In this essay in Time magazine, Edward J. Watts (professor of history at the University of California, San Diego) says,
Although everyone from schoolchildren to scholars now learn that the Western Roman Empire fell in 476, 5th century Romans did not see anything particularly special about Odoacer’s coup.
Instead, he says that Marcellinus invented the idea to help Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian justify invading Italy.
Marcellinus’s manufactured fall of Rome helped create conditions that permitted Justinian to launch a war that killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed the prosperity that Roman rule had once created in the West.
Thus, the actual fall of the Western Roman Empire is not in 476, but at some point in the 560s:
The Eastern Roman Empire had recovered Italy—and destroyed much of it in the process.
The Western Roman Empire had clearly fallen by the 560s.
Is this interpretation of the events a popular one?
As I recall, How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy and The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians by Peter Heather (which I read some time ago) both more or less proceeded with the premise that the Western Roman Empire fell in 476.
Tl; dr: Though it might be [added]:not by far the most popular one, I suppose it is still a valid and one of the popular interpretations on the relationship between Italy and the Eastern Empire from the late 5th and early 6th century (and also, I also weighed for this interpretation).
While the opinion on the role of Justinian in the final destruction of 'Roman' society in 6th Italy, together with the possible impact of the 'plague of Justinian' across the whole lands of former Roman Empire, is divided among the researchers (to give an example, compare Heather 2018 and O'Donnell 2008 for the former), very few researcher argue that the reign of Odoacer brought more serious/ revolutionary rupture than that of Gothic wars.
As for Marcellinus Comes, he also writes in the entry of 454 as following:
'Aetius, a great savior of the politics in West and the terror to King Attila, was killed in the palace by Emperor Valentinian, together with his friend Boethius. With him/ his death, the Western Empire (regnum Hesperium) has gone and hitherto not been able to be restored' (Maecellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 454, the Latin original is found in MGH AA 11 (1894), p. 86.).
Thus, I further agree that even Marcellinus might not regard the year 476 as a very special date for the fate of the (Western) Empire.
/u/Manofthedecade and I once summarized the political chaos surrounding the alleged 'end' of the Western Empire in 476 in: Why is Odoacer considered “the first king of Italy” and not just another Roman Emperor? What sets Odoacer apart from other general-turned-ruler of the western empire?
When Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476, there was nominally one more alive 'Western' Emperor, Julius Nepos (d. 480), though he took then refugee in Dalmatia (and I suppose his significance in the real politics had already been almost over so that I omitted the reference to him in my linked post).
On the other hand, Odoacer and the Senate in Rome apparently negotiated with Emperor Zeno of the East for his recognition as a de facto ruler in Italy on his behalf, though the emperor seemed to weigh both options (Odoacer and Julius Nepos) and avoid to offer a definitive answer to the proposal. The Senate in Rome and its members allied with Odoacer and Theoderic then, and played a key role in the civil administration during their reigns, at least until the latter's very last years (520s). First in the 520s (or around 520), in the eve of the thread of invasion from the Eastern Empire, they suffered from the alleged torn loyalty between the king of the Barbarians in Italy and the sole Emperor in the East. Until then, they had had almost no problem in acknowledge the former as a possibly legitimate representative of the latter. [Added]: As I also posted before in: What is the best current thinking on the role of the Western Roman Senate after the "fall" of the Roman Empire? , the decisive fall of the Senate aristocrats and their social-economic foundation generally dates back only to Gothic wars and the reign of Justinian.
As for the exact contemporary perception of the event of 476 in [former] Western Empire , we unfortunately don't have much contemporary evidence (the work of Sidonius Apollinaris is the only famous one).
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