The years between 455, when Valentinian III was assassinated, and 476 when Odoacer established his rule in Ravenna, are often identified as the key period of the ‘decline and fall of the Roman Empire’. From the Gothic sack of Rome in 410, followed by the more serious destruction by the Vandals in 455, through to the deposition of the ‘last emperor’, Romulus Augustulus, in 476, ‘barbarian’ tribes persisted in a more permanent occupation of the western provinces of the Roman world.1 But the traditions of Roman rule did not simply disappear, for the success of the newcomers owed much to their grasp of some of the Roman principles of government: secure defences, efficient administration, application of a written law and reliable coinage. Italy, like Gaul, Spain and other parts of northern Europe, suffered many invasions and incorporated many non-Roman settlers. Ravenna, however, sustained the traditions of Roman urban life longer than most cities.
From the early fifth century onwards, as we have seen, military leaders responsible for the defence of the western empire found themselves increasingly dependent on ‘barbarian’ troops with their own loyalties and Arian faith. Between 455 and 476 these non-Roman soldiers gained an utterly dominant role, not as actual emperors – because the Senate and established aristocratic families would not promote them to that supreme position – but as king makers. Ricimer, an Arian Christian of possibly Hunnic and Gothic descent, played this role most skilfully between 457 and 472, when he held the supreme military command and high title of patricius. Four emperors – Avitus (455–6), Majorian (457–61), Libius Severus (461–5) and Anthemius (467–72) – discovered in quick succession that if they failed to satisfy Ricimer their days were numbered. Using the Senate of Rome to sanction his campaigns, Ricimer set up and deposed candidates for the imperial office, and for nineteen months between 465 and 467, in the absence of any emperor, he became the effective ruler of the West. His nephew Gundobad, a Burgundian, and Odoacer, another Hun or Scirian, continued the same manipulative policy until September 476.
Initially, because it had to deal with its own ‘barbarian’ pressures, the imperial court in Constantinople did not send funds, troops or any form of serious support to the West. When the eastern court did try to intervene in the turbulent conditions of Italy, it was unable to reverse the growing authority of non-Roman figures. In 467, for example, Emperor Leo I appointed Anthemius to govern the West, but his candidate was ridiculed as ‘the little Greek’ (Graeculus). Ricimer insisted on marrying Alypia, Anthemius’ daughter, which further subverted the new emperor’s authority. The two men became rivals, and in the civil war that followed Anthemius lost.2 Thereafter Constantinople effectively abandoned the West to Ricimer’s dominance, which prepared the remaining provinces for a new phase in their history: rule by non-Roman kings, who were often more effective than their imperial predecessors.3 And most of these men – like Ricimer – were Arian Christians.4
During these twenty-one years a total of seven emperors ruled, some for one year, others for four to five but never long enough to tackle the underlying weaknesses of the West, although Majorian and Libius Severus tried. Some of these nominal emperors tried to enlist senatorial support in Rome, while others went to Ravenna, the capital city where most of the imperial administration still functioned and laws issued by emperors were still registered. This competition between Rome and Ravenna for ‘capital’ status further reduced the formal existence of the Roman empire in the West. It was in Ravenna that both Majorian (in 457) and Libius Severus (in 461) were acclaimed, while Avitus and Anthemius went to Rome. But after the deaths of Anthemius and Ricimer in 472, Glycerius (473), Julius Nepos (474) and Romulus Augustulus (475) were unable to sustain any figment of ‘imperial’ government.5 The historian Procopius describes their rapid turnover: ‘There were, moreover, still other emperors in the West before this, but . . . they lived only a short time after attaining the office and . . . accomplished nothing worthy of mention.’6 The citizens of Ravenna may have welcomed the promotion of Glycerius, previously commander of the local militia (comes domesticorum) with the expectation of donatives (gifts in coin) to loyal troops and general celebrations. But in Constantinople Emperor Leo decided to support his rather distant relative Julius (called the nephew, Nepos) to counter Glycerius.7 Despite his imperial connections Julius proved no more successful and, in less than a year, he had fled from Ravenna.
