Romulus Augustulus: The Boy Who Became Rome’s Last Emperor

By the time Romulus Augustulus appeared on the imperial throne, the Western Roman Empire was already little more than a shell of what it had once been. He was young, obscure, and never meant to become a figure of lasting fame, yet history fixed on him because his brief reign came to stand at the edge of something enormous. When he was deposed in 476, it was not simply a boy-emperor who disappeared from power, but the last Western ruler whom later generations would remember as the final Roman emperor.

A Boy Emperor at the End of the West

Romulus, later nicknamed Augustulus, “the little Augustus,” is usually remembered as the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. He was the son of Orestes, a general who had once served Attila the Hun as a secretary and had also taken part in embassies to Constantinople.

In 475, the western emperor Julius Nepos appointed Orestes commander-in-chief in Gaul. But discontent within the multi-ethnic army under his authority soon changed everything. When the soldiers’ demands for land were refused, Orestes turned against Nepos and marched on Ravenna. Nepos fled by sea to Salona, and on 31 October Orestes placed his own young son, Romulus Augustus, on the throne in his place.

Romulus was probably only around ten to fourteen years old when he became emperor. The surviving sources agree that he did not rule in any meaningful sense himself. Real power remained in the hands of his father, and the arrangement followed a familiar late Roman pattern in which a child-emperor stood in front while a powerful general governed behind him.

Earlier in the fifth century, the western empire had already seen similar pairings, such as Honorius with Stilicho and Valentinian III with Aetius. But Romulus’ position was weaker from the beginning. Unlike those earlier emperors, he had no dynastic connection that could strengthen his legitimacy, either to earlier western rulers or to the emperor in the east.

At the same time, Julius Nepos was still alive and still claiming the western throne from Dalmatia, which made Romulus appear less like a true successor and more like a usurper. Nepos also had a family connection to the eastern emperor Zeno, and there is no sign that Zeno ever accepted Romulus as the legitimate western Augustus.

The regime lasted only ten months. In late August 476, the barbarian general Odovacer killed Orestes and seized control in Italy. Romulus himself was deposed, but because of his youth and, according to the tradition, his good looks, he was spared. He was sent to live in Campania at the castellum Lucullanum and given a yearly allowance of six thousand solidi.