Patricius, the magister officiorum and lover of…

Euric’s forces have built fortifications at several key locations throughout the empire (those at the ancient city of Carcassonne in southwestern France are among the finest remains of medieval ramparts in Europe).

Orestes is free to issue new solidi in the mints of Arles, Milan, Ravenna and Rome, enabling him to pay the barbarian mercenaries who constitute most of the Roman Army at this time.

However, Orestes denies the demands of Heruli, Scirian and Turcilingi mercenaries to be granted Italian lands in which to settle.

Before he overthrew Nepos, the Roman general had promised his barbarian soldiers a third of Italian territory in exchange for assisting with the deposition of the emperor.

After being turned down by Orestes, the dissatisfied mercenaries revolt under the Germanic chieftain Odoacer, whom they declare to be their king on August 23, 476.

Odoacer leads his tribesmen against their former employer, ravaging every town and village in northern Italy and meeting little resistance.

Orestes flees to the city of Pavia, where the city's bishop gives him sanctuary within the city walls.

Despite the protection he receives from the bishop, Orestes is forced to flee for his life when Odoacer and his men break through the city defenses and ravage the church, stealing all the money that the bishop had collected for the poor and razing many of the city buildings to the ground.

After making good his escape from Pavia, Orestes rallies the few surviving units of Roman troops stationed in northern Italy and is able to move his small army to the city of Piacenza.

The forces of Odoacer and Orestes finally meet on the battlefield.

The inexperienced Roman commander and his few and sparse Imperial troops, disorganized and unprepared, stand no chance against the savagery of Odoacer's mercenary army.

The majority of the Roman soldiers are either killed, captured, or driven off, while Orestes is on August 28 apprehended near the city and swiftly executed.

Ravenna is captured within week and Romulus Augustus is deposed.

This act has been cited as the end of the Western Roman Empire, although Romulus' deposition does not cause any significant disruption at this time.

Rome has already lost its hegemony over the provinces, Germanics dominate the Roman army and Germanic generals like Odoacer have long been the real powers behind the throne.

Italy will suffer far greater devastation in the next century when Emperor Justinian I re-conquers it.

Eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon will attach great significance to this event due to Odoacer's foreign birth.

Gibbon's romantic description of the events of 476 as the fall of the Western Roman Empire will remain influential for two centuries until modern scholarship discredits this view.

Nevertheless, Odoacer's defeat of Orestes and his son are sometimes still used to demarcate the transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, or Late Antiquity.

According to the Anonymus Valesianus, Odoacer was moved by Romulus' youth and his beauty to not only spare his life but give him a pension of six thousand solidii and sent him to Campania to live with his relatives.

Peter the Fuller, deposed from the Antiochene see in 471, has spent the past five years in Constantinople, in retirement in the monastery of the Acoimetae, allowed to reside there in return for a pledge that he would not create further disturbances (Theophanes p. 104).

Peter’s fortunes revive during the short reign of Basiliscus, who, under the influence of his wife, advocates for the Non-Chalcedonians, recalls Timothy Aelurus, Patriarch of Alexandria, from exile, and by his persuasion issues an encyclical letter to the bishops calling them to anathematize the decrees of Chalcedon (Evagr.

H. E. iii.

4).

Peter gladly complies, and is rewarded by a third restoration to the see of Antioch, 476 (ib.

5).

Julian is deposed, dying not long after.

On his restoration Peter enforces the addition to the Trisagion, and behaves with great zeal against the Chalcedonian party, crushing all opposition by an appeal to the Syrian people, over whom he has gained control.

Once established on the patriarchal throne, he soon stretches its privileges to the widest extent, ordaining bishops and metropolitans for all Syria.

The fall of Basiliscus brings the ruin of all who had supported him and been promoted by him, and Peter is one of the first to fall.

To what extent Odoacer is a military commander of a Roman army and how much a German “tribal” leader is by now impossible to tell.

After the abdication of Romulus, the Roman Senate, on behalf of Odoacer, sends representatives to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno, whom it asks to formally reunite the two halves of the Empire.

He is also asked to make Odoacer a Patrician, and administrator of Italy in Zeno's name.

Zeno points out that the Senate should rightfully have first requested that Julius Nepos take the throne once more, but he nonetheless agrees to their requests.

Odoacer now rules Italy in Zeno's name.

Unlike most of the last emperors, he acts decisively, taking many military actions to strengthen his control over Italy and its neighboring areas.

According to Jordanes, at the beginning of his reign he "slew Count Bracila at Ravenna that he might inspire a fear of himself among the Romans."

Odoacer achieves a solid diplomatic coup by inducing the Vandal king Genseric to cede Sicily, with the exception of the city of Lilybaeum, in return for tribute.

Zeno finally makes peace with King Genseric and his Vandals in 476, and officially recognizes the full extent of the Vandal Kingdom, including all of western Africa, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily.

The oldest known painted depiction of a horse collar is on a cave mural of Dunhuang, during the Northern Wei Dynasty, dated to 477.