Fall of the Western Roman Empire

The Germanic commander Odoacer deposed the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, ending the Western Roman Empire.

After the chaos of the 3rd century, when soldier-emperors followed one another in quick succession, Rome was restored under Diocletian and Constantine. Constantine legalised Christianity (313) and moved the capital to Constantinople. But in the late 4th century Germanic peoples pushed by the Huns began to cross the frontier (the Migration Period), and after Emperor Theodosius died in 395 the empire was divided into East and West.

The West came to depend more and more on Germanic generals and mercenaries. Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455, and emperors became puppets made and unmade by military commanders. In 476 Odoacer deposed the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus, named no successor, and sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople.

Germanic kingdoms of the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Franks and others arose on former Western Roman territory; the Franks, who converted to Catholic Christianity, allied with the Roman Church and grew strongest. The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire lasted until 1453.

The year 476 is commonly taken as the end of antiquity and the start of the Middle Ages. Contemporaries did not feel it as a sharp break, however, and many historians see a gradual transformation of Roman society. Roman culture, Christianity and Germanic traditions together formed the basis of medieval Western civilisation.