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
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire the Huns as deeply significant in the fall of the Western Empire long before they themselves became a military threat to the Empire. He postulates that the Hunnic expansion caused unprecedented immigration in 376 and 406 by barbarian groupings who had become significantly more politically and militarily capable than in previous eras. This impacted an empire already at maximum stretch due to the Sassanid pressure. Essentially he argues that the external pressures of 376–470 could have brought the Western Empire down at any point in its history. He disputes Gibbon's contention that Christianity and moral decay led to the decline.