Julius Nepos
Julius Nepos died on the 9th of May 480, murdered at his villa near Salona by two members of his own retinue. He had not ruled Italy in nearly five years. Yet the Eastern Roman Empire still called him emperor. The coins minted in Italy still bore his face. And the man who had taken his throne, Romulus Augustulus, is today remembered as the last emperor of the west while Nepos is barely remembered at all.
How does the final legitimate holder of one of history's greatest offices end up forgotten? Who exactly was Julius Nepos, and how did he come to occupy a title that the world around him was rapidly making meaningless? And what does it mean that historians still argue, fifteen centuries later, about which man deserves the title of last western Roman emperor?
By the time Nepos entered the picture, the Western Roman Empire had been shrinking for decades. In 410, the Visigoths under Alaric I sacked Rome itself. In 455, the Vandals under Gaiseric did it again, also carrying off the widow and daughters of the slain emperor Valentinian III as captives.
The western army had grown so reliant on barbarian mercenaries that the most powerful figures in the west were no longer emperors at all. They were generals like Ricimer, who ruled by propping up a succession of puppet emperors. In the span of less than twenty years between Valentinian's murder and Nepos's accession, seven different men claimed the western throne. Effective imperial control, in practice, extended only to Italy, Raetia, and fragments of Gaul.
Dalmatia, the province where Nepos was born, sat in an unusual position within this collapsing structure. Geographically and economically tied to the western sphere, it had formally been under eastern authority since 437, when the western emperor Valentinian III ceded it to the east. In practice, the province operated with a degree of autonomy that would shape Nepos's entire career.
Nepos was the son of Nepotianus, a general who served under the western emperor Majorian, and the nephew of Marcellinus, a magister militum who had conducted campaigns against the Vandals and briefly checked their attempts to control Sardinia. These were not obscure provincial figures. Memorial inscriptions from four roughly contemporary individuals sharing variants of the name Nepos have been identified in Dalmatia, suggesting the family held real local standing.
When Marcellinus died in 468, Nepos inherited his semi-autonomous governorship. He is first recorded by name on the 1st of June 473, described as magister militum Dalmatiae, though he may have held that rank since his uncle's death. He also strengthened his connections to the eastern court through marriage: his wife, whose name is not recorded, was related to the eastern empress Verina, possibly as a niece of the emperor Leo I.
Marcellinus had once planned to march on Italy to topple Ricimer's puppet emperor Libius Severus, only to be talked out of it by Leo I himself. Nepos would eventually carry out a version of that very plan. The eastern emperor Leo I granted Nepos command of an army in December 473, tasking him with deposing Glycerius, who had been proclaimed emperor by the Burgundian general Gundobad. Leo's motives were mixed: he wanted to reassert eastern authority in the west, and he may also have wanted to remove Nepos as a potential rival closer to Constantinople.
Nepos sailed from Constantinople and landed at Portus, near Rome, in the spring of 474, backed by Leo's successor Zeno after Leo died on the 18th of January 474. He was first proclaimed Caesar at Portus, the formal step before elevation to the rank of Augustus. Glycerius offered no resistance. His life was spared; he was consecrated as bishop of Salona, the provincial capital of the very province Nepos had just left.
On the 24th of June 474, Julius Nepos was proclaimed the western Augustus in Rome. He was the last emperor to be crowned in that city until Charlemagne, in the year 800. The Roman Senate and the people of Italy accepted him. Zeno swiftly recognised him as the legitimate western emperor.
Coinage issued under Nepos circulated across Italy, from Rome to Ravenna to Mediolanum. Coins were also minted in his name in northern Gaul, where the Roman general Syagrius governed a largely autonomous province. Nepos even issued coins bearing the images of Zeno and Zeno's junior colleague Leo II, a deliberate signal of his ties to the eastern court. His rule, at least on paper, extended further than that of most of his recent predecessors.
Euric, king of the Visigoths, was pressing hard into the remaining imperial territories in Gaul and into Spain, and his target included the province of Aquitania Prima. Nepos made a calculated trade: he gave up Hispania in exchange for concentrating resources on Gaul. He appointed Ecdicius, the son of the former western emperor Avitus, as patrician and magister militum to lead the defense.
Ecdicius managed to relieve a Visigothic siege of Arles in 474. By 475, however, the military resources available to him were simply exhausted. Even that failure had a silver lining: the mere threat of a renewed imperial offensive persuaded Euric to negotiate. In the spring of 475, Nepos sent a delegation of Roman bishops to Euric's court, including Epiphanius of Pavia, who had previously mediated between Ricimer and the emperor Anthemius. A second delegation followed, composed of the bishops Leontius of Arles, Faustus of Riez, Graecus of Marseilles, and Basilius of Aix, likely tasked with working out the concrete terms of a peace treaty.
The terms, when they became known, were badly received. The Romans in Gaul, among them the writer Sidonius Apollinaris whose letters survive as a key source for this period, were shocked to learn that peace had required ceding the Auvergne region to the Visigoths. Giving up the Auvergne bought survival for what little remained of imperial Gaul, but at a political cost Nepos could not afford back in Italy.
After Ecdicius failed to hold the Visigoths, Nepos dismissed him and replaced him with Orestes, an officer with a remarkable background: he had once served as notarius, meaning secretary, to Attila, king of the Huns. Orestes was tasked with leading a fresh campaign against the Visigoths and against the Burgundians, who were rebelling in southern Gaul.
Orestes's army included large numbers of foederati, barbarian allied troops who were angry at Nepos for refusing their demands to be granted land. Orestes learned of their discontent and used it. Rather than march against the Visigoths, he turned his army toward Ravenna, the western imperial capital. Nepos recalled Ecdicius from Gaul in a last attempt to hold his position, but Ecdicius could not reach Ravenna in time.
