The discipline and tactics of the Greeks and Romans form an interesting

part of their national manners. The attentive study of the military

operations of Xenophon, or Cæsar, or Frederic, when they are described

by the same genius which conceived and executed them, may tend to

improve (if such improvement can be wished) the art of destroying the

human species. But the battle of Châlons can only excite our curiosity

by the magnitude of the object; since it was decided by the blind

impetuosity of Barbarians, and has been related by partial writers,

whose civil or ecclesiastical profession secluded them from the

knowledge of military affairs. Cassiodorus, however, had familiarly

conversed with many Gothic warriors, who served in that memorable

engagement; "a conflict," as they informed him, "fierce, various,

obstinate, and bloody; such as could not be paralleled either in the

present or in past ages." The number of the slain amounted to one

hundred and sixty-two thousand, or, according to another account, three

hundred thousand persons; and these incredible exaggerations suppose a

real and effective loss sufficient to justify the historian's remark,

that whole generations may be swept away by the madness of kings, in

the space of a single hour. After the mutual and repeated discharge of

missile weapons, in which the archers of Scythia might signalize their

superior dexterity, the cavalry and infantry of the two armies were

furiously mingled in closer combat. The Huns, who fought under the eyes

of their king pierced through the feeble and doubtful centre of the

allies, separated their wings from each other, and wheeling, with

a rapid effort, to the left, directed their whole force against the

Visigoths. As Theodoric rode along the ranks, to animate his troops, he

received a mortal stroke from the javelin of Andages, a noble Ostrogoth,

and immediately fell from his horse. The wounded king was oppressed in

the general disorder, and trampled under the feet of his own cavalry;

and this important death served to explain the ambiguous prophecy of the

haruspices. Attila already exulted in the confidence of victory,

when the valiant Torismond descended from the hills, and verified the

remainder of the prediction. The Visigoths, who had been thrown into

confusion by the flight or defection of the Alani, gradually restored

their order of battle; and the Huns were undoubtedly vanquished, since

Attila was compelled to retreat. He had exposed his person with the

rashness of a private soldier; but the intrepid troops of the centre had

pushed forwards beyond the rest of the line; their attack was faintly

supported; their flanks were unguarded; and the conquerors of Scythia

and Germany were saved by the approach of the night from a total defeat.

They retired within the circle of wagons that fortified their camp; and

the dismounted squadrons prepared themselves for a defence, to which

neither their arms, nor their temper, were adapted. The event was

doubtful: but Attila had secured a last and honorable resource. The

saddles and rich furniture of the cavalry were collected, by his order,

into a funeral pile; and the magnanimous Barbarian had resolved, if his

intrenchments should be forced, to rush headlong into the flames, and to

deprive his enemies of the glory which they might have acquired, by the

death or captivity of Attila.

But his enemies had passed the night in equal disorder and anxiety. The

inconsiderate courage of Torismond was tempted to urge the pursuit, till

he unexpectedly found himself, with a few followers, in the midst of the

Scythian wagons. In the confusion of a nocturnal combat, he was thrown

from his horse; and the Gothic prince must have perished like his

father, if his youthful strength, and the intrepid zeal of his

companions, had not rescued him from this dangerous situation. In the

same manner, but on the left of the line, Ætius himself, separated

from his allies, ignorant of their victory, and anxious for their fate,

encountered and escaped the hostile troops that were scattered over the

plains of Châlons; and at length reached the camp of the Goths, which

he could only fortify with a slight rampart of shields, till the dawn

of day. The Imperial general was soon satisfied of the defeat of Attila,

who still remained inactive within his intrenchments; and when he

contemplated the bloody scene, he observed, with secret satisfaction,

that the loss had principally fallen on the Barbarians. The body of

Theodoric, pierced with honorable wounds, was discovered under a heap of

the slain: is subjects bewailed the death of their king and father; but

their tears were mingled with songs and acclamations, and his funeral

rites were performed in the face of a vanquished enemy. The Goths,

clashing their arms, elevated on a buckler his eldest son Torismond, to

whom they justly ascribed the glory of their success; and the new king

accepted the obligation of revenge as a sacred portion of his paternal

inheritance. Yet the Goths themselves were astonished by the fierce and

undaunted aspect of their formidable antagonist; and their historian has

compared Attila to a lion encompassed in his den, and threatening

his hunters with redoubled fury. The kings and nations who might have

deserted his standard in the hour of distress, were made sensible that

the displeasure of their monarch was the most imminent and inevitable

danger. All his instruments of martial music incessantly sounded a loud

and animating strain of defiance; and the foremost troops who advanced

to the assault were checked or destroyed by showers of arrows from every

side of the intrenchments. It was determined, in a general council

of war, to besiege the king of the Huns in his camp, to intercept his

provisions, and to reduce him to the alternative of a disgraceful

treaty or an unequal combat. But the impatience of the Barbarians soon

disdained these cautious and dilatory measures; and the mature policy

of Ætius was apprehensive that, after the extirpation of the Huns, the

republic would be oppressed by the pride and power of the Gothic nation.

The patrician exerted the superior ascendant of authority and reason

to calm the passions, which the son of Theodoric considered as a duty;

represented, with seeming affection and real truth, the dangers of

absence and delay and persuaded Torismond to disappoint, by his speedy

return, the ambitious designs of his brothers, who might occupy the

throne and treasures of Thoulouse. After the departure of the Goths,

and the separation of the allied army, Attila was surprised at the vast

silence that reigned over the plains of Châlons: the suspicion of some

hostile stratagem detained him several days within the circle of his

wagons, and his retreat beyond the Rhine confessed the last victory

which was achieved in the name of the Western empire. Meroveus and his

Franks, observing a prudent distance, and magnifying the opinion of

their strength by the numerous fires which they kindled every night,

continued to follow the rear of the Huns till they reached the confines

of Thuringia. The Thuringians served in the army of Attila: they

traversed, both in their march and in their return, the territories

of the Franks; and it was perhaps in this war that they exercised the

cruelties which, about fourscore years afterwards, were revenged by the

son of Clovis. They massacred their hostages, as well as their captives:

two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite and unrelenting

rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses, or their bones were

crushed under the weight of rolling wagons; and their unburied limbs

were abandoned on the public roads, as a prey to dogs and vultures.

Such were those savage ancestors, whose imaginary virtues have sometimes

excited the praise and envy of civilized ages.

Chapter XXXV: Invasion By Attila.—Part III.

Neither the spirit, nor the forces, nor the reputation, of Attila, were

impaired by the failure of the Gallic expedition. In the ensuing spring

he repeated his demand of the princess Honoria, and her patrimonial

treasures. The demand was again rejected, or eluded; and the indignant

lover immediately took the field, passed the Alps, invaded Italy,

and besieged Aquileia with an innumerable host of Barbarians. Those

Barbarians were unskilled in the methods of conducting a regular siege,

which, even among the ancients, required some knowledge, or at least

some practice, of the mechanic arts. But the labor of many thousand

provincials and captives, whose lives were sacrificed without pity,

might execute the most painful and dangerous work. The skill of the

Roman artists might be corrupted to the destruction of their country.

The walls of Aquileia were assaulted by a formidable train of battering

rams, movable turrets, and engines, that threw stones, darts, and fire;

and the monarch of the Huns employed the forcible impulse of hope, fear,

emulation, and interest, to subvert the only barrier which delayed the

conquest of Italy. Aquileia was at that period one of the richest, the

most populous, and the strongest of the maritime cities of the Adriatic

coast. The Gothic auxiliaries, who appeared to have served under their

native princes, Alaric and Antala, communicated their intrepid spirit;

and the citizens still remembered the glorious and successful resistance

which their ancestors had opposed to a fierce, inexorable Barbarian, who

disgraced the majesty of the Roman purple. Three months were consumed

without effect in the siege of the Aquileia; till the want of

provisions, and the clamors of his army, compelled Attila to relinquish

the enterprise; and reluctantly to issue his orders, that the troops

should strike their tents the next morning, and begin their retreat.

But as he rode round the walls, pensive, angry, and disappointed, he

observed a stork preparing to leave her nest, in one of the towers, and

to fly with her infant family towards the country. He seized, with the

ready penetration of a statesman, this trifling incident, which chance

had offered to superstition; and exclaimed, in a loud and cheerful tone,

that such a domestic bird, so constantly attached to human society,

would never have abandoned her ancient seats, unless those towers had

been devoted to impending ruin and solitude. The favorable omen inspired

an assurance of victory; the siege was renewed and prosecuted with fresh

vigor; a large breach was made in the part of the wall from whence

the stork had taken her flight; the Huns mounted to the assault with

irresistible fury; and the succeeding generation could scarcely discover

the ruins of Aquileia. After this dreadful chastisement, Attila pursued

his march; and as he passed, the cities of Altinum, Concordia, and

Padua, were reduced into heaps of stones and ashes. The inland towns,

Vicenza, Verona, and Bergamo, were exposed to the rapacious cruelty of

the Huns. Milan and Pavia submitted, without resistance, to the loss of

their wealth; and applauded the unusual clemency which preserved from

the flames the public, as well as private, buildings, and spared the

lives of the captive multitude. The popular traditions of Comum, Turin,

or Modena, may justly be suspected; yet they concur with more authentic

evidence to prove, that Attila spread his ravages over the rich plains

of modern Lombardy; which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps

and Apennine. When he took possession of the royal palace of Milan, he

was surprised and offended at the sight of a picture which represented

the Cæsars seated on their throne, and the princes of Scythia prostrate

at their feet. The revenge which Attila inflicted on this monument of

Roman vanity, was harmless and ingenious. He commanded a painter to

reverse the figures and the attitudes; and the emperors were delineated

on the same canvas, approaching in a suppliant posture to empty their

bags of tributary gold before the throne of the Scythian monarch.

The spectators must have confessed the truth and propriety of the

alteration; and were perhaps tempted to apply, on this singular

occasion, the well-known fable of the dispute between the lion and the

man.

