Emperor Nepos Flees: Orestes Seizes Western Rome

The Roman general Orestes marched on Ravenna with a barbarian army in August 475 AD and forced Emperor Julius Nepos to flee the capital by ship to Dalmatia. The coup was swift, bloodless, and seemingly routine in an empire where generals had been making and unmaking emperors for decades. But Orestes did not claim the throne himself. He placed his teenage son on it instead, a boy named Romulus Augustulus, who would become the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. Nepos had been installed as Western emperor just the year before by his patron, the Eastern Emperor Zeno in Constantinople. He was legitimate but weak, lacking a military power base in Italy. Orestes, a former secretary to Attila the Hun who had risen through Roman military ranks, commanded the loyalty of the Germanic and Hunnic mercenaries who formed the backbone of the Western Roman army. When Orestes turned these forces against Nepos, the emperor had no troops willing to fight for him. He sailed for the Dalmatian coast, where he maintained a court-in-exile and continued to claim the Western throne until his assassination in 480. Orestes installed his son Romulus as emperor on October 31, 475. The boy was perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old and served purely as a figurehead for his father's power. The Eastern court in Constantinople never recognized the change and continued to regard Nepos as the legitimate Western emperor. Orestes governed in his son's name, but his hold on power depended entirely on keeping his mercenary army satisfied. When the barbarian troops demanded land in Italy, specifically one-third of the peninsula, and Orestes refused, they found a new leader. Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain serving in Orestes's own forces, led the revolt. He killed Orestes on August 28, 476, and deposed Romulus Augustulus on September 4. Odoacer spared the boy, reportedly because of his youth, and sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople. The Western Roman Empire, founded by Augustus five centuries earlier, was finished. Nepos's flight from Ravenna in 475 was the first domino in a chain that toppled one of history's most enduring political institutions within a single year.