08-09-2007, 01:19 PM
In the V century you still have in the west a roman empire; in the VI, no. Odoacer made the fiction of unifying the empire by giving the imperial regalia to the east, but the reality is that the west empire finished in 476 (even if it's power had ended several years before). Of course that the roman empire in the V century was different form Augustus, but the USA of Bush are very different from those of Jefferson and its still the USA. One thing it's the existence of a state in juridically point of view, the other it's the influence and some institutions that may survive for some years.
