The History of Rome - 178- Not With A Bang But A Whimper

Episode Date: April 30, 2012

In the last few years of the Western Empire a series of Emperors came and went. The cycle finally ended in 476 with the exile of Romulus Augustulus. 

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Hello. And welcome to the history of Rome. Episode 178, not with a bang, but a whimper. Last time, we left off with Anthemius, hold up in Rome, and Rickermere making all kinds of noises about ousting the Eastern appointed emperor and replacing him with someone more pliable. When Olibrius and his little diplomatic mission showed up from Constantinople in the spring of 472, those noises turned into direct action.

Hidden among the papers of one of the secretaries was a message from Leo to Anthemius directing his Western colleague to kill Rickamer and Elibrius in order to eliminate these two most obvious threats to Anthemius' rule. When Rickamer's men discovered the message, they showed it to their boss who showed it to Elibrius. Both were outraged and agreed that they should join forces and kill Anthemius before he could kill them. Their agreement was sealed right then and there when Ricker ordered his men to have.

Hail O'Lebrius as the new Augustus of the West. Now, this is never mentioned in the sources, but I can't help but wonder about the credibility of Rickamer and all this. I mean, think about it. Rickmer's men just so happened to find a written note from Leo that leaves O'Lebrus with no choice but to side with the virtual king of Italy instead of carrying out his original mission of brokering a piece. I mean, it might very well be true that Leo sent along handwritten murderous orders.

But it's not like it's implausible that Rickamer just made the whole thing up, you know. Word quickly reached Rome that a coup had begun down the road, and Anthemius rushed out of hiding to direct the gates of the city be shut and the defense is manned. He then sent messengers up the imperial post roads to Gaul to summon all the available forces there left under Imperial Command. But by the time the messengers arrived, whatever forces were left in Gaul had already begun to fracture. The available soldiers split between the Magister Militum, a general named Billimer, and a Burgundian chief named Gundabad, who just so happened to be Rickamer's nephew. Gundabad had at one point served as Magister Militum for Gaul, but at some point he had been replaced by Billimer, either following the near Civil War of the previous year, or right at this very moment. by which I mean that knowing he couldn't trust Gundabad,

Anthemius sent his plea for help to Billimer, officially making him Magister Militum in the same breath. Whichever way it went down, when the coup erupted, two forces wound up marching down from Gaul to help. One led by Billimer to reinforce Anthemius, and the other led by Gundabad to reinforce Rickimer and Elibrius. It is hard to see this ever really working out for Anthemius. He was, after all, a stranger in a strange land,

and most of the local nobility was solidly in Rickimer's camp. But the emperor did somehow manage to keep Rome shut tight, at least into the early summer. It seems pretty clear, though, that he was pinning all his hopes on reinforcements from Gaul, and morale within Rome was almost entirely based on the assumption that relief was on its way. When that relief showed up in July, though, the air really went out of Anthemius's sails. Billimer arrived with his troops from Gaul all right, but he was promptly defeated in battle by Rickamer's forces. This brief battle is interesting to us for two reasons. First, it pretty much ended any hope Anthemius had of escaping this thing with his life,

and second, it marks the first appearance in the historical record of Odoacer, who was a commander of some high-level bodyguards who had gone over to Rickamer back in the spring. With Billimer defeated, the entire citizen body of Rome essentially deserted Anthemius, as there was absolutely no reason for any one of them to suffer or die on his behalf. He was simply not a ship worth going down with. So as the gates of Rome were opened, and Rickamer's men came pouring in, once again Anthemius took refuge within a church. There is some disagreement as to whether he went back to St. Peter's, or whether he

hold up in Santa Maria of Tristivore, but it doesn't make much difference because it didn't do him any good. He was tracked down by a search party led by Gundabad, and when the fallen emperor was found, Gundabad paid very little attention to the sanctity of the church, and Themius was immediately beheaded. He was about 50 years old, and had been emperor for just over five years. There are now four emperors left, and Themius was the last who had any sort of talent or ability. With Anthemius dead and Elibrius now elevated in his place, the Italian nobility, who were already mostly with Rickamer, were now doubly happy because O'Lebrius, one of their own, was back in power. But the man who had to have been happiest of all was the Vandal King and

