I place no limits on them of time or space; I have given them power without

boundaries.
(Virgil, Aeneid, I.278–9)

A millennium and a half after the end of the period of its unquestioned
dominance, Rome remains a significant presence in Western culture. Rome has had a prominent role in intellectual developments, in
debates about the organisation of the state and the conduct of its
foreign policy and about the nature and morality of encounters
between Europe and the rest of the world.Rome is seen as the
greatest civilisation of the past, with a direct genetic and historical
connection to Europe and the West, and hence stands as both an
inspiration and a challenge to modernity. Modernity defined itself against antiquity, drawing on the
tradition of engagement with its literature and history and on the
idea of Rome developed in art and literature over the centuries, and
measured its achievements against those past glories.

CCORDING TO ONE Roman tradition, had been established seven

centuries earlier by Romulus Remus, twin sonsof Mars, the god of war. Romulus and the
new citizens of his tiny community were fighting their neighbours, a people
known as the Sabines, on the site that later became the Forum. As a last attempt to snatch victory, Romulus
prayed to the god Jupiter – not just to Jupiter, in fact, but to Jupiter Stator,
‘Jupiter who holds men firm’. He would build a temple in thanks. the Temple of Jupiter
Stator was erected on that very spot, the first in a long series of shrines and
temples in the city built to commemorate divine help in securing military
victory for Rome. This was a classic Roman appeal to the founding fathers, to the stirring
tales of early Rome and to the moment when the city came into being. Even
now, the image of a wolf suckling the baby Romulus and his twin brother
Remus signals the origins of Rome. Throughout most of Roman history, the
figure of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who fled to Italy to establish Rome as the
new Troy, bulked large too.

for two and a half

centuries, up to the end of the sixth century BCE, the city of Rome had been
under the control of ‘kings’. Livy, among others, tells of a standard sequence
of six monarchs following Romulus, each with a distinctive package of
achievements attached to his name.
After Romulus came Numa Pompilius, a
peaceable character who invented most of the religious institutions of Rome;
then Tullus Hostilius, a renowned warmonger; after him, Ancus Marcius, the
founder of Rome’s seaport at Ostia, ‘Rivermouth’; then Tarquinius Priscus,
or ‘Tarquin the Elder’, who developed the Roman Forum and the CircusGames; then Servius Tullius, a political reformer and the inventor of the
Roman census; and finally, Tarquinius Superbus, ‘Tarquin the Proud’ or,
perhaps better, ‘the Arrogant’. It was the tyrannical behaviour of this second
Tarquin, and of his family, that led to revolution, to the end of monarchy and
to the establishing of ‘liberty’ and the ‘free Republic of Rome’. Rome under the kings also continued to be torn apart by bitter civil war
and family conflicts.Rome’s era as a monarchy ended in 509 B.C. with the overthrow of its seventh king,Lucius Tarquinius Superbus,
whom ancient historians portrayed as cruel and tyrannical, compared to his benevolent predecessors.

The fall of the Tarquins – sometime, as the Romans had it, at the end of the sixth century BCE – amounted to a new start for Rome: the city
began again, now as ‘the Republic’. Also born was a new form of government.The power of the monarch passed to two annually elected
magistrates calledconsuls. These were to be
the most important, defining officials of the new Republic. Taking over many
of the duties of the kings, they presided over the city’s politics at home and
they led its soldiers in war; there was never any formal separation in Rome
between such military and civilian roles. their insignia and badges of office were much the same as
those of their kingly predecessors. But they embodied several key, and
decidedly unmonarchical, principles of the new political regime. First, they
were elected entirely by popular vote, not the half-and-half system of popular
involvement that supposedly characterised the choice of king. Second, they
held office for only a single year at a time, and one of their duties was to
preside (as we saw Cicero doing in 63 BCE) over the election of their
successors. Third, they held office together, as a pair. Two central tenets of
Republican government were that office holding should always be temporary.

Politics in the early republic was marked by the long strugglebetween .patricians and plebeians (the common people), who
eventually attainedsome political power through years of concessions from patricians, including theirown political bodies, the
tribunes, which could initiate or veto legislation.In 450 B.C., the first Roman law code was inscribed on 12 bronze tablets–
known asthe Twelve Tables–and publicly displayed in the Roman Forum. These laws includedissues of legal procedure, civil
rights and property rights and provided the basis forall future Roman civil law. By around 300 B.C., real political power in
Rome wascentered in the Senate, which at the time included only members of patrician andwealthy plebeian families.

