Transcription
[Music] As the summer of 476 began to draw to a close, the fate of the ailing Western Roman Empire had never been more dire. In the wake of the death of the all-powerful Germanic General Ricimer, politicking puppet master behind the throne for going on 20 years, a number of Imperial candidates had vied for control of the remnants of the once mighty realm, most of them losing their heads in the process. For it wasn't just Goths of Germanic descent who attempted to hold sway over the ebbing tide from both within and without, but full-blooded Romans too.
Just the previous year, though having all the support of Constantinople, mighty capital of the Eastern half of the Empire, and a good military pedigree being the son of a famed General, the emperor Julius Nepos had been outsmarted, left adrift to rule over a rump state in Dalmatia. Much had changed since the days of Augustus and Hadrian, so many centuries before. Even the imperial capital itself had been moved in the wake of repeated sackings by barbarians over the course of the fifth century. And in the 470s, in the well-fortified Imperial lair of Ravenna, it was a certain Orestes who now pulled the strings. But instead of placing himself on the throne in a brazen decision, it was his teenage son Romulus who would be made Emperor. But Orestes clearly failed to realize what was really going [Music] on.
When a group of Germanic officers arrived at court to ask for an increase in pay to ensure their continued loyalty, they were flatly refused. In truth, the only reason Italy hadn't already been flooded by their far more uncivilized, un-Romanized cousins from beyond the borders of the realm, they took issue, heading to their boss to demand something be done. His name was [Music] Odoacer.
And so it was in late August 476, Orestes was seized, paying for his insolence with his life. But when Odoacer found himself in the presence of the young Romulus, only around 15 years old at the time, he took pity on the little Emperor, sending him to exile on a rural villa [Music] instead. And with that relatively simple act, the vaunted days of the Western Emperors were over. Odoacer had rid himself of the petty bureaucrats once and for all. And yet, in actuality, for the vast majority of citizens, life would go on just as it had before. Gathering up all the Imperial regalia, Odoacer sent it over to Constantinople, saying only one Emperor would be necessary now and pledging his allegiance. Officially, the West was still part of the Roman Empire, though now under the official rule of a Romanized Germanic elite. Julius Nepos lingered on for another four years before he too was killed. From then on, there would be no more Roman emperors in the West. And yet, as we shall see, the title would be revived many times over the next thousand years, and the concept of a Roman was far from dead. Was there, in truth, ever a last Roman? Is such a concept even possible? It's a question that has transfixed historians for centuries, since Procopius in the 6th Century AD, and particularly since Edward Gibbon in the 18th. There have been many candidates for the title of "Last Roman," to signal, I, their valor and their virtue as Romans of old, figures who for one reason or another, due to some extraordinary material or scholarly achievements, were considered fit for such a title. From Flavius Stilicho, staunch half-Vandal defender of the Empire, betrayed and murdered by his own Emperor, to the very last Emperor himself, Constantine XI, who died fighting the Ottoman Turks in 1453, well over a millennia later. Join us on this journey of a thousand years as we trace the decline and fall of the Roman Empire through the individuals who did their utmost to preserve its existence. Hello and welcome to History Time. As always, I'm your host, Pete [Music] Kelly. Now, usually, I research, write, film, and edit these things on my own, but this episode is something special. The research and the initial script were put together by YouTube's premier channel on the fall of Rome, Mayori Anus. So, in terms of what you hear, you can think of this as a collaboration between the two of us. Go and check out his excellent channel for epic videos on all things fifth century and the late Roman Empire, one of the most fascinating periods in all of history. When it comes to editing these videos, I've always done it myself, much to the detriment of my life, as these things take years to make and I end up doing nothing else. But this year, I'm delighted to announce that I finally got a video editor involved, meaning I can focus on putting together bigger and better things for the channel than ever before. It's going to be ridiculous. Of course, I'll still be editing some of the videos, around half of them probably, but not all. And doing it this way, we've already doubled the output of the channel. So, a big thanks to Damiano Petrucci for editing this video and the recent episode on the Spartans. Let us know what you think in the comments. Also, don't forget to sign up to my Substack newsletter, where I journey to distant lands in search of the world's greatest archaeological [Music] sites. Shortly, we'll get back to the fall of Rome, but first, a quick word from our sponsor.
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[Music] In order to truly understand the fall of the Empire, we must go back to the very beginnings of its fracture, to the war-ridden 4th Century AD. In those days, more often than not, the real enemy was a fellow Roman usurper or upstart general, usually by far the biggest threats coming from the upper echelons of the military rather than Germanic barbarians. As American writer Ariel Durant once said, "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." In 363 AD, the last pagan Roman Emperor and savior of Gaul, Julian, played his hand one too many times, heading off on an ill-conceived campaign to Persia from which he would never return. Now content to simply escape with their lives, the soldiers proclaimed Julian's lieutenant, Jovian, as their new emperor, spending close to a year making humiliating peace treaties and traveling back to Constantinople. He died before he got there. In that age of magnates and generals, when only the strongest survived, a number of replacements were then put forward. All of them were high-ranking generals from military families on the frontier. Ultimately, the best man for the job was chosen: a career soldier with decades of experience fighting the Germanic barbarians who now, yet again, threatened to spill over the Rhine into the Empire. His name was [Music] Valentinian.
