W. Robert Godfrey

So it is relatively easy to say when the Roman Empire began, but when did it end?

Well, as I've already said, many have said it ended in 476 with the collapse of the Western Empire.

The trouble is that when Augustulus Romulus died in 476 AD,

the West elected another emperor who's always been neglected by history and probably didn't really amount to much, but still, Augustulus Romulus didn't amount to much either.

So the Western Empire did sort of continue, at least struggle along a little while after that.

And besides that, there's still the empire in the East, centered in what was Byzantium, modern-day Istanbul.

The emperor there continued to insist that he was the Roman emperor and that the Roman Empire survived.

And that empire continued until Constantinople was overrun by the Turks in 1453.

So there is a Roman Empire really through the whole Middle Ages in the East.

sometimes shrinking, sometimes growing, sometimes struggling, sometimes remarkably vital, and always there.

And even when the Roman Empire in the East finally is snuffed out in 1453, it's not quite the end of the story because in the year 800, a king in France and Germany by the name of Charles

is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

And the Roman Emperor in the East sends his approval for the appointment of a new Roman Emperor in the West.

So in 800, the Roman Empire is revived in the West.

Now, that Western Roman Empire survives down till

1806.

It increasingly doesn't amount to much.

The title increasingly becomes just a title, sort of in the way that for many, many years the monarchs of England were styled King of England and King of France, even though they never set a foot in France.

Titles sometimes live on beyond realities, but still.

In some formal sense, the Holy Roman Empire survives down until 1806 when Napoleon says, this silly thing is ended.