It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila, that the

grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. Yet the savage

destroyer undesignedly laid the foundation of a republic, which

revived, in the feudal state of Europe, the art and spirit of commercial

industry. The celebrated name of Venice, or Venetia, was formerly

diffused over a large and fertile province of Italy, from the confines

of Pannonia to the River Addua, and from the Po to the Rhætian and

Julian Alps. Before the irruption of the Barbarians, fifty Venetian

cities flourished in peace and prosperity: Aquileia was placed in the

most conspicuous station: but the ancient dignity of Padua was supported

by agriculture and manufactures; and the property of five hundred

citizens, who were entitled to the equestrian rank, must have amounted,

at the strictest computation, to one million seven hundred thousand

pounds. Many families of Aquileia, Padua, and the adjacent towns, who

fled from the sword of the Huns, found a safe, though obscure, refuge

in the neighboring islands. At the extremity of the Gulf, where the

Adriatic feebly imitates the tides of the ocean, near a hundred small

islands are separated by shallow water from the continent, and protected

from the waves by several long slips of land, which admit the entrance

of vessels through some secret and narrow channels. Till the middle of

the fifth century, these remote and sequestered spots remained without

cultivation, with few inhabitants, and almost without a name. But the

manners of the Venetian fugitives, their arts and their government,

were gradually formed by their new situation; and one of the epistles

of Cassiodorus, which describes their condition about seventy years

afterwards, may be considered as the primitive monument of the republic. The minister of Theodoric compares them, in his quaint declamatory

style, to water-fowl, who had fixed their nests on the bosom of the

waves; and though he allows, that the Venetian provinces had formerly

contained many noble families, he insinuates, that they were now reduced

by misfortune to the same level of humble poverty. Fish was the common,

and almost the universal, food of every rank: their only treasure

consisted in the plenty of salt, which they extracted from the sea:

and the exchange of that commodity, so essential to human life, was

substituted in the neighboring markets to the currency of gold and

silver. A people, whose habitations might be doubtfully assigned to the

earth or water, soon became alike familiar with the two elements; and

the demands of avarice succeeded to those of necessity. The islanders,

who, from Grado to Chiozza, were intimately connected with each other,

penetrated into the heart of Italy, by the secure, though laborious,

navigation of the rivers and inland canals. Their vessels, which were

continually increasing in size and number, visited all the harbors of

the Gulf; and the marriage which Venice annually celebrates with

the Adriatic, was contracted in her early infancy. The epistle of

Cassiodorus, the Prætorian præfect, is addressed to the maritime

tribunes; and he exhorts them, in a mild tone of authority, to animate

the zeal of their countrymen for the public service, which required

their assistance to transport the magazines of wine and oil from the

province of Istria to the royal city of Ravenna. The ambiguous office

of these magistrates is explained by the tradition, that, in the twelve

principal islands, twelve tribunes, or judges, were created by an annual

and popular election. The existence of the Venetian republic under the

Gothic kingdom of Italy, is attested by the same authentic record, which

annihilates their lofty claim of original and perpetual independence.

The Italians, who had long since renounced the exercise of arms, were

surprised, after forty years' peace, by the approach of a formidable

Barbarian, whom they abhorred, as the enemy of their religion, as well

as of their republic. Amidst the general consternation, Ætius alone was

incapable of fear; but it was impossible that he should achieve, alone

and unassisted, any military exploits worthy of his former renown. The

Barbarians who had defended Gaul, refused to march to the relief of

Italy; and the succors promised by the Eastern emperor were distant

and doubtful. Since Ætius, at the head of his domestic troops, still

maintained the field, and harassed or retarded the march of Attila, he

never showed himself more truly great, than at the time when his

conduct was blamed by an ignorant and ungrateful people. If the mind of

Valentinian had been susceptible of any generous sentiments, he would

have chosen such a general for his example and his guide. But the timid

grandson of Theodosius, instead of sharing the dangers, escaped from

the sound of war; and his hasty retreat from Ravenna to Rome, from an

impregnable fortress to an open capital, betrayed his secret intention

of abandoning Italy, as soon as the danger should approach his Imperial

person. This shameful abdication was suspended, however, by the spirit

of doubt and delay, which commonly adheres to pusillanimous counsels,

and sometimes corrects their pernicious tendency. The Western emperor,

with the senate and people of Rome, embraced the more salutary

resolution of deprecating, by a solemn and suppliant embassy, the wrath

of Attila. This important commission was accepted by Avienus, who, from

his birth and riches, his consular dignity, the numerous train of his

clients, and his personal abilities, held the first rank in the Roman

senate. The specious and artful character of Avienus was admirably

qualified to conduct a negotiation either of public or private interest:

his colleague Trigetius had exercised the Prætorian præfecture of

Italy; and Leo, bishop of Rome, consented to expose his life for the

safety of his flock. The genius of Leo was exercised and displayed in

the public misfortunes; and he has deserved the appellation of Great, by

the successful zeal with which he labored to establish his opinions

and his authority, under the venerable names of orthodox faith and

ecclesiastical discipline. The Roman ambassadors were introduced to the

tent of Attila, as he lay encamped at the place where the slow-winding

Mincius is lost in the foaming waves of the Lake Benacus, and trampled,

with his Scythian cavalry, the farms of Catullus and Virgil. The

Barbarian monarch listened with favorable, and even respectful,

attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense

ransom, or dowry, of the princess Honoria. The state of his army might

facilitate the treaty, and hasten his retreat. Their martial spirit was

relaxed by the wealth and indolence of a warm climate. The shepherds of

the North, whose ordinary food consisted of milk and raw flesh, indulged

themselves too freely in the use of bread, of wine, and of meat,

prepared and seasoned by the arts of cookery; and the progress of

disease revenged in some measure the injuries of the Italians. When

Attila declared his resolution of carrying his victorious arms to the

gates of Rome, he was admonished by his friends, as well as by his

enemies, that Alaric had not long survived the conquest of the eternal

city. His mind, superior to real danger, was assaulted by imaginary

terrors; nor could he escape the influence of superstition, which had

so often been subservient to his designs. The pressing eloquence of

Leo, his majestic aspect and sacerdotal robes, excited the veneration of

Attila for the spiritual father of the Christians. The apparition of

the two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who menaced the Barbarian with

instant death, if he rejected the prayer of their successor, is one

of the noblest legends of ecclesiastical tradition. The safety of Rome

might deserve the interposition of celestial beings; and some indulgence

is due to a fable, which has been represented by the pencil of Raphael,

and the chisel of Algardi.

Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return

more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria,

were not delivered to his ambassadors within the term stipulated by the

treaty. Yet, in the mean while, Attila relieved his tender anxiety,

by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his

innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp

and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch,

oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour from the banquet

to the nuptial bed. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures,

or his repose, the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual

silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to

awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the

royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside,

hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger, as well as

the death of the king, who had expired during the night. An artery had

suddenly burst: and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated

by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the

nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. His body was solemnly

exposed in the midst of the plain, under a silken pavilion; and the

chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions,

chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious in his life,

invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of

his enemies, and the terror of the world. According to their national

custom, the Barbarians cut off a part of their hair, gashed their faces

with unseemly wounds, and bewailed their valiant leader as he deserved,

not with the tears of women, but with the blood of warriors. The remains

of Attila were enclosed within three coffins, of gold, of silver, and

of iron, and privately buried in the night: the spoils of nations were

thrown into his grave; the captives who had opened the ground were

inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns, who had indulged such excessive

grief, feasted, with dissolute and intemperate mirth, about the recent

sepulchre of their king. It was reported at Constantinople, that on the

fortunate night on which he expired, Marcian beheld in a dream the bow

of Attila broken asunder: and the report may be allowed to prove, how

seldom the image of that formidable Barbarian was absent from the mind

of a Roman emperor.

The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns, established the

fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed

fabric. After his death, the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of

kings; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior; and

the numerous sons, whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased

monarch, divided and disputed, like a private inheritance, the sovereign

command of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and

represented the disgrace of this servile partition; and his subjects,

the warlike Gepidæ, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three

valiant brothers, encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of

freedom and royalty. In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of

the River Netad, in Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidæ, the sword of the

Goths, the arrows of the Huns, the Suevic infantry, the light arms of

the Heruli, and the heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported

each other; and the victory of the Ardaric was accompanied with the

slaughter of thirty thousand of his enemies. Ellac, the eldest son of

Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad: his

early valor had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian

people, whom he subdued; and his father, who loved the superior merit,

would have envied the death of Ellac. His brother, Dengisich, with an

army of Huns, still formidable in their flight and ruin, maintained his

ground above fifteen years on the banks of the Danube. The palace of

Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the

Euxine, became the seat of a new power, which was erected by Ardaric,

king of the Gepidæ. The Pannonian conquests from Vienna to Sirmium,

were occupied by the Ostrogoths; and the settlements of the tribes,

who had so bravely asserted their native freedom, were irregularly

distributed, according to the measure of their respective strength.

Surrounded and oppressed by the multitude of his father's slaves, the

kingdom of Dengisich was confined to the circle of his wagons; his

desperate courage urged him to invade the Eastern empire: he fell in

battle; and his head ignominiously exposed in the Hippodrome, exhibited

a grateful spectacle to the people of Constantinople. Attila had fondly

or superstitiously believed, that Irnac, the youngest of his sons, was

destined to perpetuate the glories of his race. The character of that

prince, who attempted to moderate the rashness of his brother Dengisich,

was more suitable to the declining condition of the Huns; and Irnac,

with his subject hordes, retired into the heart of the Lesser Scythia.

They were soon overwhelmed by a torrent of new Barbarians, who followed

the same road which their own ancestors had formerly discovered. The

Geougen, or Avares, whose residence is assigned by the Greek writers to

the shores of the ocean, impelled the adjacent tribes; till at length

the Igours of the North, issuing from the cold Siberian regions, which

produce the most valuable furs, spread themselves over the desert, as

far as the Borysthenes and the Caspian gates; and finally extinguished

the empire of the Huns.

Such an event might contribute to the safety of the Eastern empire,

under the reign of a prince who conciliated the friendship, without

forfeiting the esteem, of the Barbarians. But the emperor of the West,

the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, who had reached his thirty-fifth

year without attaining the age of reason or courage, abused this

apparent security, to undermine the foundations of his own throne, by

the murder of the patrician Ætius. From the instinct of a base and

jealous mind, he hated the man who was universally celebrated as the

terror of the Barbarians, and the support of the republic; and his new

favorite, the eunuch Heraclius, awakened the emperor from the supine

lethargy, which might be disguised, during the life of Placidia, by the

excuse of filial piety. The fame of Ætius, his wealth and dignity,

the numerous and martial train of Barbarian followers, his powerful

dependants, who filled the civil offices of the state, and the hopes of

his son Gaudentius, who was already contracted to Eudoxia, the emperor's

daughter, had raised him above the rank of a subject. The ambitious

designs, of which he was secretly accused, excited the fears, as well

as the resentment, of Valentinian. Ætius himself, supported by the

consciousness of his merit, his services, and perhaps his innocence,

seems to have maintained a haughty and indiscreet behavior. The

patrician offended his sovereign by a hostile declaration; he aggravated

the offence, by compelling him to ratify, with a solemn oath, a treaty

of reconciliation and alliance; he proclaimed his suspicions, he

neglected his safety; and from a vain confidence that the enemy, whom

he despised, was incapable even of a manly crime, he rashly ventured his

person in the palace of Rome. Whilst he urged, perhaps with intemperate

vehemence, the marriage of his son, Valentinian, drawing his sword, the

first sword he had ever drawn, plunged it in the breast of a general who

had saved his empire: his courtiers and eunuchs ambitiously struggled

to imitate their master; and Ætius, pierced with a hundred wounds,

fell dead in the royal presence. Boethius, the Prætorian præfect, was

killed at the same moment, and before the event could be divulged, the

principal friends of the patrician were summoned to the palace, and

separately murdered. The horrid deed, palliated by the specious names

of justice and necessity, was immediately communicated by the emperor

to his soldiers, his subjects, and his allies. The nations, who were

strangers or enemies to Ætius, generously deplored the unworthy fate of

a hero: the Barbarians, who had been attached to his service, dissembled

their grief and resentment: and the public contempt, which had been so

long entertained for Valentinian, was at once converted into deep and

universal abhorrence. Such sentiments seldom pervade the walls of a

palace; yet the emperor was confounded by the honest reply of a Roman,

whose approbation he had not disdained to solicit. "I am ignorant, sir,

of your motives or provocations; I only know, that you have acted like a

man who cuts off his right hand with his left."

