out Nepos and proclaims his own son, =Romulus Augustulus=, emperor. 476. Odoacer invades Italy. Romulus Augustulus deposed, and Odoacer acknowledged king of Italy. The Byzantine Emperor Zeno confers the title of patrician upon Odoacer, who rules a nominal vicar. “There was thus,” says Bryce, “legally no extinction of the Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West.” FOOTNOTES [2] This must not be construed as implying that such were the only lessons of Roman civilisation. See p. 4 _et seq._ [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIX. THE EMPIRE AND THE PROVINCES When Augustus entered upon secure possession of absolute power, the Roman Empire included the fairest and most famous lands on the face of the globe and all the civilised peoples of the ancient world found a place in its ample bosom. It extended from the ocean on the west to the Euphrates, from the Danube and the Rhine to the cataracts of the Nile and the deserts of Africa and Arabia. And although, in the first decades of imperial rule, a few tribes within its huge circumference had not completely assimilated the system of Roman civilisation and law; although in the Alps and Pyrenees, on the lower Danube and in the inaccessible gorges of the Taurus some warlike races retained their savage freedom and did not stoop their necks to the rods and axes of Rome, the mighty mistress of the world--they offered but a futile defiance, better fitted to assert and exercise the martial vigour of the legions than to inspire the masters of the world with dread or set bounds to their dominion.