In an unprecedented new situation of relative stability, Valentinian was able to appoint his brother Valens as Emperor in the East, whilst he set about pacifying the Rhine frontier in the West, proving to be exceptionally capable in his position, methodically taking on one group of Interlopers after the [Applause] other. Little did Valentinian know it, but he was to be the very last Roman Emperor to campaign significantly on the other side of that great riverine barrier to the barbarian world, marching deep into Germanic territory between 367 and 369. Whilst there, not only did he strengthen the various river defenses and watch posts on the eastern side of the river, but he rebuilt and refurbished old and dilapidated forts, also building new ones. Valentinian clearly had an eye for similarly capable subordinates too, dispatching the Hispanic General Theodosius to deal with a massive invasion of Britannia in 367. With only a small task force, Theodosius was able to bring the situation under control, winning himself and his family lasting fame in the process. We will hear from his son again. At around the same time, in 368, Valentinian moved into Germanic territory that had once been occupied by the Romans, since abandoned during the chaos of the 3rd Century, a situation which had first led to the perpetual installment of frontier generals to the post of Emperor. The Agri Decumates had been given up after the reign of Probus and since settled by the Alamanni, one of the most powerful tribal confederations to emerge in the third and fourth centuries as a very real threat to the prosperity of Roman Gaul. At Salicinium, Valentinian fought a large-scale pitched battle against the Alamanni, led by their king, Chnodomar. The Romans were victorious, but suffered substantial losses. Gone were the days of bloodless victories. The so-called barbarians now utilizing tactics and technology not too dissimilar to the Romans. This was the very last time the Romans would ever win a major battle against Germanic tribes deep in Germania. Just four decades later, not just the Alamanni, but vast amounts of other neighboring confederations would cross over the Rhine, storming Valentinian's painstakingly constructed defensive works, and once over, they would never leave. It was for this reason, for his impressive victories and for that last projection of Roman might beyond the borders of the frontier, that Valentinian would be remembered as the last of the Romans.
In 375, Valentinian died of a stroke. We're told his young son Gratian became Emperor of the West, but in the East, on the Danube frontier, similarly catastrophic events were brewing. His brother Valens still ruled. An entire barbarian confederation, the Goths, two nations to be precise, the Tervingi and the Greuthungi, had crossed the Danube into Roman territory in 376, beseeching the Romans for protection against a much more terrifying foe which had come storming in from the East. The Huns had arrived in Europe. Up until the late 370s, Valens had been quite a successful Emperor, like his brother Valentinian in the West, he'd successfully campaigned beyond the borders of the realm, heading across the Danube to defeat the Goths between 367 and 369, forcing them to sue for peace. However, this time, as tens of thousands of desperate men, women, and children poured into Roman territory, some of them refusing to give up their arms, there was no rule book to explain what to do. The subsequent situation was badly mismanaged by the local governors, resulting in outright rebellion by the Goths, eventually spiraling into open war. When yet more Gothic warriors crossed over the river, Valens, at the time, was forced to give up his campaign against the Sasanids, heading back West to personally deal with the precarious situation which was now brewing in Thrace, where the Goths had now begun attacking cities and ravaging the countryside. In 378, Valens arrived at Constantinople, apparently urged by the people of the city to attack the Goths immediately, and against the advice of Gratian's advisers, who urged him to wait for reinforcements from the West. Valens set out for war, perhaps fueled in part by his own ego. Without backup, Valens arrived at the city of Adrianople to engage the Goths. Initially, the battle went well, but the Romans were soon overwhelmed by the clever tactics of the Goths and a devastating, surprise cavalry attack. In the heat of battle, Valens himself was cut down, joining the ranks of the very few Roman emperors to be killed in combat. Adrianople was quite simply one of the greatest disasters the Roman Empire ever suffered. In its aftermath, the Goths could now roam unhindered through Roman territory for years, only being temporarily pacified by the new emperor, Theodosius. For Valens, instead of achieving a grandiose victory and immortalizing himself as a hero, the defeat set a devastating chain reaction into motion, which signaled to the barbarian tribes that the Romans could indeed be defeated. It would also set the dangerous precedent of Germanic tribes being allowed to settle within Roman land, a so-called *foederati*, a practice which would later spell doom upon the Western Empire, particularly when it was officially split into an independent entity upon the death of Theodosius.
