but benefited from the downfall of his people the Sciri. They established control on the Roman (south) side of the Danube, north of Lake Balaton in modern Hungary when they were apparently able to take over the kingdoms of the Suevi and Sciri, who had been under pressure from the Ostrogoths, who continued to press their old allies from the south. Odoacer, the commander of the Imperial foederati troops who deposed the last Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus in 476 AD came to be seen as king over several of the Danubian peoples including the Heruli, and the Heruli were strongly associated with his Italian kingdom. The Heruli on the Danube also took control of the Rugian territories, who had become competitors to Odoacer and been defeated by him in 488. However Heruli suffered badly in Italy, as loyalists of Odoacer, when he was defeated by the Ostrogoth Theoderic. By 500 the Herulian kingdom on the Danube, apparently by now under a king named Rodulph, had made peace with Theoderic and become his allies. Paul the Deacon also mentions Heruli living in Italy under Ostrogothic rule. Peter Heather estimates that the Herulian kingdom could muster an army of 5,000-10,000 men. Theoderic's efforts to build a system of alliances in Western Europe were made difficult both by counter diplomacy, for example between Merovingian Franks and the Byzantine empire, and also the arrival of a new Germanic people into the Danubian region, the Lombards who were initially under Herule hegemony. The Herulian king Rodulph lost his kingdom to the Lombards at some point between 494 and 508. Later history After the Middle Danubian Herulian kingdom was destroyed by the Lombards in or before 508, Herulian fortunes waned. According to Procopius, in 512 a group including royalty went north and settled in Thule, which for Procopius meant Scandinavia. Procopius noted that these Heruli first traversed the lands of the Slavs, then empty lands, and then the lands of the Danes, until finally settling down nearby the Geats. Peter Heather considers this account to be "entirely plausible" although he notes that others have labelled it a "fairy story", and given that it only appears in one source it is possible to deny its validity. Another Heruli group were assigned civil and military offices by Theoderic the Great in Pavia in north Italy. What happened to the main part of the Danubian Heruli has been