Onoulphus

Onoulphus, also Onoulf, Unulf and Hunulf (floruit c. 453-479) was a Roman general of Scirian origin, magister militum per Illyricum from 477 to 479.

Biography

Onoulphus was a Scirian; his brother, Odoacer, and he were raised at the court of Attila, King of the Huns.

Onoulphus entered in the Roman army and rose through its ranks in the 470s. He found a protector in the general Armatus, who had him appointed first comes and later, in 477, magister militum per Illyricum, commander in chief of the Balkan army. In that same 477, by order of the Emperor Zeno, Onoulphus killed Armatus, even if he had greatly benefited by his protection (sources states that Armatus lent him a huge sum to pay a banquet).

Onoulphus kept his office until 479, when he fell out of favour.

Connection between Onounulphus and Odoacer

Solidus minted by Odoacer, chieftain of the Heruli and later King of Italy, in the name of the Eastern Emperor Zeno.

A recent publication by Stephan Krautschick^[1] advanced the hypothesis that Armatus and his cousin and emperor Basiliscus were related by blood with the chieftain of the Heruli and later King of Italy Odoacer. According to this hypothesis, supported by several scholars,^[2] Armatus was the brother of Onoulphus and Odoacer, who, therefore, was the nephew of Emperor Basiliscus and of his sister, the Empress Verina, wife of Emperor Leo I. This hypothesis explains why Armatus generously helped Onoulphus in his career, and states that he was killed by his own brother.^[3]

The connection between Armatus, Odoacer and Onoulphus is given by a fragment in the chronicle of John of Antioch, in which Onoulphus is said to be the killer and the brother of Armatus. Before Krautschick's hypothesis, and still today for scholars who reject this identification, John's passage was corrected to read "Odoacer was the brother of that Onoulphus who killed Armatus": this correction makes the statement compatible with those of the contemporary historians, as neither John Malalas nor Malchus tell about the relationship between Odoacer and Basiliscus or the killing of Armatus by his own brother.^[4]

Notes

1. ^ Krautschick.
2. ^ Demandt; Armory.
3. ^ Armory.
4. ^ MacGeorge.

Bibliography

• Armory, Patrick (1997). People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489-554. Cambridge University Press. pp. 282–283. ISBN 0-521-52635-3. 
• Alexander Demandt, Die Spätantike: römische Geschichte von Diocletian bis Justinian 284-565 n. Chr., 1989, Munchen, p. 178.
• Krautschick, Stephan, "Zwei Aspekte des Jahres 476", Historia, 35, 1986, pp. 344-371.
• MacGeorge, Penny (2003). Late Roman Warlords. Oxford University Press. pp. 284–285. ISBN 0-19-925244-0. 
• Rohrbacher, David, The Historians of Late Antiquity, Routledge, 2002, ISBN 0415204585, pp. 82-92.