page_title: Roman Italy
section_title: Western Roman Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Italy / History / Western Roman Empire
caption_attribution_description: Praetorian Prefectures of the Roman Empire 395 AD. Gallia, Italia, Oriens, Illyricum
context_page_description: Italia was the homeland of the Romans and metropole of Rome's empire in classical antiquity. According to Roman mythology, Italy was the ancestral home promised by Jupiter to Aeneas of Troy and his descendants, whose descendants were the founders of Rome. Aside from the legendary accounts, Rome was an Italic city-state that changed its form of government from kingdom to republic and then grew within the context of a peninsula dominated by the Celts in the North, the Etruscans and Umbrians in the Centre, and the Messapians and Greeks colonies in the south.
  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. The strength of the Italian confederacy was a crucial factor in the rise of Rome, starting with the Punic and Macedonian wars between the 3rd and 2nd century BC. As provinces were being established throughout the Mediterranean, Italy maintained a special status which made it "not a province, but the Domina of the provinces".
context_section_description: In 330, Constantine inaugurated Constantinople. He established the imperial court, a Senate, financial and judicial administrations, as well as the military structures. The new city, however, did not receive an urban prefect until 359 which raised it to the status of eastern capital. After the death of Theodosius in 395 and the subsequent division of the empire Italy was part of the Western Roman Empire. As a result of Alaric's invasion in 402 the western seat was moved from Mediolanum to Ravenna. Alaric, king of Visigoths, sacked Rome itself in 410; something that hadn't happened for eight centuries. Northern Italy was attacked by Attila's Huns in 452. Rome was sacked in 455  again by the Vandals under the command of Genseric. 
  According to Notitia Dignitatum, one of the very few surviving documents of Roman government updated to the 420s, Roman Italy was governed by a praetorian prefect, Prefectus praetorio Italiae (who also governed the Diocese of Africa and the Diocese of Pannonia), one vicarius, and one comes rei militaris. The regions of Italy were governed at the end of the fourth century by eight consulares (Venetiae et Histriae, Aemiliae, Liguriae, Flaminiae et Piceni annonarii, Tusciae et Umbriae, Piceni suburbicarii, Campaniae, and Siciliae), two correctores (Apuliae et Calabriae and Lucaniae et Bruttiorum) and seven praesides (Alpium Cottiarum, Rhaetia Prima and Secunda, Samnii, Valeriae, Sardiniae, and Corsicae). In the fifth century, with the Emperors controlled by their barbarian generals, the Western imperial government maintained weak control over Italy, whose coasts were periodically under attack. In 476, with the abdication of Romulus Augustulus, the Western Roman Empire had formally fallen unless one considers Julius Nepos, the legitimate emperor recognized by Constantinople as the last. He was assassinated in 480He may have been recognized by Odoacer. Italy remained under Odoacer and his Kingdom of Italy, and then under the Ostrogothic Kingdom. The Germanic successor states under Odoacer and Theodoric the Great continued to use the Roman administrative machinery, as well as being nominal subjects of the Eastern emperor at Constantinople. In 535 Roman Emperor Justinian invaded Italy which suffered twenty years of disastrous war. In August 554, Justinian issued a Pragmatic sanction which maintained most of the organization of Diocletian. The "Prefecture of Italy" thus survived, and came under Roman control in the course of Justinian's Gothic War.
  As a result of the Lombard invasion in 568, the Byzantines lost most of Italy, except the territories of the Exarchate of Ravenna - a corridor from Venice to Lazio - and footholds in the south Naples and the toe and heel of the peninsula.
caption: The "Praetorian Prefecture of Italy" (in yellow) stretched from the Danube river to North Africa
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