity of the Vandal sack of 455 is disputed, though with the Vandals plundering the city for a full fourteen days as opposed to the Visigothic sack of 410, where the Visigoths only spent three days in the city, it was likely more thorough. Avitus , a prominent general under Petronius, was proclaimed emperor by the Visigothic king Theodoric II and accepted as such by

12862-514: The Visigoths , fleeing before the Ostrogoths , who in turn were fleeing before the Huns , were allowed to cross the river Danube and settle in the Balkans by the Eastern government. Mistreatment caused a full-scale rebellion, and in 378 they inflicted a crippling defeat on the Eastern Roman field army in the Battle of Adrianople , in which Emperor Valens also died. The defeat at Adrianople was shocking to

13080-466: The civil war of 218 between Emperor Macrinus and Elagabalus . As the Empire expanded, two key frontiers revealed themselves. In the West, behind the rivers Rhine and Danube , Germanic tribes were an important enemy. Augustus, the first emperor, had tried to conquer them but had pulled back after the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest . Whilst the Germanic tribes were formidable foes,

13298-581: The crisis of the third century . Heavy mortality in 165–180 from the Antonine Plague seriously impaired attempts to repel Germanic invaders, but the legions generally held or at least speedily re-instated the borders of the Empire. From 376, massive populations moved into the Empire, driven by the Huns who themselves may have been driven by climate change in the Eurasian steppe . These barbarian invasions led ultimately to barbarian kingdoms over much of

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13516-442: The diocese of Macedonia to their control. In 387 Maximus invaded Italy, forcing Valentinian II to flee to the East, where he accepted Nicene Christianity. Maximus boasted to Ambrose of the numbers of barbarians in his forces, and hordes of Goths, Huns, and Alans followed Theodosius. Maximus negotiated with Theodosius for acceptance as Augustus of the West, but Theodosius refused, gathered his armies, and counterattacked, winning

13734-426: The sack of Rome in 410 , and the death of Julius Nepos in 480. When Gibbon published his landmark work, it quickly became the standard. Peter Brown has written that "Gibbon's work formed the peak of a century of scholarship which had been conducted in the belief that the study of the declining Roman Empire was also the study of the origins of modern Europe". Gibbon was the first to attempt an explanation of causes of

13952-545: The 3rd century. This system effectively divided the Empire into four major regions, the First Tetrarchy : in the West, Maximian made Mediolanum (now Milan ) his capital, and Constantius made Trier his. In the East, Galerius made his capital Sirmium and Diocletian made Nicomedia his. On 1 May 305, Diocletian and Maximian abdicated, replaced by Galerius and Constantius, who, in turn, appointed Maximinus II and Valerius Severus , respectively, as their caesars, thus creating

14170-462: The 6th century, Emperor Justinian I re-imposed direct Imperial rule on large parts of the former Western Roman Empire, including the prosperous regions of North Africa , the ancient Roman heartland of Italy and parts of Hispania . Political instability in the Eastern heartlands, combined with foreign invasions, plague, and religious differences, made efforts to retain control of these territories difficult and they were gradually lost for good. Though

14388-607: The 6th century. They were later followed by the Bavarians and the Franks, who conquered and ruled most of the Italian peninsula. The Bulgars, originally a nomadic group probably from Central Asia , occupied the Pontic steppe north of Caucasus from the 2nd century. Later, pushed by the Khazars , the majority of them migrated west and dominated Byzantine territories along the lower Danube in

14606-439: The 7th century. From that time the demographic picture of the Balkans changed permanently, becoming predominantly Slavic-speaking, while pockets of native people survived in the mountains of the Balkans. Croats settled in modern Croatia and Western Bosnia, bringing with them the Serbs who settled in Rascia, an area around Montenegro - South-West Serbia. By the mid seventh century, Serb tribes were invading northern Albania. By

14824-517: The Alemanni, Burgundians, and Visigoths, the Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of what would later become France and Germany. The initial Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain occurred during the 5th century, when Roman control of Britain had come to an end. The Burgundians settled in northwestern Italy, Switzerland and Eastern France in the 5th century. Between AD 500 and 700, Slavic tribes settled more areas of central Europe and pushed farther into southern and eastern Europe, gradually making

15042-470: The Bulgars. During the Khazar–Arab Wars , the Khazars stopped the Arab expansion into Europe across the Caucasus (7th and 8th centuries). At the same time, the so-called Moors (consisting of Arabs and Berbers ) invaded Europe via Gibraltar ( conquering Hispania from the Visigothic Kingdom in 711), before being halted by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in Gaul. These campaigns led to broadly demarcated frontiers between Christendom and Islam for

15260-420: The Christian literary tradition that followed him were concerned, Theodosius deserved most of the credit for the final triumph of Christianity. Modern scholars see this as a Christian interpretation of history. Theodosius did not stamp out paganism, which continued into the seventh century. Theodosius had to face a powerful usurper in the West; Magnus Maximus declared himself Emperor in 383, stripped troops from

15478-420: The East, but these failed. In the ensuing bloody civil war Magnentius marched against Constantius with as many troops as he could mobilize, stripping the Rhine frontier of its most effective troops. Magnentius died and so did many of his men. Meanwhile, Constantius sent messages to the German tribes east of the Rhine, inviting them to attack Gaul, which they did. In the next few years a strip some 40 miles wide to

15696-623: The Eastern Empire retained territories in the south of Italy until the eleventh century, the influence that the Empire had over Western Europe had diminished significantly. The papal coronation of the Frankish king Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800 marked a new imperial line that would evolve into the Holy Roman Empire , which presented a revival of the Imperial title in Western Europe but

15914-402: The Eastern emperor Leo I did not select a new western Augustus . The prominent general Majorian defeated an invading force of Alemanni and was subsequently proclaimed Western emperor by the army and eventually accepted as such by Leo. Majorian was the last Western emperor to attempt to recover the Western Empire with his own military forces. To prepare, Majorian significantly strengthened

16132-487: The Eastern emperor Theodosius I restored him to power. In 392, the Frankish and pagan magister militum Arbogast assassinated Valentinian II and proclaimed an obscure senator named Eugenius as emperor. In 394 the forces of the two halves of the Empire again clashed with great loss of life. Again Theodosius I won, and he briefly ruled a united Empire until his death in 395. He was the last emperor to rule both parts of

16350-466: The Eastern emperor Zeno chose not to appoint a new Western emperor. Zeno, recognizing that no true Roman control remained over the territories legally governed by the Western court, instead chose to abolish the juridical division of the position of emperor and declared himself the sole emperor of the Roman Empire. Zeno became the first sole Roman emperor since the division after Theodosius I, 85 years prior, and

16568-517: The Elder ), philosophy and rhetoric . Minor rebellions and uprisings were fairly common events throughout the Empire. Conquered tribes or oppressed cities would revolt, and the legions would be detached to crush the rebellion. While this process was simple in peacetime, it could be considerably more complicated in wartime. In a full-blown military campaign , the legions were far more numerous – as, for example, those led by Vespasian in

16786-454: The Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts for administrative expediency. The Western Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna disappeared by AD 554, at the end of Justinian 's Gothic War . Though there were periods with more than one emperor ruling jointly before, the view that it was impossible for

