Deposition of Romulus Augustulus ends the Western Roman Empire
- Date
- 4 September 476 CE
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Italy (Ravenna)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
On 4 September 476 CE the Germanic commander Odoacer, leading barbarian foederati in Italy, deposed the teenage emperor Romulus Augustulus at Ravenna after defeating and executing the boy's father, the general Orestes, who had refused his troops' demands for land.
Spared on account of his youth, Romulus was pensioned off to Campania. Rather than appointing a new western emperor, Odoacer had himself recognised as king of Italy and sent the western imperial regalia to the eastern emperor Zeno in Constantinople, acknowledging him as sole emperor while ruling Italy in practice as an independent monarch. Because no successor was proclaimed in the west, the deposition is conventionally taken as the end of the Western Roman Empire and a symbolic close to ancient history, even though the eastern empire continued at Constantinople for nearly another thousand years and many Roman institutions persisted under the new Germanic kingdoms. The event crystallised a long process of imperial disintegration and is traditionally cited as the boundary between classical antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Europe.
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Empires active in 4 September 476 CE
- Sassanid Empire224 CE – 651 CE
- Kingdom of Funan50 CE – 550 CE
- Roman Empire27 BCE – 476 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Hephthalite Empire440 CE – 560 CE
- Gupta Empire320 CE – 550 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Ardashir I defeats the Parthians at Hormozdgan and founds the Sasanian Empire28 April 224 CE
- Constantine dedicates Constantinople as a new capital11 May 330 CE
- Chandragupta I founds the Gupta Empire and inaugurates the Gupta erac. 319–320 CE
- Diocletian establishes the Tetrarchy293 CE (system begun 284–286)
- Abdication of Emperor Xian ends the Han; Three Kingdoms begin220 CE
- Augustus founds the Principate (First Settlement)16 January 27 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
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