[American Thinker] It is a common historical myth that Rome fell in 476 A.D. after Odoacer, King of the Goths, sacked the capital city and forced Romulus Augustus to abdicate his throne.The historical reality is rather different. Over the course of nearly a century, Germanic tribes — fleeing everything from war, famine and tribal politics — moved, unimpeded, into Roman territory. And the Empire died not by traditional invasion but by unchecked mass migration.
During this period, Rome was ruled by a disaffected elite. Rather than send out a legion or two to kick some culus and take nomen, they decided it would be easier and cheaper to just wave them in and grant them citizenship. In return for citizenship and farmland, entire clans of Angles, Burgundians, Franks, Ostrogoths, Vandals and Visigoths agreed to serve in Rome’s military forces. The fact that this upended centuries of Roman law and practice regarding citizenship didn’t cause the upper echelons of Roman society to get their subligaculum in a bunch. They figured, now that the barbares were citizens, they’d just start acting like Romans.
That was overly optimistic thinking on the part of the Romans. Assimilation tends to occur when people enter a new culture, in small numbers, and experience social pressure to blend into their new communities. Assimilation tends to make it easier to get along in one’s newly adopted homeland because it eliminates barriers to economic success, like being unable to speak the local lingua franca.
But Rome admitted too many Germanic tribesmen, too quickly. Suddenly Rome’s elite found themselves trying to persuade guys with names like Giselric the Plunderer or Hairuwulf the Skull-Crusher to slap on a toga and eat stuffed grape leaves while daintily reclining on a Roman lounge chair. As you may have guessed, that didn’t work out so well.
In the end, unchecked mass migration, bulk amnesty and pay-for-citizenship schemes didn’t rescue Rome, they killed it. Following about three centuries of political confusion, the remnants of the society spawned by the Eternal City morphed into a distinctly Germanic simulacrum of the Empire called the Holy Roman Empire.
If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, "Gee, that sounds kind of like the U.S. today!" you may be onto something.