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Odoacer
King of Italy (first Germanic ruler of Italy)
"Let the East have its emperor; Italy will be ruled from Italy."
Biography
Odoacer was a Germanic officer in the Roman army of Italy who became the man to formally end the Western Empire. When the imperial strongman Orestes refused to grant the barbarian foederati the Italian land they demanded, they proclaimed Odoacer their king. He defeated and killed Orestes, deposed the boy-emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476, and — crucially — did not appoint a successor. Instead, Odoacer sent the imperial regalia to the Eastern emperor Zeno in Constantinople, declaring that the West no longer needed its own emperor, and ruled Italy as king under nominal Eastern overlordship. For seventeen years he governed competently, preserving Roman administration. His reign ended when the Eastern emperor unleashed Theodoric and the Ostrogoths against him; after a long war Theodoric invited Odoacer to a banquet of reconciliation in Ravenna and murdered him with his own hands in 493.
Did you know?
He spared the deposed boy-emperor Romulus, granting him a generous pension and a comfortable retirement in Campania.
Key Battles
The Deposition of Romulus Augustulus
Germanic & Hunnic Peoples victorySeptember 4, 476 AD · 1,000 total casualties
The quiet deposition of a boy who bore, with bitter irony, the names of both Rome's founder and its first emperor is the conventional end-date of the Western Roman Empire. No legions clashed; the office simply ceased. Italy passed to Germanic kings, and the institutions, peoples, and faith of the Roman West reorganized into the kingdoms of early medieval Europe.
Life Journey
Timeline
c. 433 AD
🌅 Birth
Born among the Germanic peoples of the Danube
September 476 AD
⚔️ Battle
Deposes Romulus Augustulus; becomes King of Italy
493 AD
✝️ Death
Murdered by Theodoric the Ostrogoth at Ravenna