During the early republic, the Roman state grew exponentially in both size andpower. The expansion of Roman power through Italy was
dramatic. Rome’s relations with the outside world were entirely unremarkable, so
far as we can tell, until around 400 BCE. Its trading relations with the wider
Mediterranean had been no more than typical for an Italian town. Its direct
interactions were mainly local, above all with the Latin communities to the
south, which shared a common language, a sense of common ancestry and
several common festivals and sacred sites with Rome. The most that can be
said is that by the end of the sixth century BCE the Romans probably had some
kind of control over some of the other Latins. The moment of change came near the start of the fourth century BCE, with
two events that play a leading, and hugely mythologised, role in all ancient
accounts of Rome’s expansion: the Roman destruction of the nearby town of
Veii under the heroic Camillus in 396 BCE, and the destruction of Rome by
Gauls in 390 BCE. Rome annexed Veii and its
land, instantly increasing the size of Roman territory by about 60 per cent.
Soon after, four new geographical tribes of Roman citizens were created, to
include Veii, its indigenous inhabitants as well as new settlers. indication of a move towards a more centralised organisation of Roman
armies and the decline of private warfare. The story went that in 390 BCE a band of
Gauls – possibly a tribe on the move looking for land or, more likely, a welltrained
posse of mercenaries looking for work further south – routed a
Roman army on the river Allia. the Gauls marched on to take Rome.

the Romansrebounded under the leadership of the military hero Camillus, eventually gainingcontrol of the entire Italian peninsula by
264 B.C. a long list of Roman battles fought in.
the fourth century BCE. There were two particularly significant conflicts in Italy in this period.
First was the so-called Latin War, fought against Rome’s Latin neighbours
between 341 and 338 BCE. Shortly after followed the ‘Samnite Wars’, the
occasion of Barbatus’ victories. They were fought in phases between 343
and 290 BCE against a group of communities based in the mountainous parts
of southern Italy: Samnites. At the Battle of Sentinum, the Romans faced a large
group of enemies (‘alliance’ may be too formal a word for it): the Samnites
themselves, as well as Etruscans and Gauls from the far north of the
peninsula.The military impact of Rome by the
end of the fourth century BCE was so great that Livy felt it worthwhile to
compare Roman prowess with that of the world-conquering Alexander the
Great. Romans saw their expansion more in terms of changing
relationships with other peoples than in terms of control of territory. Of
course, Rome’s growing power did dramatically transform the landscape of
Italy. The most celebrated, and devastating, conflicts were the first two Punic
Wars, against Carthage. The earlier lasted for more than twenty years (from
264 to 241 BCE), largely fought in Sicily and on the seas round about, except
for one disastrous Roman excursion to the Carthaginian homeland, in North
Africa. It ended with Sicily under Roman control – and after a few years
Sardinia and Corsica too, On a very different geographical scale was the Second Punic War, which
was fought between 218 and 201 BCE. It is now best remembered for the
heroic failure of Hannibal, who crossed the Alps with his elephants (more of
a propaganda coup than a practical military asset) and inflicted vast
casualties on the Romans in Italy, most notoriously in 216 BCE at the Battle of
Cannae in the south.

In the Third Punic War (149–146 B.C.), theRomans captured and destroyed the city of Carthage and sold its survivinginhabitants
into slavery, making a section of northern Africa a Roman province. Atthe same time, Rome also spread its influence east, defeating
King Philip V ofMacedonia in the Macedonian Wars and turning his kingdom into another Romanprovince. control over the whole
of what we call mainland Greece

Rome’s complex political institutions began to crumble under the weight of thegrowing empire.

The gapbetween rich and poor widened as wealthy landowners drove small farmers frompublic land, while access to government
was increasingly limited to the moreprivileged classes. Attempts to address these social problems, such as the reformmovements of
Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (in 133 B.C. and 123-22 B.C.,respectively) ended in the reformers’ deaths at the hands of their
opponents.Violence was increasingly taken for granted
as a political tool. Traditional restraints and conventions broke down, one by
one, until swords, clubs and rioting more or less replaced the ballot box. At
the same time, to follow Sallust, a very few individuals of enormous power.

