After the Vandal sack of Rome the imperial throne became
the mere plaything of the army and its leaders. A German commander, named
Ricimer, set up and deposed four puppet emperors within five years. He was, in
fact, the real ruler of Italy at this time. After his death Orestes, another
German general, went a step beyond Ricimer's policy and placed his own son on
the throne of the Caesars. By a curious coincidence, this lad bore the name of
Romulus, legendary founder of Rome, and the nickname of Augustulus ("the
little Augustus"). The boy emperor reigned less than a year. The German
troops clamored for a third of the lands of Italy and, when their demand was
refused, proclaimed Odoacer king. The poor little emperor, Romulus Augustulus,
was sent to a villa near Naples, where he disappears from history.
POLITICAL SITUATION IN 476 A.D.
There was now no emperor in the West. To the men of that
time it seemed that East and West had been once more joined under a single ruler,
as in the days of Constantine. The emperors who reigned at Constantinople did
not relinquish their claims to be regarded as the rightful sovereigns in Italy
and Rome. Nevertheless, as an actual fact, Roman rule in the West was now all
but extinct. Odoacer, the head of the barbarians in Italy, ruled a kingdom as
independent as that of the Vandals in Africa or that of the Visigoths in Spain
and Gaul. The date 476 A.D. may therefore be chosen as marking, better than any
other, the overthrow of the Roman Empire in the West by the Germans.
