First he chose Messianus, one of his collaborators in his embassy to the Visigoths ordered by Petronius Maximus, as the new magister militum ; then he probably went to Gaul ( Hydatius says to Arelate ) to collect all the available forces, probably the Visigoth guard he had just disbanded ; finally he led his forces against the troops of Ricimer, near Piacenza.

* 461 – Majorian is arrested near Tortona ( Northern Italy ) and deposed by the Suebian general Ricimer as puppet emperor.

* 461 – Roman Emperor Majorian is beheaded near the river Iria in north-west Italy following his arrest and deposition by the magister militum Ricimer.

* 456 – Battle of Placentia: Ricimer, supported by Majorian ( comes domesticorum ), defeats near Piacenza ( Northern Italy ) the Roman usurper Avitus.

* October 17 – Battle of Placentia: Ricimer, supported by Majorian ( comes domesticorum ), defeats near Piacenza ( Northern Italy ) the usurper Avitus.

* August 2 – Majorian is arrested near Tortona ( Northern Italy ) and deposed by Ricimer ( magister militum ) as puppet emperor.

After Petronius, the Gallic-Roman senator Avitus was proclaimed Emperor by the Visigoth king Theodoric II and ruled for two years, then was deposed by Majorian, who ruled for four years, before being killed by his general Ricimer ( 461 ).

The powerful general Ricimer deposed and killed Majorian, who had become unpopular with the senatorial aristocracy because of his reforms.

Majorian played the role of the candidate for the throne of Licinia Eudoxia, Valentinian's widow, and of Ricimer, who reserved for himself a role similar to Aetius '.

Both Majorian, comes domesticorum, and Ricimer, comes, initially supported Avitus, but when the Emperor lost the loyalty of the Italian aristocracy, the two generals revolted against him.

First Majorian and Ricimer killed Remistus, the magister militum entrusted by Avitus with the defence of the capital, Ravenna.

On the other hand, Leo rewarded both Majorian and Ricimer: the former was appointed magister militum, the latter patricius and magister militum ( February 28, 457 ).

There were actually two magistri militum to choose between, Majorian and Ricimer, but the barbarian origin of the latter barred him from the throne.

In first year ( 458 ) Majorian reserved the honour for himself, as the Emperors usually did in the first year they started as augusti, while in the second year he appointed his former colleague and powerful magister militum, Ricimer.

The fate of Avitus had been marked by the betrayal of Ricimer and of Majorian and by the dismissal of his German guard, so the fate of Majorian himself was decided by the disbandment of his army and a plot organised by Ricimer.

After the death of Majorian, Ricimer waited for three months before putting someone on the imperial throne he believed he could manipulate.

Therefore both empires had no Emperor, and the power was in the hands of the Western generals, Ricimer and Majorian, and of the Eastern Magister militum, the Alan Aspar.

As Aspar could not sit on the throne because of his barbaric origin, he opposed Anthemius whose prestige would have made him independent and chose a low-ranking military officer, Leo ; in the West, as his barbaric origin barred Ricimer from the throne, it was Majorian who received the purple.

The new Emperor needed the support of both the civil institutions, the Roman senate and the Eastern Roman Emperor Marcian, as well as that of the army and its commanders ( the generals Majorian and Ricimer ) and the Vandals of Gaiseric.

Majorian, comes domesticorum of Avitus, and Ricimer, a general of barbaric descent, rebelled against their Emperor, defeated him near Piacenza, and obliged him to become Bishop of the city.

Counting on the popular discontent, on the disbandment of the imperial guard, and on the prestige gained through their victories, Ricimer and the comes domesticorum Majorian rebelled against Avitus ; the Emperor was obliged to leave Rome in early autumn and to move north.

An ardent supporter of Majorian, Aegidius rebelled when Ricimer deposed Majorian, engaging in several campaigns against the Visigoths and creating a Roman rump state that came to be known as the Domain of Soissons.

He allies himself with Ricimer, de facto ruler of Rome, and marries his daughter Alypia to him.

* Bacurius ( presumably Romanised Bakur ), a native and possibly prince of Iberia, in command of the archers and / or scutarii with Cassio that accompanied Ricimer as hostage, and who attacked without orders.

