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The Roman expansion in Italy covers a series of conflicts in which Rome grew from being a small Italian city-state to be the ruler of the Italian region.Roman tradition attributes to the Roman kings the first war against the Sabines and the first conquests around the Alban Hills and down to the coast of Latium.
The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, [41] but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. [42] Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer .
The consolidation of Italy into a single entity occurred during the Roman expansion in the peninsula, when Rome formed a permanent association with most of the local tribes and cities. [7] The strength of the Italian confederacy was a crucial factor in the rise of Rome, starting with the Punic and Macedonian wars
In 1984, Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new theories have since emerged. [1] [2] Gibbon himself explored ideas of internal decline (civil wars, the disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions) and of attacks from outside the empire.
The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of ...
Rome: Ruins of the Forum, Looking towards the Capitol (1742) by Canaletto. The history of Rome includes the history of the city of Rome as well as the civilisation of ancient Rome. Roman history has been influential on the modern world, especially in the history of the Catholic Church, and Roman law has influenced many modern legal systems ...
In Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, much time is spent on the early history of Rome, and on the founding of the city itself. In Sallust's histories, the founding and early history of Rome is almost reduced to a single sentence. Thus, the ab urbe condita form is extremely variable while continuing to mould Roman histories.
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.