Odoacer
Odoacer, also known as Odovacar (435-493) was the half Hunnish, half Scyrrian chieftain of the Germanic Heruli. He is best known to history as the man who deposed the last Roman emperor in the West, Romulus Augustus, in 476. Romulus Augustus was sent to retirement at Lucullanum at the Bay of Naples. He survived until the year 511 or even later.After deposing Romulus, Odoacer (Germanic Audawakrs, meaning "watchful of wealth") had a choice of either appointing a new figurehead emperor and ruling through him, or ruling as an agent of the eastern Roman emperor. Unlike many of his predecessors, such as Ricimer, he chose the latter route, returning the western imperial regalia to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople, along with a letter asking to be confirmed as dux of Italy. Zeno granted this request and bestowed upon Odoacer the rank of patrician.
Until his death in 480, the legitimate western emperor Julius Nepos technically remained Odoacer's superior and the latter even issued coins in his name. However, Odoacer also styled himself rex Italiae (King of Italy) and was recognized as such for the rest of his life.
Nevertheless, relations between Odoacer and the East Romans later deteriorated, and in 489, with the emperor Zeno's encouragement, the Ostrogoths under Theodoric the Great invaded Odoacer's kingdom, destroyed his army of barbarian foederati (and a few surviving Roman forces) and forced his surrender in 493. Theodoric invited him to a banquet, supposedly slew him with his own sword and took over his entire kingdom.
tribute to him in his own verse; it is to the attacks made upon him in his
as such, that he gives expression in the "Prologue" to the "Legend of Good
And furthered well your law in his writing,
Yet hath he made unlearned folk delight
Law" says, "of lovers up and down.html">down, more than Ovid makes mention of in his
also our first English love.html">love.html">love.html">love.html">love-poet, properly so called--would have sufficed
special poetic quality of gaiety and brightness, is the preference which
Apart from the "Legend of Good Women," which is specially designed to give
trial, pain, and grief, and from two or three of the "Canterbury Tales,"
remaining a stranger to its divine radiance, which shines forth so fully
is gaiety and mirth, as indeed beseems the genial neighbourhood of Cupid's
the love-story is that which he developes with unmistakeable sympathy and
charming poetic narratives of the birth and growth of young love, which
heat of Marlowe's unrivalled "Hero and Leander." With Troilus it was love
full of nature is the narrative of this growth, that one is irresistibly
modern master in the description of women's love. Is there not a touch.html">touch of
revelation to her of the love of Troilus?--
Cressid arose, no longer there she stayed,
And set her down, as still as any stone,
That he had said, as it came to her mind.
And is there not a touch of Clarchen in her--though with a difference--
triumph:
So like a man of armes and a knight
For both he had a body, and a might
And eke to see.html">see him in his gear him dress,
It truly was a heaven him for to see.
.
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