But by no means all Germanic soldiers had the doom of the Empire on their minds. It wasn't long after the Empire had been split into an Eastern and a Western part. The doom would be spelled on the West in particular, though the ancestral home of all Romans of late. It had fallen behind the rich, glittering cities of the East, and Constantinople in particular, as imperial capital. Increasingly, the non-unified state did not uniformly fight against barbarian invasions, seeking first and foremost the survival of their own half. They would often now scheme against each other, and even more disastrously, fight civil wars within each half, weakening them even more severely. But especially in the West, with its poorer provinces and much more accessible and open geography, susceptible to being overrun by hordes of cavalry and foot soldiers alike. Over the course of 80 years, from New Year's Eve in 406, when a vast horde of Suebi, Vandals, and Alans crossed over the frozen Rhine, to the final fall of the general Syagrius, last Western Roman remnant, in 486 to Clovis's Frankish army, the West would suffer a lingering end. And yet, over the course of that near century, there were many heroic characters who gave everything for the Empire, and there were ensuing periods of peace when the Germanic invaders were subdued into pacifism and servile aid to the Imperial armies. Many of these individuals were called "Last Romans" in ancient and modern histories. Perhaps none more so, however, than Flavius Stilicho, a half-Vandal and exceptionally capable career soldier. Stilicho had been born in 359, during the days when the Empire had been whole, joining the Army at a young age. He'd risen through the ranks, ultimately serving admirably as the stalwart right-hand man of the Emperor Theodosius I, later known as the Great, the successor to Valens' Eastern Empire and eventual ruler of the West too. On Theodosius's death in 395, the Empire was split between his sons, Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West. It fell to Stilicho, as *magister militum* or Master of the Soldiers, to watch over the Western boy-king, also marrying into the royal family by marrying Theodosius's sister. Stilicho's service was exemplary, from his manning of the northern frontier in Britannia against the Picts and Scots, to his defeat of Radagaisus and the Visigoths in 402. Perhaps the greatest threat, though, came in 405, when a mighty Germanic king named Radagaisus descended upon Italy at the head of a vast horde, allegedly with the express intention of sacrificing the Emperor to the pagan gods. Stilicho was victorious, swatting aside the enemy with vastly superior tactics, forcing them into submission through starvation, and once again defeating another force in 406 when yet more barbarians crossed the Rhine to spill into Gaul. However, despite these heroic efforts, perhaps fearing his ever-growing power, whilst also wary of his Germanic heritage, in 408, the Emperor Honorius, whom Stilicho had dedicated his entire life to protecting, had his mighty general, one of Rome's greatest defenders, put to death. Just two years later, the situation Stilicho had done his utmost to avoid would come to pass. He'd spent vast amounts of time and energy in negotiating with Alaric and the Visigoths, descendants of the victors of Adrianople, but now with Stilicho gone, Alaric and his army headed to Rome, where the great city was sacked and burned for the first time in 800 years. For his incredible victories and valiant efforts to defend the Eternal City, Edward Gibbon famously called Stilicho "Last of the Romans" in his masterpiece, *The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire*. And Stilicho, perhaps above most others, is surely deserving of that title. And yet, others, perhaps equally as great, yet with less and less resources to call from due to the hemorrhaging territory of the West, would arise again.
Three years after the assassination of Stilicho, a new figure would arise in the service of the Emperor Honorius, inheriting Stilicho's role as *magister militum* of the West in 411. Although not called "Last of the Romans" by any of the ancient or modern sources, he surely deserves the title much more than many others on this list. His name was Constantius III, and it was he who managed to stabilize the Empire in the wake of the fall of Rome, allowing it to survive for another 65 years to come. A Pannonian by birth, Constantius steadily rose through the ranks of the military, until in 411, he was given the highest rank of all, essentially the undisputed master of the Western armies. Though of late, it was a state riven by usurpers and Germanic invaders. First on the agenda was Constantine III, a rival Emperor to Honorius, who'd seized Britain and vast swathes of Gaul and Hispania. Yet, it was Constantius who triumphed, reclaiming much of Gaul and Hispania, though Britain would be lost forever. Next, Constantius embarked on campaigns against the Germanic tribes who'd now managed to establish themselves on the territory of the Western Empire. In 416, he defeated the Visigoths in northern Hispania, blockading them and forcing them into submission by means of starvation. Their king, Wallia, surrendered to Rome, and the Visigoths were forced to become *foederati* of the Empire and to fight for them against the Vandals. Galla Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius, who had been captured in the sack of Rome in 408, was returned into Roman hands, becoming the wife of Constantius. She would go on to be a significant power behind the throne of the Western Empire for decades to come. In the following years, Constantius continued campaigning against the barbarians in Hispania and managed to recapture vast tracts of territory from the Goths, the Vandals, and the Suebi, thus stabilizing the Western Empire that had come so dangerously close to disintegration. And after the invasions of 406, in 421, he was even made co-Emperor of the West by Honorius. Unfortunately, though, he reigned only for seven months before he died in that same year. And this would be the last time that the Western Roman Empire would see some semblance of stability, for which he truly does deserve the title "Last of the Romans."