The luxury of Rome seems to have attracted the long and frequent visits

of Valentinian; who was consequently more despised at Rome than in any

other part of his dominions. A republican spirit was insensibly revived

in the senate, as their authority, and even their supplies, became

necessary for the support of his feeble government. The stately demeanor

of an hereditary monarch offended their pride; and the pleasures of

Valentinian were injurious to the peace and honor of noble families. The

birth of the empress Eudoxia was equal to his own, and her charms and

tender affection deserved those testimonies of love which her inconstant

husband dissipated in vague and unlawful amours. Petronius Maximus, a

wealthy senator of the Anician family, who had been twice consul, was

possessed of a chaste and beautiful wife: her obstinate resistance

served only to irritate the desires of Valentinian; and he resolved to

accomplish them, either by stratagem or force. Deep gaming was one of

the vices of the court: the emperor, who, by chance or contrivance, had

gained from Maximus a considerable sum, uncourteously exacted his ring

as a security for the debt; and sent it by a trusty messenger to his

wife, with an order, in her husband's name, that she should immediately

attend the empress Eudoxia. The unsuspecting wife of Maximus was

conveyed in her litter to the Imperial palace; the emissaries of her

impatient lover conducted her to a remote and silent bed-chamber; and

Valentinian violated, without remorse, the laws of hospitality. Her

tears, when she returned home, her deep affliction, and her bitter

reproaches against a husband whom she considered as the accomplice of

his own shame, excited Maximus to a just revenge; the desire of revenge

was stimulated by ambition; and he might reasonably aspire, by the free

suffrage of the Roman senate, to the throne of a detested and despicable

rival. Valentinian, who supposed that every human breast was devoid,

like his own, of friendship and gratitude, had imprudently admitted

among his guards several domestics and followers of Ætius. Two

of these, of Barbarian race were persuaded to execute a sacred and

honorable duty, by punishing with death the assassin of their patron;

and their intrepid courage did not long expect a favorable moment.

Whilst Valentinian amused himself, in the field of Mars, with the

spectacle of some military sports, they suddenly rushed upon him with

drawn weapons, despatched the guilty Heraclius, and stabbed the emperor

to the heart, without the least opposition from his numerous train,

who seemed to rejoice in the tyrant's death. Such was the fate

of Valentinian the Third, the last Roman emperor of the family of

Theodosius. He faithfully imitated the hereditary weakness of his cousin

and his two uncles, without inheriting the gentleness, the purity, the

innocence, which alleviate, in their characters, the want of spirit and

ability. Valentinian was less excusable, since he had passions, without

virtues: even his religion was questionable; and though he never

deviated into the paths of heresy, he scandalized the pious Christians

by his attachment to the profane arts of magic and divination.

As early as the time of Cicero and Varro, it was the opinion of

the Roman augurs, that the twelve vultures which Romulus had seen,

represented the twelve centuries, assigned for the fatal period of his

city. This prophecy, disregarded perhaps in the season of health and

prosperity, inspired the people with gloomy apprehensions, when the

twelfth century, clouded with disgrace and misfortune, was almost

elapsed; and even posterity must acknowledge with some surprise, that

the arbitrary interpretation of an accidental or fabulous circumstance

has been seriously verified in the downfall of the Western empire. But

its fall was announced by a clearer omen than the flight of vultures:

the Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies,

more odious and oppressive to its subjects. The taxes were multiplied

with the public distress; economy was neglected in proportion as it

became necessary; and the injustice of the rich shifted the unequal

burden from themselves to the people, whom they defrauded of the

indulgences that might sometimes have alleviated their misery. The

severe inquisition which confiscated their goods, and tortured their

persons, compelled the subjects of Valentinian to prefer the more simple

tyranny of the Barbarians, to fly to the woods and mountains, or to

embrace the vile and abject condition of mercenary servants. They

abjured and abhorred the name of Roman citizens, which had formerly

excited the ambition of mankind. The Armorican provinces of Gaul, and

the greatest part of Spain, were-thrown into a state of disorderly

independence, by the confederations of the Bagaudæ; and the Imperial

ministers pursued with proscriptive laws, and ineffectual arms, the

rebels whom they had made. If all the Barbarian conquerors had been

annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have

restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she

survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honor.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.—Part I.

Sack Of Rome By Genseric, King Of The Vandals.—His Naval

Depredations.—Succession Of The Last Emperors Of The West,

Maximus, Avitus, Majorian, Severus, Anthemius, Olybrius,

Glycerius, Nepos, Augustulus.—Total Extinction Of The

Western Empire.—Reign Of Odoacer, The First Barbarian King

Of Italy.

The loss or desolation of the provinces, from the Ocean to the Alps,

impaired the glory and greatness of Rome: her internal prosperity was

irretrievably destroyed by the separation of Africa. The rapacious

Vandals confiscated the patrimonial estates of the senators, and

intercepted the regular subsidies, which relieved the poverty and

encouraged the idleness of the plebeians. The distress of the Romans

was soon aggravated by an unexpected attack; and the province, so long

cultivated for their use by industrious and obedient subjects, was

armed against them by an ambitious Barbarian. The Vandals and Alani, who

followed the successful standard of Genseric, had acquired a rich and

fertile territory, which stretched along the coast above ninety days'

journey from Tangier to Tripoli; but their narrow limits were pressed

and confined, on either side, by the sandy desert and the Mediterranean.

The discovery and conquest of the Black nations, that might dwell

beneath the torrid zone, could not tempt the rational ambition of

Genseric; but he cast his eyes towards the sea; he resolved to create a

naval power, and his bold resolution was executed with steady and active

perseverance. The woods of Mount Atlas afforded an inexhaustible nursery

of timber: his new subjects were skilled in the arts of navigation

and ship-building; he animated his daring Vandals to embrace a mode of

warfare which would render every maritime country accessible to their

arms; the Moors and Africans were allured by the hopes of plunder; and,

after an interval of six centuries, the fleets that issued from the port

of Carthage again claimed the empire of the Mediterranean. The success

of the Vandals, the conquest of Sicily, the sack of Palermo, and the

frequent descents on the coast of Lucania, awakened and alarmed the

mother of Valentinian, and the sister of Theodosius. Alliances were

formed; and armaments, expensive and ineffectual, were prepared, for the

destruction of the common enemy; who reserved his courage to encounter

those dangers which his policy could not prevent or elude. The designs

of the Roman government were repeatedly baffled by his artful delays,

ambiguous promises, and apparent concessions; and the interposition of

his formidable confederate, the king of the Huns, recalled the emperors

from the conquest of Africa to the care of their domestic safety. The

revolutions of the palace, which left the Western empire without a

defender, and without a lawful prince, dispelled the apprehensions, and

stimulated the avarice, of Genseric. He immediately equipped a numerous

fleet of Vandals and Moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Tyber,

about three months after the death of Valentinian, and the elevation of

Maximus to the Imperial throne.

The private life of the senator Petronius Maximus was often alleged as

a rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and illustrious,

since he descended from the Anician family; his dignity was supported by

an adequate patrimony in land and money; and these advantages of fortune

were accompanied with liberal arts and decent manners, which adorn or

imitate the inestimable gifts of genius and virtue. The luxury of his

palace and table was hospitable and elegant. Whenever Maximus appeared

in public, he was surrounded by a train of grateful and obsequious

clients; and it is possible that among these clients, he might deserve

and possess some real friends. His merit was rewarded by the favor of

the prince and senate: he thrice exercised the office of Prætorian

præfect of Italy; he was twice invested with the consulship, and he

obtained the rank of patrician. These civil honors were not incompatible

with the enjoyment of leisure and tranquillity; his hours, according

to the demands of pleasure or reason, were accurately distributed by a

water-clock; and this avarice of time may be allowed to prove the sense

which Maximus entertained of his own happiness. The injury which he

received from the emperor Valentinian appears to excuse the most bloody

revenge. Yet a philosopher might have reflected, that, if the resistance

of his wife had been sincere, her chastity was still inviolate, and

that it could never be restored if she had consented to the will of the

adulterer. A patriot would have hesitated before he plunged himself

and his country into those inevitable calamities which must follow

the extinction of the royal house of Theodosius. The imprudent Maximus

disregarded these salutary considerations; he gratified his resentment

and ambition; he saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet; and

he heard himself saluted Emperor by the unanimous voice of the senate

and people. But the day of his inauguration was the last day of his

happiness. He was imprisoned (such is the lively expression of Sidonius)

in the palace; and after passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he

had attained the summit of his wishes, and aspired only to descend

from the dangerous elevation. Oppressed by the weight of the diadem, he

communicated his anxious thoughts to his friend and quæstor Fulgentius;

and when he looked back with unavailing regret on the secure pleasures

of his former life, the emperor exclaimed, "O fortunate Damocles, thy

reign began and ended with the same dinner;" a well-known allusion,

which Fulgentius afterwards repeated as an instructive lesson for

princes and subjects.

The reign of Maximus continued about three months. His hours, of which

he had lost the command, were disturbed by remorse, or guilt, or terror,

and his throne was shaken by the seditions of the soldiers, the people,

and the confederate Barbarians. The marriage of his son Paladius with

the eldest daughter of the late emperor, might tend to establish the

hereditary succession of his family; but the violence which he offered

to the empress Eudoxia, could proceed only from the blind impulse of

lust or revenge. His own wife, the cause of these tragic events, had

been seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian was

compelled to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to

submit to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected

as the assassin of her deceased husband. These suspicions were soon

justified by the indiscreet confession of Maximus himself; and he

wantonly provoked the hatred of his reluctant bride, who was still

conscious that she was descended from a line of emperors. From the East,

however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any effectual assistance;

her father and her aunt Pulcheria were dead; her mother languished at

Jerusalem in disgrace and exile; and the sceptre of Constantinople was

in the hands of a stranger. She directed her eyes towards Carthage;

secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals; and persuaded

Genseric to improve the fair opportunity of disguising his rapacious

designs by the specious names of honor, justice, and compassion.

Whatever abilities Maximus might have shown in a subordinate station,

he was found incapable of administering an empire; and though he might

easily have been informed of the naval preparations which were made on

the opposite shores of Africa, he expected with supine indifference

the approach of the enemy, without adopting any measures of defence, of

negotiation, or of a timely retreat. When the Vandals disembarked at the

mouth of the Tyber, the emperor was suddenly roused from his lethargy

by the clamors of a trembling and exasperated multitude. The only hope

which presented itself to his astonished mind was that of a precipitate

flight, and he exhorted the senators to imitate the example of their

prince. But no sooner did Maximus appear in the streets, than he was

assaulted by a shower of stones; a Roman, or a Burgundian soldier,

claimed the honor of the first wound; his mangled body was ignominiously

cast into the Tyber; the Roman people rejoiced in the punishment which

they had inflicted on the author of the public calamities; and the

domestics of Eudoxia signalized their zeal in the service of their

mistress.

