When I first began learning about the Roman Empire in middle school, I was most interested in what everyone else seems to be interested in — the time of Caesar and Augustus. Recently, however, I’ve become far more interested in the decline & fall of the Roman Empire. You always hear the date 476 as the definitive end. As far as dates go, 476 is as good a date as any to mark the end of the official Roman Empire, but it always struck me as a bit weird. After that date, could it be said that Rome no longer existed? When I investigated what Rome was like after 476, it seemed oddly continuous. The fundamental institutions mostly existed, and life went on as usual. Nobody at the time figured that was the end.
My favorite figure in the post-Roman period is Theoderic — ruling 493 to 526, twenty years after the “fall” of Rome. He took over the structure of the Roman Empire and ruled it as a functionally emperor-like figure. He was a Goth and an Arian Christian, or in other words, a barbarian and a heretic. He spent his youth as a hostage in Constantinople, which enabled him to understand the Roman system from the inside.
The fall of 476 was notable primarily for symbolic reasons. A general named Odoacer deposed the last western Roman emperor and shipped off the imperial regalia to Constantinople — ending the chain of emperors. He controlled Italy not as emperor, but as king — albeit keeping the Roman civil service intact. Theoderic was sent by the Eastern Roman Emperor in order to depose Odoacer, which he did first with an army, then with his own hands, at a banquet.
When he took over the machinery of the Western Roman Empire, he was able to preserve it for 33 years, longer than the previous nine western emperors combined. Things that people associate with the Roman Empire continued on under his care. Roads were repaired, trade continued, things generally ran well. This isn’t to say that everything was wonderful, but it didn’t seem clear at the time that Rome was in terminal decline and would never again rise to where it used to be.
At a real level, the Roman governmental system remained. Theoderic was not an emperor per se, but he did hold official titles which were associated with the Roman Empire. He technically was titled as magister militum and patricius — the legal fiction legitimizing his rule as custodian of the Western Roman Empire. There’s a lot of symbolic continuity through those terms! The Consuls continued to be appointed — Theoderic chose the western consul and Constantinople confirmed his choices. In 519, Theoderic’s son in law Eutharic actually held the consulship together with emperor Justin. Theoderic’s imperial communications were written by Roman scribes and writers who continued writing in the Roman imperial style (chancery style), which was at that point extremely intricate and could only be interpreted by well educated Romans. Even the communications with his bureaucracy and other government officials utilized Roman means and methods. The Senate continued to meet under Theoderic’s rule — the continuity of local power was maintained. During Theoderic’s visit to Rome in 500, he addressed the Senate, organized one of the last games ever in Rome, and likely created the gold medallion of himself to commemorate the occasion.
Portrait in imperial costume, but the text shows Rex, not Augustus, and he has a Gothic mustache. Note that regular coinage still bore the face of the Eastern Roman Emperor
After the Goths invaded Italy and defeated Odoacer, there was no competing military force — the Roman army was long gone and Odoacer’s army was destroyed. It was straightforward to swap the command top-down for a different military while keeping the civilian Roman infrastructure in place. This was enabled by a reform Diocletian began and Constantine completed: the separation of civilian and military command. The new magister peditum and magister equitum (later combined into the title of magister militum) sat on an entirely different career track from the provincial governors. The purpose behind this was to reduce the number of military coup attempts — governors with legions kept attempting to usurp the emperors. This parallel authority structure, which existed at the time of Theoderic’s takeover, meant that civilian governance could continue on as it previously had existed while the Gothic army could hot swap into the place where the Roman imperial army used to be. The exact reform that was intended to prevent internal strife enabled the easy docking of a foreign army onto the Roman state. This was a real discontinuity, but it didn’t disrupt the rest of government or regular life.
After Theoderic and his Goths invaded Italy, he needed to reward his Gothic army. He decided that the best path was to grant them land. Land, in this case, really means land rent, aristocrat style. Tenant farmers work for you while you collect rent and relax on your estate. This was accomplished in an extremely Roman way — the land redistribution was run by a Roman, Liberius, operating through the Roman bureaucracy. Liberius was given the office of praetorian prefect and he was represented locally by officials of the prefecture called delegatores. Once the Gothic recipients got their land, they also received certificates (pittacia) detailing their title of ownership. The Roman bureaucracy was present, useful, and was still able to serve Theoderic’s purposes. There is an interesting argument about whether the redistribution was monetary or whether it involved land actually changing hands. Walter Goffart, in an influential 1980 book, makes the argument that the land redistribution left so few detailed records that it implied the land was not actually redistributed, but instead only the money from the land was redistributed in the form of payment. Many historians think that real land did change hands, but I think the important point is that land redistribution was such a routine operation for the Roman bureaucracy that this generated no particularly noteworthy amount of paperwork. This was simply considered a matter of course.
In 523, Constantinople began persecuting Arians. Theoderic, king of a Catholic Italy, became suspicious of the Roman elite. His attempts at finding treason included putting Boethius on trial — who wrote the Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting execution. The first cracks in the West’s stability came from the East.
Within a decade after Theoderic’s demise, the Ostrogothic state had irreversibly begun disintegrating, and the Italian peninsula became a violent place. Succession to the throne led to infighting among the Goths, then Emperor Justinian began a reconquest of Italy. Akin more to cannibalism than conquest — the Eastern Roman Empire and not barbarians at the gates caused the collapse of Roman society. To give an idea of how bad it got, Venice was settled in the decades of chaos after Theoderic’s rule because Italy had become so dangerous that it was preferable to live on the water.
Rome was still around for a while after 476. The people were still around — the real disorder didn’t start until 50 years or so after the official fall. Political change doesn’t necessarily destroy culture in the same way that physical destruction can. The archaeological record after the official fall faced a steep decline, but it was continuous. The lights of Italy dimmed slowly into a long dusk.
