<P> The Fall of the Western Roman Empire was the process of decline in the Western Roman Empire in which it failed to enforce its rule . The Fall is not the only unifying concept for these events; the period described as Late Antiquity emphasizes the cultural continuities throughout and beyond the political collapse . The loss of centralized political control over the West, and the lessened power of the East, are universally agreed, but the theme of decline has been taken to cover a much wider time span than the hundred years from 376 . For Cassius Dio, the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 CE marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron". Gibbon started his story in 98 and Theodor Mommsen regarded the whole of the imperial period as unworthy of inclusion in his Nobel Prize - winning History of Rome . Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke argue that the entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of institutions founded in republican times . As one convenient marker for the end, 476 has been used since Gibbon, but other markers include the Crisis of the Third Century, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 (or 405), the sack of Rome in 410, the death of Julius Nepos in 480, all the way to the Fall of New Rome in 1453 . </P> <P> Gibbon gave a classic formulation of reasons why the Fall happened . He began an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire . </P> <P> The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long . The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple . The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians . </P> <P> Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new ideas have emerged since . Historians still try to analyze the reasons for loss of political control over a vast territory (and, as a subsidiary theme, the reasons for the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire). Comparison has also been made with China after the end of the Han dynasty, which re-established unity under the Sui dynasty while the Mediterranean world remained politically disunited . </P>

Who caused the fall of the roman empire