The man responsible for this startling development was Orestes, a military leader of Pannonian origin, who had made a career serving Attila as notarius and had participated in some of the Hun’s negotiations with eastern emperors in 449–52. He had married the daughter of a seasoned Roman diplomat named Romulus and commanded a loyal following. In 475 he took an initiative to promote his own family rather than accept Julius Nepos as emperor: Orestes refused to lead his troops to campaign in Gaul, as ordered, and instead marched towards Ravenna. At this point Julius decided that flight was the better option and sailed from Classis to Dalmatia, where he continued to rule as emperor for several years. In the autumn of 475 Orestes thus gained possession of Ravenna and, on 31 October, his sixteen-year-old son Romulus was duly crowned emperor in the imperial palace (Plate 18). His father intended to direct the government in the same way as Ricimer had done, from behind the throne, and having put his brother Paulus in charge of the imperial court, set out to campaign against his rivals.
By 475 the dismemberment of the Roman West was more or less complete.8 From the breaching of the Rhine frontier in 405, the Vandals had effectively conquered North Africa; Visigoths had occupied southern Gaul and Spain apart from the north-west of the country, where the Sueves established themselves. In northern Gaul the independent sub-kingdom of Soissons eventually succumbed to Frankish pressure. Under their king, Clovis, the Franks were to have a triumphant success in the early sixth century as the one non-Roman tribe to adopt the Catholic definition of Christian faith, rather than the Arian. In Italy, Rome had been sacked twice and besieged many more times, most recently by Ricimer in 472. Sicily had been repeatedly raided by the Vandals, whose dominance at sea had also given them control over Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. Ravenna and the areas to the north, Istria and parts of Pannonia, remained an independent outpost of Roman imperial tradition, as all around them tribes of non-Roman Christians took control.
As the young Romulus was set up as emperor, his father Orestes faced the dissatisfaction of a mixed group of mercenary soldiers, who demanded land to live on. This drew attention to a persistent problem of employing mercenaries rather than local troops whose families were already settled on their own farms. When Orestes refused, one of his subordinate officers, Odoacer, rebelled, promising to find the soldiers land. This daring offer won over the main army and generated a civil war between Odoacer and Orestes that was only settled by a battle near Placentia on 28 August 476. Odoacer was victorious, Orestes was killed, and the troops marched into Ravenna and killed Paulus, uncle of the young emperor. In September 476 Odoacer sent the ‘little Augustus’ into retirement, as Marcellinus reported from Constantinople in a panoramic perspective of Roman imperial history: ‘and with this Augustulus perished the Western empire of the Roman people, which the first Augustus, Octavian, began to rule in the 709th year from the foundation of the city’.9 The teenager was the last emperor of the West, and was fortunate to avoid the violent death of so many of his predecessors. A ‘barbarian’ general had finally displaced any semblance of Roman imperial authority in Italy and had settled in Ravenna.10
The man responsible for this decisive change was identified as a Hun on his father’s side and a Scirian on his mother’s. His father, named Edeco, had undertaken various diplomatic journeys for Attila.11 Like many barbarian commanders of mercenaries, who sought work as hired fighters, Odoacer is recorded in Gaul in the 460s, with a band of Saxons, and later in Italy where he supported Ricimer. At one point he was in Noricum and sought out the holy man St Severinus who predicted his regal future, despite his very poor clothing and his Arian loyalty.12 Although Odoacer led his own warriors brilliantly, he had never served as magister militum of Roman forces in the manner of so many non-Roman generals such as Orestes, and he was not as familiar with imperial customs. Yet he succeeded where Orestes and others had failed and ruled for fourteen years. Making Ravenna the seat of his Roman-style administration, he set out to create an autonomous power base by integrating non-Roman fighting forces into the regions under his control and initiated what was to become the most effective method of preserving Roman traditions in the West.
In 476 Odoacer’s primary aim was to gain recognition from Constantinople of his position as ruler of Italy. Assuming the title of king, in a highly symbolic act he sent an embassy of Roman senators to Constantinople with the imperial insignia – the crown, purple cloak of office, orb and sceptre – instructing them to negotiate his position with Emperor Zeno. The ambassadors were to report that Odoacer had no ambition to usurp imperial rule; he claimed to represent the western Roman world and wished to be granted the honorific title of patricius. According to a later report, the ambassadors announced that ‘one shared emperor was sufficient for both territories. They said, moreover, that they had chosen Odoacer, a man of military and political experience to safeguard their own affairs and that Emperor Zeno should confer upon him the rank of patrician and entrust him with the government of Italy.’13 There was no longer any need for an emperor in the West. Zeno, however, was unwilling to grant serious support, beyond the title of patrician, to a ‘barbarian’ military leader in the West and ordered Odoacer to accept Julius Nepos as emperor. Repeated high-ranking senatorial embassies from Ravenna to Constantinople failed to improve the position.
