But don’t you see different dates for different regions? And also changes in roman architectural styles itself?

there was no sack of Rome in 476.

My bad. This discussion has become quite a bit convoluted. Trying to bring some structure back into it, I try to reformulate what I am trying to argue.

The statement “The Roman Realm fell in 476” is false and implies a singular, catastrophic event that caused a significant regression in culture, technology, wealth and infrastructure, as well as it implies everything that is associated with Rome ceased to exist.
However, the regression and decline began centuries earlier and continued after. Also, several roman institutions and titles continued to exist, people kept seeing themselves (and others) as Romans (even in the further provinces) and Rome as a city stayed significant and a seat of power.
What changed in 476 was that with Odoacer, a (very romanized) barbarian became ruler over Italy, though he claimed that rule as a client of the Eastern Roman Emperor.
The connection of the “Destruction” painting by Thomas Cole with the Fall of Rome is further manifesting a picture of a violent event after which the Roman Realm, it’s culture, institutions etc suddenly ceased to exist, something that didn’t happen.
The reasons I argue that Rome never actually fell are that Rome itself continued to be a seat of power to this day (even being some kind of capital for a long time, if you stretch the term capital you could call it the capital of christiandom during the period of italian city states), and that many a rulers’s claim to power were in some way referring to the Emperor of Rome until the end of tsardom in Russia.

I get that the year 476 is imprinted in our collective minds as the end of the Roman Realm, and I see the arguments for it, but I do think we do not need many of the precise cutoffs we try to use and we do not need this specific one.

I hope this could clear up some comfusion and bring the discussion back om track.

If your response to someone claiming that the Roman Empire fell is to cite the Papal States and the Russian Tsardom as proof that Rome never fell (that being your core point, which you emphasized with punctuation), do you not see how that, in order to be a refutation, necessarily implies that the argument is putting forth the Papal States and Russian Tsardom as, in some way, the Roman Empire?

Only if you ignore the specifications mentioned to set the context.

Civil wars do not mean a breakdown of all the institutions of the Roman Empire.

Nor does the abdication of an emperor.

Again, the split between east and west does not mean the breakdown of all the major institutions of the Roman Empire.

But that didn’t happen in 476. The “barbarian” kingdoms that formed after the abdication of Augustulis were romanised to the point that Syagrius (kind of roman sounding name) of the Dominion of Soissons was known as “the roman king” by the Germans living in the region and his function was regarded as “governing a roman province”. Soissons was conquered by Franks under Clovis in 486. In Mauretania Caesariensis a “Kingdom of Moors and Romans” (inscription found in ruins dated to 507) supposedly survived into the 7th or 8th century. Even Odoaker regarded himself a roman citizen. He had the assassins of Nepos pursued and executed and assumed power with the backing of the Roman Senate and apparently increased the Senates power. Theoderic the Great ruled the Goth Kingdom of Italy (that extended into parts of Iberia at its height) as a patrician of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Again, no sudden collapse, no widespread catastrophe. Change.

… then what are you even disputing?

Again, while I can see that there are arguments for setting a arbitrary cutoff at 476, I argue that it isn’t needed and at the very least I ask if someone wants to have a Fall of Rome, they need to acknowledge that it wasn’t a sudden, catastrophic event but a long, gradual process.

So now you are refusing all arbitrary cutoffs? All life belongs to one clade by most conceptions of abiogenesis, with one common ancestor for bacteria and humans alike. Are humans then bacteria?

I say that birds are dinosaurs because they have dinosaur ancestors. Humans do not have bacterial ancestors (this is the current working model for the domains (of life) AFAIK).

Most people who are aware of the basic idea of evolution understand that it took thousands of years, not a few dozen. Arguably, more people are ignorant of the basic idea of evolution than should be, but at that point, you’re dealing with a very different issue.

But the public image is not that after the asteroid impact selection pressures changed and for that, most dinosaurs couldn’t compete for much longer (relatively speaking) and went extinct, but that they died out due to direct consequences of the impact bein a fast and radical process (compared to a nuclear winter).

The collapse of the Roman Empire led to a serious and massive regression in material and organizational culture across a broad swathe of Europe for all classes, not just the rich.

For the I don’t know how manieth time, that was a long process and not a sudden event right after 476 because there was no Western Roman Emperor anymore. It happened gradually over decades and centuries and started way before 476!

There had not been ‘sacks before, nothing special’ - the sack in 410 AD was the first sack of Rome in 800 fucking years.

A sack in 410, 455 and a siege in 472. Not like the citicens of Rome never heard of the city being sacked before 476.

These are not reconcilable positions you are putting forward. These arguments - both from you - are mutually exclusive.

One of them is not my position or argument. It is “if you assume X then you need to accept Y”. Not that I say “X and Z because Y” or something.

Okay, but you go on to cite the Papal States and then the Russian Tsardom as part of the era of the Roman Empire, which they are not in any meaningful sense.

What? No, I didn’t. And I honestly have nonIdea what makes you think that. I referred to the russian Tsardom as evidence for someone claming the title of Emperor or Rome and the Papal States as an example of Rome beimg of continued significance! How do you make that into me claiming both to be part of the Roman Empire???

It is quite clearly the fall of a formerly cohesive polity that ruled over much of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa.

Not really, especially the part about the cohesiveness. That is the centuries long process I am talking about. There were civil wars, a divided Empire in the third century, etc. It was a gradual, though not linear, progress. Augustulus wasn’t even the last Western Roman Emperor, that was Julius Nepos who died in 480 while the Imperial Court was in Ravenna until 554. The split into Eastern and Western Roman Empire happened long before though, dividing control already.

… I literally traced out some ~250 years of process in my comment.

In this case I used “you” more in a general sense, not necessarily you personally.

