Rome didn't fall when you think it did
Channel: Premodernist
Date: 2022-05-12

Rome fell much later than most English-speakers realize. We have tended to be taught world history from an English point of view, which means we have traditionally dated the Fall of Rome to AD 476, even though the Roman empire continued on for a thousand years after that.

Putting a date to the fall of Rome is tricky, because it depends on how you define "Rome." If you regard the Holy Roman Empire as a continuation of the western Roman empire, then you'd have to say that the Roman empire continued to as recently as 1806. But no one says that, because people have a certain idea in their head of what real "Rome" was.

I think the most correct date for the fall of Rome is 1453, with the Ottoman capture of Constantinople. The Byzantine empire of the Middle Ages, with its capital at Constantinople, represented an unbroken continuation of the Roman empire of Antiquity.