September 4 was the anniversary of the fall of the Roman Empire. Not long ago, social media buzzed with the claim that men think about the Roman Empire at least once a day.
The Roman Empire was indeed an unparalleled political entity. Starting out as a nondescript city-state among dozens of others on the Italian peninsula, it would expand into an empire that held vast territory in Europe and parts of Western Asia. It lasted for hundreds of years. And then it fell.
I am about to enter my 20th and final year teaching Latin in a public high school. For decades, I have studied the world of the ancient Romans and reflected upon their impact and lasting legacy. We are indebted to the Romans for more important things than their Empire—so perhaps its fall wasn’t such a bad thing.
The Fall of the Western Empire
Before the fall of the Western Empire, the city of Rome itself had been sacked by the Visigoths in 410 AD. This event shook people deeply. Saint Jerome, for instance, wrote concerning it:
"Una urbe capta, totus orbis collapsus est."
“With one city captured, the whole world has collapsed.”
— Jerome, Letter 127, to Principia
The date traditionally given for the fall of the Roman Empire is Friday, September 4, 476 AD. It was on this day that the final Roman emperor, sixteen-year-old Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the Gothic leader Odoacer, who then declared himself King of Italy. He spared Romulus, sending him into exile. He then sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno, with the message that no replacement emperor should be sent. A surviving deposed Western emperor, Julius Nepos, who had never given up his claim to be emperor, maintained his claim to the western imperial throne from Illyricum (modern-day western Balkans) until his assassination in 480.
Curiously, there are no contemporary accounts of people in the West lamenting the fall of the Western Empire. The earliest explicit reference to the fall comes decades later, from a Gothic historian, Jordanes, who writes c. 551:
"Sic occidens imperium Romanae gentis, quod Octavianus Augustus inchoaverat… periit cum hoc Augustulo."
“Thus the Western Empire of the Roman people, which Octavian Augustus had started, perished with this Augustulus.”
— Jordanes, Getica, XLVI.243
Did the Roman Empire Actually Fall?
My high school Latin teacher once described the theory that it still survives today. It goes something like this: There was still an Eastern Empire in the year 800 when the Pope crowned Charlemagne the emperor of what historians later called the Holy Roman Empire.
The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empress Irene immediately rejected Charlemagne’s claim. In an effort to win recognition, Charlemagne proposed marriage to Irene, which she seriously considered before ultimately deciding against it. She was eventually deposed, and in 812 the Eastern Roman Emperor Michael concluded a series of negotiations with Charlemagne in which they recognized the use of the title “Emperor” in the West, while Michael would maintain exclusive right to the title “Emperor of the Romans.”
The Byzantine Empire fell on May 29, 1453, after a 53-day siege by Ottoman ruler Mehmet the Conqueror. The last Roman emperor in the East, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died heroically in the final battle after the walls of Constantinople were brought down by cannon fire.
People in the Christian West did indeed lament the fall of Constantinople. But no one described the event as the end of the Roman Empire. The empire in the East had long before become Greek in culture and language. People in the West saw the Holy Roman Empire as the legitimate successor to the Roman Empire itself.
We jump forward a few centuries. It is the early 1800s, and Napoleon is on the move eastward. He would like to add the title of Holy Roman Emperor to his résumé. On August 6, 1806, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II formally abdicated and declared the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. He did this to prevent Napoleon from ever getting that coveted title.
Some claim that a tiny piece of that empire still exists. The Principality of Liechtenstein was a part of the Holy Roman Empire and it is still ruled by the same family that held its throne in 1806. It is an orphan of the dissolved Holy Roman Empire. The website of the Embassy of Liechtenstein to the United States even says:
“Today it stands as the last existing remnant of the Holy Roman Empire.”
— Embassy of Liechtenstein to the United States
This would be an indication that the principality does historically, if not officially, consider themselves a piece of a Roman Empire that still has not fallen.
Latin Is a Language Dead, as Dead as Dead Can Be. First It Killed the Romans, and Now It’s Killing Me!
This was a poem we recited back in high school Latin reflecting our love/hate relationship with the language we were studying. But it’s really quite untrue.
I tell my own students today, Latin is a dead language in exactly the same way that Old English is a dead language. All it means is that no one currently speaks it as their native language. Old English evolved into Middle English. Middle English evolved into Modern English. The language never died. Generation after generation, it changed incrementally until it became something else. In the case of Latin, it changed incrementally into something else in several different places. The Romance languages are living dialects of Latin, just as Modern English is the living successor of Old English.