17004-464: The Empire. Aetius transferred his forces to the Danube, though Attila concentrated on raiding the Eastern Roman provinces in the Balkans, providing temporary relief to the Western Empire. In 449, Attila received a message from Honoria , Valentinian III's sister, offering him half the western empire if he would rescue her from an unwanted marriage that her brother was forcing her into. With a pretext to invade

17222-579: The Gallo-Roman senator Jovinus revolted after proclaiming himself emperor, with the support of the Gallic nobility and the barbarian Burgundians and Alans. Honorius turned to the Visigoths under King Athaulf for support. Athaulf defeated and executed Jovinus and his proclaimed co-emperor Sebastianus in 413, around the same time as another usurper arose in Africa , Heraclianus . Heraclianus attempted to invade Italy but failed and retreated to Carthage, where he

17440-551: The German provinces – rebelled, and his assault on Colonia Agrippina resulted in the deaths of Saloninus and the prefect. In the confusion that followed, an independent state known in modern historiography as the Gallic Empire emerged. Its capital was Augusta Treverorum (modern Trier ), and it quickly expanded its control over the German and Gaulish provinces, all of Hispania and Britannia . It had its own senate , and

17658-536: The Germanic foederati in Italy, captured Ravenna, killed Orestes and deposed Romulus. Though Romulus was deposed, Nepos did not return to Italy and continued to reign as Western emperor from Dalmatia , with support from Constantinople. Odoacer proclaimed himself ruler of Italy and began to negotiate with the Eastern emperor Zeno . Zeno eventually granted Odoacer patrician status as recognition of his authority and accepted him as his viceroy of Italy. Zeno, however, insisted that Odoacer had to pay homage to Julius Nepos as

17876-1200: The Goths (including the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths ), the Vandals, the Anglo-Saxons , the Lombards, the Suebi, the Frisii , the Jutes , the Burgundians , the Alemanni, the Sciri and the Franks; they were later pushed westward by the Huns, the Avars, the Slavs and the Bulgars. Later invasions, such as the Vikings , the Normans , the Varangians , the Hungarians , the Arabs , the Turks , and

18094-513: The Goths, the Franks or the Saxons had on theirs. Based on the belief that particular types of artifacts, elements of personal adornment generally found in a funerary context, are thought to indicate the ethnicity of the person buried, the "Culture-History" school of archaeology assumed that archaeological cultures represent the Urheimat (homeland) of tribal polities named in historical sources. As

18312-602: The Great ; thus, much of the aristocracy was of Greek origin. The whole region, especially the major cities, had been largely assimilated into Greek culture, Greek often serving as the lingua franca . Octavian obtained the Roman provinces of the West: Italia (modern Italy), Gaul (modern France), Gallia Belgica (parts of modern Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg ), and Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal). These lands also included Greek and Carthaginian colonies in

18530-552: The Hun homelands along the Danube, forced Attila to turn back and leave Italy. When Attila died unexpectedly in 453, the power struggle that erupted between his sons ended the threat posed by the Huns. Valentinian III was intimidated by Aetius and was encouraged by the Roman senator Petronius Maximus and the chamberlain Heraclius to assassinate him. When Aetius was at court in Ravenna delivering

18748-448: The Hunnic forces, though Attila escaped. Attila regrouped and invaded Italy in 452. With Aetius not having enough forces to attack him, the road to Rome was open. Valentinian sent Pope Leo I and two leading senators to negotiate with Attila. This embassy, combined with a plague among Attila's troops, the threat of famine, and news that the Eastern emperor Marcian had launched an attack on

18966-413: The Mediterranean region". A synthesis by Harper (2017) gave four decisive turns of events in the transformation from the height of the empire to the early Middle Ages: The loss of centralized political control over the West, and the lessened power of the East, are universally agreed, but the theme of decline has been taken to cover a much wider time span than the hundred years from 376. For Cassius Dio ,

19184-403: The Mediterranean regions did. The Empire survived the "Crisis of the Third Century", directing its economy successfully towards defense, but survival came at the price of a more centralized and bureaucratic state . Excessive military expenditure, coupled with civil wars due to unstable succession, caused increased taxes to the detriment of the industry. Under Gallienus (Emperor from 253 to 268)

19402-593: The Rhine frontier in the 4th century, when Trier frequently served as a military capital of sorts for the Empire. Many leading Western generals were barbarians . The reign of Honorius was, even by Western Roman standards, chaotic and plagued by both internal and external struggles. The Visigothic foederati under Alaric, magister militum in Illyricum , rebelled in 395. Gildo , the Comes Africae and Magister utriusque militiae per Africam , rebelled in 397 and initiated

19620-521: The Rhine. In 378, Valens attacked the invaders with the Eastern field army, now perhaps 20,000 men, probably much fewer than the forces that Julian had led into Mesopotamia a little over a decade before, and possibly only 10% of the soldiers nominally available in the Danube provinces. In the Battle of Adrianople (9 August 378), Valens lost much of that army and his own life. All of the Balkan provinces were thus exposed to raiding, without effective response from

19838-411: The Roman Empire before the West fragmented and collapsed. Theodosius I's older son Arcadius inherited the eastern half while the younger Honorius got the western half. Both were still minors and neither was capable of ruling effectively. Honorius was placed under the tutelage of the half-Roman/half-barbarian magister militum Flavius Stilicho , while Rufinus became the power behind the throne in

20056-661: The Roman Empire in both its western and its eastern portions. In particular, economic fragmentation removed many of the political, cultural and economic forces that had held the empire together. The rural population in Roman provinces became distanced from the metropolis, and there was little to differentiate them from other peasants across the Roman frontier. In addition, Rome increasingly used foreign mercenaries to defend itself. That "barbarisation" parallelled changes within Barbaricum . To this end, noted linguist Dennis Howard Green wrote, "the first centuries of our era witness not merely

20274-480: The Roman Empire sank into a 50-year period of civil war now known as the Crisis of the Third Century. During this period, the Empire saw the combined pressures of barbarian invasions and migrations into Roman territory, civil wars, peasant rebellions and political instability, with multiple usurpers competing for power. The idea of dividing the empire was first developed in this time; Valerian and his son Gallienus divided

20492-560: The Roman West and Byzantium gradually converted the non-Islamic newcomers and integrated them into Christendom. Analysis of barbarian identity and how it was created and expressed during the Barbarian Invasions has elicited discussion among scholars. Herwig Wolfram , a historian of the Goths, in discussing the equation of migratio gentium with Völkerwanderung , observes that Michael Schmidt  [ de ] introduced

20710-459: The Roman position in the East. These campaigns depended on effective imperial coordination and mutual trust—between 379 and 380, Theodosius controlled not only the Eastern empire, but also, by agreement, the diocese of Illyricum . Theodosius was unable to recruit enough Roman troops, relying on barbarian warbands without Roman military discipline or loyalty. (In contrast, during the Cimbrian War ,

20928-405: The Roman provinces of Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul by 100 BC, where they were stopped by Gaius Marius and later by Julius Caesar . It is this western group which was described by the Roman historian Tacitus (AD 56–117) and Julius Caesar (100–44 BC). A later wave of Germanic tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia, between 600 and 300 BC, to the opposite coast of

21146-653: The Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians. After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans. Modern historiography diverges from Gibbon. While most of his ideas are no longer accepted in totality, they have been foundational to later discourse and