It was to be the Vandals, then, a fairly insignificant faction in Hispania, who would go on the warpath next. In 428, black sails were spied off the coast of Africa. For centuries, the Mediterranean had been clear of pirates, but now all that was to change. Sailing south from Hispania, in a great armada, where they'd been warring and wandering for the past 20 years or so, came a vast force of tens of thousands of Vandals and Alanic horse warriors. Their destination was the soft underbelly of the Empire and its breadbasket: the province of Africa, where the grain ships to Italy needed to keep sailing if the Empire was to survive. Though the general who went to the defense of that most important of provinces was ultimately unsuccessful in his attempts, for his valiant efforts, he was described by the historian Procopius, writing just over a hundred years later, as "the last of the Romans." That man was Count Boniface, or Bonasus, as he is known by Procopius. First appearing as a general of Constantius III in 413, Bonasus held various posts over the ensuing nearly two decades, proving himself a reliable and able soldier before confronting the Vandals in open field battle at Callama in 430. Unfortunately for Bonasus, the ruler of the Vandals was Gaiseric, one of the greatest Germanic kings in history, who pretty much never lost a battle in his entire career, and that day was no different. After the battle, Bonasus and his surviving soldiers retreated to the city of Hippo Regius, home of the famed theologian and Saint Augustine of Hippo, fortifying themselves in the city. The Vandals then began a lengthy and brutal siege, finally seizing the place in 431. It's thought that Augustine himself died in the chaos. Yet, Bonasus didn't give up yet. In early 432, he took to the field of battle once more, this time with support from the Eastern Empire, Aspar, the Alanic kingmaker behind the throne of Constantinople, dispatching a force to aid him. When the Romans lost that day, it was the beginning of the end for Roman Africa, with the metropolis of Carthage eventually being seized and set up as the capital of a new Vandalic kingdom for a hundred years to come. Like all Roman generals of that age, Bonasus was also engaged in various civil wars against the other powerful Roman commanders in the West, most notably Flavius Felix and Flavius Aetius. It's thought very likely by modern historians that his failures against the Vandals would be due, at least in part, to the intense civil wars raging in the background, effectively preventing a united front against the barbarians, with Bonasus only being able to call on his immediate soldiers of his own province. And yet, after winning a battle against Aetius, the all-powerful *magister militum* in Gaul, in 432, Bonasus, the last hope of Africa, mortally wounded, wed by a lance during the fighting, always seeming to fight in the thickest of the combat, passed away.
It is to his rival that we must now turn. With the death of Bonasus in 432, Flavius Aetius stood alone among the most powerful generals of the Western Empire, though unpopular with Galla Placidia in Ravenna due to his politicking and ruthless climbing of the ladder of power and the killing of many of her allies. When Aetius personally rode to Ravenna at the head of an army of battle-hardened Hun mercenaries, the Ravenna administration had no choice but to acquiesce. Many years earlier, Flavius Aetius had been fostered at the court of Attila the Visigoth himself, before being handed on to the Alanic king of the Huns. It was a childhood forged in bloodshed and turmoil, but one which forged one of the greatest generals in Roman history. History now, all those years later, he was still able to call on the support of the new Hunnic king, Rugila, who he seems to have known as a youth. It was this ability to command genuine respect and service from so-called barbarians from beyond the edge of the Empire that would make Aetius into such a powerhouse, overseeing the Empire through its final phase of relative stability, and as we shall see, one final major crisis, arguably the greatest it would ever face, violently holding the West together in a time of utter chaos and desperation, and eventually commanding the respect and service of practically all soldiers from Hispania to Gaul, Germanic mercenary and legionary alike, for the last time [Music] ever.
Aetius first came to prominence in the mid-420s as a capable general in service to the usurper Johannes, backed up by his army of Huns. He was able to renegotiate his position upon Johannes' death, arriving in Gaul in 426 to take command of the Western Army, a force 40,000 strong. Following the death of Honorius, the six-year-old Valentinian III now sat on the Imperial throne, though the real power lay with his mother, Galla Placidia, who installed various generals such as Aetius with positions in the military. Aetius was quickly able to subdue the Goths in Gaul before turning north to defeat the Franks too, coaxing oaths from all of them to serve him personally should he need it. As a result, Aetius was promoted to the position of *magister militum*, though still outranked by the overall commander of the army, Flavius Felix. By 430, however, following a feud, Felix was tracked down and summarily executed, supposedly to forestall Aetius's own execution. Another conflict with Bonasus ensued, and though defeated on his march to Italy, Bonasus soon passed away, and Aetius returned to Italy to seize his position back, as usual, at the head of a large Hunnic army. Reinstated as *magister militum*, Aetius was now by far the mightiest power in the West, a position he would hold for going on 20 years to come. To the north of the Danube, Aetius's ally Rugila soon died in 434, replaced as king of the Hunnic state by his nephews, an older youth named Bleda and a younger by the name of Attila. After two decades of keeping order in the West, the East having largely suffered the wrath of the Huns in the meantime, eventually led solely by Attila after the mysterious death of his brother, the Hunnic army launched a full-scale invasion of the West, pressing multitudes of Germanic nations wholesale into their service, driving terrified peasants and slaves alike before them across the plains of Gaul. In the vast pitched battle that followed on the Catalaunian Plains in 451, Aetius's personal charisma was so great that the veteran Visigothic king, Theodoric I, ruler for an astonishing 33 years, fought to the death on his behalf. The Huns were pushed back, and Attila died not long after, leading to the breakup of the Hunnic Confederation. Like Stilicho before him, however, Aetius's reward for his service was an ignominious death, this time supposedly by the very hands of the Emperor himself, thus plunging the Empire into utter chaos once more. Valentinian himself was murdered soon after by the vengeful bodyguards of Aetius, and only months later, ever opportunistic, the Vandals under Gaiseric sailed over to Rome to lay the city to waste yet again, the second time in only 45 years. Yet more vicious civil wars would ensue, only hastening the demise of the West. And without the strong arm of Aetius keeping both Germanic mercenaries and Roman usurpers alike in line through cunning and skillful diplomacy, it seemed only a matter of time before everything fell apart for good.
