But the Vandal came on, and in spite of Leo, as we know, sacked
the City and departed--to lose the mighty booty in the midst of the
sea.
What are we to say of the years which follow, and what are we to say
of those ghostly figures, which hover, always uncertainly and briefly,
about the imperial throne after the assassination of Valentinian III.
and the second sack of the City? There was Avitus the Gaul (455-456),
Majorian (457-461), Libius Severus (461-465), Anthemius (467-472),
Olybrius (472), Glycerius (473-474), Julius Nepos (474-475), and at
last the pitiful boy Romulus Augustulus (475-476). Nothing can be said
of them; they are less than shadows, and their empire, the material
empire they represented, was no longer conscious of itself, was no
longer a reality, but an hallucination, haunting the mind. It is true
that the chief seat of their government, if government it can be
called, was Ravenna, and that the city is concerned with most of the
incidents of those vague and confused years; the proclamations of
Majorian, of Severus, of Glycerius, and of Romulus Augustulus, the
abdication of the last and the fight in the pinewood in which his
uncle Paulus was broken and Odoacer made himself master.
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