Part 5 (1/2)
One of these recruits, on his southward journey, stepped into the cave of a holy her his lofty stature in the lowly cell, asked the saint's blessing When the blessing was given, the youth said: ”Farewell” ”Not farewell, but fare forward”,[46] answered Severinus ”Onward into Italy: skin-clothed now, but destined before long to enrichrecruit was Odovacar[47]
[Footnote 46: ”Vale” ”Vade”]
[Footnote 47: This is the form of the name used by contemporary historians; Odoacer is a later and less authentic form]
Odovacar probably entered Italy about 465 He attached hi became a conspicuous captain of _fderati_ After the death of Riciust, 472), there was a series of rapid revolutions in the Ro nonentity, died in October of the sanum, a yet more shadowy shadow, Glycerius, succeeded him, and after fifteen months of rule was thrust from the throne by Julius Nepos, who had usta of the East, and as, therefore, supported by all the moral influence of Constantinople
Nepos, after fourteen uished himself only by the loss of sooths, was in his turn dethroned by the Master of the Soldiery, Orestes, who had once held a subordinate situation in the court of Attila Nepos fled to Dalmatia, which was probably his native land, and lived there for four years after his dethroneed to a Roman Emperor
We know very little of the pretexts for these rapid revolutions, or the circu them, but there cannot be ent in what, to borrow a phrase from modern Spanish politics, were a series of _pronunciah a full-blooded Roman citizen, did not set the diadem on his own head, but placed it on that of his son, a handsome boy of some fourteen or fifteen years, naustus” For hinity of ”Patrician”, which had been so long worn by Ricimer, and was associated in men's minds with the practical mastery of the Empire But a ruler who has been raised to the throne by military sedition soon finds that the authors of his elevation are theof masters The _fderati,_ who knew themselves now absolute arbiters of the destiny of the E for a settlement within its borders which we havethe followers of Theodoric, presented themselves before the Patrician Orestes, and dened to them as a perpetual inheritance This was rant, and, on his refusal, Odovacar said to theand I will obtain for you your desire”
(23d Aug, 476) The offer was accepted; Odovacar was lifted high on a shi+eld by the ar by their unaniathered out of the ”Ro left that was capable of n, if such it may be called, between Odovacar and Orestes was of the shortest and most perfunctory kind Ticinue, was taken, sacked, and partly burnt by the barbarians The Master of the Soldiery himself fled to Placentia, but was there taken prisoner and beheaded, only five days after the elevation of Odovacar A week later his brother Paulus, who had notcity of Ravenna, was taken prisoner, and slain in the great pine-forest outside that city At Ravenna the young puppet-Emperor, Romulus, was also taken prisoner The barbarian showed himself more merciful, perhaps also more contemptuous, towards his boy-rival than was the custom of the Emperors of Rome and Constantinople towards the sons of their coustulus, and looked with admiration on his beautiful countenance, spared his life and assigned to hiardens of Lucullus, the conqueror of Mithridates, who five and a half centuries before had prepared for himself this beautiful home (the Lucullanu and the fortifying of a great commercial city have utterly altered the whole aspect of the bay, but in the long egg-shaped peninsula, on which stands to-day the Castel dell'
Ovo, we can still see the outlines of the famous Lucullanulorious days His conqueror generously allowed hi this pension continued to be a charge on the revenues of the new kingdom we are unable to say There is one doubtful indication of his having survived his abdication by about thirty years,[48] but clear historical notices of his subsequent life and of the date of his death are denied us; a striking proof of the absolute nullity of his character
[Footnote 48: I allude here to a letter in the Vanarum of Cassiodorus (iii, 35), written between 504 and 525, and addressed to Romulus and his ustulus]
This then was the event which stands out in the history of Europe as the ”Fall of the Western Ereat and terrible invasion of a conquering host like the Fall of the Eastern Empire in 1453; no sudden overthrow of a national polity like the Nor of the existing order by deic force like the French Revolution of 1792 It was but the continuance of a process which had been going forward nition of the fact that the _fderati,_ the so-called barbarian mercenaries of Rome, were really her masters If we had to seek a parallel for the event of 476, we should find it rather in the deposition of the last Mogul Emperor at Delhi, and the public assureater part of India, than in any of the other events to which we have alluded
