Odoacer

Odoacer was a military commander who deposed Romulus Augustulus in 476 and ruled Italy as king while formally acknowledging the eastern emperor. He preserved much of the Roman administration but was eventually defeated and killed by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric.

Odoacer came to power through a revolt of troops in Italy and, after removing Romulus Augustulus, sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople while governing in the name of the eastern emperor. He retained much of the Roman civil administration and worked with the Senate. Conflict with Emperor Zeno led to Theodoric’s invasion; after a prolonged siege of Ravenna, Theodoric killed Odoacer in 493.

Gary Jennings’ Raptor follows Odoacer from the deposition of Romulus Augustulus through his rule in Italy to the conflict with Theodoric that ends in his death at Ravenna. Michael Curtis Ford’s The Fall of Rome makes the mutiny of the federate troops and Odoacer’s seizure of power the climax of the western imperial collapse in 476. Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s The Last Legion casts Odoacer as the conqueror whose overthrow of the boy emperor sends the surviving Roman loyalists on their flight towards Britain. Ross Laidlaw’s Theoderic examines Odoacer from the perspective of the Ostrogothic challenger sent west by Emperor Zeno, while Ian Hughes’ Patricians and Emperors places his coup at the end of two decades in which generals and rival courts had already hollowed out western imperial authority.