The End of the Western Roman Empire
When the “Fall of Rome” is discussed, it evokes an image of ruthless, pillaging barbarians sacking the Eternal City and destroying any traces of Roman government and civilization. But the reality is far less dramatic.
There is no clear end to the Roman Empire, just a convention that draws a line in the gradual loss of control of the imperial government over its domains. At some point, the other areas of Rome carried on as they always had, but without answering to an emperor in Rome.
This line is the abdication of the child emperor Romulus Augustus in 476 AD and the beginning of the reign of the Ostrogoth and Roman officer Odoacer as King of Italy.
Odoacer lived in two different worlds. In one, he was a member of the Roman military establishment. In another, he was a leader of the foederati, legions from Germanic tribes who had settled on the outskirts of the empire. They provided military service and were garrisoned in Italy.
After generations of service, the foederati had grown tired of this arrangement and sought their own lands in Italy. They found the crowning of a boy emperor to be the perfect opportunity.
At this point, the Roman emperor was essentially a figurehead serving at the pleasure of Rome’s top military commander, the Magister militum. Due to the large presence of Germanic tribes in the Roman military, this position had been dominated for 100 years by various Germanic tribes, including the Vandals, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogroths.
However, nominally a Roman emperor still ruled, and on paper, he still held authority over the remaining provinces, though they were also dominated by “barbarian” tribesmen. Odoacer took advantage of this tenuous situation.
In 472 a Visigothic magister militium named Ricimer killed the emperor and installed the two subsequent emperors as puppets. He installed his nephew as a King of the Burgundians, independent of Rome, and used the military power of that position to be the power behind the Roman emperor.
Eventually, a Roman officer named Julius Nepos led an army from Dalmatia with the support of the Eastern Roman emperor to invade Italy and install himself as emperor in 474. He appointed a Pannonian general named Orestes as the magister militium, who in turn appointed Odoacer as head of the foederati.
Part of Emporer Nepos’ task was reducing upstart Germanic tribes such as the Franks and Burgundians back into vassals to reassert the crumbling authority of the Western Roman Empire. His campaigns in Gaul were the perfect opportunity for Orestes to march on Ravenna and successfully stage yet another coup.
With the nominal backing of the foedarti, Orestes installed his teenage son as emperor Augustus Romulus. However, the boy king commanded no power himself, and his father’s role was supported by the Germanic foedarti led by Odoacer.
Odoacer decided to formalize this de facto arrangement. Odoacer himself marched on Ravenna in 476 and deposed the Roman emperor for the final time. This was done with the tacit support of the Roman Senate. They knew that a boy king controlled by an usurper could not maintain the authority to seize back the empire.
They didn’t know that, from a historical perspective, they had signed that empire’s death warrant. With no emperor, the idea of a Roman Empire would fade away.
Odoacer proclaimed himself King of Italy and, within his domains, assumed the former role of the emperor. He gave lands to the foederati and consolidated his alliance with the Senate by appointing Senators to key positions. Where he could, he reasserted control in former Roman provinces, such as Dalmatia and Sicily.
He paid tribute to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno, but his independent streak and encroachment on the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire made him a target for yet another coup. Zeno enlisted Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, to invade and overthrow Odoacer in exchange for control of the Italian peninsula.
At the Battle of Adda River, Theodoric’s forces would take the initiative in what would be a three-year civil war that would see Ravenna sieged for nearly the entire duration. Eventually, Odoacer sued for peace. However, he would be murdered by Theodoric in 493 during a banquet ostensibly held to celebrate a peace treaty between the two leaders, leaving Theodoric as sole ruler of Italy.
From then on, control of the remnants of the Roman Empire was no longer in the hands of people who identified as Romans, but people who identified with one of many Germanic tribes that had seized control of the different regions of the empire.
Effectively, the Roman Empire had ceased to exist as a political entity.