21364-636: The Romanized population subject to invasions, first by the Picts and then by the Saxons , Angli , and the Jutes who began to settle permanently from about 440 onwards. After Honorius accepted Constantine as co-emperor, Constantine's general in Hispania, Gerontius , proclaimed Maximus as emperor. With the aid of general Constantius , Honorius defeated Gerontius and Maximus in 411 and shortly thereafter captured and executed Constantine III. With Constantius back in Italy,

21582-498: The Romans, and forced them to negotiate with and settle the Visigoths within the borders of the Empire, where they would become semi-independent foederati under their own leaders. More than in the East, there was also opposition to the Christianizing policy of the emperors in the western part of the Empire. In 379, Valentinian I's son and successor Gratian declined to wear the mantle of Pontifex Maximus , and in 382 he rescinded

21800-574: The Sasanian Persians . He succeeded in marching to the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon , but, at the suggestion of a Persian agent, burned his boats and supplies to show resolve in continuing operations. The Sassanids then burned crops so the Roman army had no food. Finding himself cut off without supplies in enemy territory, Julian began a land retreat, and during the Battle of Samarra , he was mortally wounded. Julian's successor Jovian , acclaimed by

22018-469: The Tetrici were pardoned, although they were first paraded in a triumph. Diocletian divided the Roman Empire when, in 286, he elevated Maximian to the rank of Augustus (emperor) and gave him control of the Western Empire, while he continued to rule the East. In 293, Galerius and Constantius Chlorus were appointed as their subordinate ( caesars ), as a way to avoid the civil unrest that had marked

22236-426: The Vandals and Africa. Not only did the Vandals pose a constant danger to coastal Italy and trade in the Mediterranean, but the province they ruled was economically vital to the survival of the West. Majorian began a campaign to fully reconquer Hispania to use it as a base for the reconquest of Africa. Throughout 459, Majorian campaigned against the Suebi in northwestern Hispania. The Vandals began to increasingly fear

22454-429: The Vandals, Alans and Suebi , to cross the river and enter Roman territory in 406. Honorius was convinced by the minister Olympius that Stilicho was conspiring to overthrow him, and so arrested and executed Stilicho in 408. Olympius headed a conspiracy that orchestrated the deaths of key individuals related to the faction of Stilicho, including his son and the families of many of his federated troops. This led many of

22672-409: The Vandals. Deprived of his fleet, Majorian had to cancel his attack on the Vandals and conclude a peace with Gaiseric. Disbanding his barbarian forces, Majorian intended to return to Rome and issue reforms, stopping at Arelate on his way. Here, Ricimer deposed and arrested him in 461, having gathered significant aristocratic opposition against Majorian. After five days of beatings and torture, Majorian

22890-477: The Visigoths in 437 and 438 but suffering a defeat himself in 439, ending the conflict in a status quo ante with a treaty. Meanwhile, pressure from the Visigoths and a rebellion by Bonifacius , the governor of Africa, induced the Vandals under King Gaiseric to cross from Spain to Tingitana in what is now Morocco in 429. They temporarily halted in Numidia in 435 before moving eastward. With Aetius occupied in Gaul,

23108-580: The Visigoths, a group derived either from the Tervingi or from a fusion of mainly Gothic groups, eventually invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 410 before settling in Gaul. Around 460, they founded the Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia. They were followed into Roman territory first by a confederation of Herulian , Rugian , and Scirian warriors under Odoacer , that deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476, and later by

23326-647: The Visigoths, hoping to halt their expansion. The trial and subsequent execution of Romanus , an Italian senator and friend of Ricimer, on the grounds of treachery in 470 made Ricimer hostile to Anthemius. Following two years of ill feeling, Ricimer deposed and killed Anthemius in 472, elevating Olybrius to the Western throne. During the brief reign of Olybrius, Ricimer died and his nephew Gundobad succeeded him as magister militum . After only seven months of rule, Olybrius died of dropsy . Gundobad elevated Glycerius to Western emperor. The Eastern Empire had rejected Olybrius and also rejected Glycerius, instead supporting

23544-460: The West began to collapse entirely. Alaric's men sacked Rome in 410. Honorius, the younger son of Theodosius I, was declared Augustus (and as such co-emperor with his father) on 23 January in 393, at the age of 9. Upon the death of Theodosius, Honorius inherited the throne of the West at the age of ten whilst his older brother Arcadius inherited the East. The western capital was initially Mediolanum, as it had been during previous divisions, but it

23762-583: The West refused to intervene in Christian controversy. In the East, Valens had to deal with Christians who did not conform to his ideas of orthodoxy, and persecution formed part of his response. He tolerated paganism, even keeping some of Julian's associates in their trusted positions. He confirmed the rights and privileges of the pagan priests, and confirmed the right of pagans to be the exclusive caretakers of their temples. Valentinian died of an apoplexy while shouting at envoys of Germanic leaders. His successors in

23980-517: The West were children, his sons Gratian ( r.  375–383 ) and Valentinian II ( r.  375–392 ). Gratian, "alien from the art of government both by temperament and by training", removed the Altar of Victory from the Senate House . He also rejected the pagan title of Pontifex Maximus . In 376, the East faced an enormous barbarian influx across the Danube, mostly Goths , who were fleeing from

24198-517: The West, Attila secured peace with the Eastern court and crossed the Rhine in early 451. With Attila wreaking havoc in Gaul, Aetius gathered a coalition of Roman and Germanic forces, including Visigoths and Burgundians, and prevented the Huns from taking the city of Aurelianum , forcing them into retreat. At the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains , the Roman-Germanic coalition met and defeated

24416-562: The West, while Verus spent most of his reign campaigning in the East, against Parthia . Verus accompanied Marcus at the start of the Marcomannic Wars , but died shortly after. Decades later, Septimius Severus (r. 193–211) appointed his sons Geta and Caracalla as joint heirs. However, Caracalla murdered his brother shortly after succeeding to the throne. With the assassination of the emperor Alexander Severus in March 235 by his own troops,

24634-575: The Western Roman army by recruiting large numbers of barbarian mercenaries, among them the Gepids , Ostrogoths, Rugii , Burgundians, Huns, Bastarnae , Suebi, Scythians and Alans, and built two fleets, one at Ravenna, to combat the strong Vandalic fleet. Majorian personally led the army to wage war in Gaul, leaving Ricimer in Italy. The Gallic provinces and the Visigothic Kingdom had rebelled following

24852-481: The Western Roman government could do nothing to prevent the Vandals conquering the wealthy African provinces, culminating in the fall of Carthage on 19   October 439 and the establishment of the Vandal Kingdom . By the 400s, Italy and Rome itself were dependent on the taxes and foodstuffs from these provinces, leading to an economic crisis. With Vandal fleets becoming an increasing danger to Roman sea trade and

25070-432: The Western court had lacked true power and had been subject to Germanic aristocrats for decades, with most of its legal territory being under control of various barbarian kingdoms. With Odoacer recognising Julius Nepos, and later the Eastern emperor Zeno, as his sovereign, nominal Roman control continued in Italy. Syagrius , who had managed to preserve Roman sovereignty in an exclave in northern Gaul (a realm today known as

