The political aspect of the papacy became in time very prominent, as Rome, after the removal of the imperial residence to the East, was no longer the seat of any of the higher political officials. Since the partition of the empire, the Western emperors had preferred to make the better-protected Ravenna their residence. Here was the centre of Odoacer's power and of the Ostrogothic rule; here also, after the fall of the Ostrogoths, the 'viceroy' of the Byzantine emperor in Italy, the exarch, resided.