Empire · approximate395 CE – 476 CE · 81 years
Western Roman Empire
The largest and longest-lived Mediterranean empire — and the model every later European state quoted.
What it was
At its peak under Trajan in 117 CE, Rome ruled from Britain to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine to the Sahara. The empire was held together by roads, citizenship law, professional legions, and a remarkably durable Latin–Greek bureaucracy that outlived even the western half by a thousand years in Byzantium.
Why it mattered
Roman law, the calendar, the alphabet, and the very idea of a continent-spanning state shaped everything from medieval canon law to the U.S. Senate.
From Wikipedia
In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the Roman Empire's western provinces collectively during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. Particularly during the period from AD 395 to 476, there were separate, coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire into western and eastern provinces with a distinct imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were de facto independent; contemporary Romans did not consider the Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts for administrative purposes. The Western Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna disappeared by 554, at the end of Justinian's Gothic War.
Wikipedia: Western Roman Empire·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Dashed borders mark empires whose extent we can date but whose precise frontiers are contested or undocumented.
- SOURCEreconstructed from Natural Earth country boundaries
- DETAILreconstructed-clipped-country
- SNAPSHOT400 CE
- POLITY TYPEstate
Wars of this empire37
Conflicts whose belligerents name this polity, best-documented first.
- Vandal Conquest of North Africa429–439 CEMajor conflict
- Major conflict
- Major conflict
- Attila's Balkan campaigns441–447 CESignificant
- Battle of Theveste398 CERegional
- Battle of Asta402 CERegional
- Battle of Pollentia402 CERegional
- Battle of Verona403 CERegional
- Battle of Ostia409 CERegional
- Battle of Arles411 CERegional
- Battle of Massilia413 CERegional
- Battle of Tarraco422 CERegional
- Battle of Arles425 CERegional
- Battle of Fidenae426 CERegional
- Battle of Hippo Regius430 CERegional
- Battle of Helena, France431 CERegional
- Battle of Arles435 CERegional
- Regional
- Battle of Toulouse439 CERegional
- Battle of Sirmium441 CERegional
- Battle of Asemus443 CERegional
- Battle of Chersonesus443 CERegional
- Battle of Constantinople443 CERegional
- Battle of Utus447 CERegional
+ 13 more in the atlas.
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 395 CE and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: Western Roman Empire (395 CE – 476 CE). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/western-roman-empire · Sources & methodology