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Updated: June 10, 2025
Orestes rejected the audacious demand, and his refusal was favourable to the ambition of Odoacer, a bold barbarian, who assured his fellow-soldiers that if they dared to associate under his command they might extort the justice that had been denied to their dutiful petition.
The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil administration of Italy was still exercised by the Prætorian præfect and his subordinate officers. Odoacer devolved on the Roman magistrates the odious and oppressive task of collecting the public revenue; but he reserved for himself the merit of seasonable and popular indulgence.
Stately, externally powerful, although undermined and putrescent at the core, the death-stricken empire still dashed back the assaults of its barbarous enemies. During the long struggle intervening between the age of Vespasian and that of Odoacer, during all the preliminary ethnographical revolutions which preceded the great people's wandering, the Netherlands remained subject provinces.
The soldiers were united under Odoacer chief of the Heruli, a general in the service of the Patrician one of the boldest and most unscrupulous of those mercenaries who lent their arms in the service of the government of Ravenna. The. standard of revolt was raised, and the barbarian army marched against their former master.
We may well ask what was the condition of Ravenna when the western empire fell and Odoacer made himself king of Italy. And by the greatest of good fortune we can answer that question. For we have a fairly vivid account of Ravenna from the hand of Sidonius Apollinaris who passed through the city on his way to Rome in 467.
The barbarians then marched to Ravenna, which they took, with the boy who wore the purple, who was not slain as his father was, but pensioned with six thousand crowns, and sent to a Campanian villa, which once belonged to Sulla and Lucullus. The throne of the Caesars was hopelessly subverted, and Odoacer was king of Italy, and portioned out its lands to his greedy followers, A.D. 476.
Or was the hatred against his men more than himself, contempt especially of the low-caste Herules, a question of race, springing out of those miserable tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons always divided and weak? Be that as it may, Odoacer had done a deed which raised this hatred to open fury. They had plundered, it is said, the cell of his old friend St.
Odoacer was waiting for him. He was defeated and all Venetia fell into the hands of the Ostrogoth. Odoacer retreated to Verona, that red fortress on the Adige; once more and more certainly he was beaten. He retreated to Ravenna, while Theodoric advanced to Milan, to Milan which now led nowhere. Anon. After Verona, Theodoric had received the submission of a part of Odoacer's army under Tufa.
Theodoric loved the virtues which he possessed, and the talents of which he was destitute. Liberius was promoted to the office of Prætorian præfect for his unshaken fidelity to the unfortunate cause of Odoacer. The ministers of Theodoric, Cassiodorus, and Boethius, have reflected on his reign the lustre of their genius and learning.
He endured the usurper who had taken possession of Italy until he was able to put him down, and so, in his letters to Odoacer, invested him with the title of "Patricius of the Romans," leaving the government of Italy to a German commander under his imperial authority.
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