When did the Roman Empire fall (your thoughts)?

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Mark,

Magister Militum Flavius Aetius: if you give 480 for western, you should give 1461 for the eastern (end of trebizond)

Agreed! That was arguably the last part of the Roman Empire (sort-of) governed continuously as such.
Nepos death did not end the Roman Empire, only the Western part. That's so often overlooked when discussing this topic.. The Roman Empire did not fall with the fall of the City.

Hi Neutra,

You are limiting this question with a bit of assumptions, I see..

"Legitimate" is somehow contradictory for self-proclamed emperors no?

No, I don’t think so. ‘legitimate’ is very subjective, after all. Constantine was a usurper, but he hardly is recognized as such even by his contemporaries.

So if Odoacer would have proclamed himself emperor i.o. King of Italy it would have last longer.

Again no, because you assume that by ‘Roman Empire’ we should refer to the Western Roman Empire’. That’s a wrong conclusion, because the eastern part was also very much part of the Roman Empire and looked at itself as such. IF you insist that the East was different, the end should have been in 395, at the last occasion where both halves were unified.

Based on this, what wan we consider the end of the Roman Empire or ancient Rome era?

Those are totally different subjects., and influenced by modern views which are contantly changing. When did the ‘Middle Ages’ start? When did ‘Late Antiquity’ end? Interesting as discussion but extremely semantic.

If we look at the territories the ancient Rome ruled, then maybe it ended around 461?

That’s also arbitrary, because how do we limit ‘empire’ to a number of territories? Those are such vague limits that they can’t give us proper answers when such a question is to answered, for they are subject to massive interpretation.

As for the East, I always considered it fell in 1204. Trebizond and Epirus were basically city-states and Nicea recover a fringe of teh empire past territories.

As good a date as any I suppose, but as Nicaea was not some different entity, I see no reason to brand them as ‘non-Roman’ any more than I would the preceding dynasties. The area covered hardly matters for the definition I think, as ‘Roman Empire’ was by then largely a legal status.

By the 1300's, the "romanoi" where largely turkified and byzantium ended as a vassal state to the turkish sultans.

So? I bet that Julius Caesar would hardly recognize his successor Theodosius the Great, who is considered very much to have been a ‘Roman Emperor’, but with a totally alien stance on religion (monotheistic), statecraft (emperor of a very centralist state) or the army (hiring Goth by the thousands under their own kings to fight for Rome)! That does not make Theodosius non-Roman, as it does not make the last Romanoi non-Roman either. :wink: