Theodosian Code was transmitted with a supplement of additional edicts or 'novels' for the years 438-58.
The 'end of the western Empire' in 476 was an event that no one at the time much noticed. There was no
sudden collapse of Roman resistance against external barbarians. The barbarians had long been
providing the army, and all that had happened was that the man with the real power assumed the
ceremonial insignia as well. But the landed aristocrats of Italy and the Byzantine Emperors soon realized
that the Gothic kingdom of Theoderic was much less Roman than they liked. We hear complaints of the
appalling Gothic taste in music, of trousers and hair-grease. In the West the Church increasingly came to
be the vehicle of Roman culture and civic values. It is characteristic, for example, that the clergy did not
adopt barbarian dress at the time when their congregations were doing so, but continued to wear the
'Sunday best' of old Roman aristocrats-which we today think of as ecclesiastical vestments. It mattered
little or nothing that Rome as a city had long given place to Milan and then Ravenna as the western
Emperor's residence. Ravenna had the merit of being surrounded by marshes on the landward side, with
a good port at Classis. Behind its walls Emperors felt safe. From there Theoderic administered Italy, and
his palace chapel is now Sant' Apollinare Nuovo. There too in Justinian's time the exquisite church of
San Vitale was erected and adorned with incomparable mosaic, including portraits of Justinian and
Theodora.