When did Rome really fall?
Two ancient authors shed light on the troubled and fascinating transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages
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The fall of the Roman Empire is traditionally dated to 476 CE, the year when the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed. There is a pleasing symmetry in the fact that the last emperor’s name should pay homage to the founder of Rome and the founder of the Empire; but to those who lived through it, the fall of Romulus Augustulus would not have felt like much of a milestone. By then, the transformation of the Roman Empire had been going on for at least a century, as a series of radical changes put an end to its age-old identity: the official conversion to Christianity under Constantine, the splitting of the empire into Western and Eastern halves, and the unstoppable invasions of Germanic tribes, many of which carved out new kingdoms on imperial territory. This period of transition, beginning in the fourth century CE, can be seen as “late antiquity” or the early Middle Ages, and it has been the focus of some of the most exciting classical scholarship in recent years.
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