Gaius Marius, a commoner whose military prowess elevated him to the position ofconsul (for the first of six terms) in 107 B.C., was
the first of a series of warlordswho would dominate Rome during the late republic. By 91 B.C., Marius wasstruggling against attacks
by his opponents, including his fellow general Sulla, whoemerged as military dictator around 82 B.C. After Sulla retired, In 61
BCE, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus – ‘Pompey the Great’, as he styled himself, in
imitation of Alexander – celebrated a triumph for his victory over King
Mithradates VI of Pontus, who once occupied extensive territories around the
Black Sea coast and had his eye on more. ThisDuring this same period, Marcus Tullius Cicero, elected consul in 63 B.C.,famously
defeated the conspiracy of the patrician Cataline and won a reputation asone of Rome’s greatest orators.

When the victorious Pompey returned to Rome, he formed an uneasy allianceknown as the First Triumvirate with the wealthy
Marcus Licinius Crassus (whosuppressed a slave rebellion led by Spartacus in 71 B.C.) and another rising star inRoman
politics: Gaius Julius Caesar.

After earning military glory in Spain, Caesarreturned to Rome to vie for the consulship in 59 B.C. From his alliance with Pompeyand
Crassus, Caesar received the governorship of three wealthy provinces in Gaul. This arrangement lasted for about a
decade, starting around 60 BCE (private deals are hard to date precisely). But
then, seeking to secure his personal position, Julius Caesar decided to follow
the precedent of Sulla and take over Rome by force in beginning in 58 B.C.; he then set about conquering the rest of the region for
RomeIn Leaving Gaul in early 49 BCE, Caesar
famously crossed the river Rubicon, which formed the boundary of Italy, and
marched towards Rome. The civil
war that followed, in which Caesar and Pompey, the one-time allies, were
now the rival commanders, spread throughout the Mediterranean world.
Rome’s internal conflicts were no longer restricted to Italy. The decisive
battle was fought in central Greece, and Pompey ended up murdered on the
coast of Egypt. Julius Caesar
was officially made ‘dictator for life’.

Rome relied more and more on the efforts and

talents of individuals whose power, profits and rivalries threatened the very
principles on which the Republic was based. And there was no backstop –
not even a basic police force – to prevent political conflict from spilling
over into murderous political violence in a huge metropolis of a million
people by the mid first century BCE, where hunger, exploitation and gross
disparities of wealth were additional catalysts to protests, riots and crime. Roman senators did not sit idly
by as their political institutions lapsed into chaos, nor did they simply fan the
flames of the crisis to their own short-term advantage. Julius Caesar was murdered a group of twenty or so disgruntled senators, supported
actively or passively by a few dozen more,on 15 March 44 BCE, the Ides on the Roman
dating system. In parts of the Mediterranean world the civil war had by no
means ended.

Consul Mark Antony and Caesar’s great-nephew andadopted heir, Octavian, joined forces to crush Brutus and Cassius and
dividedpower in Rome with ex-consul Lepidus in what was known as the SecondTriumvirate. With Octavian leading the western
provinces, Antony the east, andLepidus Africa, tensions developed by 36 B.C. and the triumvirate soon dissolved. In31 B.C.,
Octavian triumped over the forces of Antony and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt(also rumored to be the onetime lover of Julius Caesar)
in the Battle of Actium.
Octavian – or Augustus, as he was officially known after 27 BCE (a madeup
title meaning something close to ‘Revered One’) – dominated Roman
political life for more than fifty years, until his death in 14 CE. Going far
beyond the precedents set by Pompey and by Caesar, he was the first Roman
emperor to last the course and the longest-serving ruler in the whole of Roman
history, outstripping even the mythical Numa and Servius Tullius. As
Augustus, he transformed the structures of Roman politics and the army, the
government of the empire, the appearance of the city of Rome and the
underlying sense of what Roman power, culture and identity were all about.