On the third day after the tumult, Genseric boldly advanced from the

port of Ostia to the gates of the defenceless city. Instead of a sally

of the Roman youth, there issued from the gates an unarmed and venerable

procession of the bishop at the head of his clergy. The fearless spirit

of Leo, his authority and eloquence, again mitigated the fierceness of

a Barbarian conqueror; the king of the Vandals promised to spare the

unresisting multitude, to protect the buildings from fire, and to

exempt the captives from torture; and although such orders were neither

seriously given, nor strictly obeyed, the mediation of Leo was glorious

to himself, and in some degree beneficial to his country. But Rome and

its inhabitants were delivered to the licentiousness of the Vandals

and Moors, whose blind passions revenged the injuries of Carthage. The

pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained of

public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, was diligently

transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid

relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited a memorable

example of the vicissitudes of human and divine things. Since the

abolition of Paganism, the Capitol had been violated and abandoned; yet

the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious

roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric.

The holy instruments of the Jewish worship, the gold table, and the

gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed according to

the particular instructions of God himself, and which were placed in the

sanctuary of his temple, had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman

people in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the

temple of Peace; and at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of

Jerusalem were transferred from Rome to Carthage, by a Barbarian

who derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. These ancient

monuments might attract the notice of curiosity, as well as of avarice.

But the Christian churches, enriched and adorned by the prevailing

superstition of the times, afforded more plentiful materials for

sacrilege; and the pious liberality of Pope Leo, who melted six silver

vases, the gift of Constantine, each of a hundred pounds weight, is an

evidence of the damage which he attempted to repair. In the forty-five

years that had elapsed since the Gothic invasion, the pomp and luxury

of Rome were in some measure restored; and it was difficult either to

escape, or to satisfy, the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure

to collect, and ships to transport, the wealth of the capital. The

Imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture and

wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were accumulated with

disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to several thousand

talents; yet even the brass and copper were laboriously removed. Eudoxia

herself, who advanced to meet her friend and deliverer, soon bewailed

the imprudence of her own conduct. She was rudely stripped of her

jewels; and the unfortunate empress, with her two daughters, the only

surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled, as a captive,

to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail, and returned

with a prosperous navigation to the port of Carthage. Many

thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable

qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and

their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling Barbarians, who, in the

division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, and

the children from their parents. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of

Carthage, was their only consolation and support. He generously sold the

gold and silver plate of the church to purchase the freedom of some, to

alleviate the slavery of others, and to assist the wants and infirmities

of a captive multitude, whose health was impaired by the hardships which

they had suffered in their passage from Italy to Africa. By his order,

two spacious churches were converted into hospitals; the sick were

distributed into convenient beds, and liberally supplied with food and

medicines; and the aged prelate repeated his visits both in the day

and night, with an assiduity that surpassed his strength, and a tender

sympathy which enhanced the value of his services. Compare this scene

with the field of Cannæ; and judge between Hannibal and the successor

of St. Cyprian.

The deaths of Ætius and Valentinian had relaxed the ties which held

the Barbarians of Gaul in peace and subordination. The sea-coast was

infested by the Saxons; the Alemanni and the Franks advanced from the

Rhine to the Seine; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate

more extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus relieved

himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of these distant cares;

he silenced the solicitations of his friends, listened to the voice of

fame, and promoted a stranger to the general command of the forces of

Gaul. Avitus, the stranger, whose merit was so nobly rewarded, descended

from a wealthy and honorable family in the diocese of Auvergne. The

convulsions of the times urged him to embrace, with the same ardor, the

civil and military professions: and the indefatigable youth blended the

studies of literature and jurisprudence with the exercise of arms and

hunting. Thirty years of his life were laudably spent in the public

service; he alternately displayed his talents in war and negotiation;

and the soldier of Ætius, after executing the most important embassies,

was raised to the station of Prætorian præfect of Gaul. Either the

merit of Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was desirous of

repose, since he calmly retired to an estate, which he possessed in the

neighborhood of Clermont. A copious stream, issuing from the mountain,

and falling headlong in many a loud and foaming cascade, discharged

its waters into a lake about two miles in length, and the villa was

pleasantly seated on the margin of the lake. The baths, the porticos,

the summer and winter apartments, were adapted to the purposes of luxury

and use; and the adjacent country afforded the various prospects of

woods, pastures, and meadows. In this retreat, where Avitus amused his

leisure with books, rural sports, the practice of husbandry, and

the society of his friends, he received the Imperial diploma, which

constituted him master-general of the cavalry and infantry of Gaul. He

assumed the military command; the Barbarians suspended their fury; and

whatever means he might employ, whatever concessions he might be forced

to make, the people enjoyed the benefits of actual tranquillity. But

the fate of Gaul depended on the Visigoths; and the Roman general, less

attentive to his dignity than to the public interest, did not disdain to

visit Thoulouse in the character of an ambassador. He was received with

courteous hospitality by Theodoric, the king of the Goths; but while

Avitus laid the foundations of a solid alliance with that powerful

nation, he was astonished by the intelligence, that the emperor Maximus

was slain, and that Rome had been pillaged by the Vandals. A vacant

throne, which he might ascend without guilt or danger, tempted his

ambition; and the Visigoths were easily persuaded to support his claim

by their irresistible suffrage. They loved the person of Avitus; they

respected his virtues; and they were not insensible of the advantage,

as well as honor, of giving an emperor to the West. The season was now

approaching, in which the annual assembly of the seven provinces was

held at Arles; their deliberations might perhaps be influenced by the

presence of Theodoric and his martial brothers; but their choice would

naturally incline to the most illustrious of their countrymen. Avitus,

after a decent resistance, accepted the Imperial diadem from the

representatives of Gaul; and his election was ratified by the

acclamations of the Barbarians and provincials. The formal consent

of Marcian, emperor of the East, was solicited and obtained; but the

senate, Rome, and Italy, though humbled by their recent calamities,

submitted with a secret murmur to the presumption of the Gallic usurper.

Theodoric, to whom Avitus was indebted for the purple, had acquired

the Gothic sceptre by the murder of his elder brother Torismond; and he

justified this atrocious deed by the design which his predecessor had

formed of violating his alliance with the empire. Such a crime might

not be incompatible with the virtues of a Barbarian; but the manners of

Theodoric were gentle and humane; and posterity may contemplate

without terror the original picture of a Gothic king, whom Sidonius had

intimately observed, in the hours of peace and of social intercourse. In

an epistle, dated from the court of Thoulouse, the orator satisfies the

curiosity of one of his friends, in the following description: "By the

majesty of his appearance, Theodoric would command the respect of those

who are ignorant of his merit; and although he is born a prince, his

merit would dignify a private station. He is of a middle stature, his

body appears rather plump than fat, and in his well-proportioned

limbs agility is united with muscular strength. If you examine his

countenance, you will distinguish a high forehead, large shaggy

eyebrows, an aquiline nose, thin lips, a regular set of white teeth, and

a fair complexion, that blushes more frequently from modesty than from

anger. The ordinary distribution of his time, as far as it is exposed

to the public view, may be concisely represented. Before daybreak, he

repairs, with a small train, to his domestic chapel, where the service

is performed by the Arian clergy; but those who presume to interpret

his secret sentiments, consider this assiduous devotion as the effect

of habit and policy. The rest of the morning is employed in the

administration of his kingdom. His chair is surrounded by some military

officers of decent aspect and behavior: the noisy crowd of his Barbarian

guards occupies the hall of audience; but they are not permitted to

stand within the veils or curtains that conceal the council-chamber from

vulgar eyes. The ambassadors of the nations are successively introduced:

Theodoric listens with attention, answers them with discreet brevity,

and either announces or delays, according to the nature of their

business, his final resolution. About eight (the second hour) he rises

from his throne, and visits either his treasury or his stables. If he

chooses to hunt, or at least to exercise himself on horseback, his bow

is carried by a favorite youth; but when the game is marked, he bends it

with his own hand, and seldom misses the object of his aim: as a king,

he disdains to bear arms in such ignoble warfare; but as a soldier,

he would blush to accept any military service which he could perform

himself. On common days, his dinner is not different from the repast of

a private citizen, but every Saturday, many honorable guests are invited

to the royal table, which, on these occasions, is served with the

elegance of Greece, the plenty of Gaul, and the order and diligence of

Italy. The gold or silver plate is less remarkable for its weight than

for the brightness and curious workmanship: the taste is gratified

without the help of foreign and costly luxury; the size and number

of the cups of wine are regulated with a strict regard to the laws of

temperance; and the respectful silence that prevails, is interrupted

only by grave and instructive conversation. After dinner, Theodoric

sometimes indulges himself in a short slumber; and as soon as he wakes,

he calls for the dice and tables, encourages his friends to forget the

royal majesty, and is delighted when they freely express the passions

which are excited by the incidents of play. At this game, which he loves

as the image of war, he alternately displays his eagerness, his skill,

his patience, and his cheerful temper. If he loses, he laughs; he

is modest and silent if he wins. Yet, notwithstanding this seeming

indifference, his courtiers choose to solicit any favor in the moments

of victory; and I myself, in my applications to the king, have derived

some benefit from my losses. About the ninth hour (three o'clock) the

tide of business again returns, and flows incessantly till after

sunset, when the signal of the royal supper dismisses the weary crowd of

suppliants and pleaders. At the supper, a more familiar repast, buffoons

and pantomimes are sometimes introduced, to divert, not to offend, the

company, by their ridiculous wit: but female singers, and the soft,

effeminate modes of music, are severely banished, and such martial tunes

as animate the soul to deeds of valor are alone grateful to the ear

of Theodoric. He retires from table; and the nocturnal guards are

immediately posted at the entrance of the treasury, the palace, and the

private apartments."

