[Footnote 2:  Idem.  Ep. 1. 8.  Cf.  Hodgkin, op cit vol. 1. p. 860.]

Such was the Ravenna of the barbarian who called himself king of Italy.

We have seen Ravenna since her incorporation into the Roman administrative system fulfilling the various reasons of her existence; as the fortress which held the gate into Italy from Cisalpine Gaul, as the second naval port of the West, and as the great impregnable fortress of Italy in the barbarian invasions.  Odoacer, also, chose it as his chief seat of government for similar advantages.  Ravenna strongly held gave him, as strongly held she had given every one of her masters, Italy and Cisalpine Gaul; while as the gate of the eastern sea, Ravenna was his proper means of communication with his over-lord and the eastern provinces of what was, rightly understood, the reunited empire.

That, theoretically at least, is how Odoacer regarded the state in which, by the good pleasure of the emperor Zeno, he held the title of patrician.  He was an unlettered man, an Arian, as were all the barbarians, and he held what he held by permission of Constantinople, though he had won it by his own strength in the weakness and misery of the time.  He never aspired, it would seem, to make himself emperor.  Certainly for the first four years of his rule in Ravenna that great office was filled by Julius Nepos in exile at Salona, whose deposition at the hands of Orestes had never been recognised by Constantinople.  Thereafter, the western and the eastern empire were in theory reunited, with New Rome upon the Bosphorus for their true capital; and both before and after that event Odoacer ruled in Italy with the title of patrician conferred upon him by Constantinople.  When that consent was withdrawn, as it was immediately Odoacer showed signs of ambition, he fell.

Odoacer had ruled in Ravenna from 476 to 493, when he fell in that city after sustaining a siege of three years.  He ruled well and strongly and by the laws of the empire.  He was compelled by the barbaric confederates, who had placed him where he was, to grant them a third of the lands, certainly, of the great Italian landowners; but he created nothing new; like all the barbarians he was sterile, his only service was a service of destruction.  With him even this service was small.

His fall was curious and is exceedingly significant.

In 481, after the murder of the emperor Julius Nepos in Salona, Odoacer led an expedition into Dalmatia to chastise the murderers and seized the opportunity to make himself master of Dalmatia.  This action at once renewed the suspicion of Constantinople; but when in 484 Odoacer entered into negotiations with Illus, the last of the insurgents who disturbed the reign of Zeno, Constantinople decided that he must be broken; therefore Feletheus, king of the Rugians upon the Danube, was stirred up against him, and when that failed, for Odoacer defeated him, Constantinople sent Theodoric and his Ostrogothic host into Italy to dispose of Odoacer the patrician[1].