On the 28th of August 475, Orestes entered Ravenna. Nepos fled across the Adriatic to Salona in Dalmatia, having ruled in Italy for exactly 14 months. On the 31st of October, Orestes proclaimed his young son emperor. That son's name was Romulus Augustulus.
From Salona, Nepos continued to claim the imperial title and continued to be recognised by the Eastern Empire as the only legitimate western emperor. Romulus Augustulus was simply not acknowledged in Constantinople.
Then, on the 4th of September 476, the barbarian general Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus and sent the western imperial regalia to Zeno, declaring that the empire now needed only a single ruler based in Constantinople. An embassy from Nepos arrived in Constantinople at almost the same moment, congratulating Zeno on having just defeated the usurper Basiliscus and requesting military support to retake Italy.
Zeno's response to Odoacer's own envoys, members of the Roman Senate, was pointed: they had killed one emperor backed by the east, Anthemius, and driven out another, Nepos, and they would do well to accept Nepos back. Zeno told Odoacer that the rank of patrician he had requested ought to come from the legitimate western emperor, Nepos, not from Zeno himself, though Zeno promised to grant it personally if Nepos would not. Zeno urged Odoacer to restore Nepos.
Odoacer responded by minting gold coins in Nepos's name at Italian mints and perhaps providing him with a pension. He took no military action whatsoever to restore him. In 477 or 478, some of the remaining imperial possessions in southern Gaul rebelled against Odoacer, apparently fighting to restore Nepos. Zeno received embassies from both sides but ultimately supported Odoacer, since backing the Gallic rebels would have meant declaring war on the man who now controlled Italy.
In 479, a new possibility emerged. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, offered to pledge his troops to Nepos's cause. Whatever Nepos planned with that offer, he did not live to act on it.
On the 9th of May 480, Julius Nepos was killed at his villa near Salona, possibly in the same building as Diocletian's Palace, by two members of his retinue: the comites Ovida and Viator. The former emperor Glycerius, the man Nepos had deposed and installed as bishop of Salona years earlier, may have played a role in instigating the murder.
Another theory holds that the killing was triggered by Nepos himself. If he had genuinely begun preparing a military expedition to recover Italy in 480, perhaps emboldened by Theodoric's offer, his own supporters in Dalmatia may have been unwilling to risk such a venture. The chroniclers of the time noted the death as violent and unexpected, but gave it little attention.
Ovida took control of Dalmatia after the murder. It was not until late 481 or 482 that Odoacer invaded Dalmatia, executed Ovida, and absorbed the province into his kingdom, using Nepos's murder as the legal pretext. The Eastern Empire made no move to stop him.
After Nepos's death, Zeno did not appoint a new western emperor. He became, in the words of the historian Ralph W. Mathisen, who called Nepos an unwanted anachronism, the first proper sole Roman emperor of the entire empire since the death of Theodosius I in 395. Nepos shared the name Julius with Julius Caesar, the adoptive father of the first emperor Augustus, a coincidence his successor Romulus Augustulus matched by carrying the names of both Rome's legendary founder and its first emperor. History gave the latter the epitaph; the former got the footnote. By the 6th century, historians such as Marcellinus Comes, Procopius and Jordanes had already settled the question in Romulus Augustulus's favor, erasing the five years Nepos spent ruling as a recognised emperor from a province the empire could no longer bother to protect.
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Common questions
Who was Julius Nepos and why is he considered the last western Roman emperor?
Julius Nepos ruled as western Roman emperor from the 24th of June 474 to the 28th of August 475, when he was driven out of Italy by the general Orestes. He continued to hold the imperial title in Dalmatia with full recognition from the Eastern Roman Empire until his murder on the 9th of May 480, making him the last widely recognised holder of the western imperial title.
How did Julius Nepos become western Roman emperor?
The eastern emperor Leo I appointed Nepos in December 473 to lead an army against Glycerius, who had been proclaimed emperor by the Burgundian general Gundobad. Nepos landed at Portus near Rome in the spring of 474, deposed Glycerius without a fight, and was proclaimed Augustus in Rome on the 24th of June 474.
Why did Julius Nepos flee Italy in 475?
Nepos's newly appointed magister militum Orestes revolted, using the grievances of foederati troops who had been refused land grants, and marched on Ravenna. Unable to stop Orestes's advance, Nepos fled across the Adriatic to Salona in Dalmatia on the 28th of August 475, having ruled in Italy for 14 months.
What happened to Julius Nepos after he lost Italy?
Nepos governed from Dalmatia and continued to be recognised as the legitimate western emperor by Constantinople. Odoacer minted coins in his name after deposing Romulus Augustulus in 476, but took no action to restore him. Nepos was murdered on the 9th of May 480 by his own retinue members, the comites Ovida and Viator, at his villa near Salona.
Why is Romulus Augustulus usually called the last western Roman emperor instead of Nepos?
Romulus Augustulus was the last emperor to rule Italy, and his name coincidentally combined those of Rome's legendary founder Romulus and its first emperor Augustus. By the 6th century, historians including Marcellinus Comes, Procopius, and Jordanes all named Romulus Augustulus as the last western emperor, ignoring Nepos's continued reign in Dalmatia from 475 to 480.
Who murdered Julius Nepos and what happened to his killers?
Nepos was killed by two members of his retinue, Ovida and Viator, on the 9th of May 480. Ovida subsequently took control of Dalmatia. It was not until late 481 or 482 that Odoacer invaded Dalmatia, executed Ovida, and annexed the province, using Nepos's murder as his legal justification.