tingents of Rugii and Heruli, who had flocked in bands to Italy as adventurers. Such troops had the status of foederati, that is, barbarian auxiliaries or allies. Suddenly they demanded one-third of the lands of Italy.[1] Upon refusal of their demand, they made a king from among themselves, the Herulian Odoacer, and Romulus Augustulus flitted from the shadowy imperial throne. By reason of his dramatic name, rather than by any marked circumstance of his deposition, he has come to typify with historians the close of the line of western emperors.
The Herulian soldier-king or "Patrician," Odoacer, a nondescript transition personage, ruled twelve years. Then the nation of the Ostrogoths, which had learned much from the vicissitudes of fortune in the East, obtained the eastern emperor's sanction, and made its perilous way to the gates of Italy under the king, Theodoric. This invading people numbered perhaps two hundred thousand souls; their fighting men were forty thousand. Odoacer was beaten on the river Isonzo; he retreated to the line of the Adige, and was again defeated at Verona. After standing a long siege in Ravenna, he made terms with Theodoric, and was murdered by him.
The Goths were among the best of the barbarians, and Theodoric was the greatest of the Goths. The eastern emperors probably regarded him as their representative in Italy; and he coined money only with the Emperor's image. But in fact he was a sovereign; and, through his sovereignty over both Goths and Romans, from a Teutonic king he became an absolute monarch, even as his contemporary Clovis became, under analogous circumstances. He was a just despot, with his subjects' welfare at heart. The Goths received one-third of the Italian lands, in return for which their duty was to defend the whole. This third may have been that previously possessed by Odoacer's troops. Under Theodoric the relations between Goths and "Romans" were friendly. It was from the Code of Theodosius and other Roman sources that he drew the substance of his legislation,
- ↑ This demand was not so extraordinary in view of the common Roman custom in the provinces of billeting soldiers upon the inhabitants, with the right to one-third of the house and appurtenances.