Augustus’ dynasty included the unpopular Tiberius (A.D. 14-37), the bloodthirstyand unstable Caligula (37-41) and Claudius
(41-54), who was best remembered forhis army’s conquest of Britain. The line ended with Nero (54-68), whose
excessesdrained the Roman treasury and led to his downfall and eventual suicide.
Four emperors took the throne in the tumultuous year after Nero’s death; thefourth, Vespasian (69-79), and his successors,
Titus and Domitian, were known asthe Flavians; they attempted to temper the excesses of the Roman court, restore.

Senate authority and promote public welfare. Titus (79-81) earned his people’sdevotion with his handling of recovery efforts
after the infamous eruption ofVesuvius, which destroyed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
The reign of Nerva (96-98), who was selected by the Senate to succeed Domitian,began another golden age in Roman history,
during which four emperors–Trajan,Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius–took the throne peacefully,succeeding one
another by adoption, as opposed to hereditary succession. Trajan(98-117) expanded Rome’s borders to the greatest extent in
history with victoriesover the kingdoms of Dacia (now northwestern Romania) and Parthia. Hissuccessor Hadrian (117-138)
solidified the empire’s frontiers (famously buildingHadrian's Wall in present-day England) and continued his predecessor’s
work ofestablishing internal stability and instituting administrative reforms.
Under Antoninus Pius (138-161), Rome continued in peace and prosperity, but thereign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180) was
dominated by conflict, including war againstParthia and Armenia and the invasion of Germanic tribes from the north.
WhenMarcus fell ill and died near the battlefield at Vindobona (Vienna), he broke with thetradition of non-hereditary
succession and named his 19-year-old son Commodusas his successor.

‘every theory of the

constitution of Empire is also a theory of its decline’, then one of
the most important reasons for this must be their dependence on
the idea of Rome as the archetypal empire. ‘The fact that
the Empire no longer exists, at least in physical terms, has been
elaborated into an enthralling and deeply satisfying narrative of
triumph and disaster, grandeur and decay, power and powerlessness. The progressive questioning of Christian teleology from the
Renaissance onwards raised more complex questions about the fate
of Rome, with discussion focusing now on the natural properties of
political institutions; the Republic was taken as a powerful model
of constitutional organisation, while the example of the Empire
supported a sense that even the most powerful states were subject to
unexpected disasterThe decadence and incompetence of Commodus (180-192) brought the golden ageof the Roman emperors
to a disappointing end. His death at the hands of his ownministers sparked another period of civil war, from which Lucius
Septimius Severus(193-211) emerged victorious. During the third century Rome suffered from a cycleof near-constant
conflict. A total of 22 emperors took the throne, many of themmeeting violent ends at the hands of the same soldiers who
had propelled them topower. Meanwhile, threats from outside plagued the empire and depleted itsriches, including
continuing aggression from Germans and Parthians and raids bythe Goths over the Aegean Sea.
The reign of Diocletian (284-305) temporarily restored peace and prosperity inRome, but at a high cost to the unity of the
empire. Diocletian divided power intothe so-called tetrarchy (rule of four), sharing his title of Augustus (emperor)
withMaximian.

The stability of this system suffered greatly after Diocletian and Maximian retiredfrom office. Constantine (the son of
Constantius) emerged from the ensuing powerstruggles as sole emperor of a reunified Rome in 324. He moved the Roman
capitalto the Greek city of Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. At the Council ofNicaea in 325, Constantine made
Christianity (once an obscure Jewish sect) Rome’sofficial religion.
Roman unity under Constantine proved illusory, and 30 years after his death theeastern and western empires were again
divided. Despite its continuing battleagainst Persian forces, the eastern Roman Empire–later known as the ByzantineEmpire–
would remain largely intact for centuries to come. An entirely differentstory played out in the west, where the empire was
wracked by internal conflict aswell as threats from abroad–particularly from the Germanic tribes now establishedwithin the
empire’s frontiers like the Vandals (their sack of Rome originated thephrase “vandalism”)–and was steadily losing money due
to constant warfare.
Rome eventually collapsed under the weight of its own bloated empire, losing itsprovinces one by one: Britain around 410;
Spain and northern Africa by 430. Attilaand his brutal Huns invaded Gaul and Italy around 450, further shaking
thefoundations of the empire. In September 476, a Germanic prince named Odovacarwon control of the Roman army in Italy.
After deposing the last western emperor,Romulus Augustus, Odovacar’s troops proclaimed him king of Italy, bringing