Ceric. He had been fighting and arguing and pleading and cajoling to get O'Lebrus on the throne for years, going all the way back to the fall of Evetus, and Rickimer's initial rise to power back in 458. Now he finally had what he wanted. The brother-in-law, of his daughter-in-law, now sat on the throne of the West. These were happy days for the Vandal King. Just a few years after it looked like he was going to be toppled from power by a massive invasion fleet, not only was he still standing, but he had finally gotten his way. Happy, happy days. But fate, oh fate, she has a wicked sense of humor.

First she giveth, and then she taketh away. But at first, she appeared to be truly in the giving sort of mood, at least from Gensarik's point of view. Because in August of 472, just a month after Anthemius's fall, Rickamer, the virtual king of Italy, keeled over dead. The historical diagnosis is most. massive hemorrhage. He was about 67 years old and had been the virtual king of Italy for 15 years, bridging the gap between Stilico and Odoacer. So from Gensaric's point of view,

this all could not be working out better. The only thing that would have stopped him from exerting a huge amount of influence over O'Lebrius was Rickamer, and now Rickamer was dead. The only thing that could possibly screw this up is if O'Lebrius were to like suddenly keel over dead himself. And what are the odds of that happening? What's that you say? Oh, come on, you've got to be kidding me. In late October or early November 472,

Elibrius died of Dropsy. Though no one seems to want to give me a solid birth date, he was maybe in his mid-forties when he died, and had been emperor for six months or three months, depending on whether you date his reign from his elevation by Rickermur or from the fall of Anthemius. Just like that, there are only three emperors left. Well, two, if you happen to be a partisan of Julius Nepos,

but mainstream history does not appear to be a partisan of Julius Nepos. When Rickamer died, he was immediately succeeded by his nephew Gundabad, who, after killing Anthemius in a church, had proven himself to be a man you did not want to mess around with. So when a Librius died a few months later, the power that had normally been reverting to Rickamer, instead reverted to Gundabad. The new virtual king of Italy pondered what he was going to do about the vacant throne over the winter of 472-473, and then in March, decided to elevate the unknown, well, unknown to us anyway, captain of the elite court bodyguard, Glycarius, about whom we know next to nothing before he becomes emperor in March of 473. Glycarius'es is elevated.

like I should note the elevation of Olibrius the year before, was never recognized in the east. For Leo, Mthemius had been the legitimate emperor of the West, and everything that had happened since his death amounted to illegal usurpation. Had Olibrius lived, Leo would have certainly tried to toss him out and replace him with another eastern candidate. But Elibrius died before Leo could even begin to plan a counter-revolution, so it was left to glyphiolius. vicarious to deal with the wrath of Constantinople. Well, not exactly the wrath of Constantinople. Though the East had recovered somewhat from its debacle in North Africa, I doubt Leo had any interest in sending another army off to the West.

For example, it probably would have been political suicide. So instead, he got in touch with the aforementioned Julius Nepos and talked him into mounting an expedition to oust the usurpers in Italy. Nepos was the nephew of the General Marcellinus, and he had inherited his uncle's quasi-independent territory of Dalmatia, and as such had access to a good number of Hun and Goth mercenaries. Leo essentially told Nepos that Constantinople was prepared to recognize him as Emperor of the West, should he decide to go seize the throne from Glycarius. This sounded like a pretty good deal to Nepos, so he started to prepare for an invasion.

But Julius Nepos's invasion was not the only invasion glycarius and Gundabad had to contend with. Up in Gaul, the Goth king Uruk, was getting even more ambitious, and it appears that he had designed on perhaps sweeping down and seizing northern Italy for himself. At the same time, another goth king named Vitimer, who ran a little autonomous kingdom between the Danube and Dalmatia, also appears to have been considering making a run at Italy, which brings me to a point that I probably should have made a long time ago, but I didn't for decent reasons, but eventually became a little ridiculous.

