EPILOGUE

Eutropius’ history concludes around the year 370. Emperor Valens, to whom this history was dedicated, met his end in the Roman disaster at Adrianople in 378. The empire in the West would hang on for almost another century. Finally, in the year 476, Odoacer the barbarian deposed the emperor Romulus Augustus, thus bringing the empire in the West to an end.

The empire in the East, the Byzantine Empire, would last for almost another thousand years. It came to an end in 1453 with the siege and capture of Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, by the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II.