anignoble end to the long, tumultuous history of ancient Rome. The fall of the RomanE mpire was complete.
While Caesar’s talents brought him military victory, he failed to find a way to rule Rome as one man
without provoking the Romans’ traditional and extreme antipathy to monarchy. He was assassinated
by a conspiracy of senators on the Ides of March, 44 BC. Caesar’s death created a power vacuum
that a number of groups and individuals then sought to fill. These included several of Caesar’s
former officers—most notably Marcus Antonius, often simply called Mark Antony, who was the
strongest and in the best position to take control of the Roman state ,. On September 2, 31 BC, an
ambitious 31-year-old Roman politician named Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, commonly referred to as Octavian,
surveyed the chaotic aftermath of a ferocious naval battle off the western coast of Greece. The event was recorded in
history as the Battle of Actium, and its outcome made Octavian the ruler of the known world. it marked the final
collapse of the Roman Republic and resulted in the creation of the Roman Empire. On January 13, 27 BC, at a
meeting of the senate, Octavian began revealing his response to the challenge of power
consolidation. But even these he did not rule directly, instead delegating his power to legates who
acted as the governors of these regions. Under this arrangement, 23 of Rome’s 28 legions would be
commanded by men who had been handpicked by Octavian and whose allegiance lay first and
foremost with him. In 29 BC, in addition to the tribunician power, Octavian was granted the power of
censor. In terms of Augustus’s foreign policy, the rapid expansion of the empire’s borders that had
characterized the previous centuries largely stopped. In general, Augustus concentrated more on
solidifying what Rome already had than on gaining new lands.
.

A ugustus’s reign was marked by many spectacular achievements, and he became the inspiration and model for

subsequent leaders. However, there was one major flaw in his settlement of the empire—the issue of succession,.
Meanwhile, back at Rome, it had always been technically forbidden to have troops in Italy, but under
the emperors, a new group called the Praetorian Guard was established. Tiberius was a tight-fisted,
unpopular emperor. Although his policies did not earn him the favor of the people, the empire was
nonetheless run fairly efficiently under his rule. At the time of his accession, Caligula was 25 years
old, and at first, he was greeted with enormous enthusiasm. He staged extravagant beast hunts,
chariot races, and spectacles for the amusement of the inhabitants of the city. The senate and
upper-class Romans were pleased by his cutting of taxes on the sale of slaves and by his demeanor
toward them, To pay for his extravagance, Caligula ended up raising some taxes, imposing new
ones, and confiscating the property of citizens. the Praetorian Guard took matters into their own
hands by acclaiming a new emperor of their choosing: Claudius, the 51-year-old uncle of Caligula
and a brother of the popular general Germanicus. Claudius certainly seems to have tried his best to
be a good emperor, but he had not been given the opportunity to gain any practical experience in
leadership and government. In foreign affairs, he was vigorous, annexing several new areas and
reorganizing some of the existing provinces. His most dramatic action was to finally launch a serious
invasion of Britain, Unlike Tiberius, Claudius took great pleasure in attending public games and
entertainments. The empire endured several crises during Nero’s reign. In Judea, there was a
dangerous insurrection when the Jews, incensed by the desecration of their temple and other
insults, rose up against Rome. methodically suppressed the Jewish fighters, eventually undertaking a

siege of the city of Jerusalem itself. T he so-called year of the four emperors had witnessed a destructive

cycle of civil wars as provincial governors from every corner of the empire had abandoned their posts and marched
on Rome with their armies to battle one another for supremacy. When the bloodbath ended and the dust settled, the
one left standing was Vespasian, and his accession in the final days of AD 69 brought welcome stability to the
Roman Empire. Vespasian and his sons, collectively known as the Flavian emperors after their family
name, would rule for the next 27 years. The end of the Julio-Claudian family’s reign as emperors in
AD 68 had resulted in terrible violence and civil war, and the demise of the Flavian dynasty in AD 96
might have produced a similar tragedy, but this calamity was averted by the senate.

T he death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180 brought to an end what is conventionally regarded as the golden age

of Rome. Over the next century, however, all of those positive factors would be dramatically inverted.

