In an almost unbelievable historical symmetry, the very last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in Ravenna, Italy, was a teenage boy named Romulus Augustulus. This minor ruler's name combined Romulus, the legendary mythical founder of Rome, with Augustus, the very first Roman emperor who established the imperial system. When the Germanic chieftain Odoacer deposed him in 476, the Western Roman Empire officially ended under a name that perfectly bookended its entire thousand-year history.

This incredible onomastic coincidence became a favorite theme for medieval chroniclers and later Romantic poets, who viewed it as absolute proof of an iron law of historical destiny. The poetic irony of Rome ending with the names it began with inspired deep literary meditations on the cyclical nature of human empires.