Читать книгу The Dark Ages, 476-918 онлайн

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It has often been repeated of late years that this date, 476 A.D., does not form a very notable landmark in the history of the world, that its sole event was the transfer of the nominal supremacy of the Western World from a powerless Caesar who lived at Ravenna to a powerless Caesar who lived at Constantinople. We are reminded that the patrician Odoacer and the deputies of the Roman Senate assured the Eastern Emperor not that they had cast off allegiance to the imperial name, but that Italy no longer needed a separate Augustus, and that a single ruler might once more rule East and West, as in the days of Constantine and Theodosius. |Odoacer Patrician in Italy.| And if the representatives of the western realm then proceeded to recommend Zeno to appoint as his vice-regent among them ‘Odoacer, a mighty man of war, and a person well skilled in political matters, whom they had selected to defend their interests,’ they were, in truth, making no new or startling proposition; for similar embassies had often arrived at Constantinople to announce, not the choice of a mere patrician, but the election of an independent emperor.