480s or early 490s. A Roman noblewoman by the name of Barbaria, possibly Romulus' mother, also aided in founding the monastery. This monastery became prominent under Pope Gregory I (590–604) and was active until the 10th century. Legacy Very few records survive of Romulus' reign. Any policies that he might have pursued are not known. The scant narrative record and few known coins, in addition to there not being any known inscriptions of significance or laws issued by the emperor, make him a shadowy and relatively inconsequential figure. Ralph W. Mathisen considered him in 1997 to have been the "perhaps even the least significant" of the short-lived emperors near the end of the Western Roman Empire. When not seen as only inconsequential, opinions by historians on Romulus Augustus have been negative. In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788), Edward Gibbon wrote that he "assumed and disgraced the names of Romulus [and] Augustus". Romulus Augustus is typically regarded as the last Western Roman emperor, or even the last Roman emperor overall, with his deposition seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire as a political entity. The deposition of Romulus is also one of the most commonly used dates by historians to mark the transition from antiquity to the medieval period. Romulus being seen as the last emperor over other contenders derives not only from Romulus having been the last emperor proclaimed in the west, but also from the poetic nature of being named after both Romulus, the founder of Rome, and Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Many historians have noted the coincidence that the last emperor combined the names of both the city's founder and the first emperor. In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon wrote that "the appellations of the two great founders of the city and of the monarchy were thus strangely united in the last of their successors".Some modern scholars consider Romulus' distinction as the last western emperor to be dubious. In particular, some historians, such as Ralph W. Mathisen and Marjeta Šašel Kos, have pointed to Julius Nepos as the actual last Western Roman emperor. Though he never regained Italy, Nepos continued to rule in Dalmatia, with support from Zeno and with nominal recognition by Odoacer, until he was murdered in 480. Throughout the duration of his brief reign, Romulus was never