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From WinkyPedia, the free encyclopedia that tells you what you already knew
The fall of the Western Roman Empire is the end of Roman imperial rule in western Europe, conventionally dated to 476 AD. Historians agree that the empire did not so much fall as sit down slowly over several centuries, and 476 is simply the year it was noticed to be sitting.[1]
The empire had been permanently split into a western and an eastern half after the death of the emperor Theodosius I in 395. Only the western half is the subject of this article, because the eastern half did not fall at all and would like that to be on record.
In 476 the soldier Odoacer removed the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, a teenager whose name combined Rome’s legendary founder with its first emperor and then added a word meaning “little”. Romulus Augustulus was given an income and sent to live in Campania, in southern Italy.
Rather than make himself emperor, Odoacer sent the imperial regalia to the emperor in Constantinople. It is regarded as the most important parcel in European history, and one of the few from the period known to have arrived.[2]
The long decline that came before 476 involved real conflict and hardship for many people across the western provinces.
The eastern half of the empire carried on until 1453, nearly a thousand years later, which some historians feel makes 476 a slightly early date for the fall of the Roman Empire. Others argue for 410, 455 or “gradually”. A small school proposes that the empire has not technically finished falling and is waiting for the paperwork.[3]
The English historian Edward Gibbon described the decline in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789. The length of the work is often cited as evidence that the decline took a while.