He was killed by Ricimer, his own general of Gothic descent, who contested power with him.

On 25 March 467, Leo I, with the consent of Ricimer, designated Anthemius Western Emperor as Caesar and sent him to Italy with an army led by the Magister militum per Illyricum Marcellinus.

Ricimer had gathered 6, 000 men for the war against the Vandals, and after the death of Romanus he moved with his men to the north, leaving Anthemius in Rome.

However, relations between Ricimer and Majorian soured ; when Majorian's campaign in Hispania against the Vandals proved unsuccessful Ricimer deposed him ( 461 ), murdering another Emperor, replacing him with Libius Severus.

He moved on Rome with Visigothic support which gained his acceptance by Majorian and Ricimer, commanders of the remaining army of Italia.

He arrived in Italia with an army, supported by Marcellinus and his fleet ; he married his daughter to Ricimer, and he was proclaimed Augustus in 467.

Ricimer then quarreled with Anthemius, and besieged him in Rome ( which this time put up a vigorous defence and surrendered only after more months of starvation ).

In 472, Anthemius ( Western Roman Emperor ) was involved in a civil war with his magister militum and son-in-law Ricimer.

For most of the time, the actual rulers in the West were military strongmen who took the titles of magister militum, patrician, or both, such as Stilicho, Aetius, and Ricimer.

Although further Emperors would don the purple on the basis of military power ( e. g., Constantine I, Valentinian I, and Theodosius I ), the phenomenon of the barracks emperors died out, to be replaced in the late imperial era by shadow emperors like Stilicho, Constantius III, Flavius Aëtius, Avitus, Ricimer, Gundobad, Flavius Orestes, and Odoacer, military strongmen who effectually ruled the empire as imperial generalissimos controlling weak-willed puppet emperors rather than by donning the purple themselves.

But Ricimer had placed a guard at Ostia who found the secret letter ; Ricimer showed the document to Olybrius, which convinced Olybrius to accept the purple.

A few days after the death of Anthemius, Ricimer also died, on August 9 or 19 ; his nephew Gundobad Magister militum was elevated in his place.

The story told in the opera is quite different from the real one, despite the fact that Zeno claimed to use several historical sources ( Evagrius Scholasticus l. 2. c. 7, Procopius of Caesarea, Historia Vandalorum, l. 1, Paul the Deacon, vi ): Ricimer captures Rome, frees his sister Teodolinda and enslaves Placidia, daughter of Valentinian III ; a little later, Olybrius frees Rome and Placidia, and marries her.

* Novella Maioriani 11, De episcopali iudicio et ne quis invitus clericus ordinetur vel de ceteris negotiis, " Episcopal Courts ; No Person Shall Be Ordained A Cleric Against His Will ; Various Matters ", ( given in Arelate, on March 28, 460, to Ricimer, also in the name of Leo I );

Ricimer blockaded Anthemius in Rome ; five months of fighting followed.

Constantius ' success in rising from head of the Roman army to Imperial rank obviously influenced the actions of later holders of the patrician office, a list that includes Flavius Aëtius and Ricimer ; however, only Petronius Maximus ever made the same leap, and his reign was even shorter than that of Constantius.

Heraclius effected his retreat through the desert into Tripolitania, holding the position for two years until recalled ; Marcellinus retired to Sicily, where he was reached by Basiliscus ; the general was, however, assassinated, perhaps at the instigation of Ricimer, by one of his own captains ; and the king of the Vandals expressed his surprise and satisfaction, that the Romans themselves would remove from the world his most formidable antagonists.

In 456 the Visigothic army was too heavily engaged in Hispania to be an effective threat to Italia, and Ricimer had just destroyed a pirate fleet of sixty Vandal ships ; Majorian and Ricimer marched against Avitus and defeated him near Placentia.

Leo I wife Verina bore him at least two daughters, one of whom married the son of Anthemius, whom Leo I installed as Emperor in the West in 467 ( and whose daughter married the formidable " Shadow Emperor " Ricimer ), and the other of whom was Ariadne, who married the Isaurian leader Tarasikodissa ; Tarasikodissa was appointed master of the soldiers and adopted the name Zeno.