Murder
Nepos was murdered by his own soldiers on one of three possible dates — April 25, May 9 or June 22 — of 480. The April 25 date is probably the correct one. He was reportedly stabbed to death in his villa, near Salona. Since Diocletian also had a residence in the area, it might have been the same building. Marcellinus Comes blames "the treachery of his comes Viator and Ovida" for the murder. Malchus also implicates the former Emperor Glycerius in the conspiracy. Glycerius was after all Bishop of Salona at the time, placing him in the vicinity of the murder.
Ovida served as the next ruler of Dalmatia for a few months, but Odoacer used Nepos' murder as a pretext to invade Dalmatia. Odoacer defeated Ovida's forces on December 9, and added the province to his own kingdom. Adding to the suspicions about Glycerius is a report that Odoacer then made him bishop of Milan.
Read more about this topic: Julius Nepos
Famous quotes containing the word murder:
“As I sat before the fire on my fir-twig seat, without walls above or around me, I remembered how far on every hand that wilderness stretched, before you came to cleared or cultivated fields, and wondered if any bear or moose was watching the light of my fire; for Nature looked sternly upon me on account of the murder of the moose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We murder to dissect.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.”
—P.D. (Phyllis Dorothy)