fact that
a man of barbarian blood was the real, and in a certain sense the
supreme, ruler of his country. Ricimer might be looked upon as an
eminent servant of the Emperor who had the misfortune to be of barbarian
birth. Odovacar and Theodoric were, without all contradiction, kings; if
not "kings of Italy", at any rate "kings in Italy", sometimes actually
making war on the Caesar of Byzantium, and not caring, when they did so,
to set up the phantom of a rival Emperor in order to legitimise their
opposition. But in a matter so greatly debated as this it will be safer
not to use our own or any modern words, This is how Count Marcellinus,
an official of the Eastern Empire, writing his annals about fifty-eight
years after the deposition of Romulus, describes the event: "Odovacar
killed Orestes and condemned his son Augustulus to the punishment of
exile in the Lucullanum, a castle of Campania. The Hesperian (Western)
Empire of the Roman people, which Octavianus Augustus first of the
Augusti began to hold in the 709th year of the building of the city
(B.C. 44), perished with this Augustulus in the 522d year of his
predecessors (A.D. 476), the kings of the Goths thenceforward holding
both Rome and Italy".[49]

[Footnote 49: "Orestem Odoacer llico trucidavit, Augustulum filium
Orestis Odoacer in Lucullano Campania castello exilii poena damnavit.
Hesperium Romana gentis imperium, quod septingentesimo nono urbis
condita anno primus Augustorum Octavianus Augustus tenere coepit, cum hoc
Augustulo periit, anno decessorum regni Imperatorum DXXII. Gothorum
dehinc regibus Romam tenentibus". It will be seen that there is an error
of two years in the calculation.]

Of the details of Odovacar's rule in Italy we know very little. Of
course the _foederati_ had their will, at any rate in some measure, with
reference to the assignment of land in Italy, but no historian has told
us anything as to the social disorganisation which such a redistribution
of property must have produced. There are some indications that it was
not thoroughly carried into effect, at any rate in the South of Italy,
and that the settlements of the _foederati_ were chiefly in the valley of
the Po, and in the districts since known as the Romagna.

The old Imperial machinery of government was taken over by the new
ruler, and in all outward appearance things probably went on under King
Odovacar much as they had done under Count Ricimer. No great act of
cruelty or oppres