Germanic influence reigned in the Roman Empire from the end of the 4th century CE through the 5th. Germanic individuals took important posts in the government and the military, and Germanic tribes penetrated ever further into lands that had been Roman for centuries. The Western Roman Empire finally collapsed under these various pressures in 476 CE, chief among them the power of invading Germanic tribes. The Eastern Roman Empire, also referred to as the Byzantine Empire, however, was saved from this destruction by a tribe of Anatolian mountain folk, the Isaurians. Although the Roman populace resented the influence of the Isaurians as a foreign takeover and their epoch only lasted for approximately 40 years, the Isaurians changed the Byzantine world forever by surmounting the Germanic influence that had contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original content at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1346/the-isaurians-and-the-end-of-germanic-influence-in/.