Has the Roman Empire Ever Really Ceased to Exist?

When we speak of the Fall of the Roman Empire, what exactly are we talking about? Are we talking about the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West when the last Western Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus abdicated the throne in 476 AD, ending the succession of 199 emperors that began with the Emperor Augustus in 27 BC. Or are we talking about the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 AD, which ended the Roman Empire in the East, what modern scholars refer to as the Byzantine Empire?

Another Thousand Years

Enthusiasts for the Byzantine Empire can become a bit frosty on this point, dismissing the idea that the Roman Empire ended in 476 AD when the last Western Roman emperor stepped down, arguing, not incorrectly, that the people of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was centered around Constantinople, continued to consider themselves Romans for the next thousand years and would have looked at you with a blank stare if you had referred to them as Byzantine.

To counter that argument one might assert that by de-linking the idea of being a Roman from the city of Rome itself, we enter upon a hazy definition of Rome where the criteria for determining the continued existence of the Empire has less to do with a particular place than with an idea of being Roman that might potentially exist anywhere.

Charlemagne and the French Romans

Indeed, that’s what Charlemagne thought in 800 AD when he had himself crowned Emperor of the Romans with the intention of reviving the imperial succession that had died out 324 years earlier. However, Charlemagne wasn’t based in Rome. He was based in Aachen near the German-Belgium border and he was a Frank, a forerunner of the French.

Sadly, Charlemagne’s claim to ruling over a new Roman Empire died out with his successors and the whole project was abandoned in 924 AD. But not for long.

Otto I, the Holy Roman Emperor

By untethering the idea of being Roman from the city of Rome itself, anyone with enough heft to make the claim could get himself declared a “Roman” emperor. One such was King Otto I of Germany. Like Charlemagne, Otto was aggressively expansionist, snapping up territory after territory across western Europe. After invading Italy in 961 AD he availed himself of the opportunity to have himself proclaimed Roman Emperor, but with a twist. He was a “Holy” Roman Emperor as sanctioned by the Pope.

Although the idea of a Holy Roman Emperor ruling over a vast territory may sound a lot like the formidable emperors of old, the truth was quite different. As Voltaire famously put it, “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire.”

The German and Austrian Romans

After Otto died, a succession of rulers laid claim to the title of Holy Roman Emperor, but in keeping with the decentralized feudal land owning system of the time, their rule was not absolute but relied on the backing of lords and vassals whose needs came first. 

Eventually, the emperorship became an elected post with little actual power, more of a figurehead than a ruling emperor. As for the ethnic identities of the Holy Roman emperors, almost all were German or Austrian, none were from Rome, and although most were outwardly religious, some were corrupt, debauched, and immoral, falling far short of being “holy”.

Nevertheless, the Holy Roman Empire outlasted the Byzantine Empire by 350 years, coming to an end in 1806. After that all claims to being a legitimate successor state to the Roman Empire seemed to have dissolved, but not entirely.

The Third Rome

In 1453 Sophia Paleologue, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, fled Constantinople to escape the conquering Turks and wound up in Italy under the protection of Pope Paul II. The Pope arranged Sophia’s marriage to the Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow whereupon she became the Grand Princess of Moscow, establishing a direct dynastic link between the now defunct Byzantine Empire and Russia’s ruling dynasty.

Sophia’s new husband Ivan III of Russia wasted no time in adopting the Byzantine iconography of the double-headed eagle into the Russian coat of arms, a symbol that hearkened back to the military standard of the old Roman legions. Within a decade Russia was calling itself the “Third Rome,” the rightful successor state to the Roman Empire after the Byzantine Empire.

The Russian Romans

Russia ran into a bit of a hiccup in 1917 when the Communist Revolution brought an abrupt end to imperial rule, and with it, one would presume, any claim to being the Third Rome. But with the rise of Vladimir Putin the idea of Russia as a geopolitical successor to Rome has been resurrected among political hardliners who see it as Russia’s destiny to expand globally like their forbears in Italy more than 2,000 years ago. Seen in this context, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is in the same glorious tradition as Caesars’s invasion of Gaul. Thus, the Empire marches on.

When I say my novels are about “The Fall of Rome”, I’m speaking of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD when the last western emperor abdicated, but I’m well aware that others don’t agree, and some even claim it survives today in the guise of present day Russia. For such people the Roman Empire never really ceased to exist.

Image by Mario Pace