study the art of war and the barbarian mercenaries study
literature."[2]

[Footnote 2: _Idem. Ep_. 1. 8. Cf. Hodgkin, _op cit_ vol. 1. p. 860.]

Such was the Ravenna of the barbarian who called himself king of
Italy.

We have seen Ravenna since her incorporation into the Roman
administrative system fulfilling the various reasons of her existence;
as the fortress which held the gate into Italy from Cisalpine Gaul, as
the second naval port of the West, and as the great impregnable
fortress of Italy in the barbarian invasions. 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