<P> The situation became more critical in 408, after the death of Stilicho, a general who tried to reunite the Empire and repel barbarian invasion in the early years of the 5th century . The professional field army collapsed . In 410, the Theodosian dynasty saw the Visigoths sack Rome . During the 5th century, the Western Empire experienced a significant reduction of its territory . The Vandals conquered North Africa, the Visigoths claimed Gaul, Hispania was taken by the Suebi, Britain was abandoned by the central government, and the Empire suffered further from the invasions of Attila, chief of the Huns . </P> <P> General Orestes refused to meet the demands of the barbarian "allies" who now formed the army, and tried to expel them from Italy . Unhappy with this, their chieftain Odoacer defeated and killed Orestes, invaded Ravenna and dethroned Romulus Augustus, son of Orestes . This event of 476, usually marks the end of Classical antiquity and beginning of the Middle Ages . </P> <P> The Roman noble and former emperor Julius Nepos continued to rule as emperor from Dalmatia even after the deposition of Romulus Augustus until his death in 480 . Some historians consider him to be the last emperor of the Western Empire instead of Romulus Augustus . </P> <P> After some 1200 years of independence and nearly 700 years as a great power, the rule of Rome in the West ended . Various reasons for Rome's fall have been proposed ever since, including loss of Republicanism, moral decay, military tyranny, class war, slavery, economic stagnation, environmental change, disease, the decline of the Roman race, as well as the inevitable ebb and flow that all civilizations experience . At the time many pagans argued that Christianity and the decline of traditional Roman religion were responsible; some rationalist thinkers of the modern era attribute the fall to a change from a martial to a more pacifist religion that lessened the number of available soldiers; while Christians such as Augustine of Hippo argued that the sinful nature of Roman society itself was to blame . </P>

Name of the first main group to settle around rome