Back during the initial run-up to the Battle of Adrianople, we distinguish between the Tervingai and Grutungi branches of the Goth Nation. But ever since then, it's just sort of been goth this and goth that. This was mostly because, for the last century, we've been dealing exclusively with Alarix Goths, the Tervingi, whose descendants are now firmly established in Gaul. So there was no need to make any distinction. But what about that most famous of goth distinctions? If you listen to the history of Rome, you would never know that there was something called a Visigoth and something called an Ostrogoth. So, what is an ostracoth and what is a

Visigoth. Well, at first, I avoided the terminology because it was not invented until way later and is often anachronistically misapplied to the groups that we've been dealing with, and I didn't want to get caught in the trap. But by this point, the late four hundreds, even if the labels weren't contemporaneously used, everyone agrees that we call these guys of Visigoths and those guys ostracoths. So who were they? Well, essentially, all of them. Visigoth means is Western goth, and all Ostrogoth means is Eastern Goth. So Alarix Goths, who had moved into Italy and then up into Gaul, became known as the Visigoths. The Goths who stayed behind, straddling the Danube and contending with the Huns, became known as the Austrogoths.

So, for example, history books often speak of the Visigoth sack of Rome in 410, and the Austrogoth kingdom that was established in Italy following the fall of the Western Empire. In terms of reality, the signifiers mean very little. But in terms of understanding history and keeping things straight in your head, Visigoth and Ostrogoth is actually a fairly important distinction. So now you know. What that means is that up in Gaul, the Visigoth king Eurich was likely planning an invasion of Italy. And over south of the Danube, his counterpart, the Ossigoth.

Ostrogoth, King Vitimer, was contemplating the same thing. The great fear down in Ravenna, where Glycarius had taken up residence, was that the two great branches of the Goth nation would join forces and crush what was left of the empire. Possibly to Glycarius' great credit, though, or maybe it was just luck, not only did the two goth branches not link up, but neither wound up invading Italy. This may have been the work of Gundabad, though, who right around this same time returned to Gaul to attend to some family business.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the ethnic Burgundian used his contacts within the neighboring Visigoth community to secure a peace. But neither Gundabad nor Glycarius was able to do anything about Julius Nepos, who was not going to be deterred by anything unless his patron Leo died and threw Constantinople's backing of the adventure into doubt. but that's not going to happen. Oh, you've got to be kidding me. In January of 474, Leo the Thracian died. He was 74 years old and had been Emperor of the East for 17 years. When he died, he was officially succeeded by his grandson Leo II.

But since the new emperor was maybe only six years old, power really wound up in the hands of Leo the first son-in-law and Leo II's father, the Issyrian general, Zeno. Zeno had risen to prominence as part of Emperor Leo's push to get out from under the domination of Aspar and the Germanic commanders who had dominated the court of Constantinople. Leo had used the debacle in North Africa, among other things, as an excuse to turn on the man who had made him emperor all those years ago, and in 471, Aspar and his son Ardabur were executed. Zeno, meanwhile, was a leading member of Leo's new favorite clique of military officers, and he was married to the emperor's daughter in 466.

When Aspar fell, Zeno stepped into his place. When Leo died, Zeno became co-emperor along with his son Leo II. When Leo II died that November, Zeno claimed imperial power for himself. The official report says that Leo II died of natural causes, but conspiracy theories abound about who really killed the boy, and I, of course, tend to believe that Livya did it. Fortunately for Julius Nepos, Zeno seemed amenable to the idea of ousting glycarious and backing Neppo's claim to the throne. After all, as Leo's chief military advisor, Zeno had almost certainly come up with the idea himself.

So in June of 474, Julius Nepos and his army sailed from Dalmatia, down around the Italian peninsula, and landed at the mouth of the tiber, probably on the right bank, at the Imperial port of Portis. Glacarius appears to have been alerted to the fact that Nepos was sailing around Italy, and he rushed down to Rome to meet him. Whether he intended to offer up any resistance is an open question, but when Julius Nepos docked, it was immediately obvious that his forces were much stronger than anything Glycarius had at his disposal.