Despite this underlying problem, Odoacer set up a government that was accepted by local inhabitants, who had watched the rapid turnover in imperial claimants since 473 and may have considered the deposition of Romulus as just another change of ruler. There certainly doesn’t seem to have been any decisive shift in the functioning of the city council after 476. The leading families who had traditionally filled civilian positions on the city council continued to do so, and presumably included attendance at the king’s court in Ravenna if invited. In one major change, Odoacer favoured his own Arian clergy, often called presbyters, who had accompanied his army, rather than the Catholic hierarchy of Ravenna. The new king and his wife, Sunigilda, supported the Arian Christian community and patronized new church building.14
The new ruler’s administration was based in the palace at the Laurel built by Valentinian III. Many government offices persisted unchanged: those of the quaestor, magister officiorum, comes rei privatae (imperial treasurer) and comes sacrarum largitionum (chief tax official), under the superior authority of the praetorian prefect of Italy as before.15 To these established structures Odoacer added new ones, such as a count in charge of personal royal treasure (comes patrimonii), which corresponded to the Roman domus divina, as distinct from the management of old imperial lands (under the comes rei privatae).16 The mint continued to issue gold solidi in the name of the eastern emperor, and silver coinage displaying the monogram and portrait of the king (Plate 19). Odoacer also introduced a new, more reliable copper coinage, which formed a model for the later eastern reform made by Emperor Anastasios.17 No western consuls were appointed for the years 473 to 479, indicating quite a long hiatus as the fate of Romulus Augustulus was decided. In 480, however, Odoacer nominated Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius, of the Roman aristocratic family, and the Senate resumed its task of approving consuls until another break in 491–2.
Odoacer had to attend to immediate threats to his rule, notably from the Vandals of North Africa who had conquered parts of Sicily. By negotiating an annual payment of tribute, Odoacer regained possession of the island, which had always been a vital source of supplies for the elite of Ravenna, as well as Rome.18 When faced with a revolt in Gaul, he proposed that both parties should send embassies to Constantinople for arbitration, a sign of the far-reaching hegemony of the eastern capital. Emperor Zeno supported Odoacer’s party. In 480 Odoacer took advantage of the assassination of Julius Nepos in Dalmatia to invade the area and bring it under his control, thus reasserting the unity of the northern Adriatic coastlands. He also realized the importance of rewarding the soldiers who had supported him, for instance, his comes domesticorum Pierius, to whom he donated lands in Sicily and Dalmatia worth 690 solidi, recorded in a document drawn up in March 488. It suggests a typically effective style of administration for a government very dependent on military expertise.19
During Odoacer’s reign Roman senatorial families increasingly accepted the fact of barbarian government and put their talents at its disposal. The king recruited Cassiodorus Senior, father of the more famous Cassiodorus who played an important role in Ravenna later, to serve as provincial governor. Similarly, he appointed Opilio comes sacrarum largitionum and his sons Opilio and Cyprianus later served in the administration, while Caecina Decius Maximus Basilius (consul in 480) was promoted Praetorian Prefect in 483 and became patricius. Odoacer clearly drew on skilled Roman administrators such as Rufius Achilius Sividus, his quaestor palatii before 483, later prefect of the city, patricius and consul after 488. Other members of the Roman aristocracy in Odoacer’s chancery included Flavius Rufius Postumius Festus, the head of the Senate (caput senatu) in 490, and Anicius Probus Faustus Niger, nominated consul in the same year, both experienced diplomats.20
The Life of Epiphanius, Catholic bishop of Pavia in north-west Italy, records visits he made to Ravenna to obtain tax remissions and other material assistance from Odoacer. The author, Ennodius, who was a deacon of the church in Pavia, claimed that the sack of that city during the battles of 476 had caused severe damage, and that punishingly harsh tax demands would have wrecked its revival. Epiphanius went on several embassies to Odoacer, making him aware of the distress in the region of Liguria, and won relief from the coemptio tax (a compulsory levy of supplies for the army).21 This hagiographical account of the bishop’s deeds, one of the rare contemporary sources for the reign of Odoacer, reveals the king in a favourable light. ‘The time of King Odoacer’ is also used as a dating mechanism in the Roman Book of the Pontiffs at the election of Pope Felix III in 483. It marks the resumption of the traditional method of dating papal events missing from many of the pontifical biographies between 384 and 483 and preserves a memory of Odoacer as the legitimate ruler of Italy.22
The king, his court and the army represented a considerable body of Arian believers, whose basic needs – performing baptisms, blessing marriages and burying the dead, probably in separate cemeteries, distinct from Catholic space – were performed by the Arian clergy of Ravenna. The most exhaustive study of these Arian officials has identified twenty-seven named clerics including three bishops (episcopus), five presbyters and four individuals whose names are not recorded. While none of these leaders of the ecclesia Gothica or ecclesia legis Gothorum can be dated to the reign of Odoacer, it’s clear that a strong Arian presence continued without a break into the sixth century.23 Two papyri from Ravenna document the use of Gothic as a written language.
