Romulus Augustulus
Romulus Augustus
Western Roman Emperor (titular)
461 – 511
Biography
Last Western Roman emperor — a teenage figurehead installed by his father, the general Orestes, after a coup. Reigned for ten months before the Germanic warlord Odoacer killed Orestes, deposed the boy, and sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople with a letter declaring that the West needed no emperor of its own. Romulus was pensioned off to a villa near Naples and is presumed to have died in obscurity.
Events
On 4 September 476 the Germanic general Odoacer deposed the teenage emperor Romulus Augustulus in Ravenna and sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople with a message that the Western Empire no longer needed an emperor of its own. The conventional date for the fall of the Western Roman Empire, though contemporaries scarcely noticed: the institution had been hollowing out for a century.
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