86. END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST, 476 A.D.
VANDAL PIRATES
Rome escaped a visitation by the Huns only to fall a victim, three years later, to the Vandals. After the capture of Carthage,[16] these barbarians made that city the seat of a pirate empire. Putting out in their long, light vessels, they swept the seas and raided many a populous city on the Mediterranean coast. So terrible were their inroads that the word "vandalism" has come to mean the wanton destruction of property.
SACK OF ROME BY THE VANDALS, 455 A.D.
In 455 A.D. the ships of the Vandals, led by their king, Gaiseric, appeared at the mouth of the Tiber. The Romans could offer no resistance. Only the noble bishop Leo went out with his clergy to meet the invader and intercede for the city. Gaiseric promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants and not to destroy the public buildings. These were the best terms he would grant. The Vandals spent fourteen days stripping Rome of her wealth. Besides shiploads of booty the Vandals took away thousands of Romans as slaves, including the widow and two daughters of an emperor.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST, 455-476 A.D.
After the Vandal sack of Rome the imperial throne became the mere plaything of the army and its leaders. A German commander, named Ricimer, set up and deposed four puppet emperors within five years. He was, in fact, the real ruler of Italy at this time. After his death Orestes, another German general, went a step beyond Ricimer's policy and placed his own son on the throne of the Caesars. By a curious coincidence, this lad bore the name of Romulus, legendary founder of Rome, and the nickname of Augustulus ("the little Augustus"). The boy emperor reigned less than a year. The German troops clamored for a third of the lands of Italy and, when their demand was refused, proclaimed Odoacer king. The poor little emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was sent to a villa near Naples, where he disappears from history.
[Illustration: Map, EUROPE at the Deposition of Romulus Augustulus 476
A.D.]
POLITICAL SITUATION IN 476 A.D.
There was now no emperor in the West. To the men of that time it seemed that East and West had been once more joined under a single ruler, as in the days of Constantine. The emperors who reigned at Constantinople did not relinquish their claims to be regarded as the rightful sovereigns in Italy and Rome. Nevertheless, as an actual fact, Roman rule in the West was now all but extinct. Odoacer, the head of the barbarians in Italy, ruled a kingdom as independent as that of the Vandals in Africa or that of the Visigoths in Spain and Gaul. The date 476 A.D. may therefore be chosen as marking, better than any other, the overthrow of the Roman Empire in the West by the Germans.