Why did the East survive when the Western Empire fell?

The short answer

• Africa and the army. The western army depended on the combined revenues of Africa, Gaul, Spain and Italy. One estimate puts the cost of a late Roman soldier at roughly the taxes of five peasant households. Britain was lost in 410; Sueves and Vandals entered Spain after 409, with much of it lost by the 420s; Aquitaine was ceded to the Visigoths in 418; and northern Gaul became autonomous. Africa fell in 439. Revenue may then have been halved, although the threats remained. Grants of land to federates answered an immediate need for payment at the cost of reducing the taxable base again.
• Federate soldiers and their patrons. Western armies in the 450s brought Gothic, Hunnic, Burgundian and other forces together under Roman patrons. Their coalition could be effective, as the Catalaunian Fields showed, but its members expected support and rewards. In 476 soldiers sought land in place of pay, and Odoacer removed a government unable to satisfy them. The relationship recalls the client armies of Chapter 4: the ties that helped commanders assemble forces also gave soldiers’ demands political force.
• The eastern choice. The East had its own defense to finance. Constantinople paid gold to Attila, potentially buying relief more cheaply than war, and fortified the Theodosian Walls. Yet the joint expedition of 468 shows that it also committed vast resources to recovering Africa. After the fleet was destroyed at Cape Bon, it mounted no comparable attempt. The surviving eastern tax base and administration later supported Justinian’s brief reconquests of Africa and Italy, as well as the preservation of Roman law. The division marked in 395 had become a division between a surviving eastern core and a West the East could no longer restore at that cost.
• Loyalty and protection. Odoacer met no popular rising or senatorial resistance in 476, and no province is recorded begging for reunion. Different groups had reasons to accept a new ruler. Aristocrats could retain estates and serve kings who governed through Roman law, officials and the church. Salvian reported around 440 that some poor Romans went to the Goths to escape Roman tax collectors. He wrote as a moral critic, not a pollster; still, his account raises a question about loyalty to a government that continued to demand taxes after it had ceased to protect its subjects.

What it changed

Successor kingdoms. The western provinces became kingdoms governed by Visigoths in Spain, Franks in Gaul, Vandals in Africa and Ostrogoths in Italy. These military elites ruled Roman populations and relied on established landowners, bishops and Latin law. Their kingdoms followed different courses, but the settlements of 418–511 helped shape later western Europe; the Frankish kingdom contributed to the formation of France. The end of western imperial government opened the histories of these successor states.

Bishops and cities. Bishops possessed literacy, resources and networks organized through Roman dioceses. As imperial administration weakened, cities could look to them for food, ransom, justice and records. The bishop of Rome already claimed primacy, and no western emperor now resided in the city. The medieval papacy developed over a longer period, but the church acquired responsibilities as well as influence in the changing order. Chapter 12 follows that development.

Roman rule in the East. In 476 Constantinople retained an emperor, Roman administration and law, Greek learning and an economy using the gold solidus. Justinian’s codification in 529–534 became an important ancestor of later civil-law systems. The imperial line continued until 1204, and a Roman empire endured in the East for centuries after 476. Its people understood themselves as Romans, even as Greek became central to their political culture. The final map shows where imperial Rome continued.