Culture of ancient Rome
The Roman Empire, at its height (c. 117 CE), was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilization. By 285 CE the empire had grown too vast to be ruled from the central government at Rome and so was divided by Emperor Diocletian into a Western and an Eastern Empire. The Roman Empire began when Augustus Caesar became the first emperor of Rome (31 BCE) and ended, in the west, when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer (476 CE). In the east, it continued as the Byzantine Empire until the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. The influence of the Roman Empire on western civilization was profound in its lasting contributions to virtually every aspect of western culture.
The Last Legion
Orestes, who was partly of Germanic blood, was historically the "magister militum" – the senior officer of the Roman army second to the emperor. He had indeed promised his Germanic foederati a third of Italy to settle in but not to Odoacer personally. Orestes was himself a usurper, having promised the land to foederati to buy their quiescence in his rebellion against the legitimate emperor Julius Nepos. Although Orestes proclaimed his son, Romulus Augustus (derisively called "Augustulus", meaning "little Augustus") Emperor, the proclamation was not recognised as legitimate beyond the parts of the Italian Peninsula controlled by Orestes' troops. The common identification of Augustus as the "last Western Emperor" dates only from the publication of British historian Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th Century.