--- title: Rome Didn't Fall When You Think It Did description: For 1,500 years, we have picked the wrong time for the fall of Rome. Here's why that fabricated history still matters today. canonical: https://time.com/6101964/fabricated-fall-rome-lessons-history/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-10-06T20:18:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:53.325Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Rome Didn't Fall When You Think It Did. Here's Why That Fabricated History Matters Today og:description: For 1,500 years, we have picked the wrong time and blamed the wrong person for the fall of Rome. og:url: https://time.com/6101964/fabricated-fall-rome-lessons-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt56b767c56978ab10/698a1d3be76ad22bf5639426/Odoacer-Roman-Empire.jpg?branch=production&width=946&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 946 og:image:height: 532 og:image:alt: Odoacer forces Romulus Augustus to resign og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Rome Didn't Fall When You Think It Did. Here's Why That Fabricated History Matters Today twitter:description: For 1,500 years, we have picked the wrong time and blamed the wrong person for the fall of Rome. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt56b767c56978ab10/698a1d3be76ad22bf5639426/Odoacer-Roman-Empire.jpg?branch=production&width=946&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Rome Didn't Fall When You Think It Did. Here's Why That Fabricated History Still Matters Today > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=953fb8e5-7559-48dd-911f-2831b27e3cf0&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: The Immigrants of Angel Island [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: The Immigrants of Angel Island](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/246rXtQ4.m3u8) (11:35)  _Published 2021-05-03. When students learn immigration history in school, they often learn about Ellis Island, but they rarely learn about Angel Island, the immigration station on the west coast that was a hub for people arriving from Asia._ by [Edward J. Watts](https://time.com/author/edward-j-watts/) ## Edward J. Watts Oct 6, 2021 8:18 PM UTC  Odoacer forces Romulus Augustus to resign in 476 AD. Odoacer forces Romulus Augustus to resign in 476 AD. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images by [Edward J. Watts](https://time.com/author/edward-j-watts/) ## Edward J. Watts Oct 6, 2021 8:18 PM UTC In September of 476 AD, the barbarian commander [Odoacer](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Odoacer) forced the teenaged Western Roman emperor Romulus Augustus to resign his office. The Constantinopolitan chronicler [Marcellinus Comes would write](https://www.coursehero.com/file/12246284/17-Post-Roman-Spain-and-Africa/) in the 510s that when “Odoacer, king of the Goths, took control of Rome” the “Western Empire of the Roman people … perished.” But no one thought this at the time. The fall of Rome in 476 is a historical turning point that was invented nearly 50 years later as a pretext for a devastating war. The fact that it has since become recognized as the end of an epoch shows how history can be misused to justify otherwise unpalatable actions in the present—and how that misuse can also distort the lessons future generations take from the past. Although everyone from schoolchildren to scholars now learn that the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, 5th century Romans did not see anything particularly special about Odoacer’s coup. Nine different Western Roman emperors had risen and fallen since 455 and most of them had been overthrown by barbarian commanders like Odoacer. In four cases, the barbarian generals toppled one emperor and delayed appointing another. One of these imperial vacancies stretched for 20 months, a span longer than the entire reigns of more than 20 previous Roman emperors. Even Romulus Augustus himself was a usurper who assumed the imperial office after an imperfectly executed coup that left [Julius Nepos](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Nepos), the legitimate emperor Romulus replaced, still in charge of Western Roman imperial territories in what is now Croatia. In other words, while the West had lost an imperial usurper in 476, it still had a legitimate Roman emperor. Odoacer maintained most of the structures of the Roman government during the nearly 17 years he controlled the state. The Senate continued to meet in Rome just as it had for nearly a millennium. Latin remained the language of administration. Roman law governed the land. Roman armies continued to fight and win victories on the frontiers. And Roman emperors appeared on the coins that Odoacer minted. These coins showed Julius Nepos at first and then, after Nepos’s death in 480, they featured the busts of the Eastern Roman emperors who reigned in Constantinople. --- ### More