Questions with which this study began are intimately tied to the ways in which the two imperial traditions were understood in antiquity and how they have been perceived in the modern period. Why was a Roman Empire never firmly restored in the western Mediterranean following the deposition of the last western emperor in 476? And, more importantly, why did the several states that succeeded it in the west choose not to identify as Romans, as rightful descendants and perpetuators of the Roman name who could trace their ancestry back to such august figures as Aeneas and Romulus? This question becomes all the more necessary when one considers that, under similar circumstances, a Chinese empire thousands of miles away did reestablish itself in the late sixth century under the Sui 隨 and Tang 唐 dynasties. After nearly three hundred years of division, the empire was restored and the barbarians who had entered China eventually abandoned their respective barbarian identities for a “Chinese” one. Comparative historians are therefore presented with a similar set of circumstances that led to radically different outcomes. Western scholars, following in the footsteps of Edward Gibbon, have long been vexed by this question of how and why the Roman Empire, at least its western half, ultimately dissolved. Why did a great ecumenical empire that was, and still is, recognized as the source of so many fundamental ideas and institutions valued by modern western nations ultimately fail?