There are some who believe, like Gibbon, that the fall was due to the fabric of the Roman citizen. In fact, to ensure there would be no confusion, Odovacar returned to Constantinople the imperial vestments, diadem, and purple cloak of the emperor. Zeno could do little but accept this decision. Odovacar immediately contacted the eastern emperor Zeno and informed him that he would not accept that title of emperor. By the time he entered the city, the Roman control of Britain, Spain, Gaul, and North Africa had already been lost, in the latter three cases to the Goths and Vandals. With his entrance into the city, Odovacar became the head of the only part that remained of the once great west: the peninsula of Italy. Romulus had recently been named emperor by his father, the Roman commander Orestes, who had overthrown the western emperor Julius Nepos. Odovacar easily dethroned the sixteen-year-old emperor Romulus Augustalus, a person he viewed as posing no threat. The one-time military and financial power of the Mediterranean was unable to resist. On the last day of the empire, a barbarian member of the Germanic tribe Siri and former commander in the Roman army entered the city unopposed. Unlike the fall of earlier empires such as the Assyrian and Persian, Rome did not succumb to either war or revolution. Unlike the fall of earlier empires such as the Assyrian & Persian, Rome did not succumb to either war or revolution. The eastern half - that which would eventually be called the Byzantine Empire - would continue for several centuries, and, in many ways, it retained a unique Roman identity. Whatever the cause, whether it was religion, external attack, or the internal decay of the city itself, the debate continues to the present day however, one significant point must be established before a discussion of the roots of the fall can continue: the decline and fall were only in the west.
English historian Edward Gibbon, who wrote in the late 18th century CE, points to the rise of Christianity and its effect on the Roman psyche while others believe the decline and fall were due, in part, to the influx of 'barbarians' from the north and west.
Although historians generally agree on the year of the fall, 476 CE, and its consequences for western civilization, they often disagree on its causes. Since much of the west had already fallen by the middle of the 5th century CE, when a writer speaks of the fall of the empire, he or she generally refers to the fall of the city of Rome. To many historians, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE has always been viewed as the end of the ancient world and the onset of the Middle Ages, often improperly called the Dark Ages, despite Petrarch's assertion.
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