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The Pax Romana (Latin for ' Roman peace ') is a roughly 200-year-long period of Roman history which is identified as a golden age of increased and sustained Roman imperialism, relative peace and order, prosperous stability, hegemonic power, and regional expansion. This is despite several revolts and wars, and continuing competition with Parthia.
As one convenient marker for the end, 476 has been used since Gibbon, but other key dates for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West include the Crisis of the Third Century, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 (or 405), the sack of Rome in 410, and the death of Julius Nepos in 480.
Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer. [50] [51] [52] Odoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone.
These emperors would continue to rule the Roman Empire until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, nearly a thousand years later. [88] As 480 marks the end of the juridical division of the empire into two imperial courts, some historians refer to the death of Nepos and abolition of the Western Empire by Zeno as the end of the Western Roman Empire.
[74] [11] The end of the late Empire is usually marked in the west with the collapse of the western empire in AD 476, while in the east its end is disputed, as either occurring at the close of the reign of Justinian I (AD 565) [75] or of Heraclius (AD 641). [76]
The Holy Roman Empire would end up going to a more junior branch of the Habsburgs in the person of Charles's brother Ferdinand, while the senior branch continued to rule in Spain and the Burgundian inheritance in the person of Charles's son, Philip II of Spain. Many factors contribute to this result.
Coin of Pescennius Niger, a Roman usurper who claimed imperial power AD 193–194. Legend: IMP CAES C PESC NIGER IVST AVG. While the imperial government of the Roman Empire was rarely called into question during its five centuries in the west and fifteen centuries in the east, individual emperors often faced unending challenges in the form of usurpation and perpetual civil wars. [30]
The most enduring and significant claimants of continuation of the Roman Empire have been, in the East, the Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire, which both claimed succession of the Byzantine Empire after 1453; and in the West, the Carolingian Empire (9th century) and the Holy Roman Empire from 800 to 1806.