Being an Arian Christian, Odoacer may not have concerned himself with theological disagreements among the Catholics, yet his dominance did not prevent their bishops from caring for their own Christians; there is no hint of repression. Exuperantius (473–7) and John I (477–94) who governed the Catholic church in Ravenna during Odoacer’s reign, patronized some new building, though Agnellus confessed that he had no information about the former; he ‘constructed’ a very short and uninformative biography, describing this bishop as ‘humble and gentle, wise in good works . . . What his predecessors built he kept safe.’ In an entirely invented description of Attila the Hun’s visit to Ravenna, Agnellus praises Bishop John’s extraordinary courage in negotiating with the enemy, possibly evoking Odoacer’s Hunnic ancestry.24 These Ravenna churchmen were, however, drawn into the long dispute over the nature and essence of Christ generated by the Council of Chalcedon of 451, and were regularly summoned to Rome for meetings with its bishop. In 482 Emperor Zeno had issued the Henotikon, an attempt to reconcile the definitions of the council with its miaphysite opponents who stressed the single nature of Christ. The document, written by Patriarch Akakios (Acacius) of Constantinople and Peter Mongos, the miaphysite patriarch of Alexandria, proved unacceptable to both sides and was condemned by Pope Felix III in councils held in Rome in 484 and 485. This opened a breach between Rome and Constantinople, known as the Acacian schism (see Chapter 12).25
In contrast to the prevailing Roman hostility to heretics, Ravenna generated a more tolerant attitude. While the leading Arian clergy of the capital gained prestige from ministering to the regal court in Ravenna, benefitting from their proximity to the ruler and his patronage, the Arian and Catholic communities appear to have co-existed without the violent quarrels and fights that had dominated the city of Milan in the late fourth century. Ravenna was enhanced by a greater acceptance of Christian difference, in contrast to Roman practice, where several bishops ceremoniously burned the books of heretics on the steps of S. Maria Maggiore.26 During the fifth century the persecution of Manichaeans (dualists, quite distinct from Christians) and heretics such as Donatists (in North Africa) and Priscillianists (active mainly in Spain) culminated under Pope Gelasius (492–6), who wrote five books against Nestorios and Eutyches and two against the Arians.27 There is no evidence that Odoacer ever visited Rome, though he permitted repairs to the seats in the Colisseum.
It seems likely that the king would have celebrated his military victories in Ravenna and erected statues of himself with inscriptions that praised his achievements, but these were not recorded at the time or remembered in oral traditions. Nor did the king attract talented rhetoricians to his court who could compose panegyrics of his reign. Yet he must have been a judicious ruler and a competent administrator, as well as a successful general, to have survived for so long. As king from 476–93 he recognized the superior authority of the emperor in Constantinople but was determined to govern independently within the imperial system. He persuaded Roman senatorial administrators to work for him, tolerated their Catholic belief and the pope’s leadership of their churches, yet he remained an Arian Christian. Above all, he integrated his own mixed bag of military supporters into a Germanicized imperial system run with the help of Roman office holders. This emphasis on co-operation and co-existence secured his rule and established a template for his successor.