The thing is, the entire idea that the Roman empire fell is a 17th and 18th century idea that is wrong.
Now that i got your attention ;) let me explain why.
“Rome” didn’t fall in 476 AD, the Roman empire continued in Constantinople until 1453. It wasn’t the “Byzantine empire “, it never called itself that nor did its contemporaries call it that. It was known as the Roman empire.
Only in the 17th century did northern European writers invent that name to put down the people in Constantinople, long after constantinople had fallen.
In 476 AD when the last “Western Roman” emperor was deposed, what did Odoacer, his deposed do? He sent the imperial robes and crown to Zeno, the emperor in Constantinople, with tye acknowledgement that Zeno was now the sole emperor.
The Ostrogoths, visigoths etc paid lip service that they were still vassals of the emperor. This was kind of like Japan before the Shogunate where different Lords ruled but claimed their vassalage to the powerless emperor.
Or China under the Zhou emperors.
To the ordinary citizen in a city like Lyons, or Cologne, or Milan, the empire didn’t fall in 476 AD. The language, local administration, religion, customs, culture etc remained the same. The taxes went to the Germanic Dux ie warlords. That it didn’t go further wasn’t the local man’s bother.
That is why the Roman’s got so p!$$ed off when Charlemagne was crowned Western Roman emperor. The Roman’s were like “did we say that was okay”??
Odiacer and his successors got Romanized, in culture, language, religion. They kept the administration as it was as it worked.
The first major disruption was the Julian plague that in the 6th century wiped out large chunks of city dwellers, thereby reducing culture, literacy etc.
The next hit was the Arab conquests that immediately ended the empire in north Africa, the Levant and Spain.
The final blow was the black death. After that the concept of Rome died slowly until 1453.
Family may have been corrupted in the 3rd century but then the empire Christianized. When Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 AD, it was already between 10% to 40% of society. After that its numbers exploded.
Christianity became state religion in 378 AD under Emperor Theodosius and family and society was not corrupted, rather the opposite.
The Germanic “barbarians” were hardly barbarian. They were foedorati, who had fought in Roman armies for centuries at that point. They spoke Latin and were not the shaggy barbarians of Augustus era.
The empire had had Spanish (Trajan, Hadrian), Dacian (Aurelian, Galerian, Max Thrax), Berber ie north African (Septimus Severan and his dynasfy), even Arab (Philip the Arab who was allegedly the first Christian emperor, Elgabalus etc), heck Theodosius II was half Germanic.
They didn’t create a pathway for the Goths or Suebians etc to become emperors in their own right, so the Germanic warlords decided to just take over.
I would note that the same happened in the 7th century in the Levant. Arab client states, the Lakhmanids and Ghassanids who were both Christian (but heretical Christian more Ebionite ie that Jesus was a prophet) fought fir Rome and for Persia in the 100 year war between those two superpowers. Rome and Persia mortally wounded each other and the Arabs just walked in and took over.
The Arabs couldn’t believe their luck and so over a century concocted Islam as a way to explain their divine providence.
To sum up, our opinion on Rome (and mine too until around 2011) is framed by Edward Gibbons’ propaganda.
history is often a narrative written by the winners—or in this case, by the Enlightenment-era scholars who wanted to distance themselves from the “superstition” of the Middle Ages.
In reality, 476 AD was more of a change in middle management for the west. Hieronymus Wolf in 1557 was the guy who coined the term Byzantine empire. They called themselves Rhomaioi I’ve Romans.
the average farmer in Gaul didn’t wake up in 477 AD and think, “Darn, I’m a barbarian now.” They still used Roman coins, spoke Latin, and went to Roman churches.
The “Fall” wasn’t a sudden crash, but a “Great Simplification.” Literacy rates dropped, long-distance trade shriveled, and the complex tax system that maintained paved roads and aqueducts fell apart. The “warlords” (Dux) were Romanized, but they couldn’t afford the upkeep of an empire.
I push back against Edward Gibbon’s 18th-century claim that Christianity “rotted” the empire. Most modern scholars agree with me that Christianity actually provided a new social glue that held communities together when the secular government failed.
I just noted that I wrote the plague of Julian. I meant to write the plague of JUSTINIAN. And also the date when Christianity was made state religion was 380 AD not 378 AD.
Some books I’ve bought and referenced over the years that align with this
Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium
Anthony Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome
Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity
Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000
Jonathan Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700. This whitepaper focuses on how people in North Africa and Spain desperately held onto their Roman identity even under “barbarian” rule.
Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
I really feel passionate about 3 points to convince folks:
1. There was no “fall of the Roman empire” nor the Edward Gibbons’ idea that Christianity created some kind of dark ages, where he ignores all the innovations created during that time and the Carolingian renaissance and the Constnstinople empire
2. That Islam as we know it was created well after the traditional date and I am convinced there was no prophet Mohammed, just an accretion of personages like the character Robin Hood
3. That we need to spend more time and read about the continuance of the Roman empire in Constnstinople.
Side anecdote. After first Balkan war when the Greeks conquered some Ottoman island Lemnos that were Greek speaking, the Greek soldiers on marching in found kids staring at them calling them “Hellenes” and when they told the kids “but you are Hellenes too”, the kids replied “No, we are Romans”