from TIME --- These aspects of Roman life continued after the Gothic ruler Theoderic overthrew Odoacer in 493\. Theoderic proved even more successful than Odoacer in reviving Italian fortunes after the political chaos of the mid-5th century. His armies campaigned successfully in modern Croatia, Serbia and France. He made much of Spain into a protectorate for a time. Large scale repairs were made to churches and public buildings throughout Italy. Either Theoderic or Odoacer undertook renovations to the Colosseum following which senators proudly inscribed their names and offices on their seats. Rather than imagining that Roman rule had ended in 476, Italians in the late 5th and early 6th centuries spoke about its recovery. Bishop Ennodius of Pavia spoke of the “filth” that Theoderic “washed away from the greater part of Italy,” leaving Rome, as it emerged from “the ashes,” “living again.” Theoderic’s military victories meant that “the Roman empire has returned to its former boundary” and returned “the culture of our ancestors” to Romans who had lived in the regions he reconquered. Ennodius even went so far as to claim that “the revival of Roman renown brought Theoderic forward” as a rival to Alexander the Great because he had sparked a Roman “Golden Age.” How did it happen that Odoacer’s coup, the beginning of this Roman resurgence, instead came to be seen as the fall of Rome? The answer lies not in Italy but in Constantinople. As Italian power returned under Odoacer and Theoderic, relations with the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople deteriorated. By the time of Theoderic’s death in 526, Romans in Constantinople had begun considering the possibility of invading Italy. **Read more:** [_The Fall of Rome and the Lessons for America_](https://time.com/5478197/the-fall-of-rome-and-the-lessons-for-america/) It is at this moment of East-West tension that we can return to Marcellinus Comes. Marcellinus’s _Chronicle_ appeared in the late 510s and represents the first historical work known to claim that Rome fell in 476\. Marcellinus’s text also gives away why he said this. Marcellinus describes Odoacer as “the king of the Goths” when he caused the Roman Empire to “perish.” This is a fabrication. Odoacer was not a Goth. Theoderic, however, was a Gothic king and he had taken power from Odoacer. As the Gothic-led Western Roman state found itself in increasing tension with Constantinople, the fall of Rome emerged as a way to justify an Eastern Roman invasion that would restore Italy to Eastern Roman control. Marcellinus did not invent this idea in a vacuum. He served in Constantinople as an aide to the future [Eastern Roman emperor Justinian](https://www.worldhistory.org/Justinian%5FI/), who was at the time the imperial heir apparent. Marcellinus later received several honorific titles from Justinian following the publication of his _Chronicle_, a work that bluntly hammers home its main theme that the Western Empire had fallen and Justinian’s Eastern Roman Empire should restore it. This propaganda worked well. In 535, Eastern Roman armies attacked Italy. Justinian explained this aggression by claiming that “the Goths have used force to take Italy, which was ours, and have refused to give it back.” His troops entered the city of Rome in December of 536\. On this day, Justinian’s official historian Procopius wrote, “Rome became subject to the Romans again after a time of 60 years.” The number 60 was not arbitrarily chosen. The capture of Rome by the East came 60 years and three months after Odoacer’s coup of 476. Despite these initial successes, Justinian’s armies struggled to consolidate control over the peninsula. The Italian war did not conclude until 562 and the fighting devastated both the city of Rome and much of Italy. Goths recaptured Rome in 546, lost it in 547, retook it in 549, and then lost the city for good in 552\. Residents of Rome survived by eating weeds, mice and dung during a long Gothic siege in 546\. It is estimated that Rome’s population fell from perhaps 500,000 in the mid-5th century to as little as 25,000 in the 560s. Other Italian cities suffered even worse fates. Milan, once Italy’s second largest city, was razed to the ground in 539 with its entire population either killed or enslaved. The Eastern Roman Empire had recovered Italy—and destroyed much of it in the process. The Western Roman Empire had clearly fallen by the 560s. Italy was controlled by Justinian, many of its cities were ruined and much of its infrastructure was severely damaged. When later historians looked for the moment when the Western Empire fell, they found Marcellinus and his claim that Rome fell under Odoacer. In the memorable framing by the historian Brian Croke, the fall of Rome in 476 is a manufactured historical turning point that has become an accepted historical fact. But it was Justinian’s invasion, not Odoacer’s coup that decimated Italy and ended the Western