CHAPTER I
ODOACER TO THE TRIUMPH OF NARSES
[476-568 A.D.]
[476-489 A.D.]
The unfortunate phrase “Fall of the Western Empire” has given a false importance to the affair of 476: it is generally thought that the date marks a great era of the world. But no empire fell in 476; there was no Western Empire to fall. There was only one Roman Empire, which sometimes was governed by two or more augusti. If, on the death of Honorius in 423, there had been no Valentinian to succeed him, and if Theodosius II had assumed the reins of government over the Western provinces, and if, as is quite conceivable, no second Augustus had arisen again before the Western provinces had all passed under the sway of Teutonic rulers, surely no one would have spoken of the “Fall of the Western Empire.” And yet this hypothetical case is formally the same as the actual event of 476. The fact that the union of East and West under Zeno’s name was accompanied by the rule of the Teuton in Italy has disguised the true aspect. And in any case it might be said that Julius Nepos was still emperor; he was acknowledged by Zeno, he was acknowledged in southern Gaul; so that one might just as legitimately place the “Fall of the Western Empire” in 480, the year of his death. The Italian provinces were now, like Africa, like Spain, like the greater part of Gaul, practically an independent kingdom, but theoretically the Roman Empire was once more as it had been in the days of Theodosius the Great or in the days of Julian.
When the Count Marcellinus[e] in his Chronicle wrote that on the death of Aëtius “the Hesperian realm fell,” he could justify his statement better than those who place 476 among the critical dates of the world’s history. It is more profitable to recognise the continuity of history than to impose upon it arbitrary divisions; it is more profitable to grasp that Odovacar[95] was the successor of Merobaudes, than to dwell with solemnity on the imaginary fall of an empire.[b]
The humiliation of Rome was completed by the events recorded in the preceding volume. There was still, no doubt, a legal fiction according to which Rome and Italy yet belonged to the empire, and were under the dominion of the successor of Augustus, who reigned not in Old Rome by the Tiber, but in New Rome by the Thracian Bosporus. In fact, however, one will was supreme in Italy, the will of the tall barbarian who in sordid dress once strode into the cell of Severinus, the leader of the Herulian and Rugian mutineers, the conqueror of Pavia, Odoacer.
For thirteen years this soldier of fortune swayed with undisputed mastery the Roman state. He employed, no doubt, the services of Roman officials to work the machine of government. He paid a certain deference on many occasions to the will of his nominal superior, Zeno, the emperor at Constantinople. He watched, we may be sure much more anxiously, the shifting currents of opinion among the rough mercenaries who had bestowed on him the crown, and on whom he had bestowed the third part of the lands of Italy. But on the whole, and looking at the necessity of concentrated force in such a precarious state as that which the mercenaries had founded, we shall probably not be far wrong if we attribute to Odoacer the effective power, though of course he used not the name, of Autocrat.
The highest praise that can be bestowed on the government of this adventurer from the Danubian lands is that we hear so little about it. Some hardship, perhaps even some violence, probably accompanied the compulsory expropriation of the Romans from one-third of the lands of Italy. There is some reason for supposing, however, that this would be in the main only a loss of property, falling on the large landed proprietors.[c]