near Tortona.

He chose Libius Severus to fill the place of Majorian and had him
proclaimed in Ravenna upon November 19, 461; and upheld him for nearly
four years till he died in Rome on August 15, 465, poisoned, men said,
by Ricimer. Then the "king-maker" allied himself with Constantinople
and placed Anthemius, son-in-law of Marcian, upon the throne of the
West, in 467, kept him there till 472, and then proclaimed Olybrius,
another Byzantine, emperor; laid siege to Anthemius in Rome, took the
City, slew Anthemius, and forty days later himself died, leaving the
command of his army to his nephew Gundobald, one of the princes of the
Burgundians. Seven months later Olybrius died.

The alliance Ricimer had made with Constantinople, though he repented
it, was the one hope of the future, and as a fact the future belonged
to it. For a moment Gundobald was able to place an obscure soldier
Glycerius upon the throne, but he soon exchanged the purple for the
bishopric of Salona, and the nominee of Constantinople, Julius Nepos,
reigned in Ravenna in his stead. But though the future belonged to
Constantinople, the present did not. The barbarian confederates,
discontented and unwilling to give their allegiance to this Greek,
rebelled and under Orestes their general marched upon Ravenna. Julius
Nepos fled by ship to Dalmatia and Orestes in Ravenna proclaimed his
young son Romulus Augustulus emperor. But those barbarian mercenaries
were not to be so easily satisfied. Of the new emperor they demanded a
third of the lands of all Italy, and when this was refused them they
flocked to the standard of that barbarian general in the Roman service
whom we know as Odoacer. "From all the camps and garrisons of Italy"
the barbarian confederates flocked to the new standard and Orestes was
compelled to shut himself up in Pavia while Paulus, his brother, held
Ravenna for the boy emperor. Upon August 23, 476, Odoacer was raised
like the barbarian he was, upon the shield, as Alaric had been, and
his troops proclaimed him king. Five days later Orestes, who had
escaped from Pavia, was taken and put to death at Placentia, and on
September 4 Paulus his brother was taken in the Pineta outside Classis
by Ravenna and was slain. The gates of Ravenna were open, Romulus
Augustulus, the last emperor in the West, was forced to abdicate and
was sent by Odoacer to the famous villa that Lucullus had built for
himself long and long ago in Campania, and was granted a