When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume the purple,

he offered his person and his forces, as a faithful soldier of the

republic. The exploits of Theodoric soon convinced the world that he

had not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After the

establishment of the Goths in Aquitain, and the passage of the Vandals

into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom in Gallicia, aspired

to the conquest of Spain, and threatened to extinguish the feeble

remains of the Roman dominion. The provincials of Carthagena and

Tarragona, afflicted by a hostile invasion, represented their injuries

and their apprehensions. Count Fronto was despatched, in the name of

the emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace and alliance; and

Theodoric interposed his weighty mediation, to declare, that, unless his

brother-in-law, the king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be

obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome. "Tell him," replied

the haughty Rechiarius, "that I despise his friendship and his arms; but

that I shall soon try whether he will dare to expect my arrival under

the walls of Thoulouse." Such a challenge urged Theodoric to prevent

the bold designs of his enemy; he passed the Pyrenees at the head of

the Visigoths: the Franks and Burgundians served under his standard; and

though he professed himself the dutiful servant of Avitus, he privately

stipulated, for himself and his successors, the absolute possession

of his Spanish conquests. The two armies, or rather the two nations,

encountered each other on the banks of the River Urbicus, about twelve

miles from Astorga; and the decisive victory of the Goths appeared for

a while to have extirpated the name and kingdom of the Suevi. From the

field of battle Theodoric advanced to Braga, their metropolis, which

still retained the splendid vestiges of its ancient commerce and

dignity. His entrance was not polluted with blood; and the Goths

respected the chastity of their female captives, more especially of the

consecrated virgins: but the greatest part of the clergy and people were

made slaves, and even the churches and altars were confounded in the

universal pillage. The unfortunate king of the Suevi had escaped to one

of the ports of the ocean; but the obstinacy of the winds opposed his

flight: he was delivered to his implacable rival; and Rechiarius, who

neither desired nor expected mercy, received, with manly constancy,

the death which he would probably have inflicted. After this bloody

sacrifice to policy or resentment, Theodoric carried his victorious arms

as far as Merida, the principal town of Lusitania, without meeting any

resistance, except from the miraculous powers of St. Eulalia; but he was

stopped in the full career of success, and recalled from Spain before he

could provide for the security of his conquests. In his retreat towards

the Pyrenees, he revenged his disappointment on the country through

which he passed; and, in the sack of Pollentia and Astorga, he showed

himself a faithless ally, as well as a cruel enemy. Whilst the king of

the Visigoths fought and vanquished in the name of Avitus, the reign

of Avitus had expired; and both the honor and the interest of Theodoric

were deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend, whom he had seated on

the throne of the Western empire.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.—Part II.

The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the

emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the

consulship for the ensuing year. On the first day of January, his

son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, celebrated his praises in a panegyric

of six hundred verses; but this composition, though it was rewarded with

a brass statue, seems to contain a very moderate proportion, either

of genius or of truth. The poet, if we may degrade that sacred name,

exaggerates the merit of a sovereign and a father; and his prophecy of a

long and glorious reign was soon contradicted by the event. Avitus, at a

time when the Imperial dignity was reduced to a preeminence of toil and

danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury: age had not

extinguished his amorous inclinations; and he is accused of insulting,

with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he had

seduced or violated. But the Romans were not inclined either to excuse

his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several parts of the

empire became every day more alienated from each other; and the stranger

of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and contempt. The senate

asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor; and their

authority, which had been originally derived from the old constitution,

was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining monarchy. Yet

even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an unarmed senate,

if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps inflamed, by the

Count Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the Barbarian troops,

who formed the military defence of Italy. The daughter of Wallia, king

of the Visigoths, was the mother of Ricimer; but he was descended, on

the father's side, from the nation of the Suevi; his pride or patriotism

might be exasperated by the misfortunes of his countrymen; and he

obeyed, with reluctance, an emperor in whose elevation he had not been

consulted. His faithful and important services against the common enemy

rendered him still more formidable; and, after destroying on the coast

of Corsica a fleet of Vandals, which consisted of sixty galleys, Ricimer

returned in triumph with the appellation of the Deliverer of Italy. He

chose that moment to signify to Avitus, that his reign was at an end;

and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his Gothic allies, was

compelled, after a short and unavailing struggle to abdicate the purple.

By the clemency, however, or the contempt, of Ricimer, he was permitted

to descend from the throne to the more desirable station of bishop of

Placentia: but the resentment of the senate was still unsatisfied; and

their inflexible severity pronounced the sentence of his death He fled

towards the Alps, with the humble hope, not of arming the Visigoths in

his cause, but of securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of

Julian, one of the tutelar saints of Auvergne. Disease, or the hand of

the executioner, arrested him on the road; yet his remains were decently

transported to Brivas, or Brioude, in his native province, and he

reposed at the feet of his holy patron. Avitus left only one daughter,

the wife of Sidonius Apollinaris, who inherited the patrimony of his

father-in-law; lamenting, at the same time, the disappointment of his

public and private expectations. His resentment prompted him to join, or

at least to countenance, the measures of a rebellious faction in Gaul;

and the poet had contracted some guilt, which it was incumbent on him to

expiate, by a new tribute of flattery to the succeeding emperor.

The successor of Avitus presents the welcome discovery of a great and

heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to

vindicate the honor of the human species. The emperor Majorian has

deserved the praises of his contemporaries, and of posterity; and

these praises may be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and

disinterested historian: "That he was gentle to his subjects; that he

was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled, in every virtue, all

his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans." Such a testimony may

justify at least the panegyric of Sidonius; and we may acquiesce in the

assurance, that, although the obsequious orator would have flattered,

with equal zeal, the most worthless of princes, the extraordinary merit

of his object confined him, on this occasion, within the bounds of

truth. Majorian derived his name from his maternal grandfather, who,

in the reign of the great Theodosius, had commanded the troops of the

Illyrian frontier. He gave his daughter in marriage to the father of

Majorian, a respectable officer, who administered the revenues of Gaul

with skill and integrity; and generously preferred the friendship of

Ætius to the tempting offer of an insidious court. His son, the future

emperor, who was educated in the profession of arms, displayed, from

his early youth, intrepid courage, premature wisdom, and unbounded

liberality in a scanty fortune. He followed the standard of Ætius,

contributed to his success, shared, and sometimes eclipsed, his glory,

and at last excited the jealousy of the patrician, or rather of his

wife, who forced him to retire from the service. Majorian, after the

death of Ætius, was recalled and promoted; and his intimate connection

with Count Ricimer was the immediate step by which he ascended the

throne of the Western empire. During the vacancy that succeeded the

abdication of Avitus, the ambitious Barbarian, whose birth excluded him

from the Imperial dignity, governed Italy with the title of Patrician;

resigned to his friend the conspicuous station of master-general of the

cavalry and infantry; and, after an interval of some months, consented

to the unanimous wish of the Romans, whose favor Majorian had solicited

by a recent victory over the Alemanni. He was invested with the purple

at Ravenna: and the epistle which he addressed to the senate, will best

describe his situation and his sentiments. "Your election, Conscript

Fathers! and the ordinance of the most valiant army, have made me your

emperor. May the propitious Deity direct and prosper the counsels

and events of my administration, to your advantage and to the public

welfare! For my own part, I did not aspire, I have submitted to reign;

nor should I have discharged the obligations of a citizen if I had

refused, with base and selfish ingratitude, to support the weight of

those labors, which were imposed by the republic. Assist, therefore, the

prince whom you have made; partake the duties which you have enjoined;

and may our common endeavors promote the happiness of an empire, which

I have accepted from your hands. Be assured, that, in our times, justice

shall resume her ancient vigor, and that virtue shall become, not only

innocent, but meritorious. Let none, except the authors themselves, be

apprehensive of delations, which, as a subject, I have always condemned,

and, as a prince, will severely punish. Our own vigilance, and that of

our father, the patrician Ricimer, shall regulate all military affairs,

and provide for the safety of the Roman world, which we have saved

from foreign and domestic enemies. You now understand the maxims of my

government; you may confide in the faithful love and sincere assurances

of a prince who has formerly been the companion of your life and

dangers; who still glories in the name of senator, and who is anxious

that you should never repent the judgment which you have pronounced

in his favor." The emperor, who, amidst the ruins of the Roman world,

revived the ancient language of law and liberty, which Trajan would not

have disclaimed, must have derived those generous sentiments from his

own heart; since they were not suggested to his imitation by the customs

of his age, or the example of his predecessors.

The private and public actions of Majorian are very imperfectly known:

but his laws, remarkable for an original cast of thought and expression,

faithfully represent the character of a sovereign who loved his people,

who sympathized in their distress, who had studied the causes of the

decline of the empire, and who was capable of applying (as far as such

reformation was practicable) judicious and effectual remedies to the

public disorders. His regulations concerning the finances manifestly

tended to remove, or at least to mitigate, the most intolerable

grievances. I. From the first hour of his reign, he was solicitous

(I translate his own words) to relieve the weary fortunes of the

provincials, oppressed by the accumulated weight of indictions and

superindictions. With this view he granted a universal amnesty, a final

and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts, which,

under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people.

This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims,

improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject

who could now look back without despair, might labor with hope and

gratitude for himself and for his country. II. In the assessment and

collection of taxes, Majorian restored the ordinary jurisdiction of the

provincial magistrates; and suppressed the extraordinary commissions

which had been introduced, in the name of the emperor himself, or of the

Prætorian præfects. The favorite servants, who obtained such irregular

powers, were insolent in their behavior, and arbitrary in their demands:

they affected to despise the subordinate tribunals, and they were

discontented, if their fees and profits did not twice exceed the sum

which they condescended to pay into the treasury. One instance of their

extortion would appear incredible, were it not authenticated by the

legislator himself. They exacted the whole payment in gold: but they

refused the current coin of the empire, and would accept only such

ancient pieces as were stamped with the names of Faustina or the

Antonines. The subject, who was unprovided with these curious medals,

had recourse to the expedient of compounding with their rapacious

demands; or if he succeeded in the research, his imposition was doubled,

according to the weight and value of the money of former times. III.

"The municipal corporations, (says the emperor,) the lesser senates, (so

antiquity has justly styled them,) deserve to be considered as the heart

of the cities, and the sinews of the republic. And yet so low are

they now reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the venality of

collectors, that many of their members, renouncing their dignity and

their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure exile." He

urges, and even compels, their return to their respective cities; but

he removes the grievance which had forced them to desert the exercise of

their municipal functions. They are directed, under the authority of the

provincial magistrates, to resume their office of levying the tribute;

but, instead of being made responsible for the whole sum assessed on

their district, they are only required to produce a regular account of

the payments which they have actually received, and of the defaulters

who are still indebted to the public. IV. But Majorian was not ignorant

that these corporate bodies were too much inclined to retaliate the

injustice and oppression which they had suffered; and he therefore

revives the useful office of the defenders of cities. He exhorts the

people to elect, in a full and free assembly, some man of discretion and

integrity, who would dare to assert their privileges, to represent their

grievances, to protect the poor from the tyranny of the rich, and to

inform the emperor of the abuses that were committed under the sanction

of his name and authority.

The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient

Rome, is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals, for

the mischief which they had neither leisure, nor power, nor perhaps

inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some

lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the

foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently,

during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of interest, that

afterwards operated without shame or control, were severely checked by

the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian. The decay of the city

had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and

theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of

the people: the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians,

were no longer inhabited, either by gods or men; the diminished

crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and

porticos; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless

to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either

by study or business. The monuments of consular, or Imperial, greatness

were no longer revered, as the immortal glory of the capital: they were

only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper, and more

convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually

addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of

stones or bricks, for some necessary service: the fairest forms of

architecture were rudely defaced, for the sake of some paltry, or

pretended, repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil

to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labors

of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation

of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. He reserved

to the prince and senate the sole cognizance of the extreme cases which

might justify the destruction of an ancient edifice; imposed a fine of

fifty pounds of gold (two thousand pounds sterling) on every magistrate

who should presume to grant such illegal and scandalous license, and

threatened to chastise the criminal obedience of their subordinate

officers, by a severe whipping, and the amputation of both their hands.