25288-475: The accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 CE marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron". Since the age of humanism , the process of the Fall has been thought to have begun with Constantine the Great , or with the soldier emperors who seized power through command of the army from 235 through 284, or with Commodus , or even with Augustus . Gibbon was uncertain about when decline began. "In

25506-429: The breakdown in Roman political control, which exposed the weakness of local Roman rule. Instead of large-scale migrations, there were military takeovers by small groups of warriors and their families, who usually numbered only in the tens of thousands. The process involved active, conscious decision-making by Roman provincial populations. The collapse of centralized control severely weakened the sense of Roman identity in

25724-423: The capable Eastern general Anthemius as Western emperor following an eighteen-month interregnum . The relationship between Anthemius and the East was good, Anthemius is the last Western emperor recorded in an Eastern law, and the two courts conducted a joint operation to retake Africa from the Vandals, culminating in the disastrous Battle of Cape Bon in 468. In addition Anthemius conducted failed campaigns against

25942-486: The city at the sight of the approaching Vandals, only to be stoned to death by a Roman mob. Petronius had reigned only 11 weeks. With the Vandals at the gates, Pope Leo I requested that the King not destroy the ancient city or murder its inhabitants, to which Gaiseric agreed and the city gates were opened to him. Though keeping his promise, Gaiseric looted great amounts of treasure and damaged objects of cultural significance such as

26160-544: The civil war in 388. There were heavy troop losses on both sides of the conflict. Later Welsh legend has Maximus's defeated troops resettled in Armorica , instead of returning to Britannia, and by 400, Armorica was controlled by Bagaudae rather than by imperial authority. Western Roman Empire In modern historiography , the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire , collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from

26378-569: The climate worsened further in the Late Antique Little Ice Age that may have directly contributed to the variety of factors that brought Rome down. The Roman Empire was built on the fringes of the tropics . Its roads and its pirate-free seas, which produced an abundance of trade, also unknowingly created an interconnected disease ecology that unleashed the evolution and spread of pathogens. Pandemics contributed to massive demographic changes, economic crises , and food shortages in

26596-431: The coastal areas, though Celtic tribes such as Gauls and Celtiberians were culturally dominant. Lepidus received the minor province of Africa (roughly modern Tunisia ). Octavian soon took Africa from Lepidus, while adding Sicilia (modern Sicily ) to his holdings. Upon the defeat of Mark Antony , a victorious Octavian controlled a united Roman Empire . The Empire featured many distinct cultures, all experienced

26814-462: The coasts and islands of the western and central Mediterranean, Aetius coordinated a counterattack against the Vandals in 440, organizing a large army in Sicily. However, the plans for retaking Africa had to be abandoned due to the immediate need to combat the invading Huns, who in 444 were united under their ambitious king Attila . Turning against their former ally, the Huns became a formidable threat to

27032-427: The collapse are major subjects of the historiography of the ancient world and they inform much modern discourse on state failure . In 376, a large migration of Goths and other non- Roman people, fleeing from the Huns , entered the Empire . Roman forces were unable to exterminate, expel or subjugate them (as was their normal practice). In 395, after winning two destructive civil wars, Theodosius I died. He left

27250-547: The construction of barbarian identity. They maintained that no sense of shared identity was perceived by the Germani ; a similar theory having been proposed for Celtic and Slavic groups. A theory states that the primordialist mode of thinking was encouraged by a prima facie interpretation of Graeco-Roman sources, which grouped together many tribes under such labels as Germanoi , Keltoi or Sclavenoi , thus encouraging their perception as distinct peoples. Modernists argue that

27468-642: The court back to Rome. Most western emperors from 450 until 475 reigned from Rome. The last de facto western emperor Romulus Augustulus resided in Ravenna from 475 until his deposition in 476 and Ravenna would later be the capital of both the Ostrogothic Kingdom and the Exarchate of Ravenna . Despite the moved capital, economic power remained focused on Rome and its rich senatorial aristocracy which dominated much of Italy and Africa in particular. After Emperor Gallienus had banned senators from army commands in

27686-407: The death of Nepos and abolition of the Western Empire by Zeno as the end of the Western Roman Empire. Migration Period The term refers to the important role played by the migration, invasion, and settlement of various tribes, notably the Burgundians , Vandals , Goths , Alemanni , Alans , Huns , early Slavs , Pannonian Avars , Bulgars and Magyars within or into the territories of

27904-475: The demise of classical civilization to the 8th century. He challenged the notion that Germanic barbarians had caused the Western Roman Empire to end, and he refused to equate the end of the Western Roman Empire with the end of the office of emperor in Italy. He pointed out the essential continuity of the economy of the Roman Mediterranean even after the barbarian invasions, and suggested that only

28122-559: The deposition of Avitus, refusing to acknowledge Majorian as lawful emperor. At the Battle of Arelate , Majorian decisively defeated the Visigoths under Theoderic II and forced them to relinquish their great conquests in Hispania and return to foederati status. Majorian then entered the Rhone Valley , where he defeated the Burgundians and reconquered the rebel city of Lugdunum . With Gaul back under Roman control, Majorian turned his eyes to

28340-497: The east. Rufinus and Stilicho were rivals, and their disagreements would be exploited by the Gothic leader Alaric I who again rebelled in 408 following the massacre by Roman legions of thousands of barbarian families who were trying to assimilate into the Roman empire. Neither half of the Empire could raise forces sufficient even to subdue Alaric's men, and both tried to use Alaric against the other half. Alaric himself tried to establish

28558-512: The eastern half of Europe predominantly Slavic-speaking. Additionally, Turkic tribes such as the Avars and - later - Ugric-speaking Magyars became involved in this second wave. In AD 567, the Avars and the Lombards destroyed much of the Gepid Kingdom . The Lombards, a Germanic people, settled in Italy with their Herulian, Suebian, Gepid, Thuringian, Bulgar, Sarmatian and Saxon allies in

28776-496: The eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. Particularly during the period from AD 395 to 476, there were separate, coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire into the Western provinces and the Eastern provinces with a distinct imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were de facto independent; contemporary Romans did not consider

28994-499: The effectiveness and numbers of the army , the health and numbers of the Roman population, the strength of the economy , the competence of the emperors , the internal struggles for power, the religious changes of the period, and the efficiency of the civil administration. Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes and both endemic and epidemic disease drove many of these immediate factors. The reasons for

29212-479: The effectiveness or loyalty of the army, at least while that army was effectively led, disciplined, trained, paid, and supplied by officers who identified as Roman. A. H. M. Jones has pointed out that the earlier scholarly views are Western. Most of the weaknesses discussed by scholars were "common to both halves of the empire", with Christianity even more prevalent in the East than the West. Religious disputes were bitter, bureaucracy corrupt and extortionate, it had

29430-426: The emperor Romulus Augustulus and became the first King of Italy . In 480, following the assassination of the previous Western emperor Julius Nepos , the Eastern emperor Zeno dissolved the Western court and proclaimed himself the sole emperor of the Roman Empire. The date of 476 was popularized by the 18th-century British historian Edward Gibbon as a demarcating event for the fall of the Western Roman Empire and

29648-484: The emperor of the Western Empire. Odoacer accepted this condition and issued coins in the name of Julius Nepos throughout Italy. This, however, was mainly an empty political gesture, as Odoacer never returned any real power or territories to Nepos. The murder of Nepos in 480 prompted Odoacer to invade Dalmatia , annexing it to his Kingdom of Italy . By convention, the Western Roman Empire is deemed to have ended on 4 September 476, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus, but

