74 Arnold
representatives nor the justice and acts of succour that they were supposed to
receive in exchange.1
This chapter, therefore, will provide an overview of these non-Italian lands,
focusing on their acquisition and administration, ideological importance,
and finally loss. Indeed, though the Ostrogothic kingdom claimed many non-
Italian lands and prided itself on their possession, none of these provinces
remained within its grasp beyond the opening years of Justinian’s invasion.
In the end, and despite its lofty claims and achievements, this revived Roman
Empire remained at its core an ‘Empire of Italy’.2
Provinces from Odovacer to Theoderic
By 476 the western Roman Empire had been greatly reduced in size, becoming
essentially a truncated version of the prefecture of Italy. To the south, Africa
had been lost to the Vandals, who wrested the islands of Corsica, Sardinia,
and possibly Sicily from Italia Suburbicaria. To the north, the Alpine reaches
of Raetia and Noricum had been overrun by peoples like the Alamanni and
Rugi and were devolving to self-rule. And to the west and east, only a handful
of provinces bordering Italy remained, the rest having been lost piece by piece
over the course of the 5th century.3
Following his successful coup, Odovacer yielded Italy’s remaining Gallic ter-
ritories to the Visigoths, who had overrun Provence in the interim. At the same
time he secured a treaty with the Vandals, who relinquished their claims to
most of Sicily in exchange for an annual payment of tribute. Odovacer’s deal-
ings with the former imperial territories to the north and east of Italy, in the
diocese of Western Illyricum, were more complicated. Across the Adriatic,
Dalmatia was ruled independently by Julius Nepos, who was still viewed in
Constantinople as the legitimate emperor of the West. At the insistence of the
eastern emperor Zeno, therefore, Odovacer agreed to rule Italy as Nepos’ sub-
ordinate and agent and did so, at least nominally, until the exiled emperor’s
1 For an elaboration: Arnold, Theoderic, especially pp. 231–3.
2 For the term, which was used in reference to the late western empire and the Ostrogothic
kingdom: Prostko-Prostyński, Utraeque res publicae, pp. 100–1, and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 15,
22, 43–4.
3 Broadly: Stein, Bas-Empire 1, pp. 377–97; also Alföldy, Noricum, pp. 213–24; Heuberger,
“Rätien”, pp. 83–8; Clover, “Bluff ”, pp. 236–8; and Drinkwater, Alamanni, pp. 331–44.