The Last Western Emperors

Introduction

The Western Roman Empire between 395 and 476 was a stage on which a parade of weak and often short-lived emperors was set up, manipulated, and deposed by the Germanic generals who really held power. The nominal rulers, Honorius, Valentinian III, Majorian, and a dozen others, were often children, teenagers, or otherwise unsuitable for the burdens of imperial office. The real decisions were made by the magistri militum, the masters of the soldiers: Stilicho, Constantius, Aëtius, Ricimer, and finally Odoacer.

This article surveys the most important of these last western emperors, focusing on the reigns of Honorius, Valentinian III, and Majorian, and concluding with the deposition of the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in 476. For the broader context, see the The Fall of the Western Roman Empire. For the survival of the eastern half of the Empire, see the Survival of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Honorius (393–423)

Honorius became Western Roman Emperor in 393 at the age of ten, on the death of his father Theodosius I, who divided the Empire between his two sons. Honorius was not, by any measure, an effective ruler. He suffered from a severe speech impediment, was physically frail, and had little interest in military affairs. Real power was held by his father-in-law, the Vandal general Stilicho, who served as magister militum from 394 to 408.

The reign of Honorius is dominated by two major crises. The first was the invasion of Italy by Alaric’s Visigoths in 401–402. Stilicho managed to defeat Alaric at the battles of Pollentia (402) and Verona (403), and the Visigoths withdrew to the Balkans. The second was the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410, an event that shook the entire Roman world. Honorius was reportedly at his villa in Ravenna when Rome fell, and according to the historian Procopius, he was initially relieved to hear that the city had not been destroyed, only to be told that Rome itself had been sacked.

Stilicho was executed in 408 on suspicion of treason, and his death weakened the western Empire considerably. Honorius’s reign then continued amid the loss of Britain, the establishment of Visigothic and Vandal kingdoms in Gaul and Spain, and the final collapse of imperial authority in the western provinces. Honorius died in 423 of dropsy, and was succeeded briefly by Joannes, a usurper, before the eastern emperor Theodosius II imposed his own candidate, Valentinian III.

Constantius III and the Brief Restoration (421)

After Honorius’s death, the eastern government briefly imposed its own candidate, the general Constantius III, who ruled for less than a year before dying of illness in 421. Constantius had been a successful general who had campaigned against the Visigoths in Spain and Gaul, and his brief reign raised hopes of a recovery that were not to be fulfilled.

Valentinian III (425–455)

Valentinian III, the son of Constantius III and Placidia (Honorius’s half-sister), became Western Emperor in 425 at the age of six. He would reign for thirty years, the longest of any western emperor, but he was, throughout, dominated by powerful generals. The most important of these was Flavius Aëtius, who served as magister militum for nearly two decades and was the most capable Roman general of his age.

The reign of Valentinian III saw both the height and the limits of what was possible for the western Empire. Aëtius fought successful campaigns against the Franks, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Huns, often using diplomacy as much as force. He persuaded the Visigoths to move into Spain in 418, where they would eventually establish an independent kingdom. He fought the Franks in Gaul and the Alemanni in Germany. He played a key role in the defeat of Attila the Hun at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451.

Aëtius’s downfall was personal. In 454, Valentinian III, who had long resented the general’s power, killed Aëtius with his own sword during a private audience. The words he used, allegedly, were “There is no longer any need for you, Aëtius,” echoing a phrase from the historian Josephus. The murder of the Empire’s most capable general was a catastrophic mistake. Within a year, Valentinian III himself was assassinated by two followers of the dead Aëtius, on March 16, 455. His death opened the way for the Vandal sack of Rome later that year.

The Collapse After Valentinian III

The death of Valentinian III left the western Empire in chaos. His widow, Licinia Eudoxia, briefly sought help from the Vandal king Geiseric, who promptly sent a fleet to sack Rome in 455. The Vandal sack of Rome was even more thorough than the Visigothic sack of 410, with the Vandals systematically stripping the city of its treasures.

