Orestes having undertaken to dethrone Nepos, the emperor of the West,
raised an army, merely showed himself, and the weak monarch abandoned
the diadem. The fortunate rebel encircled the head of his son Romulus
Augustulus with it. The Roman empire of the West was in its last
period of decay. Odoacer, at the head of an army of Goths, Heruli,
Scyrri, and Thuringians, came to give it the last blow, and to reign
over its vast wreck. Terror and confusion preceded him. All fled,
all dispersed at his approach. The plains were deserted, the cities
opened their gates to him. Orestes, too weak to withstand him, shut
himself up in Pavia. Odoacer pursued him thither, carried the city
by storm, made a frightful carnage, and set fire to the churches and
houses. Orestes was taken and decapitated on the 28th of August, 476,
the very day on which, one year before, he had dragged Nepos from his
throne. Augustulus, abandoned by everybody, stripped himself of his
dangerous dignity, and delivered up the purple to his conqueror, who,
out of compassion for his age, left him his life, with a pension of
six thousand golden pence, that is, about three thousand three hundred
pounds sterling. Thus disappeared the empire of the West, after having
subsisted five hundred and six years from the battle of Actium, and
twelve hundred and twenty-nine from the foundation of Rome. Scarcely
was its fall perceived, scarcely a look was fixed upon its last
moments; it might be compared to an old man who dies of caducity.