And yet, there was one more hope, one last figure to try and save the Empire. A grandson of one of Theodosius I's greatest generals, Majorian became a distinguished officer in the service of Aetius, particularly making a name for himself against Chlodeo, ravaging the Franks in the late 440s. In around 450, however, he fell out of favor after the Emperor considered marrying his own daughter to the young general, a position Aetius wanted for his own son. Majorian was demoted and only allowed to return to service upon Aetius's death in 454. Ultimately becoming Emperor in 457, in his short but astonishing reign of only four years, Majorian almost managed to restore the Western Empire to its former extent. With the aid of his capable commanders, Marcellus of Dalmatia, Nepos, the father of the later Western Emperor Julius Nepos, and Aegidius, he restored much of Gaul and Hispania to Roman control. The Burgundians, Visigoths, and Suebi were all decisively defeated and reduced to *foederati* status, astounding victories for a supposedly dying Western Roman Empire. He also instigated laws to protect the architecture of the Western Empire itself, which had begun to fall into disrepair and ruin of late, seeming to have a genuine desire to not only restore the territory of the state but its former glory and culture too. Yet, there was one last grand feat to accomplish: the reconquest of Vandal Africa, that lost province of the Western Roman Empire that had been captured by the Vandals about 20 years before Majorian's time. Meticulously planning the reconquest, Majorian had even amassed the largest Western Roman fleet in centuries, 300 ships, near Carthago Nova. But unfortunately, his fleet was destroyed in 461 whilst still at anchor, possibly set on fire by traitors who were paid off by the Vandals. Thus perished the last hope of the Romans to restore the Western Roman Empire to its former extent. On his way back to Italy, Majorian made a terrible mistake, namely disbanding his army and only keeping a small personal bodyguard around him. The treacherous *magister militum* Ricimer, conspiring against him, had heard of this, riding hard and fast to intercept the Emperor on his way to Rome. At the city of Tortona, Majorian was tortured and executed in August of 461. Thus ended the life of a remarkable figure who rightfully deserves the title "Last of the Romans."
Within just a few years of Majorian's murder, the situation had become even more desperate than before his reign had begun. All of the territorial gains that the Emperor had made were reversed. The Suebi, Visigoths, and Burgundians were expanding and no longer considered *foederati* but entirely independent states. Worse, Marcellus of Dalmatia and Aegidius in Gaul had split away from the Western Empire as a direct result of Ricimer's execution of Majorian, forging their own factions whilst ever threatening to invade Italy themselves. But even then, one last hope for the dying Western Empire emerged: Anthemius, an often overlooked Emperor, unjustly called "the Greek" on the Western throne, when in fact he too, like Majorian, gave everything to try and save the Western [Music] Empire, eventually making the ultimate sacrifice. Anthemius became Emperor in 467, sent to the West by the Eastern Emperor Leo I. Damascus tells us that he was possibly a secret pagan and that he planned to restore the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill at Rome, and like the old Emperors of days gone by, he reigned from Rome. And already one year into his reign, he would try to actively save the Empire together with the Eastern Emperor and Marcellus of Dalmatia. A huge naval landing operation was organized in order to once again try to reconquer the lost Western Roman province of Africa. To that end, Leo had amassed a giant fleet of over a thousand ships, and Anthemius had sent Marcellus of Dalmatia to aid in this operation. So, even as late as 468, Anthemius had tried to save the Empire. But sadly, the commander of the operation, a very incapable Eastern Roman patrician called Basiliscus, was fooled by Gaiseric, and so the largest part of the fleet was destroyed at Cape Bon in 468. After this disaster, however, still Anthemius did not give up, calling upon the help of the Romano-British Remigius to fight against the Visigoths in Gaul. Remigius, called King of the Britons, crossed over from Britain in 470, but he was ultimately defeated by the Visigoths under their fierce king Euric. Finally, in one last desperate attempt, Anthemius sent forth his son, Antholus, together with three other Roman commanders and the last remnants of the Western Roman army to Gaul, in order to fight against the Visigoths. But unfortunately, this also failed, and Antholus was killed in the end. Anthemius too would suffer the same fate as Majorian before him. Ricimer, the treacherous *magister militum* of the Western Empire, became displeased with Anthemius's vigor, attempting to restore the Empire and thus waste vital resources, and so he marched on Rome to besiege the Emperor in the Eternal City. Intense fighting ensued, and Ricimer finally sacked Rome in 472, finding the Emperor and having him killed. And so ended the last best hope for the Western Roman Empire. That Greek on the Western Roman throne deserves to be called the last Roman much more than so many other Romans on the Western throne since he too, like Majorian, gave his life in order to save the state.
