00:00For over 1,000 years, Rome ruled the Western world.
00:03Then on September 4th, 476 AD, it ended.
00:07Not with a dramatic siege, not with a final battle.
00:10A barbarian general named Odoacer walked into Ravenna and forced the last Roman emperor to resign.
00:16That was it. The Roman Empire was over.
00:19By 476 AD, Rome was a shadow of itself.
00:22The Western Empire was bankrupt, fragmented, and ruled by a 16-year-old emperor named Romulus Augustellus.
00:28His father, Orestes, a Roman general, had installed him as emperor less than a year earlier.
00:33The real power? Barbarian mercenaries called Fodorati.
00:37They fought for Rome but weren't paid.
00:39They demanded land in Italy.
00:41Orestes refused. Bad decision.
00:44The mercenaries turned to their leader, a barbarian general named Odoacer.
00:47He killed Orestes in battle, marched to Ravenna, and confronted the teenage emperor.
00:52On September 4th, 476 AD, Romulus Augustellus abdicated.
00:56Odoacer didn't execute him like Romans would have.
01:00He gave him a pension of 6,000 gold coins and sent him to live with relatives in Campania.
01:05The boy disappeared from history.
01:07Odoacer became the first barbarian king of Italy.
01:10The Roman Senate approved him and sent the imperial crown to Constantinople,
01:14telling the eastern emperor they no longer needed a western emperor.
01:17Rome's laws continued.
01:19The Senate still met.
01:20Life went on.
01:21But politically, the western Roman Empire was finished.
01:24Odoacer ruled Italy for 17 years, until Theodoric the Ostrogoth killed him in 493 AD.
01:31September 4th, 476 AD marks the end of the ancient world and the beginning of the Middle Ages.
01:36No siege, no sack of Rome.
01:38Just a barbarian general and a teenage emperor.
01:41The Roman Empire that ruled for over 1,000 years ended with a forced resignation.
01:47History's greatest empire went out with a whimper, not a bang.