I f the reigns of megalomaniacal emperors such as Commodus and Caracalla in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries

AD had seemed a bad time for the Roman Empire, things were about to get much, much worse. By the midpoint of
the 3rd century, the empire appeared to be irretrievably spiraling down into total collapse, with the economy in
shambles, incessant civil war and political chaos, entire chunks of the empire breaking away, and hordes of
barbarians storming unchecked across the borders. The reeling empire was hit by a flurry of natural
disasters. Severe earthquakes wrought devastation both in Italy and in the east, and there was
another outbreak of plague that rampaged up and down the length of the empire for more than a
decade, killing millions, particularly in the large cities. The depopulation caused by this plague not
only harmed the economy by lowering productivity but may also have contributed to serious
manpower shortages, which made it more difficult to muster the troops needed to fight off the
barbarians.. Following the events of AD 238, Roman history entered a chaotic period of instability
with an extraordinarily high turnover rate of emperors,.

In AD 284, Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocles was still a relatively junior officer, but he became the choice of the
military leadership and was acclaimed emperor. He then Latinized his name to Diocletian, which is how he is
commonly known.
Diocletian had a clever solution to the perennial problem of dealing with rivals: He got the most able of them to
work for him, rather than against him. He did this by selecting capable generals and delegating part of his authority
to them, giving each power and administrative control over a section of the empire. This entire system of
government was known as the tetrarchy, or “rule by four.” All laws were issued in the names of all
four emperors, and any triumph won by any one of them was officially celebrated on behalf of all
four men. However, each emperor maintained his own separate imperial court, retinue, and
bodyguards, and each minted coins with just his image on them. . After Diocletian’s retirement,
resentments among the tetrarchs began to fester. The current two Augusti, or senior emperors,
were Constantius Chlorus in the west and Galerius in the east. Their Caesars, or junior emperors,
were Flavius Severus in the west and Maximinus Daia in the east . Constantine and his troops,
inspired by the thought that they had a god actively aiding them, soundly defeated Maxentius’s army
at what became known as the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in AD 312. During the retreat, Maxentius
fell into the Tiber River and drowned. After the battle, the empire was split into three sections:
Constantine held most of the west, including North Africa, Italy, and Gaul; Maximinus Daia controlled
the easternmost provinces; and Licinius ruled over the sections of modern eastern Europe that lay
between them.

C onstantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge in AD 312 and his accompanying conversion to Christianity are

often depicted as key transitional events in Western history, marking Christianity’s rise and transformation from
obscure sect to dominant religion. He similarly confirmed and built upon the military restructuring of
Diocletian and the other reformers of that era. He also continued their economic policies and
undertook further attempts to stabilize the coinage. Constantine increased the number of senators
and reduced many of the previous distinctions between senators and equestrians. He selected the
old Greek colony of Byzantium and completely rebuilt it into a spectacular new capital, which he
named after himself Constantinople.Constantine endowed Constantinople with a grand palace, an
amphitheater, a hippodrome for chariot racing, a senate, and libraries. By this point, however, it had
become apparent that the empire required at least two emperors—one in the east and one in the
west—to provide adequate leadership and to respond rapidly to threats.

B y the end of the 5th century AD, the Western Roman Empire centered on Rome had fallen—or, at the very
least, had been transformed into something that was no longer truly fully Roman. On the other side of the
Mediterranean, the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, would continue to flourish for another
Despite its continuing battle against Persian forces, the
1,000 years.

eastern Roman Empire–later known as the Byzantine Empire–

would remain largely intact for centuries to come. An entirely
different story played out in the west, where the empire was
wracked by internal conflict as well as threats from abroad–
particularly from the Germanic tribes now established within the
empire’s frontiers like the Vandals (their sack of Rome originated
the phrase “vandalism”)–and was steadily losing money due to
constant warfare.

Rome eventually collapsed under the weight of its own bloated

empire, losing its provinces one by one: Britain around 410; Spain
and northern Africa by 430. Attila and his brutal Huns invaded
Gaul and Italy around 450, further shaking the foundations of the
empire. In September 476, a Germanic prince named Odovacar
won control of the Roman army in Italy. After deposing the last
western emperor, Romulus Augustus, Odovacar’s troops
proclaimed him king of Italy, bringing an ignoble end to the long,
tumultuous history of ancient Rome. The fall of the Roman Empire
was complete.