Romulus Augustus

c. 460–after 507

Romulus Augustus was installed as emperor in 475 by his father, the military commander Orestes, after the expulsion of Julius Nepos. His authority was limited to Italy and was not recognised by the Eastern emperor. In 476 Odoacer defeated Orestes and deposed Romulus, who was spared and sent into retirement.

Ian Hughes’s Patricians and Emperors places Romulus within the longer disintegration of western imperial government rather than treating 476 as an isolated collapse. The book distinguishes the symbolic importance of his deposition from the survival of Roman institutions, elites and rival imperial claims.