A native speaker of Spanish cannot really follow rapidly spoken French. If they look at each other’s languages written down, they can make reasonable sense of them. Native speakers of Spanish and Italian, however, actually understand each other fairly well. And they do this because they are both speaking a language which evolved from Latin, but not quite far enough to completely impede understanding.
The Roman Empire did fall, but the Latin language continued to live long after Roman legions were marching in those lands. The Latin language had already been brought out of Italy to the lands that would become Spain, Portugal, and France when Rome was still a Republic, while Romania adopted a Romance language only later with the imperial expansion by Emperor Trajan. As a result of more recent history, modern dialects of Latin are now also spoken in North, Central, and South America, as well as North and sub-Saharan Africa.
The Future Is Looking Pretty Romantic
The most commonly spoken language in the world today is Mandarin Chinese. The population of China, however, is projected to decline significantly in the next 50 years. Expected demographic shifts in Latin America and French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa mean that 50 years from now, modern dialects of Latin will collectively be the most commonly spoken language group in the world.
Why Does the Fall of the Roman Empire Sadden/Engross/Concern Us?
The British don’t daily mourn the loss of their even more impressive empire. Queen Victoria held the title “Empress of India” because the British once controlled a place that Alexander the Great himself tried and failed to conquer.
The end of Rome seems to cause an obsession because of the question “What if?” That glorious empire once called the Mediterranean mare nostrum—“our sea”—because it controlled every inch of its shores. What would the world look like if that had not fallen?
We seem to assume that that would have been a better place than our currently quite imperfect world. Whatever problems we now deal with, surely a Roman Empire that survived to this day would have solved them?
The Romans knew about steam engines. The key ingredients for an industrial revolution were all found within the borders of that empire. Instead of the fall and ensuing dark ages, Roman astronauts could have been planting a Roman eagle on the moon by the year 800.
The Roman Empire Fell. And That’s a Good Thing
Despite the curiosity of Liechtenstein, the Roman Empire fell. But there was a Roman Republic before there was an Empire. Founded in 509 BC following the overthrow of the Etruscan king Tarquin the Proud, this system of government would last for 482 years, until Caesar Augustus was granted the title Princeps by the Senate in 27 BC. This effectively ended the Republic as a true political entity. But Augustus intentionally maintained the institutions that had made up that Republic. The Senate remained, and two consuls were still appointed every year (albeit frequently as prizes at the whim of the emperor). This empire would last for 502 years, until the abdication by Romulus Augustulus.
But then something curious happened. The Gothic king Odoacer not only allowed the teenage Emperor Romulus to live in exile, he maintained the operation of both the Roman Senate and the annual appointment of two consuls. This policy was continued by Odoacer’s successor, Theodoric the Great. The last resident Roman consul was Decimus Theodorius Paulinus, consul in 534. Ostrogothic rule over Rome was then brought to an end with the invasion by the Eastern Emperor Justinian I, who did not continue to appoint consuls in Rome itself. There is evidence, however, that the Roman Senate lingered on in some form or another until the end of the 500s.
In some important ways, the Roman Republic survived the empire that had ended in 476. The Romans who served as consuls and in the Senate under Ostrogothic rule were apparently respected and consulted by their occupiers. These Romans were pragmatically using their influence to maintain the welfare of the Roman people.
The Roman Republic would later become the model for peoples who overthrew the monarchies under which they had lived. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 discussed several possible titles for the executive officer, such as magistrate, director, and even consul, before eventually settling on “president.” The names for the two legislative bodies, House of Representatives and Senate, also showed how deeply they were drawing upon models of the Roman Republic when framing the new government of the United States. And they wanted no hint of the Roman Empire.
"Rome… Is to Be a Republic Again"
These words, spoken by Marcus Aurelius to General Maximus in Ridley Scott’s 2000 movie Gladiator, were a stirring but inaccurate depiction of the political situation as that emperor was ending his life. There was no actual plan for Rome to again become a republic.
But the words of that movie ended up being quite true, just much later. The people who inhabit Rome today quite properly call themselves Romans. But they are not the only people who still proudly bear that name. The Romanians, who speak a modern dialect of Latin, also thus call themselves. Speakers of any modern Latin dialect, like Spanish or French, even if they don’t actually call themselves Romans, have an equal claim to Roman heritage.
Those Roman descendants who live in Spain have a constitutional monarchy (but it does have a Senate). Everyone else descended from those people who threw off the rule of Etruscan kings—whether Italians, Romanians, French, or Portuguese—once again live in republics. And of these, all but Portugal have a legislative body called a Senate. (Interestingly, all of those republics use the word “president” as the title of their highest executive officer.)