In the last instance, the legislator might seem to forget the proportion

of guilt and punishment; but his zeal arose from a generous principle,

and Majorian was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages, in

which he would have desired and deserved to live. The emperor conceived,

that it was his interest to increase the number of his subjects; and

that it was his duty to guard the purity of the marriage-bed: but the

means which he employed to accomplish these salutary purposes are of

an ambiguous, and perhaps exceptionable, kind. The pious maids, who

consecrated their virginity to Christ, were restrained from taking the

veil till they had reached their fortieth year. Widows under that age

were compelled to form a second alliance within the term of five years,

by the forfeiture of half their wealth to their nearest relations, or to

the state. Unequal marriages were condemned or annulled. The punishment

of confiscation and exile was deemed so inadequate to the guilt of

adultery, that, if the criminal returned to Italy, he might, by the

express declaration of Majorian, be slain with impunity.

While the emperor Majorian assiduously labored to restore the happiness

and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the arms of Genseric, from his

character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of Vandals

and Moors landed at the mouth of the Liris, or Garigliano; but the

Imperial troops surprised and attacked the disorderly Barbarians, who

were encumbered with the spoils of Campania; they were chased with

slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the king's brother-in-law,

was found in the number of the slain. Such vigilance might announce the

character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance, and the most

numerous forces, were insufficient to protect the long-extended coast

of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion had

imposed a nobler and more arduous task on the genius of Majorian. Rome

expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design, which

he formed, of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements, was the

result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could have

infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy; if he could have

revived in the field of Mars, the manly exercises in which he had always

surpassed his equals; he might have marched against Genseric at the

head of a Roman army. Such a reformation of national manners might be

embraced by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune of those

princes who laboriously sustain a declining monarchy, that, to obtain

some immediate advantage, or to avert some impending danger, they are

forced to countenance, and even to multiply, the most pernicious abuses.

Majorian, like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the

disgraceful expedient of substituting Barbarian auxiliaries in the place

of his unwarlike subjects: and his superior abilities could only be

displayed in the vigor and dexterity with which he wielded a dangerous

instrument, so apt to recoil on the hand that used it. Besides the

confederates, who were already engaged in the service of the empire, the

fame of his liberality and valor attracted the nations of the Danube,

the Borysthenes, and perhaps of the Tanais. Many thousands of the

bravest subjects of Attila, the Gepidæ, the Ostrogoths, the Rugians,

the Burgundians, the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the plains of

Liguria; and their formidable strength was balanced by their mutual

animosities. They passed the Alps in a severe winter. The emperor led

the way, on foot, and in complete armor; sounding, with his long staff,

the depth of the ice, or snow, and encouraging the Scythians, who

complained of the extreme cold, by the cheerful assurance, that they

should be satisfied with the heat of Africa. The citizens of Lyons had

presumed to shut their gates; they soon implored, and experienced, the

clemency of Majorian. He vanquished Theodoric in the field; and admitted

to his friendship and alliance a king whom he had found not unworthy of

his arms. The beneficial, though precarious, reunion of the greater part

of Gaul and Spain, was the effect of persuasion, as well as of force;

and the independent Bagaudæ, who had escaped, or resisted, the

oppression, of former reigns, were disposed to confide in the virtues

of Majorian. His camp was filled with Barbarian allies; his throne was

supported by the zeal of an affectionate people; but the emperor had

foreseen, that it was impossible, without a maritime power, to achieve

the conquest of Africa. In the first Punic war, the republic had exerted

such incredible diligence, that, within sixty days after the first

stroke of the axe had been given in the forest, a fleet of one hundred

and sixty galleys proudly rode at anchor in the sea. Under circumstances

much less favorable, Majorian equalled the spirit and perseverance of

the ancient Romans. The woods of the Apennine were felled; the arsenals

and manufactures of Ravenna and Misenum were restored; Italy and Gaul

vied with each other in liberal contributions to the public service;

and the Imperial navy of three hundred large galleys, with an adequate

proportion of transports and smaller vessels, was collected in the

secure and capacious harbor of Carthagena in Spain. The intrepid

countenance of Majorian animated his troops with a confidence of

victory; and, if we might credit the historian Procopius, his courage

sometimes hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious to

explore, with his own eyes, the state of the Vandals, he ventured, after

disguising the color of his hair, to visit Carthage, in the character

of his own ambassador: and Genseric was afterwards mortified by the

discovery, that he had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the

Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but

it is a fiction which would not have been imagined, unless in the life

of a hero.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.—Part III.

Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was sufficiently

acquainted with the genius and designs of his adversary. He practiced

his customary arts of fraud and delay, but he practiced them without

success. His applications for peace became each hour more submissive,

and perhaps more sincere; but the inflexible Majorian had adopted the

ancient maxim, that Rome could not be safe, as long as Carthage existed

in a hostile state. The king of the Vandals distrusted the valor of

his native subjects, who were enervated by the luxury of the South; he

suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an

Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure, which he executed, of reducing

Mauritania into a desert, could not defeat the operations of the Roman

emperor, who was at liberty to land his troops on any part of the

African coast. But Genseric was saved from impending and inevitable ruin

by the treachery of some powerful subjects, envious, or apprehensive,

of their master's success. Guided by their secret intelligence, he

surprised the unguarded fleet in the Bay of Carthagena: many of the

ships were sunk, or taken, or burnt; and the preparations of three years

were destroyed in a single day. After this event, the behavior of the

two antagonists showed them superior to their fortune. The Vandal,

instead of being elated by this accidental victory, immediately renewed

his solicitations for peace. The emperor of the West, who was capable

of forming great designs, and of supporting heavy disappointments,

consented to a treaty, or rather to a suspension of arms; in the full

assurance that, before he could restore his navy, he should be supplied

with provocations to justify a second war. Majorian returned to Italy,

to prosecute his labors for the public happiness; and, as he was

conscious of his own integrity, he might long remain ignorant of the

dark conspiracy which threatened his throne and his life. The recent

misfortune of Carthagena sullied the glory which had dazzled the eyes of

the multitude; almost every description of civil and military officers

were exasperated against the Reformer, since they all derived some

advantage from the abuses which he endeavored to suppress; and the

patrician Ricimer impelled the inconstant passions of the Barbarians

against a prince whom he esteemed and hated. The virtues of Majorian

could not protect him from the impetuous sedition, which broke out in

the camp near Tortona, at the foot of the Alps. He was compelled to

abdicate the Imperial purple: five days after his abdication, it was

reported that he died of a dysentery; and the humble tomb, which covered

his remains, was consecrated by the respect and gratitude of succeeding

generations. The private character of Majorian inspired love and

respect. Malicious calumny and satire excited his indignation, or, if he

himself were the object, his contempt; but he protected the freedom of

wit, and, in the hours which the emperor gave to the familiar society

of his friends, he could indulge his taste for pleasantry, without

degrading the majesty of his rank.

It was not, perhaps, without some regret, that Ricimer sacrificed his

friend to the interest of his ambition: but he resolved, in a second

choice, to avoid the imprudent preference of superior virtue and merit.

At his command, the obsequious senate of Rome bestowed the Imperial

title on Libius Severus, who ascended the throne of the West without

emerging from the obscurity of a private condition. History has scarcely

deigned to notice his birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.

Severus expired, as soon as his life became inconvenient to his patron;

and it would be useless to discriminate his nominal reign in the vacant

interval of six years, between the death of Majorian and the elevation

of Anthemius. During that period, the government was in the hands of

Ricimer alone; and, although the modest Barbarian disclaimed the name

of king, he accumulated treasures, formed a separate army, negotiated

private alliances, and ruled Italy with the same independent and

despotic authority, which was afterwards exercised by Odoacer and

Theodoric. But his dominions were bounded by the Alps; and two Roman

generals, Marcellinus and Ægidius, maintained their allegiance to the

republic, by rejecting, with disdain, the phantom which he styled an

emperor. Marcellinus still adhered to the old religion; and the devout

Pagans, who secretly disobeyed the laws of the church and state,

applauded his profound skill in the science of divination. But he

possessed the more valuable qualifications of learning, virtue, and

courage; the study of the Latin literature had improved his taste; and

his military talents had recommended him to the esteem and confidence

of the great Ætius, in whose ruin he was involved. By a timely flight,

Marcellinus escaped the rage of Valentinian, and boldly asserted his

liberty amidst the convulsions of the Western empire. His voluntary, or

reluctant, submission to the authority of Majorian, was rewarded by

the government of Sicily, and the command of an army, stationed in

that island to oppose, or to attack, the Vandals; but his Barbarian

mercenaries, after the emperor's death, were tempted to revolt by

the artful liberality of Ricimer. At the head of a band of faithful

followers, the intrepid Marcellinus occupied the province of Dalmatia,

assumed the title of patrician of the West, secured the love of his

subjects by a mild and equitable reign, built a fleet which claimed the

dominion of the Adriatic, and alternately alarmed the coasts of Italy

and of Africa. Ægidius, the master-general of Gaul, who equalled, or at

least who imitated, the heroes of ancient Rome, proclaimed his immortal

resentment against the assassins of his beloved master. A brave and

numerous army was attached to his standard: and, though he was prevented

by the arts of Ricimer, and the arms of the Visigoths, from marching to

the gates of Rome, he maintained his independent sovereignty beyond the

Alps, and rendered the name of Ægidius, respectable both in peace and

war. The Franks, who had punished with exile the youthful follies of

Childeric, elected the Roman general for their king: his vanity, rather

than his ambition, was gratified by that singular honor; and when the

nation, at the end of four years, repented of the injury which they

had offered to the Merovingian family, he patiently acquiesced in the

restoration of the lawful prince. The authority of Ægidius ended only

with his life, and the suspicions of poison and secret violence, which

derived some countenance from the character of Ricimer, were eagerly

entertained by the passionate credulity of the Gauls.

The kingdom of Italy, a name to which the Western empire was gradually

reduced, was afflicted, under the reign of Ricimer, by the incessant

depredations of the Vandal pirates. In the spring of each year, they

equipped a formidable navy in the port of Carthage; and Genseric

himself, though in a very advanced age, still commanded in person the

most important expeditions. His designs were concealed with impenetrable

secrecy, till the moment that he hoisted sail. When he was asked, by

his pilot, what course he should steer, "Leave the determination to

the winds, (replied the Barbarian, with pious arrogance;) they will

transport us to the guilty coast, whose inhabitants have provoked the

divine justice;" but if Genseric himself deigned to issue more precise

orders, he judged the most wealthy to be the most criminal. The Vandals

repeatedly visited the coasts of Spain, Liguria, Tuscany, Campania,

Lucania, Bruttium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia, Dalmatia, Epirus, Greece,

and Sicily: they were tempted to subdue the Island of Sardinia, so

advantageously placed in the centre of the Mediterranean; and their arms

spread desolation, or terror, from the columns of Hercules to the mouth

of the Nile. As they were more ambitious of spoil than of glory, they

seldom attacked any fortified cities, or engaged any regular troops in

the open field. But the celerity of their motions enabled them, almost

at the same time, to threaten and to attack the most distant objects,

which attracted their desires; and as they always embarked a sufficient

number of horses, they had no sooner landed, than they swept the

dismayed country with a body of light cavalry. Yet, notwithstanding the

example of their king, the native Vandals and Alani insensibly declined

this toilsome and perilous warfare; the hardy generation of the first

conquerors was almost extinguished, and their sons, who were born in

Africa, enjoyed the delicious baths and gardens which had been acquired

by the valor of their fathers. Their place was readily supplied by a

various multitude of Moors and Romans, of captives and outlaws; and

those desperate wretches, who had already violated the laws of their

country, were the most eager to promote the atrocious acts which

disgrace the victories of Genseric. In the treatment of his unhappy

prisoners, he sometimes consulted his avarice, and sometimes indulged

his cruelty; and the massacre of five hundred noble citizens of Zant

or Zacynthus, whose mangled bodies he cast into the Ionian Sea, was

imputed, by the public indignation, to his latest posterity.

