The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Roman Empire had been repeatedly attacked by invading armies from Northern Europe and in 476, Rome finally fell. Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, surrendered to the Germanic King Odoacer. The British historian Edward Gibbon argued in "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776) that the Romans had become decadent and had lost civic virtue.