Roman state. For 1,500 years, we have picked the wrong time and blamed the wrong person for the fall of Rome. [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](https://time.com/newsletter-history) This mistake matters for two reasons. First, Marcellinus’s manufactured fall of Rome helped create conditions that permitted Justinian to launch a war that killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed the prosperity that Roman rule had once created in the West. His words had real, deadly and long-lasting consequences. Second, the manufactured fall of Rome reveals the unstable boundaries between historical epochs. For 1,500 years, Odoacer’s coup has concluded a cautionary tale about how barbarian commanders in the Roman army ended Rome’s empire. People around the world have scrutinized this story so that their societies may avoid suffering Rome’s fate. But, if we recognize that Rome did not fall in 476, the lessons we take from Roman history become quite different. Rome’s story then does not warn us of the danger of barbarous outsiders toppling a society from within. It instead shows how a false claim that a nation has perished can help cause the very problems its author invented. We ignore this danger at our peril. ## Transcript I teach classes in East Americans in public policy. And one of my first lessons, is actually my family history of six Generations in the US and how public policy has shaped my family's personalized. So, my family face exclusion face segregation face, being detained, face being deported. If you have the political is personal on the personal is political, When students learn about immigration history in school, they're often introduced to Ellis Island the processing center in New York Harbor, where millions of immigrants arrived in the US mainly from Europe. But the history of Angel Island is less known. Angel Island is now a National Historic Landmark, its sits in the middle of San Francisco's Bay, but it was originally an immigrant Detention Center this station, which operated between 1910 and 1940 was a hub for people arriving from Asia. When is Milan was first thing built, the newspapers had all of these really flowery descriptions, they describe Angel Island as being the future Ellis Island of the west but with palm trees, with a pleasant Sea Breeze and it really could not be more different The US has a long history of limiting immigrants from Asia exclusionary laws against babe and are seen as being prostitutes in traffic for sex. Mhhe they pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1917. There was the easy a task cards on that was created by Congress that which basically Bard 500 million people from from Asia, from entering the United States. So on Ellis Island about 20% of the immigrants are detained. When they are. Detained is for relatively short. Just one to two days. When we look to Angel Island, we see that 60% of all immigrants were detained. Chinese immigrants were the group that had the the most detentions in relation to their population. They counted them. Detentions not in one to two days, but in weeks and months, the longest attention that we have found on record was 756 days. Being equally between Beast to immigration station, since is really start when we look at the numbers, but also at the store is as well. I live in San Francisco. So I knew about Angel Island. Sweet Spot all the time when we drove across the bridge. And I probably learned about it from my family who told me that my grandmother respond to Angel Island. The Russell Jones grandmothers came through, Angel Island and were detained in the 1920s, got her immigration records where she went through, Angel Island, and they actually had to have three Witnesses or white in order to prove that my Grandfather was born in the US and was an American citizen entitled to bring a wife back, man to interview. I saw a lengthy and difficult songs. Family story is typical of the Discrimination that many Asian immigrants coming through. Angel Island faced. In fact, the walls of Angel Island are covered with lines of Chinese poetry written by detainee's that describe their hardships Immigration station was known to be overcrowded known to the unsanitary. Known to have unhealthy food, detainees were very limited and their freedom. They were not allowed to be outside for many hours of the day. And even after immigrants left, Angel Island, racism and racist laws, made building a life here, difficult, that can be seen clearly in the story of the guy family from India. There were many South Asians to come to the United States during this time. Even before the 1917, Immigration Act, and there were hardly any women. But in 1915, the Buckeye family made up of fish. No. The guy father. And husband and his wife, Paula. And there's three young boys. Came to the United States through San Francisco. And my grandmother did not know a word of English at that time. She