Ricimer

Born around 405 to a Suebian noble father and a mother of Visigothic royal lineage, Ricimer came of age as imperial armies filled their ranks with federate soldiers. He learned the trade of command under late Western regimes where field success mattered more than pedigree, and where a general’s loyalty could outweigh an emperor’s legitimacy. An Arian Christian working with mostly Nicene elites, he cultivated a practical tolerance: Rome’s senate, Italy’s landowners, and the army’s officers would cooperate if he kept the Vandals at bay and the army paid.

Elevated to magister militum in 456, Ricimer quickly revealed the real location of power. He deposed the Gallic emperor Avitus and later executed the reforming Majorian in 461 when policy diverged from army realities. He then installed Libius Severus, a pliant figure who reigned while Ricimer fought a losing maritime contest with Gaiseric’s Carthage. When the East sent Anthemius in 467 to rebuild the West, Ricimer cooperated long enough to launch the grand—but disastrous—468 expedition against the Vandals. The strategic failure deepened Western insolvency, and with relations collapsing, Ricimer besieged Rome in 472, killed Anthemius, and raised Olybrius before dying himself that same year. Throughout, his hand steered appointments, campaigns, and the meager coin that still crossed the imperial palace.

Ricimer’s challenge was structural as much as personal. He governed a state whose fiscal heart—Africa—beat in an enemy’s chest. His fleets were outmatched, his tax base eroded, and his armies were a patchwork of federates and provincial remnants. He compensated with political agility: rewarding allies, neutralizing rivals, and accepting Eastern oversight when useful. To some contemporaries he was a necessary evil, the one man who could keep Italy from disintegrating; to others, the butcher of emperors. He was disciplined, calculating, and surprisingly conservative in style, preferring senatorial cooperation and traditional titles to revolutionary trappings.

Ricimer’s legacy is the archetype of the kingmaker. He did not wear the purple because his barbarian birth and Arian faith made that impossible; instead, he reduced the purple to a tool. In the central logic of this timeline, he represents the final inversion of Roman governance: without revenues and with federate armies, the emperor was the disposable part. Ricimer kept the West functioning—barely—but at the price of making imperial office visibly subordinate to the sword. After his death, the system he embodied collapsed into the brief, brutal politics that ended with Odoacer’s coup in 476.