Orestes

Orestes, (died August 476, Pavia, Italy), regent of Italy and minister to Attila, king of the Huns. He obtained control of the Roman army in 475 and made his own son Romulus, nicknamed Augustulus, the last Western Roman emperor.

Of Germanic origin, Orestes’ family had been Roman citizens for a few generations. Orestes married the daughter of Count Romulus of Passau, after whom he named his son. In 474 Julius Nepos, the Byzantine supreme magistrate in Italy, proclaimed himself emperor; a year later Orestes, commander of Nepos’s barbarian troops, deposed him and caused the troops to acclaim the 14-year-old Romulus emperor. In 476, however, the troops mutinied, proclaiming as king one of their own number, Odoacer, and besieging and killing Orestes in Pavia and exiling Romulus.