nepobabies (10. 831)

Though history may consider his successive claimant the last Roman emperor by dint of the poetic symmetry of his praenomen and cognomen, Romulus Augustus—invoking the mythological founder and first to claim that title, proclaimed by his father the magister militum Orestes once he ultimately mutinied a year into his rule, Julius Nepos was crowned on this day on 474 after disposing the unrecognised Glycerius installed some four months earlier with the help of Burgundian mercenaries and marching on to the new capital at Ravenna, with the sanction of Zeno, the Eastern emperor. Unable to control Italy after Orestes’ revolt and march on the imperial palace in late August of 475, dissatisfied by his leaders inability to repulse incursions by the Visigoths, Nepos retreated to Dalmatia, with the general installing his son some two months later. Constantinople, however, continued to recognise this government-in-exile as legitimate, with Nepos minting coins and issuing orders from the palace of Diocletian, the actions of this nominal ruler mostly dismissed. Neopos was assassinated by two of his disaffected military commanders in 480 but Romulus Augustus, still a child, was deposed decades earlier after a only a brief reign by Odoacer, barbarian general and first king of Italy.