The date generally accepted for the collapse of the Western Empire is 476, when the Germanic chieftain Odoacer took Ravenna (not that far from Venice) and overthrew Romulus Augustulus.
My question is why still refer to a Roman empire (eg.Byzantine) after its collapse?
I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
Because as the name implies the Western Roman Empire was just the western half of the empire and the Eastern Roman Empire continued to chug right along. The ERE had been the senior ( and wealthier ) half since 330 when Constantine I moved the capital from Ravenna to Constantinople. The term “Roman” had long since ceased to refer exclusively to citizens of the city of Rome - the inhabitants of the ERE/Byzantine empire considered themselves Romans, called themselves Romans and were called Romans by all of their neighbors. Hence historical geopolitical terms like Romania, Rum and Rumelia.
Historians use the term Byzantine as a useful placeholder for the increasingly Greco-centric post-WRE ERE state to avoid confusion. But it was not contemporary word, only appearing in the Renaissance after the state was defunct. When the Byzantine state existed it was the Roman Empire to just about everyone.
Excuse me - Milan. Milan ( Mediolanum ) replaced Rome as the capital in 286 and remained the capital in the West until 402, before it was moved to Ravenna.
The more I’ve read about the end of the Western Empire the less I view Romulus Augustus as the clear “last Emperor.” If you want to talk of the end of the Western Empire there are many points you could pick, you could pick the 455 sack of Rome, or you could pick Odoacer’s ascension, or even Theoderic’s death. I think instead it’s best viewed that as the Western Empire became weaker and weaker it just slowly fell apart. I don’t think any single event or any single leader ascending or dying is a clear breaking point.
Take Odoacer for example, yes he wasn’t a “Roman” in the sense of being from Rome or even Italy–but that’s hardly a unique situation. Several Roman Emperors had not been Latin before him. Odoacer had a Romanized name that was used in some contexts we know of, and he himself retained a relationship with the de jure Western Roman Emperor Julius Nepos. I’ve always likened it to perhaps the “Mayor of the Palace” relationship that Charles Martel had to the “real” Frankish King, in that Odoacer had all the actual power but he still saw some reason to keep a titular Roman Emperor alive and “theoretically” reigning. Odoacer wasn’t raised in the Roman tradition but he appears to have had reason to desire and accept status as a patrician and adopted other aspects of being “Roman” during his life (as best we can tell.) Odoacer also, after Nepos was killed, made himself a client of the Eastern Emperor–again strengthening the idea that Odoacer himself saw his position as an “independent King” but perhaps one who was still “part of the Roman Empire.” [His later warring against the Eastern Emperor doesn’t necessarily dispute this, as wars between persons within the Roman Empire were anything but rare.]
After Odoacer, Theoderic was basically raised under the Roman tradition as a hostage of the Eastern Emperor and when he overthrew Odoacer it was at the orders of the Eastern Emperor and he had already at that point collected offices from the Emperor Zeno that he certainly never discarded. Theoderic even made sure Roman law continued under his rule (but it was not applicable to Ostrogoths) and etc.
I don’t know much of anything about the rulers of Italy after Theoderic but at least up through his reign there was still a special relationship with the Eastern Emperor such that it’s hard to definitively say (at least for me) “the Western Empire was clearly dead.” At the same time, everything that made the Western Empire the “Roman Empire” was already mostly dead before the death of Romulus Augustus, such that I can’t view his death as a “clear break line.”
We call the Eastern empire Romans because that is what they called themselves. They were hoi Romaioi. The word “Byzantine” is a modern appellation.
Odoacer was not the first strongman to rule what was left of the West, but he was the first to dispense with the tradition of having a Roman figurehead nominally govern on his behalf. He was technically a client of Julius Nepos, but this fiction had become strained to say the least. Odoacer ruled directly with the blessing of the Emperor Zeno and even supported him when he fought the rebel Illus.
Odoacer was also really only the king of Italy. His rule did not mark the end of Roman institutions, laws, and traditions: the Ostrogoths were very Romanized and had been so for at least a hundred years. But the king of Italy had no real authority in the former provinces of the West. Carthage and North Africa were already ruled by Vandal kingdoms, Honorius had officially retreated from Britain decades before, and Spain and Gaul had both fallen. So the empire in the West was gone before 476, and what Roman authority remained in Italy wasn’t even directed by Romans.
