What killed the Roman Empire

476 CE is the traditional date for the fall of the Western Roman Empire. That year, Odoacer deposed the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus. The end was gradual, though: the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 and the Vandals in 455, and by 476 the emperor held little real power outside Italy.

No. Only the Western half fell in 476. The Eastern Roman Empire, later called the Byzantine Empire, was richer and stronger and lasted until Constantinople fell in 1453. Its people kept calling themselves Romans, so the empire survived for nearly a thousand more years.

A Germanic military leader named Odoacer overthrew him. Odoacer led the foreign troops in Rome's army, who rebelled after the emperor's father, Orestes, refused them land in Italy. Odoacer spared the teenage emperor and took the title King of Italy, accepting the Eastern emperor Zeno as his nominal superior.

Germanic kingdoms took over much of the former Western territory, and Italy came under Odoacer as king. Roman laws, culture, and institutions endured in medieval Europe, and the Church, under the popes, grew into a leading authority. Many scholars see the fall as a transformation, not a sudden vanishing.