THE ROMAN EMPIRE **** If you say that the Roman Empire ended with the sacking of Rome in A.D. 410 by the Visigoths, then Rome endured for 1,162, years. ****. If you say it lasted until the defeat of the last Roman emperor at Constantinople in 1453, then it endured for 2,206 years. In 500 BC, Rome was a minor city-state on the Italian peninsula. By 200 BC, the Roman Republic had conquered Italy, and over the following two centuries it conquered Greece and Spain, the North African coast, much of t