ger produce an army, and the foreign soldiery who had
served under various leaders naturally desired the partition of its lands.
Odoacer was now their leader, who, when a penniless youth, had visited St.
Severinus in Noricum, and received from him the prophecy: "Go into Italy,
clad now in poor skins: thou wilt speedily be able to clothe many richly".
Odoacer, after an adventurous life of heroic courage, made the homeless
warriors whom he now commanded understand that it was better to settle on
the fair lands of Italy than wander about in the service of phantom
emperors. They acclaimed him as their king, and after beheading Orestes and
getting possession of Romulus Augustus, he compelled him to abdicate before
the senate, and the senate to declare that the western empire was extinct.
This happened in the third year of the emperor Zeno the Isaurian, the ninth
of Pope Simplicius, A.D. 476. The senate sent deputies to Zeno at Byzantium
to declare that Rome no longer required an independent emperor; that one
emperor was sufficient for East and for West; that they had chosen for the
protector of Italy Odoacer, a man skilled in the arts of peace as well as
war, and besought Zeno to entrust him with the dignity of Patricius and the
government of Italy. The deposed Nepos also sent a petition to Zeno to
restore him. Zeno replied to the senate that of the two emperors whom he
had sent to them, they had deposed Nepos and killed Anthemius. But he
received the diadem and the imperial jewels of the western empire, and kept
them in his palace. He endured the usurper who had taken possession of
Italy until he was able to put him down, and so, in his letters to Odoacer,
invested him with the title of "Patricius of the Romans," leaving the
government of Italy to a German commander under his imperial authority. So
the division into East and West was cancelled: Italy as a province belonged
still to the one emperor, who was seated at Byzantium. In theory, the unity
of Constantine's time was restored; in fact, Rome and the West were
surrendered to Teuton invaders.[16] This was the last stroke: the mighty
members of the great mother--Gaul, and Spain, and Britain, and Africa, and
Illyricum--had been severed from her. Now, the head, discrowned and
impotent, submitted to the rule of Odoacer the Herule. The Byzantine
supremacy remained in keeping for future use. It had been acknowledged from
the death of Honorius in 423, when Galla Placidia had become