Rule
As emperor, Nepos sought to consolidate the Western Empire's remaining holdings, which consisted of Italy, Illyria and the remaining parts of Roman Gaul. He was able to re-negotiate a recently concluded peace settlement with the Visigoths and their king Euric, under which he restored the Provence region of Gaul to imperial control in exchange for other, minor territories where the empire was unable to maintain firm control and their strategic position was less sustainable. But he was less successful in negotiating with Geiseric, the king of the Vandals, who was once again launching pirate attacks on the Italian coast. Having recently made peace with the Eastern Empire, Geiseric saw no need to make new concessions to the recently-appointed Augustus of the weakened and unstable West.
Nepos was, by all accounts, one of the more capable of the late Western Emperors, but he was unpopular with the Roman Senate, whose members disliked him for his close ties to the East. When Nepos made the mistake of appointing the untrustworthy but well-established Orestes as his magister militum, Nepos' lack of a solid core of support in Italy would work against him.
Read more about this topic: Julius Nepos
Famous quotes containing the word rule:
“The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project,—Will it bake bread?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“Rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend. The process of justification is the delicate one of making mutual adjustments between rules and accepted inferences; and in the agreement achieved lies the only justification needed for either.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)