Outside the direct descendants of the Romans, there are over 100 countries today which have constitutions based on United States or French models, which were themselves consciously drawing upon the institutions of the Republic.
As Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a woman reportedly asked him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” His reply was:
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
— James McHenry, Notes on the Federal Convention of 1787
At a time when our own republic was seriously threatened, Lincoln would state that the purpose of our Civil War was:
“…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
— Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863
The Roman Empire, for all of its nostalgic glory, was a brutal totalitarian system. The transfer of power was almost always either hereditary or violent. A government giving a voice to the people would never have organically evolved out of the Roman Empire. The dozens of republics around the world today instead emerged from under monarchy, in the exact same way that the Roman Republic was a rejection of Etruscan kings. I dare say, in a world where the original ancient Roman Empire never fell, such governments might never have existed.
Conclusion
Our own Constitution acknowledges in the Preamble that we are always striving for a “more perfect union.” Our Constitution provided checks and balances and ways to amend as necessary the Constitution itself. Perhaps that was one weakness of the Roman Republic. It was eventually overtaken and repurposed by exactly the dictatorships that it had once replaced.
The fall of the Roman Empire did not mark the end of the values and institutions that the Romans had first formed when they rejected Etruscan kings to form a Republic. The Empire people nostalgically pine for is insignificant compared to the enduring legacy of democratic principles the Republic inspired. The language of the Romans, far from being dead, has never been more alive in terms of those who speak modern dialects, and the vast amounts of Latin vocabulary borrowed into languages such as English.
The Roman Republic doesn’t just survive, it thrives across continents unknown to the Romans. Thanks to the Romans, we don’t have a totalitarian regime—we have a Republic, if we can keep it.
FallofRomeMassey
.docx
15.4 kB
Keith Massey
From:
keithamassey@yahoo.com
To:
keithamassey@yahoo.com
Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Dear Opinion Editors,
I am submitting for your consideration a guest essay titled The Roman Empire Fell – But the Roman Republic Is Doing Just Fine (approx. 2,500 words). As September 4 marks the anniversary of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the piece uses that historical moment to reflect on what truly endures from Rome — its republican institutions and the Latin language itself.
As I begin my twentieth year teaching Latin in a New Jersey public high school, I’ve spent decades helping students uncover the legacy of the Roman world — not as a dead civilization, but as a living influence on global democracies today. I hope this essay offers readers a timely and accessible lens on why Rome continues to fascinate, and why its fall may not be the tragedy we often assume.
A short bio is included below. Article is attached and pasted below the bio.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Warm regards,
Keith Massey, PhD
keithamassey@yahoo.com
973-262-5498
Bio:
I am entering my twentieth year teaching Latin at a public high school in New Jersey. Before becoming a teacher, I served as an Arabic linguist at the National Security Agency, including a tour in Iraq, for which I was awarded the Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal.
The Roman Empire Fell – But the Roman Republic Is Doing Just Fine
By Keith Massey
keith.massey@leoniaschools.org
973-262-5498
Word Count: 2296
September 4 was the anniversary of the fall of the Roman Empire. Not long ago, social media buzzed with the claim that men think about the Roman Empire at least once a day.
The Roman Empire was indeed an unparalleled political entity. Starting out as a nondescript city-state among dozens of others on the Italian peninsula, it would expand into an empire that held vast territory in Europe and parts of Western Asia. It lasted for hundreds of years. And then it fell.
I am about to enter my 20th and final year teaching Latin in a public high school. For decades, I have studied the world of the ancient Romans and reflected upon their impact and lasting legacy. We are indebted to the Romans for more important things than their Empire—so perhaps its fall wasn’t such a bad thing.
The Fall of the Western Empire
Before the fall of the Western Empire, the city of Rome itself had been sacked by the Visigoths in 410 AD. This event shook people deeply. Saint Jerome, for instance, wrote concerning it:
"Una urbe capta, totus orbis collapsus est."
“With one city captured, the whole world has collapsed.”
— Jerome, Letter 127, to Principia
The date traditionally given for the fall of the Roman Empire is Friday, September 4, 476 AD. It was on this day that the final Roman emperor, sixteen-year-old Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the Gothic leader Odoacer, who then declared himself King of Italy. He spared Romulus, sending him into exile. He then sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno, with the message that no replacement emperor should be sent. A surviving deposed Western emperor, Julius Nepos, who had never given up his claim to be emperor, maintained his claim to the western imperial throne from Illyricum (modern-day western Balkans) until his assassination in 480.
