The Last Legion from the publication of British historian Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th Century. At the time of his proclamation as Emperor, Romulus Augustus was 16, older than portrayed in the film. Upon being captured by Odoacer, the boy usurper was seen to be a victim of his father. He was spared and sent to live in comfortable retirement in southern Italy. There was a struggle for control of the Eastern Roman Empire at the time but the Emperor alluded to would probably have been Zeno (explicit in the novel). In
Decline of the Byzantine Empire Decline of the Byzantine Empire The Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire during the medieval period, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire) following the Sack of Constantinople (1204) slowly collapsed by Ottoman expansion. After crisis of the Gothic Wars it managed to re-establish itself in a golden age under the Justinian dynasty in the 6th century, and during the Early Middle Ages it continued to flourish even after the Muslim conquest of the Levant and the constant threat of Arab invasion. But in the High Middle Ages, under pressure from the Seljuk Empire, it suffered serious setbacks and