Odoacer, a Gothic chief who, according to some authorities, was of the tribe of the Heruli, originally served as a mercenary in the barbarian auxiliary force which the later einperors of the West had taken into their pay for the defence of Italv. After the two rival emperors. Glycerins and Julius Nepos, were both driv- en from the throne, Orestes, a soldier from Pannonia, clothed his own son Romulus, yet a minor, with the imperial pm-ple, but retained all the substantial author- ity in his own hands. The barbarian troops now asked for one third of the lands of Italy to be distributed among them as a reward for their services. Orestes having rejected their demand, they chose Odoacer for their leader, and he immediately marched against Orestes, who had shut himself up in Pavia. Odoacer took the city by storm, and gave it up to be plundered by his soldiers. Orestes was taken prisoner and led to Placentia, where he was publicly executed, in August, A.D. 475, exactly a twelvemonth after he had driven Nepos out of Italy. Romulus, who was called Au- gustulus by way of derision, was in Ravenna, where he was seized by Odoacer, who stripped him of his imperial ornaments and banished him to a castle of Campania, but allowed him an honorable maintenance. Odoacer now proclaimed himself king of Italy, rejecting
ODOLLAM
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the imperial titles of Caesar and Augustus. For this reason the Western empire is considered as having ended with the deposition of Komulus xVugustulus, the son of Orestes. Udoacer's authority did not extend beyond the boundaries of Italy. Little is known of the events of liis reign until the invasion of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who, at the instigation, as some his- torians assert, of Zeno, emperor of the East, marched from the banks of the Danube to dispossess Odoacer of his kingdom. Theodoric, at the head of a large army, defeated Odoacer near Aquileia, and entered Verona without opposition. Odoacer shut himself up in Ka- vennain 4fS'.». The war, however, lasted several years. Odoacer made a brave resistance, but was compelled by famine to surrender Ravenna (March, 493). Theodoric at first spared his life, but in a short time caused him to be killed, and proclaimed himself king of Italy. — Eii</lish C'l/clop. s. v. See Jornandes, De Ref/norum suc- cess, p. 59, 60; De Rebus Gothicis, p. 128-141; Paul Diacre, De Gestis Longohard. i, 19 ; Gregory of Tours, Hist. Vranq. ii, 118 sq. ; Procopius, Bell. Goth, i, 1 ; ii, fi ; Ennodius, Vita I'Jpipknnii; Cassiodorus, Ckron. ad an. 370; Epist. i, 18; Evagrius, ii, 16; Le Beau, Hist, du Bus Empire, vol. xxxv; Gibbon, Decline and Eallof the Roman Empire, ah. xxxvi ; Hoefer, Xouv. Biog. Gene- rale, xxxviii, 481. '
Odollam (OeoWdp, Vulg. Odollam), the Greek form of the name Aduli^aji (2 Mace. xii,38). Adullam is stated by Eusebius and Jerome {Onomast. "Adol- 1am") to have been in their day a large village, about ten miles east of Eleutheropolis; and here (if Beit- jibrin be Eleutheropolis) a village with the name of Bet Dula (Tohlev, Bethlehem, p. 29; Dritte Wander, p. 151) or Beit Via (Robinson, 1st ed. A pp. p. 117) now stands. The obstacle to this identification is not that Adullam, a town of the Shefelah, should be found in the mountains, for that puzzling circumstance is not unfrequent, so much as that in the catalogue of Joshua XV it is mentioned with a group of towns (Zoreah, Socoh, etc.) which lay at the N.W. corner of Judah, while Bet Dula is found with those (Nezib, Keilah, etc.) of a separate group farther south (Smith). More recently Mr. Ganneau has proposed to identif)' the site of Adullam with that of MtVZ el-Mia, a hill-side near Shuweikeh, burrowed with caves {Quar. Statement of " Pal. Expl. Fund," Jan. 1875, p. 427) ; but the corre- spondence in name is not striking; and he afterwards expresses himself doubtful, after a prolonged investiga- tion {ih. July, 1875, p. 168-177).
Further examination is requisite before we can posi- tively say if there is any cavern in the neighborhood of Bet Dula answering to the "cave of Adullam." The cavern at Khureitun, three miles south of Bethlehem, usually shown to travellers as A(hdlam, is so far distant as to make a connection diftieult. It is probable that this latter is the cavern in the wilderness of Engedi, in •which the adventure of Saul and David (1 Sam. xxiv) occurred (see Van de Velde, Si/r. and Pal. ii, 33). E very- tliing that can be said to identify it witli the cave of Adullam has been said by Dr. Bouar {Land of Promise, p. 248-50) ; but his strongest argument — an inference, from 1 Sam. xxii, 1, in favor of its proximity to Beth- lehem— comes into direct collision with the statement of Jerome quoted above, which it should be observed is equally opposed to Dr. Robinson's proposal to i)lace it at Ddr-Dubbun. Tlie conliict, however, would be some- what obviated by separating the cave from the town. The name of Adullam appears to have been first applied to Khureitun at the time of the Crusades (Will, of Tyre, xv, 6). Dr. Bonar suggests that the name Khureitun represents the ancient Hareth (Khareth). This is in- genious, and may be correct ; but Tobler (Umgebungen, etc. p. 522, 3 ) has made out a strong case for the name being that of Chareiton, or Kreton, a famous Essene hermit of the 3d or 4th century, who founded a Laura in the cavern in question (Acta Sanct. Sept, 28) (Smith). Mr. Ganneau reports the jiresent name of the cave as