What happened in the 5th century AD? Why did the Roman identity that had weathered so many changes, that had persisted across so many centuries, a millennium by many measures, finally fall to these barbarians? The exact qualities of Roman multiculturalism during the High Empire and Republic explain its earlier robustness. The Roman Empire was diverse, the elite that oversaw it always either Latin or Greek speaking, at least notionally bound together by a common devotion to philosophy and religion, and united in fealty to a single emperor.