<P> The fleet was burned by traitors, and Majorian made peace with the Vandals and returned to Italy . Here Ricimer met him, arrested him, and executed him five days later . Marcellinus in Dalmatia, and Aegidius around Soissons in northern Gaul, rejected both Ricimer and his puppets and maintained some version of Roman rule in their areas . Ricimer later ceded Narbo and its hinterland to the Visigoths for their help against Aegidius; this made it impossible for Roman armies to march from Italy to Hispania . Ricimer was then the effective ruler of Italy (but little else) for several years . From 461 to 465 the pious Italian aristocrat Libius Severus reigned . There is no record of anything significant that he even tried to achieve, he was never acknowledged by the East whose help Ricimer needed, and he died conveniently in 465 . </P> <P> After two years without a Western Emperor, the Eastern court nominated Anthemius, a successful general who had a strong claim on the Eastern throne . He arrived in Italy with an army, supported by Marcellinus and his fleet; he married his daughter to Ricimer, and he was proclaimed Augustus in 467 . In 468, at vast expense, the Eastern empire assembled an enormous force to help the West retake the Diocese of Africa . Marcellinus rapidly drove the Vandals from Sardinia and Sicily, and a land invasion evicted them from Tripolitania . The commander in chief with the main force defeated a Vandal fleet near Sicily and landed at Cape Bon . Here Genseric offered to surrender, if he could have a five - day truce to prepare the process . He used the respite to prepare a full - scale attack preceded by fireships, which destroyed most of the Roman fleet and killed many of its soldiers . The Vandals were confirmed in their possession of the Diocese of Africa and they retook Sardinia and Sicily . Marcellinus was murdered, possibly on orders from Ricimer . The Praetorian prefect of Gaul, Arvandus, tried to persuade the new king of the Visigoths to rebel, on the grounds that Roman power in Gaul was finished anyway, but he refused . </P> <P> Anthemius was still in command of an army in Italy . Additionally, in northern Gaul, a British army led by one Riothamus, operated in imperial interests . Anthemius sent his son over the Alps, with an army, to request that the Visigoths return southern Gaul to Roman control . This would have allowed the Empire land access to Hispania again . The Visigoths refused, defeated the forces of both Riothamus and Anthemius, and with the Burgundians took over almost all of the remaining imperial territory in southern Gaul . </P> <P> Ricimer then quarreled with Anthemius, and besieged him in Rome, which surrendered in July 472 after more months of starvation . Anthemius was captured and executed (on Ricimer's orders) by the Burgundian prince Gundobad . In August Ricimer died of a pulmonary haemorrhage . Olybrius, his new emperor, named Gundobad as his patrician, then died himself shortly thereafter . </P>

Where did the west goths settle down after the decline of the western roman empire