Fall of the Western Roman Empire

The story

The last emperor was a boy

On 4 September AD 476, in Italy, a boy of about ten to fourteen was removed from the throne and sent away with a pension. His name was Romulus, and he had a curious nickname: Augustulus, that is, “little Augustus”. He was the last Roman emperor of the West. Many historians choose this day to mark the end of the ancient world. But how did it come to this?

To understand, we must remember that the Roman Empire, in the 5th century, was divided into two parts, with two emperors: one in the West, with his court in Italy, and one in the East, at Constantinople. The western part had been in crisis for some time: it had economic problems, internal struggles for power and the arrival of Germanic peoples who settled inside its borders. The emperors of the West were often weak and depended on the generals who commanded the troops.

The father, the son and the mercenaries

From 474 the emperor of the West was Julius Nepos, recognised by the Eastern emperors Leo I and then Zeno. In 475 Nepos put at the head of the army a general named Orestes, born in Pannonia, a region between present-day Hungary and the Balkans. Orestes, of barbarian origin but a Roman citizen, entered Ravenna on 28 August 475 and forced Nepos to flee to Dalmatia, to Salona. On 31 October of the same year he declared Nepos deposed and had his own son Romulus, who was then about ten to fourteen years old, named emperor.

The real leader was Orestes. Romulus decided nothing: he was an emperor in name. In his name gold coins were minted at Rome, Milan, Ravenna and in some cases also at Arles.

The problems came in 476. The mercenary troops, made up of Germanic warriors from peoples such as the Heruli, the Sciri and the Turcilingi, asked to receive lands in Italy as a reward. Orestes refused. The soldiers rebelled and chose as their leader a warrior of Germanic origin, perhaps a Scirian, Odoacer, who on 23 August 476 was acclaimed king by his men.

Orestes sought refuge at Ticinum, present-day Pavia, but Odoacer besieged it, took it and captured him. Orestes was then taken to Piacenza, where he died on Odoacer's orders. His brother Paul was also defeated.

The end of an empire (or perhaps not)

On 4 September 476 Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus. He did not kill him: he spared him, according to an ancient chronicle (the Anonymus Valesianus), because of his youth, and sent him to live in the Castellum Lucullanum, a residence in Campania which, according to the tradition, stood in the area of today's Castel dell'Ovo in Naples, with an annual pension of six thousand solidi (gold coins). After that moment Romulus disappears from the sources: we do not know how his life ended.

Odoacer did not take the title of emperor. He had the imperial insignia sent to Constantinople: he wrote, or had written, that there was no need for two emperors and that Italy could be entrusted to him. Zeno, the emperor of the East, recognised him as governor of Italy with the title of patrician, though without an official appointment. Zeno had never backed Romulus: for him the true emperor of the West was still Julius Nepos, who remained in Dalmatia. Nepos died in 480, killed by one of his officers, and then this claim too came to an end.

476, 480 or 486?

Historians do not all agree on the date of the “fall”. 476 is the most used: already in the 6th century a writer, Marcellinus Comes, considered the Western Empire ended in that year. Some point to 480, the year of the death of Nepos, because Odoacer had recognised his authority: but this is a minority view. Others think of 486, when the last kingdom of Roman type in Gaul, at Soissons, was annexed to the Franks. This view too is hard to defend.

Rather than a sudden “fall”, scholars today speak of a slow transformation. For many inhabitants of Italy life went on almost as before: the cities, the laws, the language. What changed was who held power. For this reason it is said that 476 is more a symbol than a sudden break. The Eastern Roman Empire, on the other hand, continued for almost a thousand years.