Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome, episode 176, the quote unquote emperor.

When Rickamer arrested and executed the emperor majorian in August 461, it is entirely

likely that he didn't think it would be that big of a deal.

Sure, it might be a little scandalous, but as PR problems go, it would almost certainly

blow over.

After all, Rickamer was the real power behind the throne, everyone knew it, so it wasn't

like this was a coup or something, more like a CEO firing his COO.

But Rickamer underestimated the popularity of majorian.

Living in Italy and surrounded by a bunch of Italian aristocrats who had soured on the

emperor, it might have seemed to Rickamer like the whole empire hated majorian and was

ready for him to go.

But this was not so.

Majorians policies may have been ticking off Rickamer any Italian nobility, but that

did not mean that they were ticking off anyone else.

So when majorian was killed, these anyone else's were shocked and angry, and as we're

about to see, they were not going to take it lying down.

Two of these anyone else's are of particular interest.

The first was the general I mentioned last week, the guy whose name I told you to remember.

Do you remember his name?

That's right, it's agidious.

Agidious had risen up through the ranks with majorian, and as you'll recall, one of

majorians' first axis emperor was to make agidious, magister, militum, the commander

...