But we do have hints of other forlorn attempts at Roman survival too, even far beyond the borders of Italy. Just as chaos reigned on the continent, on the distant shores of Britannia, once the trophy and glory of the Emperors who sailed beyond the ends of the Earth, death had come from beyond the frontiers too, from the West and the North in the form of Pictish and Scottish raiders, and from the East, from Saxon, Anglian, and Jutish pirates, as well as Germanic mercenary commanders already long inside the province, and Romano-British usurpers alike. Almost entirely lacking of historical sources and with little to go on in the continental accounts, instead we must turn to the 6th Century British monk Gildas for any semblance of a story. And in his fiery, polemical work *On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain*, he gives us the name of one particularly valiant individual who, two generations before his own time, in the second half of the fifth century AD, around about the same time as Remigius, King of the Britons, made his expedition into Gaul, unified some sort of resistance against the Saxon invaders then besetting the Western portions of the island, winning an important victory and securing peace for years to come. His name was Ambrosius Aurelianus. According to Gildas' account, Ambrosius's parents had supposedly worn the purple and been slain in it, suggesting some sort of continuation from the Roman administration of the island. It is for this reason that Gildas calls Ambrosius Aurelianus "Last of the Romans," perhaps along with Remigius, in part the original inspiration for the King Arthur legend. Ambrosius was later transformed into King Arthur's uncle and eventually merged with Merlin to form an entirely new character, an interesting half-life for a figure we know next to nothing about, who may well have been a form of last Roman governor in Britain after most Roman troops had been withdrawn from the island in 407 and it officially being left by 410, but whose grandparents may well have regaled him of tales of the Empire in his youth.
Meanwhile, on the continent, that Empire still clung on by a thread. In most conventional histories of the Western Roman Empire, and certainly in the popular imagination, the last de facto Roman Emperor in the West, and a figure often called a "Last Roman," is the "Little Caesar" Romulus Augustus, deposed by the Germanic General Odoacer in 476 to be replaced by a new system of kingship. He certainly was the last Emperor to rule over Italy, though as we have seen, he was far from the last Western Emperor to rule anywhere, let alone in the Eastern Empire, which would survive for another thousand years. Across the Adriatic, in Dalmatia, where great Roman generals had been born and raised for centuries, Julius Nepos and his supporters, including the Eastern Court, considered him, not Romulus, to be the last rightful Emperor in the West. The son and heir of one of Majorian's generals, Nepos, Julius Nepos, initially went to Rome to depose Glycerius, puppet of the Burgundian General Gundobad, who seemed to be becoming a new Ricimer. His uncle Nepos had some initial success against the Burgundians, bringing them back in line, but crucially, he failed to defeat the Visigoths. This, coupled with his erstwhile supporter, the Eastern Emperor Zeno, being temporarily overthrown by a usurper, resulted in Nepos being forced to flee from his recently appointed and now almost immediately rebellious *magister militum*, Orestes. Still backed by the Eastern Emperor Zeno and married to the previous Emperor Leo's niece, Nepos continued reigning in his home province of Dalmatia until, in 480, just as he planned another incursion on Italy, he was murdered by two of his generals. Julius Nepos was the last Emperor to be crowned in Rome until the Frankish King Charlemagne in the year 800.
And yet, even Julius Nepos wasn't the last Western Roman ruler to hold power over a substantial territory. For in the north of Gaul, hemmed in by hostile powers on all sides, the sprawling remnants of the Imperial province still held [Music] on. After the Emperor Majorian was murdered in 461, replaced by Ricimer's puppet Libius Severus, the *magister militum* in Gaul, Aegidius, immediately rebelled, probably pledging his allegiance to Emperor Leo in the East in order to retain some legitimacy with his legions. He repeatedly threatened to invade Italy to depose the new Emperor and Ricimer's regime. Visigothic pressure proved too much to actually act, however. Though as a native of Gaul, perhaps from a well-respected aristocratic family, Aegidius was able to maintain order. And when he died in around 465, he was succeeded by his son. Far from an unsuitable hereditary climate, as so often happened in Roman history, Syagrius would hold on to the reins of power in a sprawling state extending from the borders of Brittany to Germany for an astonishing 20 years to come, holding off Childeric's Salian Franks for decades, as well as making gains against the Visigoths, only to finally succumb to one of the most powerful Germanic leaders in all of history, Childeric's ambitious young son, Clovis, at the Battle of Soissons in 486. Syagrius was captured and quietly executed. His administration, however, and probably his army, would largely survive, going on to form a major component in Clovis's new conception of a single, united Francia, which would ultimately turn into France. It is thanks to figures like Syagrius that French is a Latin-derived Romance language, not Germanic. Gallo-Roman life would continue in Francia, and to a certain extent, the Roman way of life never died out there, going on to form a major part of the Merovingian and subsequently Carolingian regimes in the Early Middle Ages. Syagrius was the last Western Roman ruler, and in France in particular, he is often considered "Last of the Romans."
