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So Odoacer went on into Italy, deposed the last of the Caesars, a paltry boy, Romulus Augustulus by name, and found himself, to his own astonishment, and that of all the world, the first German king of Italy; and, when he was at the height of his power, he remembered the prophecy of Severinus, and sent to him, offering him any boon he chose to ask.
And the great wild beast's hard heart smote him, and he sent the poor little lad away, to live in wealth and peace in Lucullus' villa at Misenum, with plenty of money, and women, and gewgaws, to dream away his foolish life looking out over the fair bay of Naples the last Emperor of Rome. Then Odoacer set to work, and not altogether ill.
Odoacer held a regular Roman commission; he was a Roman soldier: Theodoric supplanted him by leave of, and actually under orders from, the Emperor. The last and greatest example, the most permanent, Gaul, tells the same story. The Burgundians are auxiliaries regularly planted after imploring the aid of the Empire and permission to settle. Clovis, the Belgian Fleming, fights no Imperial Army.
The Goths, settled on the lower Danube, had been living, as wild men and mercenaries live, recklessly from hand to mouth, drinking and gambling till their families were in want. They send to the Amal. 'While thou art revelling at Roman banquets, we are starving come back ere we are ruined. They were jealous, too, of the success of Odoacer and his mercenaries.
Less than a century later, viz., between the years A.C. 475 and 480, the Western Empire was finally extinguished by Odoacer; the Eastern Empire surviving it nearly a thousand years, lasting as the latter did from the partition in A.C. 395 to the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II. in A.C. 1453.
But that the position of the Pope under Odoacer and Theodorick was one of great difficulty and delicacy no one can doubt.
Ravenna alone, secure in the fortifications of art and nature, still sustained a siege of almost three years; and the daring sallies of Odoacer carried slaughter and dismay into the Gothic camp. At length, destitute of provisions and hopeless of relief, that unfortunate monarch yielded to the groans of his subjects and the clamors of his soldiers.
The Gauls were endowed with all the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend them, they were justly condemned to obey, and even to flatter, the victorious Barbarians, by whose clemency they held their precarious fortunes and their lives. As soon as Odoacer had extinguished the Western empire, he sought the friendship of the most powerful of the Barbarians.
Italy was protected by the arms of its conqueror; and its frontiers were respected by the Barbarians of Gaul and Germany, who had so long insulted the feeble race of Theodosius. Odoacer passed the Adriatic, to chastise the assassins of the emperor Nepos, and to acquire the maritime province of Dalmatia.
Such were Venice and Genoa, which preserved their freedom by their obscurity, till they became able to preserve it by their power. Other cities seem to have retained, under all the changing dynasties of invaders, under Odoacer and Theodoric, Narses and Alboin, the municipal institutions which had been conferred on them by the liberal policy of the Great Republic.
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