Damon said: > (keep in mind that the Roman Empire per se did not collapse until > 1453 when the Turks under IIRC Suleyman the Magnificent conquered > Constantinople)
and later > We know the Roman Empire in the West collapsed in 476 when Odoacar. For someone who is stressing continuities elsewhere, this talk of "collapse" sticks out! What was left of the "Roman Empire" in 1453 is surely not deserving of the words "Roman" or "Empire". If you want to choose a single date at which the Eastern empire collapsed, the disaster at Manzikert in 1071 would surely be a better choice, even if some remnant did limp on for centuries longer. (Or, for that matter, the loss of many of the Asian and African provinces to the forces of Islam many centuries before.) And what ended in 476 was the line of Augusti, which was more a formal recognition of the new order in western Europe than anything else. More important dates might be the defeat at Adrianople in 378, the battle of Chalons in 451 the murder of Flavius Aetius in 454. But again, there is no sudden dramatic collapse, just a long series of defeats, disasters and displays of idiocy, incompetence and treachery. Rich
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