Romulus Augustulus

The reign of Romulus Augustulus, conventionally reckoned the end of the Western Roman Empire, lasted less than a year and was the work of his father. Romulus was born about 461, the son of Orestes, a Roman from Pannonia who had once served as secretary to Attila the Hun and rose to be master of soldiers in Italy. In August 475 Orestes turned his army against the western emperor Julius Nepos, who fled to Dalmatia, and on 31 October 475 installed his teenage son as emperor at Ravenna, retaining real power himself.

The boy's name struck contemporaries as an irony of history, combining the legendary founder of Rome with the title of its first emperor; "Augustulus," the diminutive "little Augustus," was a mocking nickname rather than an official style. His government was never recognized by the eastern court at Constantinople, which continued to regard Nepos as the lawful western emperor, so Romulus reigned as a usurper's figurehead with authority confined to Italy.

In 476 the barbarian soldiers of the Italian army, demanding land for settlement, found a leader in the officer Odoacer. Orestes was captured and executed at Placentia in August, and on 4 September 476 Odoacer entered Ravenna and deposed Romulus. Rather than appoint another puppet, Odoacer ruled Italy as king, and the Senate's envoys conveyed the western imperial insignia to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople. Later tradition fixed on this moment as the empire's fall in the West, although Nepos maintained his claim from Dalmatia until his murder in 480.

Romulus himself was spared, reportedly on account of his youth. Odoacer granted him a substantial annual pension and sent him to live with relatives at the fortified villa of Castellum Lucullanum near Naples. A letter of Cassiodorus written on behalf of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric around 507 confirms arrangements for a pension to a Romulus generally identified with the former emperor, indicating that he was still alive more than thirty years after his deposition; the date of his death is unknown.