4 September – On this day

Romulus Augustulus, the 16 year old last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was forced to abdicatewhen Odoacer proclaimed himself “King of Italy”, thus ending the Western Roman Empire. The map below shows the areas that remained directly under Roman control after Augustulus’ abdication.

640px-Roman-Empire_477ad

Image credits:

“Roman-Empire 477ad” by Thomas Lessman – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roman-Empire_477ad.jpg#/media/File:Roman-Empire_477ad.jpg