> For someone who is stressing continuities elsewhere, this talk of > "collapse" sticks out! What was left of the "Roman Empire" in 1453 is > surely not deserving of the words "Roman" or "Empire".
And yet the people living it it continued to refer to themselves as Romans (or, specifically, Romaioi), people outside the empire referred to them as Romans (the term Romanians comes up often when referring to the Byzantine Empire). Whether or not the fragment of Empire that existed at the end resembled the empire is academic; there was a clear line of succession from the original Roman Emperors, and the last Byzantine Emperor was an inheritor of that. > And what ended in 476 was the line of Augusti, which was more a formal > recognition of the new order in western Europe than anything else. More > important dates might be the defeat at Adrianople in 378, the battle of > Chalons in 451 the murder of Flavius Aetius in 454. But again, there is > no sudden dramatic collapse, just a long series of defeats, disasters > and displays of idiocy, incompetence and treachery. Again, you can make plenty of arguments for or against. But in academic circles 476 is the recognized or agreed upon date for the final end of the Empire in the West. It was never clear whether the empire in the West was in its final decline or whether it could be revived. Certainly there were elements that hoped so, and we are fairly certain that despite the movement of the Germans into the remnants of the Empire, the Imperial government and beauracracy continued to function, even AFTER the deposition of Romulus Augustulus. But this date is most accepted for the fact that the Imperial Regalia for the Western empire was returned to the Emperor Zeno in Constantinople, making a reality what had already happened. Damon. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