29866-545: The empire between them, the former ruling from the East and the latter from the West. However, Valerian was captured by the Sassanids at the Battle of Edessa , leaving Gallienus as sole emperor. Saloninus , Gallienus' infant son, and the praetorian prefect Silvanus resided in Colonia Agrippina (modern Cologne ) to solidify the loyalty of the local legions. Nevertheless, Postumus  – the local governor of

30084-407: The empire was divided between his two infant sons, with Honorius as his successor in the West governing briefly from Mediolanum then from Ravenna , and Arcadius as his successor in the East governing from Constantinople . In 476, after the Battle of Ravenna , the Roman army in the West suffered defeat at the hands of Odoacer and his Germanic foederati . Odoacer forced the abdication of

30302-570: The end of the Theodosian dynasty , Petronius Maximus proclaimed himself emperor during the ensuing period of unrest. Petronius was not able to take effective control of the significantly weakened and unstable Empire. He broke the betrothal between Huneric, son of the Vandal king Gaiseric , and Eudocia, daughter of Valentinian III. This was seen as a just cause of war by King Gaiseric, who set sail to attack Rome. Petronius and his supporters attempted to flee

30520-524: The end of the fourth century, Christianity had become the religion of any ambitious civil official. The wealth of the Christian Church increased dramatically in the fifth century. Immense resources, both public and private, were used for building churches, storage barns for the grain used for charity, new hospitals for the poor, and in support of those in religious life without other income. Bishops in wealthy cities were thus able to offer patronage in

30738-455: The end of the fourth century. Constantine settled Franks on the lower left bank of the Rhine . Their communities required a line of fortifications to keep them in check, indicating that Rome had lost almost all local control. Under Constantius, bandits came to dominate areas such as Isauria , which were well within the empire. The tribes of Germania also became more populous and more threatening. In Gaul , which did not really recover from

30956-474: The entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of institutions founded in republican times. Theodor Mommsen excluded the imperial period from his Nobel Prize-winning History of Rome (1854–1856). As one convenient marker for the end, 476 has been used since Gibbon, but other key dates for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West include the Crisis of the Third Century, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 (or 405),

31174-594: The equation in his 1778 history of the Germans. Wolfram observed that the significance of gens as a biological community was shifting, even during the early Middle Ages and that "to complicate matters, we have no way of devising a terminology that is not derived from the concept of nationhood created during the French Revolution ". The "primordialistic" paradigm prevailed during the 19th century. Scholars, such as German linguist Johann Gottfried Herder , viewed tribes as coherent biological (racial) entities, using

31392-506: The estates of persons condemned for treason and other capital crimes . This practice reduced future, though not immediate, income; those close to the emperor also gained a strong incentive to encourage his suspicion of conspiracies . The new supreme rulers disposed of the legal fiction of the early Empire (seeing the emperor as but the first among equals ); emperors from Aurelian (r. 270–275) onwards openly styled themselves as dominus et deus , "lord and god", titles appropriate for

31610-705: The event shocked people across both halves of the Empire as this was the first time Rome (viewed at least as the symbolic heart of the Empire) had fallen to a foreign enemy since the Gallic invasions of the 4th century BC. The Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius II , the successor of Arcadius, declared three days of mourning in Constantinople. Without Stilicho and following the sack of Rome, Honorius' reign grew more chaotic. The usurper Constantine III had stripped Roman Britain of its defenses when he crossed over to Gaul in 407, leaving

31828-423: The first emperor to increase the arrogance of the military, raising their rank and power to excess, severely punishing the minor crimes of the common soldiers, while sparing those of higher rank who felt able to commit shameful and monstrous crimes. Despite a possible decrease in the Empire's ability to assemble and supply large armies, Rome maintained an aggressive and potent stance against perceived threats almost to

32046-431: The first of the " barbarian kingdoms ", the Visigothic Kingdom , was formed. Honorius' death in 423 was followed by turmoil until the Eastern Roman government installed Valentinian III as Western emperor in Ravenna by force of arms, with Galla Placidia acting as regent during her son's minority. Theodosius II, the Eastern emperor, had hesitated to announce the death of Honorius and in the ensuing interregnum, Joannes

32264-548: The first paragraph of his text, Gibbon wrote that he intended to trace the decline from the golden age of the Antonines"; later text has it beginning about A.D. 180 with the death of Marcus Aurelius; while in chapter 7, he pushes the start of the decline to about 52 B.C., the time of Julius Caesar and Pompey and Cicero. Gibbon placed the western empire's end with the removal of the man Gibbon referred to as "the helpless Augustulus" in 476. Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke argue that

32482-483: The fleets, and numbers may have increased later. With the limited communications of the time, both the European and the Eastern frontiers needed the attention of their own supreme commanders . Diocletian tried to solve this problem by re-establishing an adoptive succession with a senior ( Augustus ) and junior ( Caesar ) emperor in each half of the Empire, but this system of tetrarchy broke down within one generation and

32700-468: The force of law, putting the imperial power directly in touch with even humble subjects. The cults of polytheist religion were hugely varied, but none claimed that theirs was the only truth. Their followers displayed mutual tolerance , producing a polyphonous religious harmony. Religious strife was rare after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136, after which the devastated Judaea ceased to be

32918-520: The former territory of the Western Empire. But the final blow came only with the Late Antique Little Ice Age and its aftermath, when Rome was already politically fragmented and materially depleted. Aurelian reunited the empire in 274, and from 284 Diocletian and his successors reorganized it with more emphasis on the military. John the Lydian , writing over two centuries later, reported that Diocletian's army at one point totaled 389,704 men, plus 45,562 in

33136-505: The fortifications and the sea and land forces of Constantinople , while the European frontier from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Danube is some 2000 kilometres great-circle distance and could be crossed with much less difficulty. "The devastations of the barbarians impoverished and depopulated the [Western] frontier provinces, and their unceasing pressure imposed on the empire a burden of defense which overstrained its administrative machinery and its economic resources. ... [playing]

33354-409: The freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and

33572-403: The hereditary principle re-established itself with generally unfortunate results. Thereafter civil war became again the main method of establishing new imperial regimes . Although Constantine the Great (in office 306 to 337) again re-united the Empire, towards the end of the fourth century the need for division was generally accepted. From then on, the Empire existed in constant tension between

33790-481: The historical record calls this determination into question. Indeed, the deposition of Romulus Augustus received very little attention in contemporary times. Romulus was a usurper in the eyes of the Eastern Roman Empire and the remaining territories of Western Roman control outside of Italy, with the previous emperor Julius Nepos still being alive and claiming to rule the Western Empire in Dalmatia . Furthermore,

34008-446: The idea of "imagined communities"; the barbarian polities in late antiquity were social constructs rather than unchanging lines of blood kinship. The process of forming tribal units was called " ethnogenesis ", a term coined by Soviet scholar Yulian Bromley . The Austrian school (led by Reinhard Wenskus ) popularized this idea, which influenced medievalists such as Herwig Wolfram, Walter Pohl and Patrick J. Geary . It argues that

