the twenty years between the death of Valentinian and the accession of Romulus Augustus, eight different emperors ruled in the west. By 475, the western empire was in critical condition. Outside of Italy, authority was only exercised in Raetia and some regions of Gaul. The ruling emperor in 475 was Julius Nepos, who had been in power for less than a year. Nepos had been appointed western emperor in 474 by the eastern emperors Leo I (457–474) and Zeno (474–491), but had little real support in the west. In 475, Nepos named Orestes as a patrician and magister militum ('master of soldiers'; effectively commander-in-chief), replacing the previous holder of that office, Ecdicius. Orestes was a distinguished late Roman figure, once having served as notarius (secretary) to the Hunnic king Attila. As magister militum, Orestes was tasked by Nepos to lead an army against Visigoths and Burgundians, foederati (barbarian allies of the empire) who were rebelling in southern Gaul. The army given to Orestes by Nepos was multi-ethnic, with many foederati soldiers. obeying to the grievances of his troops, among other things learning that Nepos had refused requests for land grants, Orestes betrayed the emperor's orders and marched on Ravenna, the capital of the western empire. On 28 August 475, Orestes entered Ravenna with his army and Nepos escaped across the Adriatic Sea to Salona in Dalmatia. Ancestry and family There is little surviving concrete evidence in regards to Romulus' ancestry beyond Orestes being known to have been a Roman citizen from Pannonia and sparse information on his immediate family. Orestes' father was a Pannonian Roman officer by the name of Tatulus, and Tatulus had at least one other son, Paulus, who served as a comes. The name of Romulus' mother is not known, but it might have been Barbaria. The name Barbaria, otherwise rarely attested, may derive either from the gens (family) Barbii, attested in Roman Pannonia, or it may simply be the feminine version of the name Barbarius, attested from a few Roman individuals in southern Gaul. Romulus' maternal grandfather was a comes, also by the name of Romulus, attested as alive in 449, when he was sent on an embassy to Attila by the general Aetius. Orestes and Romulus Augustus' mother married at some point before 449. It is believed that Romulus' mother, and thus perhaps her immediate family, were, like Orestes, from Roman Pannonia. It is possible