Theodoric II, ruled the Empire and Hispania between the years 457-466 . A few days after Theodoric II's victory at the Órbigo river, the Gallic emperor Eparquio Avito was overthrown by the magister militum Ricimer, of Swabian and Visigothic extraction, was a real shadow power in Ravenna until his death in 472. The turn of events forced the Toulousian monarch to leave the Iberian Peninsula in March 457, although part of the army remained and continued a advance towards Baetica, which culminated in a certain control over Seville. The federated theoreticians followed the line of Suebian expansion with a growing awareness of the construction of a Visigoth domain in the Peninsula. However, Theodoric II's plans regarding the northeastern barbarian kingdom did not prosper, given the autonomist ambition of the client Agiulfo. After his death in June 457, faced with a power vacuum, maritime Galicia was fragmented into units controlled by different leaders, all reflecting an ethnogenesis that was not fully mature, which, therefore, had not withstood the onslaught of a harsh military defeat.
At the end of 457, Majoriano, one of the participants in the rebellion against Eparquio Avito, was proclaimed emperor with the acquiescence of Ricimero . The first reluctance of Theodoric II was transformed into recognition from 459, which made possible a joint action in Suebi territory. Of greater importance were specifically imperial interventions in Hispania. From Tarraconense, where Roman authority had been strengthened, Majorian toured the Peninsula in the spring of 460 in a futile attempt to develop a naval expedition against the Vandals. Its failure, without a doubt, led to the deposition by Ricimer in the summer of 461. With this, a definitive imperial withdrawal from Hispania was sanctioned, since Ravenna's concerns were narrowed to a mere Italic survival, in fact abandoning to their fate the provinces of the empire. In the sixties, Hispanic military positions disappeared, as well as any significant presence of imperial troops on Hispanic soil. It is not surprising, therefore, the progressive awareness of lack of reference and lack of protection that was generalized among the different peninsular aristocracies. Symptomatic of imperial emptiness is the fact that a Galician-Roman nobleman, Palogorio, directed his steps to the Visigothic court, rather than to Ravenna, in 461 for help against Suevian depredations.
Theodoric II and his reconnaissance in the Northwest
During these years, Theodoric II again took up the issue of the peninsular northwest, achieving recognition as monarch in 465 of Remismundo (465-469) , a related Swabian aristocrat; the year before, he had married a Visigoth and had become part of the clientele of the King of Toulouse. The assimilation to the world of the trans-Pyrenean kingdom was also extended to the religious sphere. With the acquiescence of Remismundo, the Goth Ajax began to preach the Arian faith in an environment of great fluidity of beliefs. Paganism must have had strong roots among the Suevi and the Galician rural world, where, a century later, it maintained its vigor, as Bishop Martín de Braga (ca.520-579) testifies in De correctione rusticorum; A good number of Christians still persevered in the Priscillianist doctrines, ardently fought by the Catholic clergy.