Notes

The Rise of Kingdoms in the Roman Empire

Here are the nine sections of this series on the end of the Roman Empire in the West and its change from, first, a unified and then, a divided empire, into a collection of independent political entities ruled by kings, originally, loosely aligned with Rome's representative in the East, at Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. 1 - Ancient History: From Prehistory to the Early Middle Ages
2 - Other Dates for Rome's Fall: Pros and Cons
3 - How the Romans Handled Problems of Imperial Successions
4 - The Barbarian at the Gates
5 - Early Rome and the Issue of Kings
6 - Caesar's Role in the Collapse of the Roman Republic
7 - Challenges the Empire Faced and Resolved by Division
8 - Administrative Units of the Later Roman Empire
9 - Kings Replace the Roman Emperor

References

Maps

These maps show the political divisions of the area that was once under the dominion of Rome. Both date to around the time of the traditional Fall of the Roman Empire (A.D. 476).

_{1st Map A.D. 476 - From History Workshop}

_{2nd Map A.D. 476 - From Melissa Snell at Medieval History at About.com}

Sources

These are the references used in the series of nine articles.

_{1. Latin Library Notes: Battle of Tours}

_{2. "An Empire's New Holy Land: The Byzantine Period," by S. Thomas Parker; Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 134-180.}

_{3. "Late Antiquity: Before and After," by James J. O'Donnell; Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), Vol. 134, No. 2(Autumn, 2004), pp. 203-213.}

_{4. "Rome, Ravenna and the Last Western Emperors," by Andrew Gillett; Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 69, Centenary Volume (2001), pp. 131-167}

_{5. Ancient History, by Philip Van Ness Myers; Ginn and Company, 1916.}

_{6. The Birth of Classical Europe, by Simon Price and Peter Thonemann. Viking: 2010.}

_{7. Constantine, by Paul Stephenson; Overlook Press, 2010.}

_{8. Daily life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire, by Jerome Carcopino; Yale University Press, 1940.}

_{9. The Fall of the Roman Empire, by Peter Heather; Oxford, 2006.}

_{10. Frontiers of the Roman Empire, by C.R. Whittaker. Johns Hopkins, 1994.}

_{11. A History of Byzantium, by Timothy E. Gregory; John Wiley & Sons, 2011.}

_{12. How Rome Fell, by Adrian Goldsworthy; Yale, 2009.}

_{13. Imperial Romans, by John Beierle; HRAF, 2009.}

_{14. Official Positions After the Time of Constantine, by Mario Emilio Cosenza; New Era, 1905.}

_{15. Roman Civilization: Sourcebook II: The Empire, edited and with an introduction and notes by Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold; Harper and Row, 1966.}

_{16. Roman Slavery: A Study of Roman Society and Its Dependence on Slaves, by Andrew Mason Burks (MA Thesis East Tennessee State University; 2008).}

_{17. Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World, by Ralph W. Mathisen, Danuta Shanzer; Ashgate Publishing, 2011.}

_{18.Vanished Kingdoms, by Norman Davies; Viking, 2011.}

Main Characters

There are some names that come up again and again when studying Roman history, like Julius Caesar, who was central to the end of the Republican period of Roman history. Here are some such recurring names, but mostly ones that particular to the period of the fall of Rome.

• Julius Caesar
  
• Augustus
  
• Alexander Severus
  
• Diocletian
  
• Domitian
  
• Constantine the Great
  
• Honorius
  
• Julian the Apostate
  
• Romulus Augustus
  
• Septimius Severus
  
• Theodosius the Great
  
• Valens
  
• Shapur II The Great (r. 309-379) (Persian king)
  
• Alaric the Visigoth
  
• Attila the Hun
  
• Odoacer (r. 476-493)