But a version of Rome would survive in the successor kingdoms that followed. Odoacer ruled Italy for 17 years. And though the Western Empire might have officially been gone, in reality, very little had changed. Like most soldiers of Germanic heritage, whose ancestors had converted as much as a hundred years before, Odoacer was an Arian Christian, and though distinct from the Roman Church, he rarely intervened in ecclesiastical matters, spending significant resources in defending Italy from potential Germanic invaders like the Rugii. After involving himself with a usurper's attempt to overthrow the Eastern Emperor Zeno, however, Odoacer's days were numbered. In 489, a new group on the scene, the Ostrogoths, formerly part of Attila's Hunnic Empire beyond the Danube, came crashing into Italy, finally seizing Ravenna in 493 and killing Odoacer there. There was to be no hostile sack by the Ostrogoths, however. Happy to present themselves as the new defenders of Rome, Odoacer was portrayed as a tyrant, and a new Ostrogothic kingdom ushered in. Like Odoacer's, very much based on the Roman one that came before, Theodoric, the ruler of the Ostrogoths, was happy to maintain the Senate, invested time in repairing and rebuilding Roman infrastructure, and dedicated patronage to artistic and educational endeavors. Rather than a break, the reign of Theodoric was a continuation of what had come before, with a minor transformation of the ruling class. It was into this system that a lauded figure would arise, often called "Last of the Romans" due to his dedication to knowledge and his deep desire to keep intact the world of before. Born in Italy just a few short years after the fall of the Western Empire, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was an integral senator, consul, *magister officiorum*, historian, and philosopher in Theodoric's Kingdom. Boethius earned his title as "Last Roman" because he was one of the very last true statesmen and senators who, just as in the days of old, wielded Roman politics masterfully, being an excellent orator and writer in the Latin tongue, compared by some to the likes of Cicero. Boethius lived and studied in the city of Rome, still in those days, despite its repeated sackings, quite identical in form and in shape to the last decades of the Western Empire. Unfortunately, in the last few years of his reign, Theodoric the Great ceased to be as wise and as benevolent a ruler as he had once been, and after Boethius took a contrary ecclesiastical stance to the great king one too many times, he was [Music] executed.
But there was another integral figure of the time too, often lauded as perhaps even greater than Boethius. By the time Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus reached the end of his days, in around 585 AD, the once prosperous towns and cities of the Western Empire were utterly unrecognizable from the time of his youth. Italy in particular had been prosperous in those days under the benevolent rule of the Ostrogoths, when Romans still held many significant political and societal positions. Hailing from an elite senatorial family with links stretching back into the 5th century and earlier, after the usual scholarly education, Cassiodorus rose through the ranks of society, becoming Consul in 514 and *Magister of the Forum* in 523, ultimately becoming a vital pillar of the Ostrogothic administration. War would soon arrive once more, though, this time when the Eastern Romans made an attempt to take back Italy for good. In the carnage that followed, the countryside would be scorched, devastated by years of turmoil, seeming to quietly disappear from political life. Cassiodorus spent his last 30 years in a monastery, where he wrote many magisterial works of history, most of which we sadly only have fragments of today. It was during those years that the most devastating invasion yet arrived in the form of the Lombards, still pagan barbarians from beyond the Rhine. Italy was ravaged, its complicated bureaucratic administration overthrown, as factions began to tear the peninsula apart. Most obviously visible of all, architecture suffered massively, as the classical buildings of the past began to be left to ruin, the stoneworking secrets of the ancestors beginning to be forgotten. But in the East, the Empire still survived. Following the deaths of the last Western Roman emperors in the dying days of the fifth century, it was the still surviving Eastern half of the Empire, based on Constantinople, which saw itself as the true successor to Rome, particularly by the early 6th century, as none of the Western provinces were considered even nominally part of the Roman state. By 533, then, under the strong hand of the Emperor Justinian, the time was right for another campaign to the West, this one a full-scale invasion by land and sea to reconquer the lost provinces, with the ultimate goal being Rome itself. Justinian was probably one of the last Eastern Roman emperors to speak Latin as a first language. Due to this fact, and for his remarkable restoration campaigns, which were successful for a brief time, he is often considered the last Roman by [Music] some.
Yet, Justinian leaned hard on one particular individual, often considered one of the greatest strategic and military minds in all of history. His name was Flavius Belisarius. In truth, Justinian likely would not have achieved anything at all without him, the stalwart general having kept him on his throne against rebels inside the capital during the early tumultuous part of his reign, later winning astounding victories in Illyricum, Persia, Africa, and finally Italy, where he did, against all odds, manage to wrest back the great city for a time from the Ostrogoths. Belisarius was the secret superweapon of the Emperor, winning almost every battle he ever fought, despite often receiving far too little support from the Emperor and being pitted against rival generals for the Emperor's favor. For his incredible achievements in conquering two entire kingdoms with a surprisingly small army of not even 20,000 men, Belisarius is often called "Last of the [Music] Romans."