didn't know anything about American culture. My grandfather did, he had learned English school in India, he was wearing American clothes, he had Capital. Unlike most volcanoes as laborers vaishno is also an Indian nationalist. He opposed British colonialism of his homeland that America was supposed to guarantee and that they didn't have in India established a, a business. In San francisco-based show also became a naturalized citizen. He was adopted western dress and manners. He was doing everything, right? What you're supposed to do when you come as an immigrant, but they could Not escape the virulent and violent anti-asian discrimination and racism. That was injuring in the United States. In the early 20th century, When they try to move into their home and in Berkeley, they found a group of angry white neighbors, who prevented them from moving into the home. But they had he found out that new laws in the United States. New court rulings, made him ineligible for citizenship, and government officials went around the country. Denaturalizing South Asian Americans who had already been naturalized felt by the 1920s that as he wrote in a letter, their obstacles behind me blockades in front of me, he could not find a way forward and in 1928, he took his online My grandmother on the story. Kind of to it and sometimes you just didn't even want to go there and say, all right, that's enough for now, I don't want to talk about the rest and, you know, my heart would kind of tug for her. She would take off her glasses, kind of wiped her her glasses and look away And I know that that tragedy of those early days when my grandfather took his life, just always remained with her. As you can imagine, it was incredibly difficult for this young family to to persevere. But she did, she did, she became a community leader after the laws change G and her three sons became naturalized citizens. She saw them off for college and into careers, guy story of perseverance, became such a source of inspiration that in February 2021 a street in Berkeley was named after her. The Salvation American activist who fought for the name change that they felt compelled to do so after hearing how the family was driven out of Berkeley by their neighbors in, maybe 2012 or 2013, and it's really stuck with me. So when the opportunity came up, I really wanted this to be a way to talk about those from our community, who have not been allowed to live in the city of Berkeley. You know this history of the first Indian immigrants to California is just not now and the emphasis I think I'm like Ellis Island, you know, European immigration as the Great American story of how America came together as this Melting Pot or Salad Bowl what you think is what's important. And so when we continue to highlight, you know, just the Ellis Island Story, it helps to obscure the ways in which white supremacy works and works in our immigration system. One of the reasons why the Ellis Island immigrants were able to become so successful was because existing laws in a privilege their entry into the country. Allow them to become naturalized citizens. Which meant That they had the power of the boat. It's, it's really a story about white supremacy being extended White Privilege, being extended to certain immigrant, even though they certainly face hardships and struggles as well. But when we compare it to the Angel Island Story, it causes us to question, how equal our nation of immigrants has really been my family's been here for six generation, but we're still not seen as belonging for still being excluded and attacked for being Outsiders and threats. SSA word at Angel Island, I hate tracker, Which documents the sharp rise in racist incidents against Asians in America today, the government legitimate exclusion. And also, when government uses rhetoric like the term, Chinese virus, That gives people a signal, it gives them license to hate Asians has led to increased national awareness of the issue and in April 2021 the Senate passed a bill to help combat anti-asian hate crimes. This has been going on for a long time, in some ways we have evolved but deep inside in our Humanity, how do we feel about others who look different who come from different countries or cultures that we know little about? And I feel that education helps bridge that defied. That once you get past ignorance, you can feel that you share a certain Humanity ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6101964/fabricated-fall-rome-lessons-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6101964/fabricated-fall-rome-lessons-history/"},"headline":"Rome Didn't Fall When You Think It Did. Here's Why That Fabricated History Still Matters Today","datePublished":"2021-10-06T20:18:06.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:51:53.325Z","description":"For 1,500 years, we have picked the wrong time for the fall of Rome. 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