History of the Roman Empire founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, to be followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the "Five Good Emperors": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and the philosophically inclined Marcus Aurelius. In the view of the Greek historian Dio Cassius, a contemporary observer, the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 AD marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron"—a famous comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted
Decline of the Byzantine Empire fell into decline. After the Battle of Manzikert (1071) it lost control of Anatolia, and while the Komnenos dynasty restored a degree of stability in the 12th century with help from the First Crusade, the empire was captured and partitioned by the Crusaders themselves in the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Even after Byzantine rule was restored in 1261, the empire was now a shadow of its former self, and after the end of the Crusades, the empire had little to set against the rise of the Ottoman Empire during the late medieval period, and was eventually conquered with the Fall