34226-486: The idea of a dynamic and "wandering Indo-Germanic people". In contrast, the standard terms in French and Italian historiography translate to "barbarian invasions", or even "barbaric invasions" ( French : Invasions barbares , Italian : Invasioni barbariche ). Historians have postulated several explanations for the appearance of "barbarians" on the Roman frontier: climate change, weather and crops, population pressure ,

34444-405: The identity of the newcomers. In Gaul , the collapse of imperial rule resulted in anarchy: the Franks and Alemanni were pulled into the ensuing "power vacuum", resulting in conflict. In Hispania, local aristocrats maintained independent rule for some time, raising their own armies against the Vandals . Meanwhile, the Roman withdrawal from lowland England resulted in conflict between Saxons and

34662-442: The imperial forces, or settled in the devastated provinces along the south bank of the Danube, where the regular garrisons were never fully re-established. In some later accounts, and widely in recent work, this is regarded as a treaty settlement, the first time that barbarians were given a home within the Empire, in which they retained their political and military cohesion. No formal treaty is recorded, nor details of whatever agreement

34880-458: The imperial government was not providing the military protection the northern provinces expected and needed, numerous usurpers arose in Britain, including Marcus (406–407), Gratian (407), and Constantine III who invaded Gaul in 407. Britain was effectively abandoned by the empire by 410 due to the lack of resources and the need to look after more important frontiers. The weakening of the Rhine frontier allowed multiple barbarian tribes, including

35098-469: The imperial system. In this way many groups provided unfree workers ( coloni ) for Roman landowners, and recruits ( laeti ) for the Roman army . Sometimes their leaders became officers. Normally the Romans managed the process carefully, with sufficient military force on hand to ensure compliance. Cultural assimilation followed over the next generation or two. The Empire suffered multiple serious crises during

35316-408: The increased importance of non-Romans created additional internal factors. Migrations, and the use of non-Romans in the military, were known in the periods before and after, and the Eastern Roman Empire adapted and continued to exist until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, although it involved the establishment of competing barbarian kingdoms,

35534-471: The invasions of the third century, there was widespread insecurity and economic decline in the 300s, perhaps worst in Armorica . By 350, after decades of pirate attacks, virtually all villas in Armorica were deserted. Local use of money ceased around 360. Repeated attempts to economize on military expenditure included billeting troops in cities, where they could less easily be kept under military discipline and could more easily extort from civilians. Except in

35752-485: The long-established manner of Roman aristocrats. Ammianus described some who "enriched from the offerings of matrons, ride seated in carriages, wearing clothing chosen with care, and serve banquets so lavish that their entertainments outdo the tables of kings". But the move to Christianity probably had no significant effects on public finances. The large temple complexes, with professional full-time priests, festivals, and large numbers of sacrifices (which became free food for

35970-425: The loss of political unity and military control is universally acknowledged, the fall of Rome is not the only unifying concept for these events; the period described as late antiquity emphasizes the cultural continuities throughout and beyond the political collapse. Since 1776, when Edward Gibbon published the first volume of his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Decline and Fall has been

36188-415: The maintenance of their own power. The arrival of the Huns helped prompt many groups to invade the provinces for economic reasons. The nature of the barbarian takeover of former Roman provinces varied from region to region. For example, in Aquitaine , the provincial administration was largely self-reliant. Halsall has argued that local rulers simply "handed over" military rule to the Ostrogoths , acquiring

36406-616: The masses), had also been expensive to maintain. They had already been negatively impacted by the empire's financial struggles in the third century. The numbers of clergy , monks , and nuns increased to perhaps half the size of the actual army, and they have been considered as a drain on limited manpower. The numbers and effectiveness of the regular soldiers may have declined during the fourth century. Payrolls were inflated, so that pay could be diverted and exemptions from duty sold. The soldiers' opportunities for personal extortion were multiplied by residence in cities, while their effectiveness

36624-433: The mid-3rd century, the senatorial elite lost all experience of – and interest in – military life. In the early 5th century the wealthy landowning elite of the Roman Senate largely barred its tenants from military service, but it also refused to approve sufficient funding for maintaining a sufficiently powerful mercenary army to defend the entire Western Empire. The West's most important military area had been northern Gaul and

36842-448: The modern synthesis with archaeology, epidemiology, climatic history, genetic science, and many more new sources of history beyond the documentary sources that were all that was available to Gibbon. While Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, twenty-first century scholarship classifies the primary possibilities more concisely: A recent summary interprets disease and climate change as important drivers of

37060-449: The name of Galba . The Praetorian Guard, a figurative "sword of Damocles ", was often perceived as being of dubious loyalty, primarily due its role in court intrigues and in overthrowing several emperors, including Pertinax and Aurelian . Following their example, the legions at the borders increasingly participated in civil wars . For instance, legions stationed in Egypt and the eastern provinces would see significant participation in

37278-418: The need for two emperors and their mutual mistrust . Until late in the fourth century, the united Empire retained sufficient power to launch powerful attacks against its enemies in Germania and in the Sasanian Empire . Receptio of barbarians became widely practised: imperial authorities admitted potentially hostile groups into the Empire, split them up, and allotted to them lands, status, and duties within

37496-416: The next millennium. The following centuries saw the Muslims successful in conquering most of Sicily from the Christians by 902. The Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin from around AD 895 and the subsequent Hungarian invasions of Europe and the Viking expansion from the late 8th century conventionally mark the last large migration movements of the period. Christian missionaries from Ireland,

37714-430: The ninth century, the central Balkans (corresponding to modern Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia) and the area of southern and central Albania became invaded and settled by Bulgars. During the early Byzantine–Arab Wars , Arab armies attempted to invade southeast Europe via Asia Minor during the late 7th and early 8th centuries but were defeated at the siege of Constantinople (717–718) by the joint forces of Byzantium and

37932-539: The only worthwhile form of civilization, giving the Empire ideological legitimacy and a cultural unity based on comprehensive familiarity with Greek and Roman literature and rhetoric . The Empire's power allowed it to maintain extreme differences of wealth and status. Its wide-ranging trade networks permitted even modest households to use goods made by professionals far away. The empire had both strength and resilience. Its financial system allowed it to raise significant taxes which, despite endemic corruption, supported

38150-420: The outlying regions of Roman Britain (probably replacing some with federate chieftains and their war-bands) and invaded Gaul. His troops killed Gratian and he was accepted as Augustus in the Gallic provinces, where he was responsible for the first official executions of Christian heretics . To compensate the Western court for the loss of Gaul, Hispania, and Britannia, Theodosius ceded the diocese of Dacia and

38368-416: The political collapse of the empire. There was a Roman climatic optimum from about 200 BCE to 150 CE, when lands around the Mediterranean were generally warm and well-watered. This made agriculture prosperous, army recruitment easy, and the collection of taxes straightforward. From about 150, the climate became on average somewhat worse for most of the inhabited lands around the Mediterranean. After about 450,

38586-409: The political reality of lost control (and the attendant fragmentation of commerce, culture, and language), but also the cultural and archaeological continuities, the process has been described as a complex cultural transformation, rather than a fall. The "perception of Late Antiquity has significantly changed: the period is no longer seen as an era of decline and crisis but as an epoch of metamorphosis in

