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Routes taken by barbarian invaders of the Roman Empire during the Migration Period. A synthesis by Harper (2017) gave four decisive turns of events in the transformation from the height of the empire to the early Middle Ages: The Antonine Plague that ended a long period of demographic and economic expansion, weakening but not toppling the empire.
The traditional date for the end of the Western Roman Empire is 476 when the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed. Many theories of causality have been explored. In 1984, Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new theories have since emerged.
During the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves.
The Roman Renaissance was cut short abruptly with the devastation of the city in 1527, but the Papacy reasserted itself in the Counter-Reformation, and the city continued to flourish during the early modern period. Rome was annexed by Napoleon and was part of the First French Empire from 1809 to 1814.
The European balance of power is a tenet in international relations that no single power should be allowed to achieve hegemony over a substantial part of Europe. During much of the Modern Age, the balance was achieved by having a small number of ever-changing alliances contending for power, [1] which culminated in the World Wars of the early 20th century.
Marble bust of the final Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, in a style inspired by ancient Roman marble busts. The defining characteristic of the Holy Roman Empire was the idea that the Holy Roman Emperor represented the leading monarch in Europe and that their empire was the one true continuation of the Roman Empire of Antiquity, through proclamation by the popes in Rome.
At the end of the Middle Ages, there was a transitional period, known as the Renaissance. Early Modern Europe is usually dated to the end of the 15th century. Technological changes such as gunpowder and the printing press changed how warfare was conducted and how knowledge was preserved and disseminated.
In Western Europe, the view of the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD as a historic watershed, marking the fall of the Western Roman Empire and thus the beginning of the Middle Ages, was introduced by Leonardo Bruni in the early 15th century, strengthened by Christoph Cellarius in the late 17th century, and cemented by Edward Gibbon in the late 18th century.