The usual date marking the end of
the Western Empire, 476, is only the convenient sign for the culmination
of the movement long since begun in the interferences of an army
composed more and more of a non-Italian, Northern soldiery, and ending
in a final mutiny or revolt which assumed the character of invasion and
the permanent seizure of civil as well as military authority. The coming
of Odoacer is the ultimate stage in the process of Roman and Italian
exhaustion, the sign that life is not longer possible except through
infusion of northern blood.
The military and political change itself was only exterior, the outward
demonstration of deep-seated maladies. The too-successful
bureaucratization of Augustus and such of his successors as were really
able and virtuous, the development of authority into tyranny by such as
were neither able nor virtuous, but mad and wilful, had removed from
Roman citizenship the responsibility which in the olden time had made it
strong; and the increase of taxes, assessments, and compulsory honors
involving personal contribution, had substituted for responsibility and
privilege a burden so heavy that under it the civic life of the Empire
was crushed to extinction.
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