38804-439: The politics of an empire already falling apart for quite a few other causes". Goffart argues that the process of settlement was connected to hospitalitas , the Roman practice of quartering soldiers among the civilian population. The Romans, by granting land and the right to levy taxes to allied (Germanic) armies, hoped to reduce the financial burdens of the empire. The Crisis of the Third Century caused significant changes within

39022-434: The position of Western Roman Emperor wielded negligible military, political, or financial power, and had no effective control over the scattered Western domains that could still be described as Roman. Barbarian kingdoms had established their own power in much of the area of the Western Empire. In 476, the Germanic barbarian king Odoacer deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in Italy, Romulus Augustulus , and

39240-410: The position would never again be divided. As such, the (eastern) Roman emperors after 480 are the successors of the western ones, albeit only in a juridical sense. These emperors would continue to rule the Roman Empire until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, nearly a thousand years later. As 480 marks the end of the juridical division of the empire into two imperial courts, some historians refer to

39458-422: The provinces, which may explain why the provinces then underwent dramatic cultural changes even though few barbarians settled in them. Ultimately, the Germanic groups in the Western Roman Empire were accommodated without "dispossessing or overturning indigenous society", and they maintained a structured and hierarchical (but attenuated) form of Roman administration. Ironically, they lost their unique identity as

39676-422: The rare case of a determined and incorruptible general, these troops proved ineffective in action and dangerous to civilians. Frontier troops were often given land rather than pay. As they farmed for themselves, their direct costs diminished, but so did their effectiveness, and their pay gave much less stimulus to the frontier economy. However, except for the provinces along the lower Rhine, the agricultural economy

39894-405: The remaining garrisons who were "more easily slaughtered than sheep". Cities were able to hold their own defensive walls against barbarians who had no siege equipment , therefore the cities generally remained intact, although the countryside suffered. Gratian appointed a new Augustus , a proven general from Hispania called Theodosius . During the next four years, he partially re-established

40112-411: The rights of pagan priests and removed the Altar of Victory from the Roman Curia , a decision which caused dissatisfaction among the traditionally pagan aristocracy of Rome. The political situation was unstable. In 383, a powerful and popular general named Magnus Maximus seized power in the West and forced Gratian's half-brother Valentinian II to flee to the East for aid; in a destructive civil war

40330-410: The role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire . The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed

40548-459: The same time, however, several eastern provinces seceded to form the Palmyrene Empire , under the rule of Queen Zenobia . In 272, Emperor Aurelian finally managed to reclaim Palmyra and its territory for the empire. With the East secure, his attention turned to the West, invading the Gallic Empire a year later. Aurelian decisively defeated Tetricus I in the Battle of Châlons , and soon captured Tetricus and his son Tetricus II . Both Zenobia and

40766-424: The scale, complexity, and violence of government were unmatched, the emperors lost control over their whole realm insofar as that control came increasingly to be wielded by anyone who paid for it . Meanwhile, the richest senatorial families, immune from most taxation, engrossed more and more of the available wealth and income while also becoming divorced from any tradition of military excellence. One scholar identifies

40984-405: The senatorial aristocracy ceased joining the ranks of the senior military commanders. Its typical members lacked interest in military service, and showed incompetence at command. Under Constantine, the cities lost their revenue from local taxes, and under Constantius II (r. 337–361) their endowments of property. This worsened the existing difficulty in keeping the city councils up to strength, and

41202-417: The services provided by the cities were scamped or abandoned. Public building projects had declined since the second century. There is no evidence of state participation in, or support for, restoration and maintenance of temples and shrines . Restorations were funded and accomplished privately, which limited what was done. A further financial abuse was Constantius's habit of granting to his immediate entourage

41420-410: The soldiers to instead join with Alaric, who returned to Italy in 409 and met little opposition. Despite attempts by Honorius to reach a settlement and six legions of Eastern Roman soldiers sent to support him, the negotiations between Alaric and Honorius broke down in 410 and Alaric sacked the city of Rome. Though the sack was relatively mild and Rome was no longer the capital of even the Western Empire,

41638-451: The stimulus for forming tribal polities was perpetuated by a small nucleus of people, known as the Traditionskern ("kernel of tradition"), who were a military or aristocratic elite. This core group formed a standard for larger units, gathering adherents by employing amalgamative metaphors such as kinship and aboriginal commonality and claiming that they perpetuated an ancient, divinely-sanctioned lineage. The common, track-filled map of

41856-442: The supervision of Constantine II, received Italy , Africa, Illyricum , Pannonia, Macedonia , and Achaea . The provinces of Thrace, Achaea and Macedonia were shortly controlled by Dalmatius , nephew of Constantine I and a caesar , not an Augustus , until his murder by his own soldiers in 337. The West was unified in 340 under Constans, who was assassinated in 350 under the order of the usurper Magnentius . After Magnentius lost

42074-575: The taxes of the province and serving as the province's chief judges. Prior to the establishment of the Empire, the territories of the Roman Republic had been divided in 43 BC among the members of the Second Triumvirate : Mark Antony , Octavian and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus . Antony received the provinces in the East: Achaea , Macedonia and Epirus (roughly modern Greece, Albania and the coast of Croatia ), Bithynia , Pontus and Asia (roughly modern Turkey ), Syria , Cyprus , and Cyrenaica . These lands had previously been conquered by Alexander

42292-425: The term to refer to discrete ethnic groups. He also believed that the Volk were an organic whole, with a core identity and spirit evident in art, literature and language. These characteristics were seen as intrinsic, unaffected by external influences, even conquest. Language, in particular, was seen as the most important expression of ethnicity. They argued that groups sharing the same (or similar) language possessed

42510-473: The theme around which much of the history of the Roman Empire has been structured. "From the eighteenth century onward," historian Glen Bowersock wrote, "we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears." From at least the time of Henri Pirenne (1862–1935), scholars have described a continuity of Roman culture and political legitimacy long after 476. Pirenne postponed

42728-419: The third century. The rising Sassanid Empire inflicted three crushing defeats on Roman field armies and remained a potent threat for centuries. Other disasters included repeated civil wars , barbarian invasions, and more mass-mortality in the Plague of Cyprian (from 250 onwards). For a short period, the Empire split into a Gallic Empire in the West (260–274), a Palmyrene Empire in the East (260–273), and

42946-407: The threats of barbarian attacks on all the Western frontiers. They also tried to alleviate the burdens of taxation, which had risen continuously over the previous forty years; Valens in the East reduced the tax demand by half in his fourth year. Both of them were Christians, and re-confiscated the temple lands which Julian had restored. But they were generally tolerant of other beliefs. Valentinian in

43164-454: The uniqueness perceived by specific groups was based on common political and economic interests rather than biological or racial distinctions. Indeed, on this basis, some schools of thought in recent scholarship urge that the concept of Germanic peoples be jettisoned altogether. The role of language in constructing and maintaining group identity can be ephemeral since large-scale language shifts occur commonly in history. Modernists propose

43382-405: The vast extent of the Empire. News of invasion, revolt, natural disasters, or epidemic outbreak was carried by ship or mounted postal service , often requiring much time to reach Rome and for Rome's orders to be returned and acted upon. Therefore, provincial governors had de facto autonomy in the name of the Roman Republic. Governors had several duties, including the command of armies, handling

