Julius Nepos

But the extravagance of ignominy was not exhausted.

A rival emperor, Julius Nepos, compelled Glycerius to exchange the inheritance of the Caesars for the bishopric of Salona.

Again, the bishop of Salona in due time found his fallen rival Nepos in his power and murdered him.

In the next turn of fortune, a former secretary of Attila, Orestes, had become patrician and general of the barbarian troops.

But the extravagance of ignominy was not exhausted.

A rival emperor, Julius Nepos, compelled Glycerius to exchange the inheritance of the Caesars for the bishopric of Salona.

Again the bishop of Salona in due time found his fallen rival Nepos in his power and murdered him.

In the next turn of fortune a former secretary of Attila, Orestes, had become patrician and general of the barbarian troops.

But the extravagance of ignominy was not exhausted.

A rival emperor, Julius Nepos, compelled Glycerius to exchange the inheritance of the Caesars for the bishopric of Salona.

Again the bishop of Salona in due time found his fallen rival Nepos in his power and murdered him.

In the next turn of fortune a former secretary of Attila, Orestes, had become patrician and general of the barbarian troops.

In 250 the Goths, who in their migrations had come in contact with the Huns and had fled before them, were becoming dangerous on the Danube.

A Roman emperor, Decius, was defeated and slain by them.

During the whole of the third century the confederacy then known as that of the Alamani was putting to the severest strain the efforts of emperors like Maximin, Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus to keep them from the Upper Rhine, and they ended by establishing themselves there in spite of the victories in the following century of Julian and Gratian.

In the year 240 the Germans of the Lower Rhine, no more known as the Chatti, Camavi, Buchtari, and only in rhetoric as Sigambrians, appear for the first time as the Franks, more furious, more enterprising, and more terrible in their ravages in Gaul than even the Alamani.

And the Burgundians, once settled between the Oder and the Vistula, then in their migrations driven westward before the Goths, pushed themselves in between the Alamani and the Franks.

It was becoming certain not only that Roman armies might meet with ill success in barbarian wars, but that barbarians were losing that awe of the empire which had kept them at a distance and were becoming more audacious in their enterprises.

There was an undoubted loosening of the bands, the customs, the political and civil instincts, the forces of authority which had kept the empire together.

Among the greatest innovations was the division of power between two or three emperors and even more serious still the creation of a new and permanent capital, necessarily the rival of the hitherto unique center of the power and majesty of the empire.

The government was having trouble even just paying them, which is a very effective way to, you know, get your soldiers offside.

Um, so anyway, the, the second to last emperor, uh, a bloke whose name was Julius Nepos, uh, he appointed a fella by the name of Orestes as the magister militum, sort of like the commander in chief of the army.

Um, and, uh, taking command of these disgruntled, uh, Foederati, uh, Orestes decided to demonstrate his gratitude to Emperor Nepos for this, you know, powerful appointment by overthrowing him with the soldiers he commanded, one of whom was this bloke Odoacer.

Anyway, with, uh, with Nepos out of the way and forced into exile by Orestes, uh, Orestes then plonks his young son Romulus Augustus on the imperial throne in October 475.

Emperor Zeno, uh, Zeno, meanwhile, um, instead of accepting the situation as it was, he was happy that, you know, Odoacer was willing to bend the knee to him, but all the same he said, "Mate, okay.

How, like, that, that...

I, I love that as a starting point, but how about we go back and recognize the previously overthrown and exiled Julius Nepos, right? How about we bring him back as the Western Roman Emperor, you know, just for the, the look of the thing, you know.

Bring him back out of exile.

And this same historian also suggests that Athaulf decided to work within the Roman state because it was more feasible to set himself up set his people up within Roman territory, then expanding beyond Roman territory and trying to form a new empire there.

While we can't know what Athelf's intentions were for sure, he did work to promote good relations with the Roman emperor Honorius, and he eventually married the emperor's sister.

And this gave the Visigoths a little bit of breathing room as they were settling down in southern Gaul.

Athaulf's relations with the Romans were occasionally rocky, however, due to Athaulf's poor personal relationship with Constantius, who was the magister militum, or the head of the imperial army.

Athaulf also developed a rivalry with a neighboring Gothic chieftain called Ceres, who was in the employ of the Roman emperor.

Athaulf ambushed Ceres in 412 AD and had him executed, and this kicked off something of a blood feud between Athaulf and Ceres' families.

You have to remember, with Germanic culture at the time, familial blood feuds were a real serious part of life, and so...

In 418, Constantius ordered Wallia to withdraw from Spain.