As I said, Gondabad was still up in Gaul while all this was happening, leaving Glycarius to deal with the invasion by himself. It is also possible that he rushed down to Rome to take the pulse of the Senate and see where they stood. Were they disposed to back him, or were they abandoned him for the newcomer? With the answer appearing to be back the newcomer, Glycarius gave it up. When Nepos arrived, Glycarius was there to meet him, and he surrendered without so much as a sword being drawn. Glycarius was in his mid-50s, and had been emperor for just over a year.

Nepos, for his part, took this bloodless victory well, and instead of killing Glycarius, he followed the lead of Rickermar and Majorian, and made Glycarius a bishop. Specifically, the bishop of Salona, the major port city in Nepos' home province of Dalmatia, which is more famous to students of Roman history, as the city where Diocletian retired to following his abdication in 305. With Glycarius out of the picture, there are now just two emperors left, unless you believe Julius Nepos, and lots of good people think that we really ought to believe Julius Nepos. After being accepted as emperor by the Senate, Nepos set to work laying the foundation for his long and glorious rule. His first order of business was officially firing Gundabad and elevating a Gallic native named Eccius to the rank of Magister Militum.

Echius's main claim to fame was that he was the son of Avitus, and if Julius was going to ever have any hope of recovering Gaul, he was going to need the support of the Gallic Rural. Romano nobility. Since most of them still carried a torch for Evetus, Evitas's son was brought into the administration. With Ectecius almost certainly doing the negotiating, Julius Nepos got his reign off to a fine start by working out a land-swap peace deal with Eurik and the Visigoths. In exchange for the Gothic withdrawal from Provence, the Romans would grant them title to lands further north and west that they had no hope of reclaiming

right now anyway. There's some disagreement in the historical record about how and why this plan was approved, with some blaming Ecteus for blundering away territory. But the general consensus seems to be that this was Nepos' conscious plan from the start, to maintain a geographically contiguous territory and worry about unreachable pockets of Roman territory, like the demand of Suassan later. The chroniclers like Jordanis, who tend to blame Ecteus's blundering, use that alleged blundering to explain the rise of Orestes. Because in early 475, Orestes was suddenly and inexplicably made Magister Militum at Ecteus' expense.

Orestes was a soldier and politician of Germanic descent, who had once upon a time been attached to Attila the Huns court, serving as a secretary and diplomat for the Hun king. When the Huns sent invoice to Constantinople to demand more indemnity payments, you can be sure that Arrestes was on at least a few of those missions. After Hun Unity was shattered after the death of Attila in the 450s, Arrestes appears to have drifted into the western orbit, and by the 470s, somehow he had become a prominent member of the Western establishment. He was also the father of a young boy named Romulus.

The exact reasons for his elevation are obscure. Either it was indeed because Echdicius had freelanced the deal with the Goths over Nepos's head, and so he got the big ugly axe. But another explanation is that the elevation of a restes was engineered by the Senate, who, though they technically acquiesced to Nepos's rule when he had a very strong army in their backyard, were now trying to undermine him. In this telling, Ectecus was not recalled to Italy because he was being fired. He was recalled to Italy to help Nepos fend off the possible attack by the suddenly emboldened

Arrestes. Whichever it was, in mid-475, Arrestes organized a revolt against Nepos in Rome. Whether the emperor was in Ravenna at the time, or whether he just fled there when he found out what Arrestes was up to is unknown. But it seems pretty clear that Arrestes marched north at the head of some kind of army, and Nepos, fearing for his life, boarded a ship and fled to Dalmatia. Though he would never relinquish his claim to power, he would remain in Dalmatia as a quasi-private citizen until he was finally killed in 480. During the five years he spent in Salona in exile, his personal bishop was none other than the deposed Glycarius, which I believe marks only the second

