![]() ![]() Economic troubles and overreliance on slave laborĮven as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from within thanks to a severe financial crisis. From then on, no Roman emperor would ever again rule from a post in Italy, leading many to cite 476 as the year the Western Empire suffered its death blow. Finally, in 476, the Germanic leader Odoacer staged a revolt and deposed Emperor Romulus Augustulus. The Empire spent the next several decades under constant threat before “the Eternal City” was raided again in 455, this time by the Vandals. ![]() ![]() The Romans weathered a Germanic uprising in the late fourth century, but in 410 the Visigoth King Alaric successfully sacked the city of Rome. Rome had tangled with Germanic tribes for centuries, but by the 300s “barbarian” groups like the Goths had encroached beyond the Empire’s borders. The most straightforward theory for Western Rome’s collapse pins the fall on a string of military losses sustained against outside forces. ![]()
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