User:Iazyges/WRE format
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In historiography, the Western Roman Empire consists of the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any one time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court, coequal with that administering the eastern half. Both "Western Roman Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" (or "Byzantine Empire") are modern terms describing de facto independent entities; however, at no point did the Romans consider the Empire split into two, but rather considered it a single state governed by two separate Imperial courts out of administrative expediency, a system of government known as a diarchy.
Roman Empire [Senatus Populusque Romanus] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) [Imperium Romanum] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)a | |
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285–476/480b | |
Status | Western division of the Roman Empire (285–480)a |
Capital | Mediolanum (286–402) Ravenna (402–476) |
Common languages | Latin (official) Regional / local languages |
Religion | Roman religion until 4th century Christianity (state church) after 380 |
Government | Autocracy, Tetrarchy (293–313) |
Notable emperors | |
• 286–305 | Maximian |
• 324–337 | Constantine I |
• 364–375 | Valentinian I |
• 392–395 | Theodosius I |
• 395–423 | Honorius |
• 457–461 | Majorian |
• 474–480 | Julius Nepos |
Consul | |
• 396 | Flavius Honorius Augustus |
• 480 | Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius |
• 534 | Decius Paulinusc |
Legislature | Roman Senate |
Historical era | Late Antiquity |
• Division of Diocletian | 285 |
• Division after Constantine I | 337 |
• Division by Valentinian I | 364 |
• Division after Theodosius I | 395 |
• Deposition of Romulus Augustulus | 4 September 476 |
• Murder of Julius Nepos | 25 April 480 |
Area | |
395[1] | 2,000,000 km2 (770,000 sq mi) |
Currency | Roman currency |
Today part of | |
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The view that the Empire was impossible to govern by one emperor was established by Diocletian following the disastrous civil wars and disintegration of the Crisis of the 3rd century, and was instituted in Roman law by his introduction of the Tetrarchy in AD 285, a form of government which was legally to endure in one form or another for centuries. There being more than one emperor at a time was not an unknown concept in the empire, as there had been multiple points in the past where more than one emperor ruled jointly.
The Western Roman Empire existed intermittently in several periods between the 3rd and 5th centuries, after Diocletian's Tetrarchy and the reunifications associated with Constantine the Great and Julian the Apostate (331/2–363). Theodosius I divided the Empire upon his death (in 395) between his two sons. Finally, eighty-five years later in AD 480, Zeno of the Eastern Empire recognized the reality of the Western Empire's reduced domain—effective central control had ceased to exist even in the Italian Peninsula—after the deposition of Romulus Augustus and the subsequent death of Julius Nepos, and therefore abolished the Western court and proclaimed himself the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.
The rise of Odoacer of the Foederati to rule over Italy in 476 was popularized by eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon as a demarcating event for the end of the Western Empire and is sometimes used to mark the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Imperial rule was reimposed in large parts of the West, including North Africa, Italy and parts of Hispania, in the sixth century by the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire under Emperor Justinian I. Political upheaval in the East Roman heartlands made efforts to retain control of these territories difficult and they were gradually lost, this time for good.
Though the Eastern Empire retained territories in the south of Italy until the 11th century, the influence that the Empire had over Western Europe had diminished significantly with the papal coronation of the Frankish king Charlemagne as "Roman Emperor" in 800 AD. His imperial line would come to evolve into the Holy Roman Empire, a revival of the imperial title in the West but in no meaningful sense an extension of Roman traditions or institutions. The Great Schism of 1054 between the churches of Rome and Constantinople further diminished the authority the Emperor in Constantinople could hope to bring forth in the west.