# Did anyone live in Rome after the "Fall?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 15, 2003, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347 "2003-05-15T02:47:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/1 "2003-05-15T02:47:23Z")
Subject pretty much says it all. Were all the Roman citizens killed or did they just become refugees? Was there any attempt to regroup? Did anyone live in Rome after the Germans moved on? If not, why not? ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/2 "2003-05-15T03:02:47Z")
I think it is a given that at least a few people stayed there, since I’m pretty sure it was a city through the middle ages and (definitely) the Renaissance. ---
**Author:** ![brianmelendez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/65b543/32.png) [@brianmelendez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianmelendez)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/3 "2003-05-15T03:38:42Z")
The sacks of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 CE and by the Huns in 453 CE did not depopulate the city, which has remained a vibrant commercial and political center throughout the medieval era and to the present day. The invading forces simply displaced the decadent Italian aristocracy as the region’s overlords. For several decades after the last westerm emperor was deposed, the invaders and the imperial government–whose capital had moved eastward to Constantinople, and which had grown less concerned with the now-remote Italian peninsula–observed the fiction that the invaders’ authority derived from the eastern emperor, in whose name they ruled. The city’s natives were as guilty as the invaders of stripping the city’s monuments for their marble. ---
**Author:** ![j\_kat\_251](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/71c47a/32.png) [@j\_kat\_251](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j_kat_251)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/4 "2003-05-15T06:39:47Z")
Aren’t there heaps of pickpockets there and stuff?? 😕 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/5 "2003-05-15T07:49:20Z")
Damn, man, your namesake started ruling around 800 AD over a population that still largely considered itself the Roman Empire. It’s only a modern view that the Roman Empire dissolved around 400 or so. Rome was a world, not just a city! ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/6 "2003-05-15T07:57:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by brianmelendez \* > \*\*The sacks of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 CE and by the Huns in 453 CE did not depopulate the city, which has remained a vibrant commercial and political center throughout the medieval era and to the present day. Allow me to nitpick just a bit. While it’s true Rome never sank to the status of non-entity, remaining a significant economic ( and of course religious ) center throughout the Middle Ages, it did indeed undergo a sharp decline in the 5th to 7th centuries. The sacks of Rome by the Visigoths and Vandals ( _not_ the Huns, who never got near Rome ) in the 5th century were probably less traumatic than the chaotic 6th century, with the long wars of Justinian’s reconquest, followed by the Lombard eruption. The damage here was maybe less to Rome per se than the Italian penninsula as a whole, with the resultant crash of the local economic infrastructure. Rome’s population definitely bottomed out at below 100,000 in the 7th century, possibly as low as 35,000. Still big by European standards, but a fraction of what it once was. Even after the slow recovery of Europe from the late 8th century, Rome suffered periodic reverses, the worst of course being the Black Death, which may have dropped the population below 20,000 by the early 15th century. But again, I will agree with you that Rome continued to endure as an important population center, even if an often politically impotent one. > [@](#): > > The invading forces simply displaced the decadent Italian aristocracy as the region’s overlords. Right, though it is worth noting that like the last Western Emperors from Honorius to Romulus Augustus ( ~402-476 ), they ruled from Ravenna, not Rome. - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![brianmelendez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/65b543/32.png) [@brianmelendez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianmelendez)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/7 "2003-05-15T11:15:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tamerlane \* > **The sacks of Rome by the Visigoths and Vandals ( _not_ the Huns, who never got near Rome ) in the 5th century were probably less traumatic than the chaotic 6th century, with the long wars of Justinian’s reconquest, followed by the Lombard eruption.** Thank you for the correction, **Tamerlane** , I can’t believe that I wrote Huns instead of Vandals. The Huns did invade Gaul in 451 and northern Italy in 452, but were set back by a significant defeat by an army of Romans and Visigoths at the battle of Chalons in 451, and withdrew from Italy in 452 at Pope Leo’s intercession before reaching Rome. The Hun leader Attila died in 453. The Vandals sacked Rome in 455 (not 453 as I wrote). ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/8 "2003-05-15T12:40:12Z")
Remember, too, that the date of the fall of Rome was picked arbitrarily because of its conveninence. It’s easy to teach Rome fell in 453 when sacked by the Vandals, but the truth is less neat. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/9 "2003-05-15T14:39:32Z")
Also of some interest is the fact that the vandal conquerer was himself a Christian (Arian heretic). This led indirectly to the creation of the uber-important “City of God” by Saint Augustine, which remains one of the most important Catholic texts. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/10 "2003-05-15T15:02:26Z")
And where was the Ponifex Maximus during this period? I know Leo I told Attila to go away, but did the pope live in Rome or Ravenna, or elsewhere during the conquests and the subsequent dark ages? ---
**Author:** ![brianmelendez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/65b543/32.png) [@brianmelendez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianmelendez)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-anyone-live-in-rome-after-the-fall/175347/11 "2003-05-15T15:08:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by eburacum45 \* > \*\*And where was the Ponifex Maximus during this period? I know Leo I told Attila to go away, > but did the pope live in Rome or Ravenna, or elsewhere during the conquests and the subsequent dark ages? \*\* The Papacy stayed in Rome even after the city was no longer the imperial capital. It did not move out of Rome until it moved to Avignon in the 14th century.