Ricimer - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

According to Sidonius Apollinaris, Ricimer served under the magister militum Flavius Aetius alongside the comes domesticorum Majorian, whom he befriended.

A power vacuum was created in the Western Empire after the events of 454 and 455, which saw the consecutive murders of Aetius and of the Western Emperor Valentinian III, who had been responsible for the magister militum's assassination. After the assassinations, the Roman senator Petronius Maximus proclaimed himself emperor. Petronius, however, was killed by a Roman mob immediately prior to the Vandal sacking of the city in 455. After the sack, the Visigothic king Theodoric II proclaimed as emperor Avitus, the Roman military commander in Gaul. In return for Theodoric's support, Avitus agreed to allow the Visigoths to enter Suevi-controlled Hispania. Theodoric consented to Avitus's offers and the new emperor, with the Visigoths under his command, marched on Rome to secure the throne. Avitus named the Visigothic Remistus as magister militum, a position which had been vacant since Aetius's death.

Following the arrival of Avitus in Rome, Majorian gave his support, albeit reluctantly, to the new emperor. Avitus subsequently appointed Ricimer as a comes, or count of the Empire, a prominent military position. By this point, however, the Western Empire encompassed the Italian peninsula and portions of southern Gaul, which were mere fractions of the territory held by Rome in previous centuries.

Ricimer raised an army and navy from the Germanic mercenaries available to him, and commenced campaigns directed against "barbarian" tribes in conflict with the Empire. Ricimer achieved his first important victory in 456, when he defeated the Vandals in a naval battle. Although Priscus wrote that Avitus had sent him to Sicily to engage the Vandals, Hydatius states he defeated the Vandals near Corsica. After his Mediterranean victory, Ricimer was appointed by Avitus as magister militum praesentalis, the commander of the Western Empire's field army in Italy and effectively the second-highest rank available to a general of the West.

Ricimer used his new position to assist his colleague Majorian in plotting against Avitus, who had not yet been recognized as emperor of the West by Marcian, the Eastern emperor. Ricimer and Majorian convinced the Roman Senate to authorize a military expedition against Avitus, who had established himself at the Imperial capital of Ravenna. The two led an army against an Imperial force commanded by the magister militum Remistus and defeated it at Piacenza on October 16, 456. They then besieged Avitus in Ravenna, which fell. Avitus was captured, forced to assume the bishopric of Piacenza, and finally executed. With the Western throne vacant, the new Eastern Emperor, Leo I, granted Ricimer the title of patrician and the rank of magister militum on February 28, 457. Leo appointed Majorian to replace Ricimer in his Italian command. Without a Western Emperor, Leo hoped to use Ricimer as his effective vicegerent in the West.