The Roman Empire is a preferred template of collapse, a practice that ignores two important realities. First, the empire’s eastern part (the capital was removed from Rome to Constantinople in the year 330) continued to prosper (even to expand) for hundreds of years and it had survived almost exactly for another millennium after the last Western ruler was deposed in 476. Second, the manifold legacy of the Western empire had never disappeared, and after 800 ce it was resurrected in a major way in the West, providing an important political and cultural scaffolding for another 1,000 years of
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The Roman Empire didn't collapse so much as split and transfer
