The 460s decade ran from January 1, 460, to December 31, 469.
Year 460 (CDLX) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Magnus and Apollonius. The denomination 460 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Anicius Olybrius was Roman emperor from July 472 until his death later that same year; his rule as augustus in the western Roman Empire was not recognised as legitimate by the ruling augustus in the eastern Roman Empire, Leo I. He was in reality a puppet ruler raised to power by Ricimer, the magister militum of Germanic descent, and was mainly interested in religion, while the actual power was held by Ricimer and his nephew Gundobad.
Ricimer was a Romanized Germanic general who effectively ruled the remaining territory of the Western Roman Empire from 456 after defeating Avitus, until his death in 472, with a brief interlude in which he contested power with Anthemius. Deriving his power from his position as magister militum of the Western Empire, Ricimer exercised political control through a series of puppet emperors. Ricimer's death led to unrest across Italy and the establishment of a Germanic kingdom on the Italian Peninsula.
Majorian was the Western Roman emperor from 457 to 461. A prominent commander in the Western military, Majorian deposed Avitus in 457 with the aid of his ally Ricimer at the Battle of Placentia. Possessing little more than Italy, Dalmatia, as well as some territory in Hispania and northern Gaul, Majorian campaigned rigorously for three years against the Empire's enemies. In 461, he was murdered at Dertona in a conspiracy, and his successors until the Fall of the Empire in 476 were puppets either of barbarian generals or the Eastern Roman court.
Procopius Anthemius was the Western Roman emperor from 467 to 472. Born in the Eastern Roman Empire, Anthemius quickly worked his way up the ranks. He married into the Theodosian dynasty through Marcia Euphemia, daughter of Eastern emperor Marcian. He soon received a significant number of promotions to various posts, and was presumed to be Marcian's planned successor. However, Marcian's sudden death in 457, together with that of Western emperor Avitus, left the imperial succession in the hands of Aspar, who instead appointed Leo, a low-ranking officer, to the Eastern throne, probably out of fear that Anthemius would be too independent. Eventually, this same Leo designated Anthemius as Western emperor in 467, following a two-year interregnum that started in November 465.
Eparchius Avitus was Roman emperor of the Western Empire from July 455 to October 456. He was a senator of Gallic extraction and a high-ranking officer both in the civil and military administration, as well as Bishop of Piacenza.
In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire refers to the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. Particularly during the period from AD 395 to 476, there were separate, coequal courts dividing the governance of the empire into the Western provinces and the Eastern provinces with a distinct imperial succession in the separate courts. The terms Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire were coined in modern times to describe political entities that were de facto independent; contemporary Romans did not consider the Empire to have been split into two empires but viewed it as a single polity governed by two imperial courts for administrative expediency. The Western Empire collapsed in 476, and the Western imperial court in Ravenna disappeared by AD 554, at the end of Justinian's Gothic War.
Bonifatius was a Roman general and governor of the diocese of Africa. He campaigned against the Visigoths in Gaul and the Vandals in North Africa. An ally of Galla Placidia, mother and advisor of Valentinian III, Bonifacius engaged in Roman civil wars on her behalf against the generals Felix in 427-429 and Aetius in 432. Although he defeated the latter at the Battle of Rimini, Bonifacius suffered a fatal wound and was succeeded by his son-in-law Sebastianus as patricius of the Western Roman Empire.
The naval forces of the ancient Roman state were instrumental in the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean Basin, but it never enjoyed the prestige of the Roman legions. Throughout their history, the Romans remained a primarily land-based people and relied partially on their more nautically inclined subjects, such as the Greeks and the Egyptians, to build their ships. Because of that, the navy was never completely embraced by the Roman state, and deemed somewhat "un-Roman".
Placidia was a daughter of Valentinian III, Roman emperor of the West from 425 to 455, and from 454/455 the wife of Olybrius, who became western Roman emperor in 472. She was one of the last imperial spouses in the Roman west, during the Fall of the Western Roman Empire during Late Antiquity.
Libius Severus, sometimes enumerated as Severus III, was Western Roman emperor from November 19, 461 to his death on November 14, 465. A native of Lucania, Severus was the fourth of the so-called "Shadow Emperors" who followed the deposition of the Valentinianic dynasty in 455. He ruled for just under four years, attaining the throne after his predecessor, Majorian, was overthrown by his magister militum, Ricimer. Severus was the first of a series of emperors who were highly dependent on the general, and it is often presumed that Ricimer held most of the de facto power during Severus' reign
Heremigarius was a Suevic military leader operating in Lusitania in the early fifth century. He may have been a joint monarch with Hermeric or his successor, but no primary source directly attests it. Writing in the mid-seventh century, Fredegar calls Heremigarius rex Suaevorum, king of the Suevi.
Gaiseric, also known as Geiseric or Genseric was king of the Vandals and Alans from 428 to 477. He ruled over a kingdom and played a key role in the decline of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century.
The Battle of Cape Bon was an engagement during a joint military expedition of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires led by Basiliscus against the Vandal capital of Carthage in 468. The invasion of the kingdom of the Vandals was one of the largest amphibious operations in antiquity, with 1,113 ships and over 50,000 personnel.
The Vandal Kingdom or Kingdom of the Vandals and Alans was a confederation of Vandals and Alans, which is one of the barbarian kingdoms established under Gaiseric, a Vandal warrior. It ruled in North Africa and the Mediterranean from 435 to 534 AD.
Ancient navies had a large impact on the navies of today. The outcomes of battles between ancient navies have been studied by the military to learn tactics that would help in their conquests. The ships that these civilizations created were what many ship designs were based on and allowed the vessels to become better built. The Punic Wars are some of the most notorious wars in history, and the naval vessels and tactics used in all three became a major part of naval military history.
The siege of Hippo Regius was a siege from June 430 to August 431, carried out by the Vandals under their king Gaiseric against Roman defenders under Boniface, Count of Africa.
The Battle of Agrigentum was fought in 456 A.D. at Agrigentum, now Agrigento in modern-day Sicily. An army of the Western Roman Empire, led by the general Ricimer, drove off an invading force, a fleet of sixty ships, sent by the Vandal king Gaiseric to raid Sicily. Ricimer then led the Roman fleet against the Vandals and defeated them in a naval battle off the coast of Corsica. The victory gave the Romans only temporary relief from Vandal raids.
The Vandal War (461–468) was a long-term conflict between the two halves of the Roman Empire on the one hand and the Vandals in North Africa on the other. This war revolved around hegemony in the Mediterranean and the empire of the west. The Vandals as a rising power posed an enormous threat to the stability of the Roman Empire. Piracy and plunder were a scourge, threatening trade throughout the Mediterranean. The Roman war effort from 466 onwards was aimed at the destruction of the Vandal Kingdom in order to restore the empire to its original territory. Armed conflicts alternated with peace talks and the two parts of the Roman Empire did not always act in unison.
Western Roman Empire