43600-441: The west of the Rhine was occupied by the Germans, and a further 120 miles into Gaul the surviving population and garrisons had fled. Julian ( r.  360–363 ) won victories against Germans who had invaded Gaul. He launched a drive against official corruption, which allowed the tax demands in Gaul to be reduced to one-third of their previous amount, while all government requirements were still met. In civil legislation, Julian

43818-427: The whole empire so, by 314, began to compete against Licinius, finally defeating him in 324 at the Battle of Chrysopolis . After Constantine unified the empire, he refounded the city of Byzantium in modern-day Turkey as Nova Roma ("New Rome"), later called Constantinople , and made it the capital of the Roman Empire. Although the Tetrarchy was ended, the concept of physically dividing the Roman Empire into East and

44036-449: Was actually made. When the Goths are next mentioned in Roman records, they have different leaders and are soldiers of a sort. In 391, Alaric , a Gothic leader, rebelled against Roman control. Goths attacked the emperor himself, but within a year Alaric was accepted as a leader of Theodosius's Gothic troops and this rebellion was over. Theodosius's financial position must have been difficult, since he had to pay for expensive campaigning from

44254-412: Was beheaded near the river Iria . The final collapse of the Empire in the West was marked by increasingly ineffectual puppet emperors dominated by their Germanic magistri militum . The most pointed example of this is Ricimer , who effectively became a "shadow emperor" following the depositions of Avitus and Majorian. Unable to take the throne for himself due to his barbarian heritage, Ricimer appointed

44472-605: Was endemic in many areas, notably in the city of Rome itself, possibly encouraged by the enthusiasm of rich Romans for water features in their gardens. In 313, Constantine the Great declared official toleration of Christianity . This was followed over the ensuing decades by the search for a definition of Christian orthodoxy all could agree upon. Creeds were developed, but Christianity has never agreed upon an official version of its Bible or its doctrine; instead it has had many different manuscript traditions. Christianity's disputes may have effected decline. Official and private action

44690-479: Was experiencing a period of prosperity for the great landowners who took advantage of the court's need for food, "turning agrarian produce into gold", while repressing and misusing the poor who grew it and brought it in. Paulinus the Deacon , notary of Ambrose the bishop of Milan , described these men as creating a court where "everything was up for sale". Ambrose himself preached a series of sermons aimed at his wealthy constituents, asserting that avarice leads to

44908-734: Was first tested by Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180), who decided to rule alongside his adoptive brother Lucius Verus . There was, however, much precedent. The consulate of the Republic was a twin magistracy, and earlier emperors had often had a subordinate lieutenant with many imperial offices. Many emperors had planned a joint succession in the past— Augustus planned to leave Gaius and Lucius Caesar as joint emperors on his death; Tiberius wished to have Caligula and Tiberius Gemellus do so as well; as Claudius with Nero and Britannicus . All of these arrangements had ended in failure, either through premature death (Gaius and Lucius) or murder (Gemellus and Britannicus). Marcus Aurelius ruled mostly from

45126-468: Was generally doing well. On January 18 350, the imperial magister officiorum gave a banquet in Augustodunum while his master, Western Emperor Constans , was away hunting. During the feast Magnus Magnentius , commander of the imperial household troops , appeared in an imperial purple toga and announced himself to be the new Emperor. Constans was soon murdered and Magnentius took over most of his western domains. He made peace overtures to Constantius in

45344-461: Was in no meaningful sense an extension of Roman traditions or institutions. The Great Schism of 1054 between the churches of Rome and Constantinople further diminished any authority the emperor in Constantinople could hope to exert in the West. As the Roman Republic expanded, it reached a point where the central government in Rome could not effectively rule the distant provinces. Communications and transportation were especially problematic given

45562-423: Was killed. With the Roman legions withdrawn, northern Gaul became increasingly subject to Frankish influence, the Franks naturally adopting a leading role in the region. In 418, Honorius granted southwestern Gaul ( Gallia Aquitania ) to the Visigoths as a vassal federation. Honorius removed the local imperial governors, leaving the Visigoths and the provincial Roman inhabitants to conduct their own affairs. As such,

45780-446: Was moved to Ravenna in 401 upon the entry of the Visigothic king Alaric I into Italy. Ravenna, protected by abundant marshes and strong fortifications, was far easier to defend and had easy access to the imperial fleet of the Eastern Empire but made it more difficult for the Roman military to defend the central parts of Italy from regular barbarian incursions. Ravenna would remain the western capital until 450 when Valentinian III moved

45998-535: Was near the border in the East, the chances were high that an ambitious general would rebel in the West and vice versa. This wartime opportunism plagued many ruling emperors and indeed paved the road to power for several future emperors. By the time of the Crisis of the Third Century , usurpation became a common method of succession: Philip the Arab , Trebonianus Gallus and Aemilianus were all usurping generals-turned-emperors whose rule would end with usurpation by another powerful general. The idea of co-emperorship

46216-435: Was nominated as Western emperor. Joannes' rule was short and the forces of the East defeated and executed him in 425. After a violent struggle with several rivals, and against Placidia's wish, Aetius rose to the rank of magister militum . Aetius was able to stabilize the Western Empire's military situation somewhat, relying heavily on his Hunnic allies. With their help Aetius undertook extensive campaigns in Gaul, defeating

46434-462: Was notable for his pro-pagan policies. Julian lifted the ban on sacrifices , restored and reopened temples, and dismantled the privileged tax status and revenue concessions of the Christians. He gave generous tax remissions to the cities which he favored, and disfavor to those who remained Christian. Julian ordered toleration of varieties of Christianity banned as heretical by Constantius; possibly, he would not have been able to persecute effectively such

46652-518: Was reduced by concentration on extortion instead of military exercises . However, extortion , gross corruption , and occasional ineffectiveness were not new to the Roman army. There is no consensus whether its effectiveness significantly declined before 376. Ammianus Marcellinus , himself a professional soldier, repeats longstanding observations about the superiority of contemporary Roman armies being due to training and discipline, not to individual size or strength. He also accuses Valentinian I of being

46870-475: Was still subject to pressure from below. Imperial proclamations were used to stress the traditional limitations of the imperial office, while imperial ceremonies "left room for consensus and popular participation". Official cruelty , supporting extortion and corruption , may also have become more commonplace; one example being Constantine 's law that slaves who betrayed their mistress's confidential remarks should have molten lead poured down their throats. While

47088-418: Was taken against heterodox Christians (heretics) from the fourth century up to the modern era. Limited action against pagans , who were mostly ignored, was based on the contempt that accompanied Christianity's sense of triumph after Constantine. Christianity opposed sacrifice and magic, and Christian emperors made laws that favored Christianity. Constantine's successors generally continued this approach, and by

47306-435: Was to some extent managed by the Eastern emperors. The migrants comprised war bands or tribes of 10,000 to 20,000 people. Immigration was common throughout the time of the Roman Empire, but over the course of 100 years, the migrants numbered not more than 750,000 in total, compared to an average 40 million population of the Roman Empire at that time. The first migrations of peoples were made by Germanic tribes such as

47524-411: Was well fortified and located at the crossroads of several major trade and military routes. The site had been acknowledged for its strategic importance already by emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla , more than a century prior. In 361, Constantius II became ill and died, and Constantius Chlorus' grandson Julian , who had served as Constantius II's Caesar, assumed power. Julian was killed in 363 in

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