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The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of Octavian (better known as Caesar Augustus). Although Rome accumulated a collection of tribute-states in the centuries before the autocracy of Augustus, the pre-Augustan state is conventionally described as the Roman Republic, since the structure of the power in that age was the one of a republic.
Augustus' reorganization survived mostly unchanged until the Diocletian reform at end of the 3rd century, which turned the empire into a tetrarchy. While the political form given by Diocletian was short-lived, it led to the division of the Empire into two halves. This allowed Roman rule to continue for two more centuries over the whole empire, although divided into the Eastern and the Western Roman Empire. The end of the Western Empire is traditionally set in 476, when Odovacar deposed the last Emperor and sent the Imperial insignia to Constantinople; henceforth he nominally ruled as dux on behalf of Constantinople. After another millennium, in 1453, the Eastern Empire, better known as the Byzantine Empire, fell to the Ottoman Turks.
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