Siege of Ravenna (490–493)
Odoacer gives his son as hostage and accepts peace terms with Theodoric
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25 February 493
A reconstruction based on the Ravenna annalistic tradition places the opening of the capitulation on 25 February 493, when Odoacer handed over his son Thela — Thelanes — as a hostage guaranteeing the agreement.
The near-contemporary Anonymus Valesianus confirms the essential transaction: Odoacer gave Thelanes as a hostage after first receiving a pledge that his own blood would be spared. It supplies no February date.
A traditional reconstruction assigns the hostage to 25 February, Theodoric’s occupation of Classis to 26 February and the formal peace to 27 February; some modern summaries date the whole agreement to 25 February.
Three years of blockade
Ravenna had endured a prolonged blockade, famine and failed sorties. The Anonymus Valesianus reports a siege of three years, and says a modius of wheat cost six gold pieces inside the city.
Odoacer could no longer reverse Theodoric’s control of most of Italy, and negotiated through John, bishop of Ravenna.
John mediated an agreement under which Odoacer and Theodoric were ostensibly to share the government of Italy.
The condominium lasted days
Theodoric did not enter Ravenna until 5 March.
He killed Odoacer shortly afterwards — usually dated 15 March — and ordered the killing of Odoacer’s available soldiers and family.
The pledge was not honoured: Odoacer’s life had been promised safe, and Theodoric became the uncontested ruler in Ravenna.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 4 sources not yet audited Date disputed
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Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.
What the sources leave uncertain
- The sources do not preserve a perfectly consistent day-by-day chronology. A traditional reconstruction assigns the hostage to 25 February, Theodoric's occupation of Classis to 26 February and the formal peace to 27 February; some modern summaries instead date the entire agreement to 25 February.
- The Anonymus Valesianus confirms the hostage and promise of safety but supplies no February date. The precise dates depend on reconstruction from the lost Ravenna annals and later derivative chronicles.
- The settlement's constitutional meaning is debated. Sources describe joint government, but it should not automatically be treated as the founding instrument of a fully independent Ostrogothic state.