Over the next twenty years, the western Empire was ruled by a succession of puppet emperors set up and deposed by the Germanic general Ricimer. These included Avitus (455–456), Majorian (457–461), Libius Severus (461–465), Anthemius (467–472), Olybrius (472), Glycerius (473–474), and finally Julius Nepos (474–475) and Romulus Augustulus (475–476). Real power in Italy rested with Ricimer until his death in 472, and after his death with other Germanic commanders.

Majorian (457–461)

Of the post-Valentinian emperors, Majorian stands out as the last serious, capable ruler of the western Empire. He was, like so many of the last western emperors, elevated by Ricimer, but he quickly showed that he intended to rule in his own right. He was the last western emperor to undertake serious military campaigns to restore the Empire’s fortunes.

Majorian campaigned in Gaul, recovering much of the province from the Visigoths and Burgundians. He rebuilt the Roman fleet and prepared an invasion of the Vandal kingdom in Africa. But his preparations were betrayed to the Vandals by traitors, and the Vandal fleet destroyed his ships in harbor. Discredited, Majorian was deposed by Ricimer in 461, tried, and executed. His death marked, in effect, the end of serious imperial ambition in the West.

The fact that Majorian’s last major project, the reconquest of Africa, failed because of internal treachery is a measure of how thoroughly the western Empire had lost the political cohesion needed for survival. Even when a capable emperor came to the throne, the apparatus of government could not be relied upon. Majorian’s fate, in this respect, was the most clear-eyed demonstration of why the western Empire could not last.

Romulus Augustulus and the End (475–476)

The last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was Romulus Augustulus, who was elevated as a teenager in 475 by his father Orestes. He was given the name Romulus, after the legendary founder of Rome, and the diminutive Augustulus, “little Augustus,” a name that has been used to lampoon him ever since. He ruled for less than a year.

In 476, Odoacer, a Scirian chieftain who commanded the Germanic foederati in Italy, led a revolt. Orestes was captured and executed, and Romulus Augustulus was deposed. Odoacer spared the young emperor’s life, a notable act of clemency, and sent him into retirement in Campania, where he disappears from the historical record.

Crucially, Odoacer did not appoint a successor emperor. Instead, he sent the imperial regalia, the diadem and the purple robe, to Constantinople, asking the eastern emperor Zeno to recognize him as king of Italy. Zeno, in a complicated political maneuver, eventually granted this recognition. The Western Empire was at an end.

The date of Odoacer’s seizure of power, 476, is conventionally used as the end point of the Western Roman Empire. The story of his life and reign is told in the Who Was Odoacer?, and the biography of the last emperor in the Who Was the Last Roman Emperor?.

The Significance of the Last Western Emperors

The history of the last western emperors illustrates several broader themes of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. First, it shows the political instability of the late western Empire, with emperors reigning for an average of less than six years. Second, it shows the increasing power of Germanic generals, who used the imperial office as a cover for their own rule. Third, it shows the increasing weakness of the western Empire’s military and financial resources, which made serious resistance to the new Germanic kingdoms impossible.

Yet it would be wrong to see the last western emperors as merely passive. Majorian in particular was a serious and capable ruler who attempted to restore the Empire’s fortunes. Even Romulus Augustulus, in his brief reign, was the object of genuine efforts at political reform. The fall of the Western Empire was not the result of personal incompetence alone, but of structural problems that no emperor, however capable, could have solved.

Conclusion

The last western emperors were a parade of weak and short-lived figures, dominated by Germanic generals and unable to reverse the structural decline of the western Empire. Their reigns illustrate both the political and military decay of the western state and the increasing power of the new Germanic peoples who were taking over the western provinces. The fall of the western Empire was the end of a long process, and the last emperors were the closing chapter, not the cause, of that process.

Their names, Honorius, Valentinian III, Majorian, Romulus Augustulus, are nearly synonymous with the fall of Rome itself, but it is worth remembering that the eastern Empire, with the same Roman institutions and the same Christian church, survived for another thousand years. The weakness of the last western emperors cannot be explained by the institutions of the Empire as such, but by specific structural problems in the western provinces, the loss of tax revenue, the dependence on Germanic foederati, and the relentless pressure of new peoples on the frontiers. The story of why the East survived while the West did not is told in the Survival of the Eastern Roman Empire.