Such crimes could not be excused by any provocations; but the war,

which the king of the Vandals prosecuted against the Roman empire was

justified by a specious and reasonable motive. The widow of Valentinian,

Eudoxia, whom he had led captive from Rome to Carthage, was the sole

heiress of the Theodosian house; her elder daughter, Eudocia, became

the reluctant wife of Hunneric, his eldest son; and the stern father,

asserting a legal claim, which could not easily be refuted or satisfied,

demanded a just proportion of the Imperial patrimony. An adequate, or at

least a valuable, compensation, was offered by the Eastern emperor, to

purchase a necessary peace. Eudoxia and her younger daughter, Placidia,

were honorably restored, and the fury of the Vandals was confined to the

limits of the Western empire. The Italians, destitute of a naval force,

which alone was capable of protecting their coasts, implored the aid of

the more fortunate nations of the East; who had formerly acknowledged,

in peace and war, the supremacy of Rome. But the perpetual divisions of

the two empires had alienated their interest and their inclinations; the

faith of a recent treaty was alleged; and the Western Romans, instead

of arms and ships, could only obtain the assistance of a cold and

ineffectual mediation. The haughty Ricimer, who had long struggled with

the difficulties of his situation, was at length reduced to address the

throne of Constantinople, in the humble language of a subject; and Italy

submitted, as the price and security to accept a master from the

choice of the emperor of the East. It is not the purpose of the present

chapter, or even of the present volume, to continue the distinct series

of the Byzantine history; but a concise view of the reign and character

of the emperor Leo, may explain the last efforts that were attempted to

save the falling empire of the West.

Since the death of the younger Theodosius, the domestic repose of

Constantinople had never been interrupted by war or faction. Pulcheria

had bestowed her hand, and the sceptre of the East, on the modest

virtue of Marcian: he gratefully reverenced her august rank and virgin

chastity; and, after her death, he gave his people the example of the

religious worship that was due to the memory of the Imperial saint.

Attentive to the prosperity of his own dominions, Marcian seemed to

behold, with indifference, the misfortunes of Rome; and the obstinate

refusal of a brave and active prince, to draw his sword against the

Vandals, was ascribed to a secret promise, which had formerly been

exacted from him when he was a captive in the power of Genseric. The

death of Marcian, after a reign of seven years, would have exposed the

East to the danger of a popular election; if the superior weight of a

single family had not been able to incline the balance in favor of the

candidate whose interest they supported. The patrician Aspar might

have placed the diadem on his own head, if he would have subscribed

the Nicene creed. During three generations, the armies of the East

were successively commanded by his father, by himself, and by his son

Ardaburius; his Barbarian guards formed a military force that overawed

the palace and the capital; and the liberal distribution of his immense

treasures rendered Aspar as popular as he was powerful. He recommended

the obscure name of Leo of Thrace, a military tribune, and the principal

steward of his household. His nomination was unanimously ratified by the

senate; and the servant of Aspar received the Imperial crown from the

hands of the patriarch or bishop, who was permitted to express, by this

unusual ceremony, the suffrage of the Deity. This emperor, the first of

the name of Leo, has been distinguished by the title of the Great;

from a succession of princes, who gradually fixed in the opinion of

the Greeks a very humble standard of heroic, or at least of royal,

perfection. Yet the temperate firmness with which Leo resisted the

oppression of his benefactor, showed that he was conscious of his duty

and of his prerogative. Aspar was astonished to find that his influence

could no longer appoint a præfect of Constantinople: he presumed to

reproach his sovereign with a breach of promise, and insolently shaking

his purple, "It is not proper, (said he,) that the man who is invested

with this garment, should be guilty of lying." "Nor is it proper,

(replied Leo,) that a prince should be compelled to resign his own

judgment, and the public interest, to the will of a subject." After this

extraordinary scene, it was impossible that the reconciliation of the

emperor and the patrician could be sincere; or, at least, that it could

be solid and permanent. An army of Isaurians was secretly levied, and

introduced into Constantinople; and while Leo undermined the authority,

and prepared the disgrace, of the family of Aspar, his mild and cautious

behavior restrained them from any rash and desperate attempts, which

might have been fatal to themselves, or their enemies. The measures

of peace and war were affected by this internal revolution. As long as

Aspar degraded the majesty of the throne, the secret correspondence of

religion and interest engaged him to favor the cause of Genseric. When

Leo had delivered himself from that ignominious servitude, he listened

to the complaints of the Italians; resolved to extirpate the tyranny of

the Vandals; and declared his alliance with his colleague, Anthemius,

whom he solemnly invested with the diadem and purple of the West.

The virtues of Anthemius have perhaps been magnified, since the Imperial

descent, which he could only deduce from the usurper Procopius, has been

swelled into a line of emperors. But the merit of his immediate parents,

their honors, and their riches, rendered Anthemius one of the most

illustrious subjects of the East. His father, Procopius, obtained, after

his Persian embassy, the rank of general and patrician; and the name

of Anthemius was derived from his maternal grandfather, the celebrated

præfect, who protected, with so much ability and success, the infant

reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the præfect was raised above

the condition of a private subject, by his marriage with Euphemia, the

daughter of the emperor Marcian. This splendid alliance, which might

supersede the necessity of merit, hastened the promotion of Anthemius to

the successive dignities of count, of master-general, of consul, and

of patrician; and his merit or fortune claimed the honors of a victory,

which was obtained on the banks of the Danube, over the Huns. Without

indulging an extravagant ambition, the son-in-law of Marcian might hope

to be his successor; but Anthemius supported the disappointment with

courage and patience; and his subsequent elevation was universally

approved by the public, who esteemed him worthy to reign, till

he ascended the throne. The emperor of the West marched from

Constantinople, attended by several counts of high distinction, and a

body of guards almost equal to the strength and numbers of a regular

army: he entered Rome in triumph, and the choice of Leo was confirmed

by the senate, the people, and the Barbarian confederates of Italy. The

solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the nuptials of

his daughter and the patrician Ricimer; a fortunate event, which was

considered as the firmest security of the union and happiness of the

state. The wealth of two empires was ostentatiously displayed; and many

senators completed their ruin, by an expensive effort to disguise their

poverty. All serious business was suspended during this festival; the

courts of justice were shut; the streets of Rome, the theatres, the

places of public and private resort, resounded with hymeneal songs and

dances: and the royal bride, clothed in silken robes, with a crown on

her head, was conducted to the palace of Ricimer, who had changed

his military dress for the habit of a consul and a senator. On this

memorable occasion, Sidonius, whose early ambition had been so fatally

blasted, appeared as the orator of Auvergne, among the provincial

deputies who addressed the throne with congratulations or complaints.

The calends of January were now approaching, and the venal poet, who

had loved Avitus, and esteemed Majorian, was persuaded by his friends

to celebrate, in heroic verse, the merit, the felicity, the second

consulship, and the future triumphs, of the emperor Anthemius. Sidonius

pronounced, with assurance and success, a panegyric which is still

extant; and whatever might be the imperfections, either of the subject

or of the composition, the welcome flatterer was immediately rewarded

with the præfecture of Rome; a dignity which placed him among the

illustrious personages of the empire, till he wisely preferred the more

respectable character of a bishop and a saint.

The Greeks ambitiously commend the piety and catholic faith of the

emperor whom they gave to the West; nor do they forget to observe, that

when he left Constantinople, he converted his palace into the pious

foundation of a public bath, a church, and a hospital for old men. Yet

some suspicious appearances are found to sully the theological fame of

Anthemius. From the conversation of Philotheus, a Macedonian sectary, he

had imbibed the spirit of religious toleration; and the Heretics of Rome

would have assembled with impunity, if the bold and vehement censure

which Pope Hilary pronounced in the church of St. Peter, had not obliged

him to abjure the unpopular indulgence. Even the Pagans, a feeble and

obscure remnant, conceived some vain hopes, from the indifference,

or partiality, of Anthemius; and his singular friendship for the

philosopher Severus, whom he promoted to the consulship, was ascribed

to a secret project, of reviving the ancient worship of the gods. These

idols were crumbled into dust: and the mythology which had once been

the creed of nations, was so universally disbelieved, that it might be

employed without scandal, or at least without suspicion, by Christian

poets. Yet the vestiges of superstition were not absolutely obliterated,

and the festival of the Lupercalia, whose origin had preceded the

foundation of Rome, was still celebrated under the reign of Anthemius.

The savage and simple rites were expressive of an early state of society

before the invention of arts and agriculture. The rustic deities who

presided over the toils and pleasures of the pastoral life, Pan, Faunus,

and their train of satyrs, were such as the fancy of shepherds might

create, sportive, petulant, and lascivious; whose power was limited, and

whose malice was inoffensive. A goat was the offering the best adapted

to their character and attributes; the flesh of the victim was roasted

on willow spits; and the riotous youths, who crowded to the feast,

ran naked about the fields, with leather thongs in their hands,

communicating, as it was supposed, the blessing of fecundity to the

women whom they touched. The altar of Pan was erected, perhaps by

Evander the Arcadian, in a dark recess in the side of the Palantine

hill, watered by a perpetual fountain, and shaded by a hanging grove.

A tradition, that, in the same place, Romulus and Remus were suckled by

the wolf, rendered it still more sacred and venerable in the eyes of

the Romans; and this sylvan spot was gradually surrounded by the stately

edifices of the Forum. After the conversion of the Imperial city,

the Christians still continued, in the month of February, the annual

celebration of the Lupercalia; to which they ascribed a secret and

mysterious influence on the genial powers of the animal and vegetable

world. The bishops of Rome were solicitous to abolish a profane custom,

so repugnant to the spirit of Christianity; but their zeal was not

supported by the authority of the civil magistrate: the inveterate abuse

subsisted till the end of the fifth century, and Pope Gelasius, who

purified the capital from the last stain of idolatry, appeased by a

formal apology, the murmurs of the senate and people.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.—Part IV.