Curiously, there are no contemporary accounts of people in the West lamenting the fall of the Western Empire. The earliest explicit reference to the fall comes decades later, from a Gothic historian, Jordanes, who writes c. 551:
"Sic occidens imperium Romanae gentis, quod Octavianus Augustus inchoaverat… periit cum hoc Augustulo."
“Thus the Western Empire of the Roman people, which Octavian Augustus had started, perished with this Augustulus.”
— Jordanes, Getica, XLVI.243
Did the Roman Empire Actually Fall?
My high school Latin teacher once described the theory that it still survives today. It goes something like this: There was still an Eastern Empire in the year 800 when the Pope crowned Charlemagne the emperor of what historians later called the Holy Roman Empire.
The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empress Irene immediately rejected Charlemagne’s claim. In an effort to win recognition, Charlemagne proposed marriage to Irene, which she seriously considered before ultimately deciding against it. She was eventually deposed, and in 812 the Eastern Roman Emperor Michael concluded a series of negotiations with Charlemagne in which they recognized the use of the title “Emperor” in the West, while Michael would maintain exclusive right to the title “Emperor of the Romans.”
The Byzantine Empire fell on May 29, 1453, after a 53-day siege by Ottoman ruler Mehmet the Conqueror. The last Roman emperor in the East, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died heroically in the final battle after the walls of Constantinople were brought down by cannon fire.
People in the Christian West did indeed lament the fall of Constantinople. But no one described the event as the end of the Roman Empire. The empire in the East had long before become Greek in culture and language. People in the West saw the Holy Roman Empire as the legitimate successor to the Roman Empire itself.
We jump forward a few centuries. It is the early 1800s, and Napoleon is on the move eastward. He would like to add the title of Holy Roman Emperor to his résumé. On August 6, 1806, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II formally abdicated and declared the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. He did this to prevent Napoleon from ever getting that coveted title.
Some claim that a tiny piece of that empire still exists. The Principality of Liechtenstein was a part of the Holy Roman Empire and it is still ruled by the same family that held its throne in 1806. It is an orphan of the dissolved Holy Roman Empire. The website of the Embassy of Liechtenstein to the United States even says:
“Today it stands as the last existing remnant of the Holy Roman Empire.”
— Embassy of Liechtenstein to the United States
This would be an indication that the principality does historically, if not officially, consider themselves a piece of a Roman Empire that still has not fallen.
Latin Is a Language Dead, as Dead as Dead Can Be. First It Killed the Romans, and Now It’s Killing Me!
This was a poem we recited back in high school Latin reflecting our love/hate relationship with the language we were studying. But it’s really quite untrue.
I tell my own students today, Latin is a dead language in exactly the same way that Old English is a dead language. All it means is that no one currently speaks it as their native language. Old English evolved into Middle English. Middle English evolved into Modern English. The language never died. Generation after generation, it changed incrementally until it became something else. In the case of Latin, it changed incrementally into something else in several different places. The Romance languages are living dialects of Latin, just as Modern English is the living successor of Old English.
A native speaker of Spanish cannot really follow rapidly spoken French. If they look at each other’s languages written down, they can make reasonable sense of them. Native speakers of Spanish and Italian, however, actually understand each other fairly well. And they do this because they are both speaking a language which evolved from Latin, but not quite far enough to completely impede understanding.
The Roman Empire did fall, but the Latin language continued to live long after Roman legions were marching in those lands. The Latin language had already been brought out of Italy to the lands that would become Spain, Portugal, and France when Rome was still a Republic, while Romania adopted a Romance language only later with the imperial expansion by Emperor Trajan. As a result of more recent history, modern dialects of Latin are now also spoken in North, Central, and South America, as well as North and sub-Saharan Africa.
The Future Is Looking Pretty Romantic
The most commonly spoken language in the world today is Mandarin Chinese. The population of China, however, is projected to decline significantly in the next 50 years. Expected demographic shifts in Latin America and French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa mean that 50 years from now, modern dialects of Latin will collectively be the most commonly spoken language group in the world.
Why Does the Fall of the Roman Empire Sadden/Engross/Concern Us?
The British don’t daily mourn the loss of their even more impressive empire. Queen Victoria held the title “Empress of India” because the British once controlled a place that Alexander the Great himself tried and failed to conquer.
The end of Rome seems to cause an obsession because of the question “What if?” That glorious empire once called the Mediterranean mare nostrum—“our sea”—because it controlled every inch of its shores. What would the world look like if that had not fallen?
We seem to assume that that would have been a better place than our currently quite imperfect world. Whatever problems we now deal with, surely a Roman Empire that survived to this day would have solved them?
The Romans knew about steam engines. The key ingredients for an industrial revolution were all found within the borders of that empire. Instead of the fall and ensuing dark ages, Roman astronauts could have been planting a Roman eagle on the moon by the year 800.