The history of Italy after Theoderic is especially interesting. The Eastern empire under Justinian launched an enormous reconquista, first taking back Carthage and North Africa and then fighting the Goths in Italy. After 20 years of terrible war, plague, and depopulation, Justinian succeeded and restored Byzantine rule in Italy. Just in time for the Lombards to invade. They defeated what was left of Greek rule almost without resistance and established their own kingdom. In AD 574 they assassinated their king Cleph (perhaps with Byzantine instigation) and Lombard rule fell apart. There followed a lengthy interregnum known as the “Rule of the Dukes.” 7 Lombard dukes battled it out for supremacy of Italy while the beleaguered Byzantines maintained a foothold in Ravenna.
Interesting times. Due to war and the Justinianic plague, the population of Rome fell from about 500,000 to about 30,000.
It’s also a matter of prestige. Rome had dominated the world for so long that the term Roman Empire had a lot of weight for centuries after the collapse of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. Which is why the term was revived in the West as the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th century (neither holy, Roman nor an empire as the gag went) and survived into the 19th. Words matter.
It was revived earlier than that. Charlemagne used the title in the year 800.
There are rumors, unconfirmed of course, that when the Greek War of Independence was concluded in the early 19th century many celebrants went into the countryside proclaiming the news to the people “We have won! We are Greeks!”.
To which, many replied back “What are you talking about? We’re Romans!”.
The people had considered themselves such for centuries.
A lot of people barely considered Romulus Augustus to be the Emperor even before he was overthrown.
Julius Nepos was also the Emperor at the time. He had been in power for several years. But one of his generals, Orestes, led a revolt against him in 475 and seized the capital. Orestes, who was a little more German than the average Roman was comfortable with, decided to make his teenage son Romulus the Emperor. Of course Orestes was the person really giving the orders.
Meanwhile Julius Nepos was still around but he had to relocate to an outer province (in what’s now Croatia). As far as the Eastern Empire was concerned, he was the legitimate Western Emperor and all Odoacer did in 476 was overthrow a usurper. Emperor Nepos was still in power (albeit not in Italy) years after Orestes and Romulus were gone.
Thank you all for your helpful replies.
davidmich
It’s said that Justinian, the Eastern Roman emperor, was well on his way to regaining Roman control in the West when the first known outbreak of the bubonic plague in Europe hit in 541, wiping out much of his army and perhaps a quarter of his entire empire’s population. Just thought that was interesting and semi-relevant.
I wonder how different history would have turned out had the plague not hit.
I’ve often heard it speculated that Justinian’s successors might have held on to his conquests or even expanded upon them if not for the devastating plague. The idea has merit on at least a few levels. Firstly, the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire was far more powerful than any other Christian realm at the time. It was soldiered by professional soldiers, and they had heavily armored cavalry to my knowledge as well.
That was a persistent weakness among most other Christian nations then and even hundreds of years later, and is why many Christian Kingdoms fell to Arabian cavalry forces throughout the Mediterranean region, especially during the Muslim conquests of Spain and incursions into Frankish lands.
Problems with the theory however, at least to my knowledge, I thought the Plague of Justinian was believed to have been global (sans Americas) in scope. Meaning it affected Muslims and other Christian Kingdoms just as much as the Byzantines, in which case it wasn’t as though the Byzantine Empire got weaker from the plague while the other surrounding powers stayed the same. But maybe the plague did disproportionately affect the Byzantines–I do not know enough about it and couldn’t find an answer in quick searches in google. I do know a lot of people speculate about theoretical post-Justinian Byzantine rulers holding on to a lot more land if not for the plague, so maybe there is research out there showing that the Byzantine Empire was disproportionately hit by the plague versus others.
Pedantry, but hey where would this board be without it ;)…
Just to be clear the early Arab armies were very infantry-centric. Mobile infantry quite often ( rode to battle, dismounted to fight ), but infantry when it came to the actual fighting. The Arabian peninsula didn’t have the grazing to support large strings of horses and camels were good for transportation, but made for lousy cavalry. So Arab armies consisted overwhelmingly of of lightly armored ( or virtually unarmored, aside from a shield and helm ) dismounted spearmen and archers, with one-handed straight swords as the standard sidearm. About the only unusual feature vis-a-vis Western armies was the very high proportion of foot archers, often a third of the earliest armies ( and archery as a discipline was culturally lauded, unlike in most Christian armies ). Cavalry figures in the very earliest clashes are uncertain, but maybe made up 10-15% of the whole.
As the Arabs came into conflict with Christian powers, the proportion of cavalry rose in response to western cavalry and with the acquisition of better sources for mounts. The Arab/Berber armies of the Umayyads that invaded Spain certainly had a higher proportion of horse than the armies of the Rashidun Caliphs. Still Arab armies remained more infantry-centric than not under the Umayyads until the Abbasid revolution of 747-750, when the Persian-centered Abbasids initially favored Persian-style cataphracts as the arm of decision. Later they shifted to imported Turkish horse-archers as the dominant arm of the military, which would remain the case right down to the modern age.
