Onoulphus
Sign in to saveOnoulphus, also Onoulf, Unulf and Hunulf (died 493) was a military leader in the 5th century. His origins lay in the non Roman tribal groups led by Attila the Hun (died 453) in the Middle Danube region, but his career as a soldier brought him into the violent internal politics of the Roman empire during the period when the last Western Roman emperors lived and died.
Article
4 sectionsContents
- Biography
- Connection between Onoulphus, Odoacer and Armatus
- Notes
- Bibliography
Onoulphus, also Onoulf, Unulf and Hunulf (died 493) was a military leader in the 5th century. His origins lay in the non Roman tribal groups led by Attila the Hun (died 453) in the Middle Danube region, but his career as a soldier brought him into the violent internal politics of the Roman empire during the period when the last Western Roman emperors lived and died.
Together with his father Edeka, he was first mentioned as a chief of an independent Sciri polity, which was crushed by the Ostrogoths in 468/9. By 477 he was serving in the Eastern Roman Empire as magister militum per Illyricum, under the command of Armatus, who he killed in about that year on the instructions of the emperor Zeno. He finally became a general under the command of his own brother Odoacer, who in 476 led the non Roman soldiers under his command to a takeover of Roman Italy. He and his brother were killed in 493 when Theoderic the Great and his Ostrogothic forces took control of Roman Italy.