The phrase "the Fall of Rome" suggests some cataclysmic event that ended the empire that stretched from the British Isles to Egypt and Iraq. But there was no straining at the gates, no barbarian horde that dispatched the Roman Empire in one fell swoop. Rather, the Roman Empire was challenged from within and without, changing over the course of hundreds of years until its form was unrecognizable. Historians have put the end of the empire at many points on this continuum; the Fall of Rome is rather an idea, a syndrome of various maladies that changed a large swath of human habitation over many hundreds of years.
Read on to understand the pressures that precipitated the end of the Romans' project, and what it meant to the people they once ruled.
When Did Rome Fall?
In his masterwork, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon names the date AD 476 as the year Rome ceased to exist. That date has been generally accepted because that's when the Germanic king of the Torcilingi Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor to rule the western part of the Roman Empire.
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The eastern half became the Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople (modern Istanbul). But the city of Rome continued to exist; it still does. Some see the rise of Christianity as putting an end to the Romans; those who disagree with that find the rise of Islam a more fitting bookend to the end of the empire (that would put the Fall of Rome at Constantinople in A.D. 1453!). In the end, the arrival of Odoacer was but one of many barbarian incursions into the empire. (For more, see my review of Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire.) The people who lived through the takeover would probably be surprised by the importance we place on determining an exact event and time.
How Did Rome Fall?
Just as the Fall of Rome was not caused by a single event, the way Rome fell was also complex.
For example, during the period of imperial decline, the empire actually expanded. Conquered peoples changed the structure of the Roman government. Emperors moved the capital away from the city of Rome, too. The schism of east and west created not just an eastern capital in Nicomedia and then Constantinople, but also a move in the west from Rome to Milan.
Take a look at the maps to see the changing expanse of the Roman Empire. Rome started out as a small, hilly settlement by the Tiber River, in the middle of the Italian boot. It was surrounded by more powerful neighbors.
By the time Rome had become an empire, the territory covered by the term "Rome" looked completely different. It reached its greatest extent in the second century A.D. Some of the theories on the Fall of Rome focus on the geographic diversity and the territorial expanse that Roman emperors and their legions had to control.
Why Did Rome Fall?
Easily the most argued question about the Fall of Rome is Why? The Roman Empire lasted over a thousand years and represented the height of civilization. Some historians maintain that the split into an eastern and western empire governed by separate emperors caused Rome to fall. Most classicists believe that a combination of factors including Christianity, decadence, lead in the water supply, monetary trouble, and military problems caused the Fall of Rome. Imperial incompetence and chance could be added to the list. And still others question the assumption behind the question, and maintain that Rome adapted rather than fell.
See the Rome Era-by-Era Timeline
Leading Theories for the Fall of Rome
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