Western 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 is sometimes used to mark the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.

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.

[4] 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.

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.

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.

[22] Saloninus, Gallienus' infant son, and the praetorian prefect Silvanus resided in Colonia Agrippina (modern Cologne) to solidify the loyalty of the local legions.

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.

As 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.

The weakening of the Rhine frontier allowed multiple barbarian tribes, including the Vandals, Alans and Suebi, to cross the river and enter Roman territory in 406.

[60] 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.

With Constantius back in Italy, the Gallo-Roman senator Jovinus revolted after proclaiming himself emperor, with the support of the Gallic nobility and the barbarian Burgundians and Alans.

[64] With the Roman legions withdrawn, northern Gaul became increasingly subject to Frankish influence, the Franks naturally adopting a leading role in the region.

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.

Aetius transferred his forces to the Danube,[68] 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.

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.

Unable to take the throne for himself due to his barbarian heritage, Ricimer appointed 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.

[83] By convention, the Western Roman Empire is deemed to have ended on 4 September 476, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus, but the historical record calls this determination into question.

[84] Syagrius, who had managed to preserve Roman sovereignty in an exclave in northern Gaul (a realm today known as the Domain of Soissons) also recognized Nepos as his sovereign and the legitimate Western emperor.

[93] The Germanic kingdoms in Italy, Hispania and Gaul continued to recognise the emperor in Constantinople as a somewhat nominal sovereign, the Visigoths minted coins in their names until the reign of Justinian I in the sixth century.

An inscription on a fortification at the ruined city of Altava from the year 508 identifies a man named Masuna as the king of "Regnum Maurorum et Romanarum", the Kingdom of the Moors and Romans.

[95] Amalasuntha continued the policies of conciliation between the Goths and Romans, supporting the new Eastern emperor Justinian I and allowing him to use Sicily as a staging point during the reconquest of Africa in the Vandalic War.

The end of the conflict saw Italy devastated and considerably depopulated, which, combined with the disastrous effects of the Plague of Justinian, made it difficult to retain over the following centuries.

After 600, events conspired to drive the Western provinces out of Constantinople's control, with imperial attention focused on the pressing issues of war with Sasanian Persia and then the rise of Islam.

Thereafter, imperial attention declined, with Constantinople itself being besieged in the 670s, renewed war with the Arabs in the 680s, and then a period of chaos between 695 and 717, during which time Africa was finally lost once and for all, being conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate.

[72] As Rome was invaded by Germanic tribes, many assimilated, and by the middle of the medieval period (c. 9th and 10th centuries) the central, western, and northern parts of Europe had been largely converted to Roman Catholicism and acknowledged the Pope as the Vicar of Christ.

Its authority increased under the rule of Odoacer and later the Ostrogoths, evident by the Senate in 498 managing to install Symmachus as pope despite both Theodoric of Italy and Emperor Anastasius supporting another candidate, Laurentius.

[146] At the end of Emperor Tiberius II's reign in 582, the Eastern Roman Empire retained control over relatively large parts of the regions reconquered under Justinian.

Pope Leo III and contemporary historians were fully aware that the notion of a separate Western court had been abolished over three centuries prior and considered the Roman Empire to be "one and indivisible".

In 423, after the death of Honorius, a usurper named Joannes rose up, forcing Valentinian III to flee with his family to the court of the Eastern emperor Theodosius II.

The Roman Republic before the conquests of Octavian
Roman Empire in AD 117 at its greatest extent, at the time of Trajan 's death
vassal states [ 12 ]
The Roman, Gallic and Palmyrene Empires in AD 271
The organization of the Empire under the Tetrarchy
Division of the Empire among the Caesars appointed by Constantine I : from west to east, the territories of Constantine II , Constans I , Dalmatius and Constantius II . After the death of Constantine I (337), this was the formal division of the Empire, until Dalmatius was killed and his territory divided between Constans and Constantius.
The division of the Empire after the death of Theodosius I , c. AD 395, superimposed on modern borders
Western Court under Honorius
Eastern Court under Arcadius
The administrative divisions of the Roman Empire in 395 AD
Gold solidus of Honorius
Barbarian invasions and the invasion of usurper Constantine III in the Western Roman Empire during the reign of Honorius , 407–409
Germanic and Hunnic invasions of the Roman Empire, 100–500 AD
Boxwood relief depicting the liberation of a besieged city by a relief force, with those defending the walls making a sortie . Western Roman Empire, early 5th century AD
The Western Roman Empire during the reign of Majorian in AD 460. During his four-year-long reign from 457 to 461, Majorian restored Western Roman authority in Hispania and most of Gaul. Despite his accomplishments, Roman rule in the west would last less than two more decades.
The Western and Eastern Roman Empire by 476
The city of Ravenna , Western Roman capital, on the Tabula Peutingeriana , a 13th-century medieval map possibly copied from a 4th- or 5th-century Roman original
Map of the Barbarian kingdoms (major kingdoms and the Roman Empire labelled below) of the western Mediterranean in 526, seven years before the campaigns of reconquest under Eastern emperor Justinian I
The Roman Empire under Justinian
The Vandal Kingdom
The Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy
The Visigothic Kingdom
The Frankish Kingdom
6th-century Visigothic coin, struck in the name of Emperor Justinian I
Odoacer 's Italy in AD 480, following the annexation of Dalmatia
Solidus minted under Odoacer with the name and portrait of the Eastern emperor Zeno
Map of the realm of Theodoric the Great at its height in 523, following the annexation of the southern parts of the Burgundian kingdom . Theoderic ruled both the Visigothic and Ostrogothic kingdoms and exerted hegemony over the Burgundians and Vandals .
The Eastern Roman Empire , by reoccupying some of the former Western Roman Empire's lands, enlarged its territory considerably during Justinian 's reign from 527 (red) to 565 (orange) .
Map of the Eastern Roman Empire in AD 717. Over the course of the seventh and eighth centuries, Islamic expansion had ended Roman rule in Africa and though some bastions of Roman rule remained, most of Italy was controlled by the Lombards .
Romance languages , languages that developed from Latin following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, are spoken in Western Europe to this day, with the exception of Romanian, which developed from the Latin spoken in the eastern provinces and the early Eastern Empire. Their extent in Western Europe almost reflects the continental borders of the old Empire.
Denarius of Frankish king Charlemagne , who was crowned as Imperator Romanorum in the year 800 by Pope Leo III due to, and in opposition to, the Roman Empire in the East being ruled by Irene , a woman.
Bust of Emperor Maximian , the first Western Roman emperor
Bust of Constantine I , the founder of the Constantinian dynasty
Bust of Emperor Valentinian II , a member of the Valentinianic dynasty 's second generation of emperors
Emperor Honorius , as depicted by Jean-Paul Laurens in 1880
Solidus of Romulus Augustulus .