Editing Julius Nepos (section)

==Legacy==
Nepos' successor in Italy, [[Romulus Augustulus]], is typically regarded as the last western Roman emperor,{{Sfn|Mathisen|1997}}{{Sfn|Kos|2008|p=439}}{{Sfn|McEvoy|2012}}{{Sfn|Heather|2015}} though several historians argue that this distinction is better applied to Nepos,{{Sfn|Mathisen|1997}}{{Sfn|Demo|1988|p=247}}{{Sfn|Nathan|1997}}{{Sfn|Arnold|Bjornlie|Sessa|2016|p=3}} given that he continued to rule in Dalmatia with the imperial title and the full recognition, although not the full military support, of the eastern empire, until he was murdered in 480.{{Sfn|Kos|2008|p=439}}{{Sfn|Nathan|1997}} Romulus Augustulus, by strange coincidence, shares the name of both the founder of Rome ([[Romulus]]) and its first emperor ([[Augustus]]),{{Sfn|Gibbon|1872|p=100}} which may, in addition to being the last western emperor to rule Italy, have contributed to him being viewed as the last emperor over Nepos.{{Sfn|Mathisen|1997}} Nepos shares a similar coincidence, in that he shares his first name, Julius, with [[Julius Caesar]], Augustus' adoptive father and predecessor as authoritarian ruler of the Roman state.{{Sfn|Halsall|2007|p=301}}

By the time of Nepos' death in 480, the Western Roman Empire was gone, and Nepos had, in the words of the Roman historian Ralph W. Mathisen, become an "unwanted [[anachronism]]"; a hindrance to Odoacer who wished to expand into Dalmatia himself and an embarrassment to Zeno, who could not offer him his full support. Though his death was seen as marking the end of the line of emperors in the west, it was barely acknowledged at the time.{{Sfn|Mathisen|1998}} By the next century, eastern Roman historians no longer recognised Nepos' reign in Dalmatia from 475 to 480 as a legitimate continuation of his imperial reign: the 6th-century eastern historians [[Marcellinus Comes]], [[Procopius]] and [[Jordanes]] all considered the child emperor, Romulus Augustulus, to have been the last western emperor.{{Sfn|Mathisen|1997}}{{Sfn|Kos|2008|p=439}}{{Sfn|Nathan|1997}}