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For years, the well-disciplined Roman army held the barbarians of Germany back. Then in the third century A. D. the Roman soldiers were pulled back from the Rhine-Danube frontier to fight civil war in Italy. This left the Roman border open to attack. Gradually Germanic hunters and herders from the north began to overtake Roman lands in Greece and Gaul (later France). Then in 476 A. D. the Germanic general Odacer or Odovacar overthrew the last of the Roman Emperors, Augustulus Romulus. From then on the western part of the Empire was ruled by Germanic chieftain. Roads and bridges were left in disrepair and fields left untilled. Pirates and bandits made travel unsafe. Cities could not be maintained without goods from the farms, trade and business began to disappear. And Rome was no more in the West.
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Peter Arnott in his book, "The Byzantines and their World" gave a description of the condition in Italy at the time of the Roman invasion in the 6th century under the emperor Justinian I. The roads were in good repair, the cities were in good condition, the Ostrogothic King was just, and the citizenry were contented enough to not welcome their cousins from the East back with open arms. What caused the ultimate decline of Italy after the fall was the constant fighting between the Byzantines, and the Goths; and later the Lombard invasions.