Deposition of Romulus Augustulus

Deposition of
Romulus Augustulus

Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor, surrenders the crown to Odoacer (1880 illustration).
Date	476 AD
Location	Ravenna, Italy
Participants	Odoacer Flavius Orestes Romulus Augustulus Zeno Julius Nepos Theodoric the Great
Outcome	The overthrow of Romulus Augustulus, considered to have been the final Western Roman Emperor.

Odoacer's deposition of Romulus Augustulus, occurring in 476 AD, marked the end of the period during which Western Roman Emperors exercised sovereignty, although Julius Nepos exercised control over Dalmatia until 480. Romulus Augustulus was a 16-year-old minor at the time.

Ancient Rome had twice been submitted to sack in the fifth century A.D., after a lengthy decline which followed more than a millennium of dominance, first over central Italy and then over an empire that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea. First, in 410, a Visigothic army under the command of Alaric besieged, entered, and looted the city, and in 455, the Vandals attacked Rome after their king, Genseric, believing himself to have been snubbed by an usurper emperor, voided a peace treaty. Still the seat of the Roman Senate, and a gem of the Western Empire, Rome was not what it had once been – the emperors had moved their courts to the more secure Ravenna in the wake of the two pillages and the Hun incursions.

The Vandals were allowed to enter the city after promising the Pope to spare its citizens, but they carried off many of the unfortunate Romans, some of whom were sold into slavery in their captors' North African realm. The widow of the emperors Valentinian III and Petronius Maximus, Licinia, was herself taken to Carthage, where her daughter was married to Genseric's son.