The Roman Empire Fell. And That’s a Good Thing
Despite the curiosity of Liechtenstein, the Roman Empire fell. But there was a Roman Republic before there was an Empire. Founded in 509 BC following the overthrow of the Etruscan king Tarquin the Proud, this system of government would last for 482 years, until Caesar Augustus was granted the title Princeps by the Senate in 27 BC. This effectively ended the Republic as a true political entity. But Augustus intentionally maintained the institutions that had made up that Republic. The Senate remained, and two consuls were still appointed every year (albeit frequently as prizes at the whim of the emperor). This empire would last for 502 years, until the abdication by Romulus Augustulus.
But then something curious happened. The Gothic king Odoacer not only allowed the teenage Emperor Romulus to live in exile, he maintained the operation of both the Roman Senate and the annual appointment of two consuls. This policy was continued by Odoacer’s successor, Theodoric the Great. The last resident Roman consul was Decimus Theodorius Paulinus, consul in 534. Ostrogothic rule over Rome was then brought to an end with the invasion by the Eastern Emperor Justinian I, who did not continue to appoint consuls in Rome itself. There is evidence, however, that the Roman Senate lingered on in some form or another until the end of the 500s.
In some important ways, the Roman Republic survived the empire that had ended in 476. The Romans who served as consuls and in the Senate under Ostrogothic rule were apparently respected and consulted by their occupiers. These Romans were pragmatically using their influence to maintain the welfare of the Roman people.
The Roman Republic would later become the model for peoples who overthrew the monarchies under which they had lived. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 discussed several possible titles for the executive officer, such as magistrate, director, and even consul, before eventually settling on “president.” The names for the two legislative bodies, House of Representatives and Senate, also showed how deeply they were drawing upon models of the Roman Republic when framing the new government of the United States. And they wanted no hint of the Roman Empire.
"Rome… Is to Be a Republic Again"
These words, spoken by Marcus Aurelius to General Maximus in Ridley Scott’s 2000 movie Gladiator, were a stirring but inaccurate depiction of the political situation as that emperor was ending his life. There was no actual plan for Rome to again become a republic.
But the words of that movie ended up being quite true, just much later. The people who inhabit Rome today quite properly call themselves Romans. But they are not the only people who still proudly bear that name. The Romanians, who speak a modern dialect of Latin, also thus call themselves. Speakers of any modern Latin dialect, like Spanish or French, even if they don’t actually call themselves Romans, have an equal claim to Roman heritage.
Those Roman descendants who live in Spain have a constitutional monarchy (but it does have a Senate). Everyone else descended from those people who threw off the rule of Etruscan kings—whether Italians, Romanians, French, or Portuguese—once again live in republics. And of these, all but Portugal have a legislative body called a Senate. (Interestingly, all of those republics use the word “president” as the title of their highest executive officer.)
Outside the direct descendants of the Romans, there are over 100 countries today which have constitutions based on United States or French models, which were themselves consciously drawing upon the institutions of the Republic.
As Benjamin Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a woman reportedly asked him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” His reply was:
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
— James McHenry, Notes on the Federal Convention of 1787
At a time when our own republic was seriously threatened, Lincoln would state that the purpose of our Civil War was:
“…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
— Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863
The Roman Empire, for all of its nostalgic glory, was a brutal totalitarian system. The transfer of power was almost always either hereditary or violent. A government giving a voice to the people would never have organically evolved out of the Roman Empire. The dozens of republics around the world today instead emerged from under monarchy, in the exact same way that the Roman Republic was a rejection of Etruscan kings. I dare say, in a world where the original ancient Roman Empire never fell, such governments might never have existed.
Conclusion
Our own Constitution acknowledges in the Preamble that we are always striving for a “more perfect union.” Our Constitution provided checks and balances and ways to amend as necessary the Constitution itself. Perhaps that was one weakness of the Roman Republic. It was eventually overtaken and repurposed by exactly the dictatorships that it had once replaced.
The fall of the Roman Empire did not mark the end of the values and institutions that the Romans had first formed when they rejected Etruscan kings to form a Republic. The Empire people nostalgically pine for is insignificant compared to the enduring legacy of democratic principles the Republic inspired. The language of the Romans, far from being dead, has never been more alive in terms of those who speak modern dialects, and the vast amounts of Latin vocabulary borrowed into languages such as English.
The Roman Republic doesn’t just survive, it thrives across continents unknown to the Romans. Thanks to the Romans, we don’t have a totalitarian regime—we have a Republic, if we can keep it.
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