Okay, but no one is going to seriously claim that birds are dinosaurs. Birds as dinosaurs is a very tongue-in-cheek trope.

Actually, no. Birds evolved from species in the clade of dinosaurs and species cannot develop out of a clade. Birds are dinosaurs because they’re descendents of other dinosaurs.

It doesn’t have to be a ‘singular event’ wherein all dinosaurs died inside of a day for all of those things to be true and talking about the mass extinction of the dinosaurs due to an asteroid collision changing Earth’s environment to be valid.

But that is generally how the public sees it. Maybe some will say it took a few years because clouds blocked out sunlight, but compared to the tens of thousands of years the process actually took, in the minds of the general public it’s a ridiculusly short period.

the collapse of the Western Empire was a catastrophic event

For whom? Some few high ranking politicians, nobility and stuff. Not much for regular people, like farmers, tradesfolk and such. Not even for citizens of the City of Rome. There were sacks before, nothing special.

Okay, but the refusal of all arbitrary cutoffs

That’s not what I’m doing though. I’m refusimg this specific point as a cutoff. And at the very least, we should not talk about this event as “the Fall of Rome”, because it isn’t. Because even if you want to have a fall of the Western Roman Empire, there needs to be acknowledgement and communication, that it was a long process and not a singular event.
That’s why I compare it to the extinction of dinosaurs. Even if you don’t want to acknowledge birds as dinosaurs, the extinction was not “an asteroid crashed into earth and boom, dinosaurs gone”, it was a process over thousands of years that includes a lot of climate related change in selection pressures, change in habitation conditions, change in nutrition conditions, etc.

but the change from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire with the ascension of Augustus is a commonly discussed cutoff in historiography?

Or that the Kingdom of Rome fell in 503 BC.

That’s also acknowledged?

Not as a catastrophic event, but in a step of the “evolution”, a change in how the Roman Realm is constituted.

Actually the Byzantinians tried to reconquer western roman lands under Emperor Justinian between 535 and 554 AD

an arbitrary cutoff point.

Exactly. It’s arbitrary. Well, not entirely since there are arguments for this date and event as a cutoff, but there are other dates, other events, contingencies etc. And it is an ongoing discussion among historians.

Without arbitrary boundaries, we wouldn’t have any boundaries at all

Well, the point I’m trying to make is that we do not need a boundary here, we can accept that change is gradual.

Rome still exists, it is still a nation’s capital, it has been a seat of power all throughout its history (even when it wasn’t the seat of the (Eestern) Roman Emperor and durimg the era of italian city states, it was the popes’ seat), with the Vatican there is even a state with latin as its official language. And until the end of the tsars’ rules in Russia, there were rulers claming the titel of Roman Emperor.

Rome. Never. Fell. It is a gradual, probably still ongoing and neverending process of transformation. You can say the Roman Empire does not exist anymore. You might even say the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD. But then it’s weird to not also point out that the Roman Republic stopped existing when Gaius Julius Caesar came to total power. Or that the Kingdom of Rome fell in 503 BC.

And here’s the fun part: in German, the whole deal is called “Römisches Reich” - Roman Realm. The type of government does not matter here. So where do we draw the line then?

Why the sack of 476 AD? Why not the end of the Republic? Why is the Eastern Roman Empire ignored? What about the Papal State? What about modern Rome that is still a nation’s Capital?

Rome never fell and dinosaurs never went extinct (birds are dinosaurs)!

Yeah, of course it’s a meme. But a meme that reinforces a wrong image.

That is not really how rome “fell” (if you even need it to fall") and this painting is a catastrophic misrepresentation of the “fall” of Rome.

And whil you can argue a lot about how Rome fell, at the very least it definetly it was not a few or even a single event in a short period of time.

Wasn’t “all of Greece” united under Alexander the Great?

The greco-persian wars happened in the early fifth century BCE, roughly 170-150 years before Alexander became ruler of Macedonia.

During these wars, the greek city states (mainly Athens, Korinth and Sparta as those were the most powerful) fought united against the persians out of necessity and formed the hellenic alliance just before the second war (that one with Xerxes and the Battle of Thermopylae), but again, out of necessitiy and not a sense of shared nationality or other modern ideas.
And after these wars, the greek poleis returned to happily bashing each other again.

Some 50 years after (still around 80 years before Alexander was even born), Sparta and Athens (and their allies/subordinates, so basically all of Greece again) warred each other once more in the Peloponnesian War, but persian king Dareios II supported the spartan war efforts (mostly with money).

I think the meme refers to this clusterfuck of unstable relations between greek city states, but it does not narrow down the time period enough and I’d highly doubt Athens ever actually saw Sparta as a friend, a rival at best during the most peaceful periods maybe.

Because they’re not magnifying glasses but circles cut through by a line.

Also, that small village’s inhabitants uses safe browsers and search engines that don’t collect and sell user data so nobody knows what the villagers search for.

The most famous ‘Caesar’, for example, inherited the name from his ancestors… but the name means ‘hairy’, because one of his ancestors was presumably hairy.

That is one possible explanation but other possibilities include the name being deriven of “caesius” meaning blueish-grey (eyes?) or “caesarian”, a procedure of delivering a child by cutting through the mother’s abdomen (yep, c-section (c being short for caesarian section) is that old). There is also something floating around about a lost carthaginian term for elephants.

That supposed Spangenhelm is a Vendel era northern ridge helm though. The difference is the titular ridge over the top.

But I made this meme specifically about german history. It’s even in the caption. Also, it’s not about horrible events in german history, it’s about significant events. Neither the abdication of the emperor and the proclamation of the republic nor the fall of the wall were horrible events, quite the opposite!

First, how would that be german history? Second, nope, that was a day earlier, the 8th of November 2016.