Thread by @_Dragases_

1. In this week in 476, the insignificant boy-emperor Romulus ("Augustulus") was deposed by Odoacer, leader of the Italian field army. This event is claimed to be "the fall of the [western] Roman empire". Thread on one of the biggest #BadAncientHistory takes. Feel free to share.

2. First: why can't we call this the end of the Roman Empire? Well, there was still a Roman emperor in Constantinople, who ruled the entire Eastern Mediterranean and Southeastern Balkans. Since the end of the third century, Imperial rule had ceased being centered on Italy.

3. Multiple emperorship became the norm and for about a century there was not even a fixed capital. The "capital" was simply there were the emperor resided. It didn't matter whether this was Milan, Trier or Constantinople. To put it differently, long after 476 the Roman Empire...

4. simply continued to exist in the eastern provinces. Secondly: no contemporary source regarded Romulus' deposition as the end of empire. We have to wait until the 520s until one author starts formulating the idea that with Romulus gone the line of emperors ended in the West.

5. Yet this was an eastern chronicler writing in Constantinople, during the rise of Justinian. This emperor would launch a war against his western neighbours, so the timing and formulation of this chronicle entry is not innocent one bit.

6. Thirdly: Romulus was not even a properly recognized western emperor! He had been put on the throne by his father Orestes, after he'd driven out the previous emperor Julius Nepos. The latter continued to claim western emperorship from Dalmatia, with eastern recognition, ...

7. until he was murdered by his own supporters in 480. Only then did western Roman emperorship truly come to an end. Fun fact: the great irony of 476 is that the last three western emperors were all still alive and around during the next few years.

8. Fourthly: With his junta of 476, Odoacer had technically deposed a usurper. He even continued to recognize Nepos until his murder, and he had explicitly acknowledged in diplomatic reports with the eastern emperor that Italy remained part of the Empire.

9. Odoacer sporadically used the title of rex ('king') but only as a form of leadership over the Italian field army. He never declared himself to be a 'rex Italiae'. The eastern emperor Zeno even granted him the right to nominate senators as western consuls.

10. So does 476 have no significance at all? It does as a marker for local history in Italy. By 476, there had been two decades of intermittent provincial civil wars, usually centered on disputes between western emperors and the commanders of the Italian field army.

11. This is the period when we can say that western Imperial rule is disintegrating. Already by 461, the western army had dissolved into local warlord fiefdoms in Gaul, Italy, and Dalmatia. But at least in Italy, western emperors continued to reside and every now and then ...

12. ... make good on their claim to rule over territories now governed by reges ('kings') in Gaul, Spain and Africa. It was a downward spiral to continue doing so with dwindling resources. It took longer and longer to find emperors who could appease the different factions...

13. ... whether they were the landed senatorial aristocracy in Italy, the regional imperial armies of Gaul, Italys, and Dalmatia, the various provincial kings of Goths, Burgundians, Vandals etc or the Eastern emperor.

14. Already in 465-467, there had been 18 months without a western emperor (take note Belgium). Already before 476, most people outside of Italy had learned to take care of their own business. Emperorship had ceased to be the best way or providing leadership in government.

15. Trying to keep it functioning, usually meant more infighting and wasted resources. This may be hard to fathom for those who can only imagine Odoacer as a "skinclad barbarian", but in 476 he brought peace to Italy and did it in the name of empire.
"Are we the goodies?".
Fin.