time that two former emperors were able to get together and just kind of shoot the breeze. The first, being the brief Imperial Summit attended by both Diocletian and Maximian in 308, after the tetrarchy started to break down. When Arrestes arrived in Ravenna and found that Julius Nepos had flown the coup, he decided to take the logical step and seize power. But probably due to his Germanic extraction, and old connections to Attila the Hun, Arrestes didn't presume to claim the throne for himself. Although, that said, no one really knows why Arrestes did not proclaim himself emperor,

or why his son would have been more acceptable. For example, Gibbon simply states that it was, quote, for some secret motive, unquote, whatever those secret motives were, on October the 31st, 475, 14 or 15-year-old Romulus Augustulus, the little Augustus, was proclaimed emperor in Ravenna. So now you can see why Julius Nepos keeps raising a stink about how he's really the last emperor of the Western Empire. He had the backing of Constantinople. After marrying one of Leo's nieces, he had ties to the Eastern Imperial family.

He had been driven off by an illegal coup led by some barbarian. secretary of Attila the Hun. His successor was a 14-year-old puppet. So why does he get to be the last Emperor of the West and not me? I'll still be claiming Imperial Authority until they kill me in 480. Shouldn't the fall of the West at least be linked to my death? Not the exile of some anonymous kid? Well, unfortunately, that's not the way history remembers it, my friend, but your objections are duly noted for the record. Julius Nepos was in his mid-40s, and he had been to emperor for just about a year, though he would maintain his claim to the throne for another four years until he was murdered

in 480. Orestes settled into Ravenna to lay the groundwork for his own long and glorious rule, but unlike Nepos, who actually got off to a fairly decent start, Orestes started screwing things up right off the bat. Shortly after seizing power, the new puppet master of Italy was approached by a group of federated soldiers who demanded what soldiers had been demanding from time immemorial, better pay and more land. Orestes, feeling awfully secure in his position for absolutely no good reason, refused to grant any sort of concessions. So the soldiers went to their captain, who just so happened to be Odoacer, and asked him to please do something. about this joker calling the shots in Ravenna.

Odoacer agreed to do something about him, all right? In August of 476, Odoacer told him that if they wanted, he would lead them in revolt against Arrestes, that he would rid them of their problem, and if all went well, rid them of haughty imperial bureaucrats forever. Five days later, Odoacer marched on Ravenna and caught Arrestes near Piachenza. The little snake was trying to sneak away. He was executed immediately. A few days later, Odoacer entered Ravenna, killed Oresti's brother, occupied the imperial palace, and tracked down young Romulus Augustulus.

Taking pity on the boy, who was, after all, just a puppet of his father, Odoacer decided to let the boy live, and he exiled him down to an estate in Campania. Romulus Augustulus was maybe 15 or 16 years old, and he was emperor for 10 months. So, no, the Western Empire did not exactly go out with a bang. After deposing the boy emperor, Odoacer collected up the Imperial Regalia, put it in a package bound for Constantinople with a note for the Emperor Zeno. There is no longer any need for separate empires. A single emperor is enough. I will rule Italy in your name, but don't bother sending any imperial replacements.

With that, the line of Western emperors was truly broken. Yes, yes, Julius Nepos, I hear you wailing over there, but did you ever make it back to Italy? Were you ever able to rest back control of your empire from Odoacer? No? Well, okay, then. You and Glycarius go back to playing backgammon, or whatever it is that you do. So that's it, right? I mean, here we are.

Today is someday. It is 476 AD, and Romulus Augustulus, last emperor of the Western Empire, has just been exiled. The History of Rome podcast, as once upon a time defined by me, is over. But it wouldn't be very nice of me to just go off and leave you like that. So we will be back next week. for one final episode. All good stories have an epilogue, so the history of Rome shall too have an epilogue. A chance to wrap things up, ponder all the stuff that comes after 476 that we didn't get to,

wonder aloud why the West fell but the East kept right on trucking, and gaze in awe at the legacy of the Roman Empire. Are we going to stumble upon a grand unified theory of Roman history? I doubt it, but it will be good to digest. what we've all been through and what will come next. So I will see you next week for the final episode of the history of Rome. Unless, of course, we have a baby in the next seven days, in which case, see you.