BLIND AMBITION The Last Roman Emperor

I believe that ambitious people tend to be unhappy people. Take Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus as an example, (or, Caesar Augustus, for short) ,who was the first Roman Emperor -  beginning about 27 B.C.  He was the most ambitious man of his age. He invented the Roman Empire. And he lived longer than all but a couple of the Emperors who followed him. He had a big funeral in 14 A.D. That's something you get only if you are very ambitious.

Augustus’s last words were, “Did you like the performance?” To which my response is, “In retrospect, it was just okay”.  I say this because his show ended in a huge bloody confusing mess which I shall now attempt to explain as best I can.  Suffice it to say that if Augustus had seen just how sorry his empire would end up, he might have rolled over in his grave, if he still had one. He didn't, because the barbarians scattered his ashes in 420 A.D. as they burned Rome the first time. That is just one of the ways they earned the title of barbarians. Anyway, the really messy part starts 470 years after Augustus, with Emperor Julius Nepos.

Nepos had been the Governor of Dalmatia and he got the job as Western Emperor in 474 A.D. because he was just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, and because he was married to the niece of Leo I, the Byzantium Emperor, and because he was willing to pay for an army to defeat Glycerius, the guy who had knocked off the previous western Emperor.

Now, Nepos is Latin for "nephew", and - what a surprise - that is also the root of the term “nepotism”, which tells you almost everything you need to know about this guy.

Nepos was supposed to bring peace and order to the capital of the Western Empire, the capital of which was then at Ravenna (above). Caesar Augustus (him again) had established the port of Ravenna in the first century B.C. as the home for the western Roman fleet. By the fourth century A.D., with the barbarians carrying off half the Roman forum in a fire sale, the capital had been moved here because Ravenna was surrounded by swamps and marshes, which offered protection from the invading hordes, of which there were plenty around at the time.. 

But, boy, did Nepos ever screw things up. He started out badly by not killing Glycerius. Instead Nepos took him prisoner and shipped him off to Salona, the largest port back in Dalmatia. And he had Glycerius ordained as a Bishop, giving him a steady income. Nepos was assuming, I guess, that this act of charity would win Glycerius’ loyalty.  But, as they say in the Emperor business; "No good deed goes unpunished", and an Ex-Emperor not dead is an ambitious Bishop.

So low had Western Empire fallen that the next invading hoard didn’t even have to invade, because they were already there. Half the army Nepos hired to defeat Glyceriys was made up of German barbarians – er, I mean, mercenaries - about 30,000 of them who had been fighting for Glyceriys, until Nepos bribed them to fight for him. These Germans were led at this opportune moment by an ambitious man who had been a secretary to "Atilla the Hun". His name was  Orestes. And he does not seem to have been very bright.

And that is probably why the new Emperor, Nepos, figured that Orestes would not catch  on when he ordered him take all his German troops and march them off to defend Gaul. But Orestes had a Roman wife, who was clever enough to catch the catch in his new orders.

I suspect it was his wife who explained to Orestes what Nepos was really up to, i.e. getting the Germans out of Italy and away from the center of power. Wives have a way of pointing out to their husbands when they are being particularly dense. Anyway, it was probably she who suggested that Orestes should offer the Germans their own villas and farms in Italy, which could be stolen from the Roman patricians who currently owned them. And since Nepos would be up the paddle-less creek if the Germans refused to go, Nepos offered Orestes and his Germans some very nice Roman properties.

But that surrender did not assuage the Germans, it emboldened them  And on 28 August, 475, the Germans marched off to Ravenna,  to occupy the royal  palace.  Emperor Nepos could have stayed and fought, but then he would not have been Nepos.

Neops jumped ship in the harbor of Ravenna, and sailed home for Dalmatia, taking his purple robes with him. Behind Neops' inglorious exit, Orestes walked into the capital, where, instead of crowning himself as Emperor, he did something so smart I suspect it was again  his wife’s idea; he put the crown and the purple robes on his son.

The twelve year old boy was crowned Emperor Romulus Augustus, on 31 October, 475 A.D.– on what would eventually become Halloween, for any prophets with a sense of irony.

Of course Orestes was still the power behind the throne, and that was why the graffiti artists labeled their new Emperor “Romulus Augustulus”, which is the Latin diminutive version of the name – meaning “Little Romulus”.  It was the kind of nasty political joke which graffiti artists had been scrawling on the walls of Roman back alleys for a thousand years. And it is further proof of the old adage that historians spend centuries struggling to learn from dusty records and scratches on walls what they could have discovered in just five minutes talking to any guy on any street corner in ancient Rome, if they could just find one alive today.

One of histories’ greatest mysteries, unexplained by the dusty records, is why, having won such power and wealth so easily, Orestes then went back on the promise to his fellow German mercenaries and refused to hand over the patrician’s lands to them. Of course the Roman Patricians paid him off. That was always going to happen. But did Orestes think 30,000 Germans were not going to notice they were being stiffed. Again, I suspect, the answer is that poor old Orestes was just not very bright. And by this time he had probably decided he didn't need his nagging wife any longer. Another stupid man.

Anyway, the Germans noticed Orestes had stiffed them, and they quickly rose up under their new commander, Odoacer.  And this time they were joined by a lot of the regular Roman soldiers who decided to get their own share of the spoils. So in 476 A.D., they all marched on Ravenna. Unlike Nepose, the brave, courageous, dull headed slow thinking Orestes didn’t have the common sense to run for it.  He stayed and fought . Badly.  Orestes was captured just outside the city, and duly chopped into tiny little pieces.

On 4 September 476 A.D.  15 year old “Little Romulus” gladly handed over his crown to Odoacer. Romulus was thus, according to most historians, the last Roman Emperor, ever. He had been emperor for barely 10 months. His puberty lasted longer than his nobility.  Some stories say that Odoacer gave Romulus a pension, but that seems a little likely to me. Odoacer was not a stupid man. 

It is said the little-last Emperor and his entire family were packed up and shipped them off to prison in Campania, in Southern Italy.  And I hope Romulus was contented there. You see, history seems at times to be the story of ambitious people getting everybody else into trouble, and this kid never had a chance to be ambitious, even if he were so inclined.

The truth is, almost nobody got out of this particular story by natural causes. Poor old Nepos was murdered on 25 April, 480 A.D., by his own servants, who were probably in the pay of Glycerius,. Odoacer rushed in to fill the political vacuum in Dalmatia, repaying Glycerius by appointing him Archbishop of Milan.  Odoacer then settled down to run his little empire.

But this Dalmatian land grab attracted the suspicions of the new Byzantium Emperor, Zeno (above), who, being Emperor, was suspicious of anybody as ambitious as himself. So he offered a pile of gold to the Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, if he would cut Odoacer down to size.

Theodoric laid siege to Ravenna for three long, bloody years. Finally, with both armies suffering from hunger and plague, Theodoric offered Odoacer a truce, which Odoacer agreed to. However, at the celebratory banquet on 2 February 493 A.D., Odoacer said something offensive and without warning Theodoric fell on Odoacer and with his bare hands strangled him to death. The repetition of the stupidity and violence in this story is a bit depressing, I agree.

Little Romulus would outlive most of them but only because he was younger to start with. Legend says he died about 509 A.D., not yet 35 years old, but still residing in his prison outside of Naples. And considering the fate of all the ambitious people in this story, that was a long, if not a happy, life.

Amino Domina, Roman Empire.

- 30 -