One of these imperial vacancies stretched for 20 months, a span longer than the entire reigns of more than 20 previous Roman emperors. Even Romulus Augustus himself was a usurper who assumed the imperial office after an imperfectly executed coup that left Julius Nepos , the legitimate emperor Romulus replaced, still in charge of Western Roman imperial territories in what is now Croatia.
In other words, while the West had lost an imperial usurper in , it still had a legitimate Roman emperor. Odoacer maintained most of the structures of the Roman government during the nearly 17 years he controlled the state. The Senate continued to meet in Rome just as it had for nearly a millennium. Latin remained the language of administration. Roman law governed the land. Roman armies continued to fight and win victories on the frontiers.
And Roman emperors appeared on the coins that Odoacer minted. These aspects of Roman life continued after the Gothic ruler Theoderic overthrew Odoacer in Theoderic proved even more successful than Odoacer in reviving Italian fortunes after the political chaos of the mid-5th century. His armies campaigned successfully in modern Croatia, Serbia and France.
He made much of Spain into a protectorate for a time. Large scale repairs were made to churches and public buildings throughout Italy. Either Theoderic or Odoacer undertook renovations to the Colosseum following which senators proudly inscribed their names and offices on their seats. Rather than imagining that Roman rule had ended in , Italians in the late 5th and early 6th centuries spoke about its recovery. The answer lies not in Italy but in Constantinople.
It is at this moment of East-West tension that we can return to Marcellinus Comes. Odoacer was not a Goth. This is easily the most argued question about the fall of Rome.
The Roman Empire lasted over a thousand years and represented a sophisticated and adaptive civilization. Some historians maintain that it was 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, the metal lead in the water supply, monetary trouble, and military problems caused the Fall of Rome. And still, others question the assumption behind the question and maintain that the Roman empire didn't fall so much as adapt to changing circumstances.
When the Roman Empire started, there was no such religion as Christianity. In the 1st century CE, Pontius Pilate, the governor of the province of Judaea, executed their founder, Jesus, for treason.
It took his followers a few centuries to gain enough clout to be able to win over imperial support. This began in the early 4th century with Emperor Constantine , who was actively involved in Christian policy-making. When Constantine established a state-level religious tolerance in the Roman Empire, he took on the title of Pontiff. Although he was not necessarily a Christian himself he wasn't baptized until he was on his deathbed , he gave Christians privileges and oversaw major Christian religious disputes.
He may not have understood how the pagan cults, including those of the emperors, were at odds with the new monotheistic religion, but they were, and in time the old Roman religions lost out.
Over time, Christian church leaders became increasingly influential, eroding the emperors' powers. For example, when Bishop Ambrose — CE threatened to withhold the sacraments, Emperor Theodosius did the penance the Bishop assigned him. Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion in CE. Since Roman civic and religious life were deeply connected—priestesses controlled the fortune of Rome, prophetic books told leaders what they needed to do to win wars, and emperors were deified—Christian religious beliefs and allegiances conflicted with the working of empire.
The barbarians, which is a term that covers a varied and changing group of outsiders, were embraced by Rome, who used them as suppliers of tax revenue and bodies for the military, even promoting them to positions of power.
But Rome also lost territory and revenue to them, especially in northern Africa, which Rome lost to the Vandals at the time of St. Augustine in the early 5th century CE. The loss of Spain meant Rome lost revenue along with the territory and administrative control, a perfect example of the interconnected causes leading to Rome's fall.
That revenue was needed to support Rome's army and Rome needed its army to keep what territory it still maintained. There is no doubt that decay—the loss of Roman control over the military and populace—affected the ability of the Roman Empire to keep its borders intact.
Early issues included the crises of the Republic in the first century BCE under the emperors Sulla and Marius as well as that of the Gracchi brothers in the second century CE. But by the fourth century, the Roman Empire had simply become too big to control easily. The decay of the army, according to the 5th-century Roman historian Vegetius , came from within the army itself.
The army grew weak from a lack of wars and stopped wearing their protective armor. This made them vulnerable to enemy weapons and provided the temptation to flee from battle. Security may have led to the cessation of the rigorous drills. Vegetius said the leaders became incompetent and rewards were unfairly distributed. In addition, as time went on, Roman citizens, including soldiers and their families living outside of Italy, identified with Rome less and less compared to their Italian counterparts.
They preferred to live as natives, even if this meant poverty, which, in turn, meant they turned to those who could help—Germans, brigands, Christians, and Vandals. Some scholars have suggested that the Romans suffered from lead poisoning. The lead was also used in cosmetics, even though it was also known in Roman times as a deadly poison and used in contraception. Being the Roman emperor had always been a particularly dangerous job, but during the tumultuous second and third centuries it nearly became a death sentence.
Civil war thrust the empire into chaos, and more than 20 men took the throne in the span of only 75 years, usually after the murder of their predecessor. The political rot also extended to the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership. When these Eurasian warriors rampaged through northern Europe, they drove many Germanic tribes to the borders of the Roman Empire.
The Romans grudgingly allowed members of the Visigoth tribe to cross south of the Danube and into the safety of Roman territory, but they treated them with extreme cruelty. According to the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman officials even forced the starving Goths to trade their children into slavery in exchange for dog meat.
In brutalizing the Goths, the Romans created a dangerous enemy within their own borders. When the oppression became too much to bear, the Goths rose up in revolt and eventually routed a Roman army and killed the Eastern Emperor Valens during the Battle of Adrianople in A. The shocked Romans negotiated a flimsy peace with the barbarians, but the truce unraveled in , when the Goth King Alaric moved west and sacked Rome.
The Edict of Milan legalized Christianity in , and it later became the state religion in These decrees ended centuries of persecution, but they may have also eroded the traditional Roman values system. Christianity displaced the polytheistic Roman religion, which viewed the emperor as having a divine status, and also shifted focus away from the glory of the state and onto a sole deity. Meanwhile, popes and other church leaders took an increased role in political affairs, further complicating governance.
The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon was the most famous proponent of this theory, but his take has since been widely criticized.
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