Reflecting on this fact, and seeing that the Roman Empire still lived on in the East for nearly a thousand years, that the Eastern Csar never for enerations reliquished his claiitimate ruler of the Old Rome, as well as of the New, and sometimes asserted that clai too that Charles the Great, when he (in modern phrase) ”restored the Western Empire” in 800, never professed to be the successor of Roustulus, but of Constantine VI, the then recently deposed Eators, with scarcely an exception, minimise the importance of the event of 476, and some even object to the expression ”Fall of the Western E it The protest is a sound one and was greatly needed
Perhaps now the danger is in the other direction, and there is a risk of ourtoo little of an event in which after all the sceptre didthe whole interval between Odovacar's accession and Belisarius' occupation of Rome (476-536), no Roman, however proud or patriotic, could blind himself to the fact that a man of barbarian blood was the real, and in a certain sense the supreht be looked upon as an eminent servant of the Emperor who had the misfortune to be of barbarian birth Odovacar and Theodoric were, without all contradiction, kings; if not ”kings of Italy”, at any rate ”kings in Italy”, so war on the Csar of Byzantiu, when they did so, to set up the phantoitireatly debated as this it will be safer not to use our own or any modern words, This is how Count Marcellinus, an official of the Eastern Eht years after the deposition of Romulus, describes the event: ”Odovacar killed Orestes and condeustulus to the punishment of exile in the Lucullanum, a castle of Campania The Hesperian (Western) Eustus first of the Augusti began to hold in the 709th year of the building of the city (BC 44), perished with this Augustulus in the 522d year of his predecessors (AD 476), the kings of the Goths thenceforward holding both Rome and Italy”[49]
[Footnote 49: ”Oresteustulum filium Orestis Odoacer in Lucullano Campania castello exilii poena daentesiustus tenere cpit, cuni Iibus Romam tenentibus” It will be seen that there is an error of two years in the calculation]
Of the details of Odovacar's rule in Italy we know very little Of course the _fderati_ had their will, at any rate in son as to the social disorganisation which such a redistribution of property must have produced There are sohly carried into effect, at any rate in the South of Italy, and that the settlements of the _fderati_ were chiefly in the valley of the Po, and in the districts since known as the Roovernment was taken over by the new ruler, and in all outward appearance things probably went on under King Odovacar reat act of cruelty or oppression stains the oths, but, on the other hand, he by judicious diploether it is probable that Italy was, at any rate, notthan she had been at any time since Alaric's invasion, in 408, proclaimed her helplessness to the world
One piece of sole, namely, the embassies despatched to Constantinople by the rival claimants to the dominion of Italy It was probably towards the end of 477, or early in 478, that Zeno, then recently returned from exile after the usurpation of Basiliscus, received two embassies from two deposed Emperors of the West First of all caustulus, or rather of the Roustulus, really by those of Odovacar These reat Roman nobles, represented ”that they did not need an Euard both East and West; but they had, moreover, chosen Odovacar, ell able to protect their interests, being a man wise in counsel and brave in war They therefore prayed the Enity of Patrician, and to entrust to him the administration of the affairs of Italy” At the saht the ornanity, the diadem, the purple robe, the jewelled buskins, which had been worn by all the ”Shadow Ee, and requested that they ht be laid up in the Imperial palace at Constantinople
Simultaneously there caee, the nephew by ratulated his kinsed hi about the like happy result for hi him on the Western throne
To these euous answers, which seeitimacy of Odovacar's rule an open one
The Senate were sharply rebuked for having acquiesced in the dethronement of Nepos, and a previous Emperor who had been sent to them from the East[50] Odovacar was reconity from Nepos, and to co-operate for his return At the same time, the moderation of Odovacar's rule, and his desire to conform himself to the maxims of Roman civilisation, received the Emperor's praise The nature of the reply to Nepos is not recorded, but it was no doubt ood wishes were all that he would receive froue The letters addressed to Odovacar bore the superscription ”To the _Patrician_ Odovacar”, and that was all that the barbarian really cared for With such a title as this, every act, even thewas rendered legitiustulus were equally excluded as useless encus _de jure_ and _de facto_ became practically one man, and that man Odovacar
[Footnote 50: Anthemius]
[Illustration: HALF-SILIQUA OF SILVER (ODOVACAR)]
[Illustration:]
CHAPTER VII
THE CONQUEST OF ITALY