Odoacer, also, chose it
as his chief seat of government for similar advantages. Ravenna
strongly held gave him, as strongly held she had given every one of
her masters, Italy and Cisalpine Gaul; while as the gate of the
eastern sea, Ravenna was his proper means of communication with his
over-lord and the eastern provinces of what was, rightly understood,
the reunited empire.
That, theoretically at least, is how Odoacer regarded the state in
which, by the good pleasure of the emperor Zeno, he held the title of
patrician. He was an unlettered man, an Arian, as were all the
barbarians, and he held what he held by permission of Constantinople,
though he had won it by his own strength in the weakness and misery of
the time. He never aspired, it would seem, to make himself emperor.
Certainly for the first four years of his rule in Ravenna that great
office was filled by Julius Nepos in exile at Salona, whose deposition
at the hands of Orestes had never been recognised by Constantinople.
Thereafter, the western and the eastern empire were in theory
reunited, with New Rome upon the Bosphorus for their true capital; and
both before and after that event Odoacer ruled in Italy with the title
of patrician conferred upon him by Constantinople.
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