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From 600 CE, shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, there was a major influx of individuals from Eastern Europe.

Honorary consuls date back at least to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, when Greece, China, India and countries in the Middle East appointed volunteer foreign liaisons to expand commerce.

The lack of looting and the unburied bodies suggest that the fort was abandoned after the massacre, which took place during the turmoil that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The town enjoyed a brief heyday in the fifth century as the capital of the Western Roman Empire, protected by marshland and neighboring the powerful port of Classe.

For more than a thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantines safeguarded Roman, and hence by extension, Western, culture.