The Empire

Ceasar’s assassination by Republican nobles on March 15, 44 BC, was followed by Cicero’s attempt to restore the old Republican constitution, but Mark Antony, who had been appointed consul with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Caesar’s grandnephew, the youthful Octavian, later Rmperor Augustus, to form the second triumvirate. Octavian received the title of Augustus in 27 BC and began the new regime by an apparent restoration of the Republic, with himself as princeps, or chief citizen. During the last 80 years of the Western Roman Empire the provinces, drained by taxes levied for the support of the army and the bureacracy, were visited by internal war and by barbarian invasions. At first the policy of conciliating the invader with military commands and administrative offices succeded. Gradually, however, the barbarians estublished in the east began to aim at conquest in the west, and Alaric I, king of the Visigoths, first occupied illyricum, whence he ravaged Greece. In 410 he captured and sacked Rome, but died soon after. His successor, Ataulf(r. 410-15), drew off the Visigoths to Gaul, and in 419 a succeeding king, Wallia, received formal permission from Honorius to settle in southwestern Gaul, where at Toulouse he founded the Visigothic dynasty.The last Western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was overthrown by the mercenary Herulian leader Odoacer(c.435-93),who was proclaimed king of Italy by his troops. The history of Rome would subsequently merge with that of the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, and Italy. For the history of the Eastern Empire from the time of Theodosius the Great.