But the popular conception of the early Arabs as being similar to say, the Mongols, is incorrect. No horse-archers at all as far as anyone can tell and low proportions of cavalry generally. Also no curved swords until at least a few centuries later ;).
Later instances of the plague had higher mortality in more densly populated areas, so it seems likely that the Empire suffered more heavily then the largely de-urbanized West.
Plus holding onto territory on the other side of the Mediterranean and fighting off an occupier on your home turf aren’t really symmetrical tasks, so even if both parties were affected equally, I don’t think that’s really a problem with the theory that the plague caused the western half of the empire to be lost (again).
Another issue with the post-Justinian empire is the resources poured into Italy for decades for a piss-poor return. This was substantially Belisarius’ fault. His refusal to sign off on the very reasonable peace deal struck between Justinian and the Ostrogoths in retrospect ended up wrecking a previously still prosperous Italy. In addition if the Ostrogoths had been relocated to their new proposed demesne in northern Italy ( north of the Po ), they would have been perfectly positioned to block, deflect or weaken the Langobard eruption.
As it is, despite his failures Justinian should still get some credit for his grandiose vision. His reconquest of North Africa would prove critical down the road to potentially saving the Byzantine state when Heraclius emerged from the Exarchate of Africa to remove the none too competent usurper Phocas.
That would have been very optimistic. Plague aside, the Gothic War was much longer and much more expensive than anticipated. Belisarius was certainly a competent leader, but he also got very lucky in Carthage. He destroyed the Vandals so quickly that leadership back home thought that the conquest of Italy would just be another lightning war. It wasn’t; it dragged on for twenty years and cost the better part of Byzantine manpower and cash. By the time the war was over, there was hardly anyone left in Italy to defend against the Lombards even if they could have.
ETA: Damn you, Tamerlane. 
Like I said, I’m only repeating common speculation–note that the portion of my post you cut away makes it clear I don’t find the theory that plausible.
That’s a bit different than how I thought it was–but I also did not reference horse archers. It has always been my understanding the Umayyads who fought the Christians for control of modern day Spain and parts of France had significant cavalry advantages. Is that not in fact the case? I know the amount of information is actually fairly sparse in this area and time in history, but I thought it was old knowledge that the Christians were not regularly (or perhaps did not even use at all) stirrups or mounted combatants at all until some time after Tours?
What was Roman Britannia like in AD 475? I understand that the two legions defending Britannia had been withdrawn-but were there any local militias capable of repelling the invading Anglo-Saxons?
Yeah, I know - I just threw that out there because many people have a stereotypical ( for good reason ) association of Middle-Eastern troops with mounted archers.
Well, in that particular case it is a little more possible, though hardly definitive. The Byzantines seem to have adopted stirrups from the Avars around 600 and the Arabs adopted them from the Byzantines. But northern and western Europe picked them up more slowly. They are relatively rare ( though they exist ) in German grave sites ~700. Though some have suggested the Visigoths had stirrups as early as Adrianople ( in 378 ), that seems doubtful. It is within the realm of possibility that Arab forces in Spain were better-equipped in that respect than the Spanish Visigoths. Further by the 8th century Arab forces had not only become more sophisticated, but on the backs of booty and newly conquered regions, were much better-equipped than they had once been. It is likely body armor was much more common than it had been in the 7th century and the quality of edged weapons they possessed were certainly better than the Franks and likely better than the Goths.
However stirrups are not the end-all, be-all and it is also likely that the Visigoths retained heavier armored cavalry than the Arab/Berber invaders ( which by that point it has been suggested their forces were about 1/3 cavalry ). The Visigoths certainly had a mounted tradition. It is claimed, though it may be apocryphal because everything about that battle is hazy and contested, that at the decisive encounter at Guadalete that a wing of the Visigothic cavalry treacherously stood aside owing to disputes with the king and largely enabling the victory.
So 8th century Umayyad Arab armies had improved a great deal materially from the 7th century Arab armies of the Rashidun and had increased the proportion of cavalry. They also likely had a material advantage over the armies of western Europe, though not necessarily one in training ( Carolingian armies, including cavalry, were intensively drilled ) or in numbers ( Martel likely had a numerical superiority at Tours, at least according to Bachrach ). Did they enjoy a significant superiority in cavalry? Probably not significant. Some superiority? Possibly. But they remained predominantly infantry-based armies even in this later period.