Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire The causes and mechanisms of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire are a historical theme that was introduced by historian Edward Gibbon in his 1776 book "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". He started an ongoing historiographical discussion about what caused the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the reduced power of the remaining Eastern Empire, in the 4th–5th centuries. Gibbon was not the first to speculate on why the Empire collapsed, but he was the first to give a well-researched and well-referenced account.
History of the Constitution of the Roman Empire History of the Constitution of the Roman Empire The history of the constitution of the Roman Empire begins with the establishment of the Principate in 27 BC and is considered to conclude with the abolition of that constitutional structure in favour of the Dominate at Diocletian's accession in AD 284. <onlyinclude> The Roman Empire's constitution emerged as a transformation of the late Roman Republic's constitution, utilising various late Republican precedents, to legitimise the granting of incredible legal powers to one man and the centralisation of legal powers into bodies which that man controlled. The creation of the Principate and the