But in Rome itself, as the smoke cleared from the maelstrom of the Gothic Wars, there were still individuals who sought to preserve the glory of the distant past. Not long after the deaths of Justinian and Belisarius, there arose a person to power in Italy who, for his valiant efforts to preserve the glory of Rome, Rome would sometimes be called the "Last Roman." He was born Gregory Anicius, but today we know him as Pope Gregory the Great. The son of a senator, Gregory became Prefect of Rome at a young age. Yet, in those days, in the aftermath of the disastrous Gothic Wars and with the Lombards sweeping down from the north to lay waste to Italy, the resources needed to repair the city could simply not be spared, not to mention the massive population decline and plague that ravaged its inhabitants. In this tumultuous time, with the city of Rome falling faster and faster into decay, Gregory did everything in his power to help the inhabitants of Rome and to preserve the buildings as best he could [Music], as well as preserving as much knowledge as he could in a great central library, ultimately being made Pope in 590. Realizing that the secular power of Rome was likely gone forever, Gregory focused instead on winning over the hearts and minds of the pagan Germanic warrior elite who now held sway in many parts of Europe, working hard to convert the heathen Lombards and more famously dispatching a mission to Britain to begin the conversion of the pagan Anglo-Saxons who'd set up a very different set of nations than those Christian Germanic ones on the continent. Far from just a spiritual leader, Gregory was a very able statesman too, notably visiting Constantinople to convene with the Patriarch of the East and even with the Emperor Tiberius II. For these achievements, he has sometimes been called "the Last Roman."
Yet, despite his best efforts, the decay continued. By the early 8th century, a hundred years had passed since the days of Gregory the Great. Italy was then ruled by a myriad collection of states, most of them Lombard, but with a number of Eastern Roman enclaves around major cities that never fell. Rome itself had never been conquered, lingering on as a shadow of its former self. Into this confusing political situation, there
was one person who could in theory be called the last Western Roman Emperor. And though we know very little about his life, he might deserve the title "Last of the Romans." His name was Tiberius Petasus, an Italian-born usurper.
When parts of Italy were still a part of the Eastern Empire, he may have roused up a sort of Italian independence movement in 730. Tiberius's reign, however, was short-lived, and in 731, he was killed in battle. His decapitated head was sent to the Eastern Emperor Leo III as a trophy.
By the early 9th century, events in northern Europe would change the concept of what it meant to be a Roman forevermore. In the year 800, the all-powerful Frankish King Charlamagne rode down across the Alps to have himself crowned as a new emperor of the Romans, in actuality, a completely different and new institution to that in the East. The title would be revived again and again over the ensuing centuries, perhaps most notably with the high medieval German tendency to call themselves Holy Roman Emperors, though a famous quip reminds us today that they were not in fact holy, nor Roman, nor Emperors.
Nevertheless, this was largely lost on the people of Western Europe, who, after Charlamagne's crowning in 800, did not now recognize the Eastern Romans as having any more of a legitimate claim to the succession of ancient Rome. Therefore, we can turn to the last Eastern Roman Emperor to sit on the throne of Constantinople before Charlamagne's Imperial coronation, Constantine V, as a potential candidate for the title of "Last Roman." He was in actuality the last authentically Roman emperor to be recognized as such in the West.
Though the two sides of the former Empire would only drift further and further apart over the years, unrecognizable, unreconcilable, a situation only made worse during the Crusades when they came head-to-head in centuries of chaotic, violent warfare. The Eastern Empire, commonly known as Byzantium today, though that is a phrase used by 15th-century historians like Hyronimus Wolf, would survive for another 700 years, defeating all enemies, holding out against essentially the entire Middle East alone for a ridiculous amount of time. But eventually, all things must come to an end, though the world had irrevocably changed and would only continue to do so at a more rapid pace from then on.
By the 15th century, toward the close of the Medieval Era, the Emperors of Constantinople, now a rump state with a modest territory, continued to see themselves as true Romans, the true successors of the Roman Empire, with an unbroken line of succession stretching back all the way to the first Emperor Augustus in the first century AD. Eastern Romans had never stopped referring to themselves as such, and when Constantinople finally fell in 1453, its last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologus, even bearing the name of the first Constantine of the 4th Century AD, has a good claim to being the last Roman. He fought valiantly, defending the city tooth and nail, and though not a great deal of information survives from his last moments, his last words do survive: "The city has fallen, yet I am still alive," before charging alone into the vast army of Ottoman Turks surging through the breach in the walls, never to be seen again.
Because of this heroic defense of Constantinople, Constantine is often called the last Roman. And yet, Constantinople wasn't the only holdout in the Eastern Empire. To the north of the Black Sea, the trading emporium of Trebizond had long thrived at a crossroads of north, south, east, and west, having broken away from Constantinople during the cataclysmic years of occupation by Latin Westerners in the 13th century and later making itself useful to the various surrounding Turkic Muslim powers. The so-called Empire of Trebizond had managed to not only survive but thrive.
By the 15th century, however, 10 years after the fall of Constantinople, Trebizond's time was finally up. Its final emperor, David II Comnenos, often called the last Roman, was taken to Constantinople after the city fell, where he was executed along with his sons and nephew. Though astonishingly, there was one more Eastern Roman state yet to fall.
When the Fortress of Venza finally fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1479, thus officially ended the Empire that had lasted 1500 years. Though a successor state founded after the Crusader sack and capture of Constantinople in 1204, the commander of Venza, the despot of Epirus, Leonardo III Tocco, is often said to have ruled over the very last Eastern Roman remnant state and thus listed as one of the very final candidates to be considered the last Roman.
As we have seen, it is an extremely difficult task to call one specific person that illustrious title, and though this list is long, it is by no means complete. There were innumerable claimants and candidates over the long centuries, all of them outstanding characters playing a pivotal role in the 1500-year history of the Roman Empire. In reality, there were many last Romans.
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