In all his public declarations, the emperor Leo assumes the authority,

and professes the affection, of a father, for his son Anthemius, with

whom he had divided the administration of the universe. The situation,

and perhaps the character, of Leo, dissuaded him from exposing his

person to the toils and dangers of an African war. But the powers of

the Eastern empire were strenuously exerted to deliver Italy and the

Mediterranean from the Vandals; and Genseric, who had so long oppressed

both the land and sea, was threatened from every side with a formidable

invasion. The campaign was opened by a bold and successful enterprise

of the præfect Heraclius. The troops of Egypt, Thebais, and Libya, were

embarked, under his command; and the Arabs, with a train of horses and

camels, opened the roads of the desert. Heraclius landed on the coast

of Tripoli, surprised and subdued the cities of that province, and

prepared, by a laborious march, which Cato had formerly executed, to

join the Imperial army under the walls of Carthage. The intelligence

of this loss extorted from Genseric some insidious and ineffectual

propositions of peace; but he was still more seriously alarmed by the

reconciliation of Marcellinus with the two empires. The independent

patrician had been persuaded to acknowledge the legitimate title of

Anthemius, whom he accompanied in his journey to Rome; the Dalmatian

fleet was received into the harbors of Italy; the active valor of

Marcellinus expelled the Vandals from the Island of Sardinia; and

the languid efforts of the West added some weight to the immense

preparations of the Eastern Romans. The expense of the naval armament,

which Leo sent against the Vandals, has been distinctly ascertained; and

the curious and instructive account displays the wealth of the declining

empire. The Royal demesnes, or private patrimony of the prince, supplied

seventeen thousand pounds of gold; forty-seven thousand pounds of gold,

and seven hundred thousand of silver, were levied and paid into the

treasury by the Prætorian præfects. But the cities were reduced to

extreme poverty; and the diligent calculation of fines and forfeitures,

as a valuable object of the revenue, does not suggest the idea of a just

or merciful administration. The whole expense, by whatsoever means

it was defrayed, of the African campaign, amounted to the sum of one

hundred and thirty thousand pounds of gold, about five millions two

hundred thousand pounds sterling, at a time when the value of money

appears, from the comparative price of corn, to have been somewhat

higher than in the present age. The fleet that sailed from

Constantinople to Carthage, consisted of eleven hundred and thirteen

ships, and the number of soldiers and mariners exceeded one hundred

thousand men. Basiliscus, the brother of the empress Vorina, was

intrusted with this important command. His sister, the wife of Leo, had

exaggerated the merit of his former exploits against the Scythians. But

the discovery of his guilt, or incapacity, was reserved for the

African war; and his friends could only save his military reputation by

asserting, that he had conspired with Aspar to spare Genseric, and to

betray the last hope of the Western empire.

Experience has shown, that the success of an invader most commonly

depends on the vigor and celerity of his operations. The strength and

sharpness of the first impression are blunted by delay; the health and

spirit of the troops insensibly languish in a distant climate; the naval

and military force, a mighty effort which perhaps can never be repeated,

is silently consumed; and every hour that is wasted in negotiation,

accustoms the enemy to contemplate and examine those hostile terrors,

which, on their first appearance, he deemed irresistible. The formidable

navy of Basiliscus pursued its prosperous navigation from the Thracian

Bosphorus to the coast of Africa. He landed his troops at Cape Bona, or

the promontory of Mercury, about forty miles from Carthage. The army of

Heraclius, and the fleet of Marcellinus, either joined or seconded the

Imperial lieutenant; and the Vandals who opposed his progress by sea or

land, were successively vanquished. If Basiliscus had seized the moment

of consternation, and boldly advanced to the capital, Carthage must have

surrendered, and the kingdom of the Vandals was extinguished. Genseric

beheld the danger with firmness, and eluded it with his veteran

dexterity. He protested, in the most respectful language, that he

was ready to submit his person, and his dominions, to the will of the

emperor; but he requested a truce of five days to regulate the terms

of his submission; and it was universally believed, that his secret

liberality contributed to the success of this public negotiation.

Instead of obstinately refusing whatever indulgence his enemy so

earnestly solicited, the guilty, or the credulous, Basiliscus consented

to the fatal truce; and his imprudent security seemed to proclaim, that

he already considered himself as the conqueror of Africa. During this

short interval, the wind became favorable to the designs of Genseric.

He manned his largest ships of war with the bravest of the Moors

and Vandals; and they towed after them many large barks, filled with

combustible materials. In the obscurity of the night, these destructive

vessels were impelled against the unguarded and unsuspecting fleet of

the Romans, who were awakened by the sense of their instant danger.

Their close and crowded order assisted the progress of the fire, which

was communicated with rapid and irresistible violence; and the noise

of the wind, the crackling of the flames, the dissonant cries of the

soldiers and mariners, who could neither command nor obey, increased

the horror of the nocturnal tumult. Whilst they labored to extricate

themselves from the fire-ships, and to save at least a part of the navy,

the galleys of Genseric assaulted them with temperate and disciplined

valor; and many of the Romans, who escaped the fury of the flames, were

destroyed or taken by the victorious Vandals. Among the events of that

disastrous night, the heroic, or rather desperate, courage of John,

one of the principal officers of Basiliscus, has rescued his name from

oblivion. When the ship, which he had bravely defended, was almost

consumed, he threw himself in his armor into the sea, disdainfully

rejected the esteem and pity of Genso, the son of Genseric, who pressed

him to accept honorable quarter, and sunk under the waves; exclaiming,

with his last breath, that he would never fall alive into the hands

of those impious dogs. Actuated by a far different spirit, Basiliscus,

whose station was the most remote from danger, disgracefully fled in the

beginning of the engagement, returned to Constantinople with the loss of

more than half of his fleet and army, and sheltered his guilty head

in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, till his sister, by her tears and

entreaties, could obtain his pardon from the indignant emperor.

Heraclius effected his retreat through the desert; Marcellinus retired

to Sicily, where he was assassinated, perhaps at the instigation

of Ricimer, by one of his own captains; and the king of the Vandals

expressed his surprise and satisfaction, that the Romans themselves

should remove from the world his most formidable antagonists. After the

failure of this great expedition, Genseric again became the tyrant of

the sea: the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Asia, were again exposed to

his revenge and avarice; Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his obedience;

he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and before he died, in

the fulness of years and of glory, he beheld the final extinction of the

empire of the West.

During his long and active reign, the African monarch had studiously

cultivated the friendship of the Barbarians of Europe, whose arms he

might employ in a seasonable and effectual diversion against the two

empires. After the death of Attila, he renewed his alliance with the

Visigoths of Gaul; and the sons of the elder Theodoric, who successively

reigned over that warlike nation, were easily persuaded, by the sense

of interest, to forget the cruel affront which Genseric had inflicted on

their sister. The death of the emperor Majorian delivered Theodoric the

Second from the restraint of fear, and perhaps of honor; he violated

his recent treaty with the Romans; and the ample territory of Narbonne,

which he firmly united to his dominions, became the immediate reward of

his perfidy. The selfish policy of Ricimer encouraged him to invade the

provinces which were in the possession of Ægidius, his rival; but the

active count, by the defence of Arles, and the victory of Orleans, saved

Gaul, and checked, during his lifetime, the progress of the Visigoths.

Their ambition was soon rekindled; and the design of extinguishing the

Roman empire in Spain and Gaul was conceived, and almost completed,

in the reign of Euric, who assassinated his brother Theodoric, and

displayed, with a more savage temper, superior abilities, both in peace

and war. He passed the Pyrenees at the head of a numerous army, subdued

the cities of Saragossa and Pampeluna, vanquished in battle the martial

nobles of the Tarragonese province, carried his victorious arms into

the heart of Lusitania, and permitted the Suevi to hold the kingdom of

Gallicia under the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The efforts of Euric were

not less vigorous, or less successful, in Gaul; and throughout the

country that extends from the Pyrenees to the Rhone and the Loire,

Berry and Auvergne were the only cities, or dioceses, which refused

to acknowledge him as their master. In the defence of Clermont, their

principal town, the inhabitants of Auvergne sustained, with inflexible

resolution, the miseries of war, pestilence, and famine; and the

Visigoths, relinquishing the fruitless siege, suspended the hopes of

that important conquest. The youth of the province were animated by the

heroic, and almost incredible, valor of Ecdicius, the son of the emperor

Avitus, who made a desperate sally with only eighteen horsemen, boldly

attacked the Gothic army, and, after maintaining a flying skirmish,

retired safe and victorious within the walls of Clermont. His charity

was equal to his courage: in a time of extreme scarcity, four thousand

poor were fed at his expense; and his private influence levied an army

of Burgundians for the deliverance of Auvergne. From his virtues alone

the faithful citizens of Gaul derived any hopes of safety or freedom;

and even such virtues were insufficient to avert the impending ruin of

their country, since they were anxious to learn, from his authority

and example, whether they should prefer the alternative of exile or

servitude. The public confidence was lost; the resources of the state

were exhausted; and the Gauls had too much reason to believe, that

Anthemius, who reigned in Italy, was incapable of protecting his

distressed subjects beyond the Alps. The feeble emperor could only

procure for their defence the service of twelve thousand British

auxiliaries. Riothamus, one of the independent kings, or chieftains, of

the island, was persuaded to transport his troops to the continent of

Gaul: he sailed up the Loire, and established his quarters in Berry,

where the people complained of these oppressive allies, till they were

destroyed or dispersed by the arms of the Visigoths.

One of the last acts of jurisdiction, which the Roman senate exercised

over their subjects of Gaul, was the trial and condemnation of Arvandus,

the Prætorian præfect. Sidonius, who rejoices that he lived under a

reign in which he might pity and assist a state criminal, has

expressed, with tenderness and freedom, the faults of his indiscreet

and unfortunate friend. From the perils which he had escaped, Arvandus

imbibed confidence rather than wisdom; and such was the various, though

uniform, imprudence of his behavior, that his prosperity must appear

much more surprising than his downfall. The second præfecture, which

he obtained within the term of five years, abolished the merit and

popularity of his preceding administration. His easy temper was

corrupted by flattery, and exasperated by opposition; he was forced to

satisfy his importunate creditors with the spoils of the province; his

capricious insolence offended the nobles of Gaul, and he sunk under the

weight of the public hatred. The mandate of his disgrace summoned him to

justify his conduct before the senate; and he passed the Sea of Tuscany

with a favorable wind, the presage, as he vainly imagined, of his future

fortunes. A decent respect was still observed for the Præfectorian

rank; and on his arrival at Rome, Arvandus was committed to the

hospitality, rather than to the custody, of Flavius Asellus, the count

of the sacred largesses, who resided in the Capitol. He was eagerly

pursued by his accusers, the four deputies of Gaul, who were all

distinguished by their birth, their dignities, or their eloquence.

In the name of a great province, and according to the forms of Roman

jurisprudence, they instituted a civil and criminal action, requiring

such restitution as might compensate the losses of individuals, and such

punishment as might satisfy the justice of the state. Their charges

of corrupt oppression were numerous and weighty; but they placed their

secret dependence on a letter which they had intercepted, and which they

could prove, by the evidence of his secretary, to have been dictated by

Arvandus himself. The author of this letter seemed to dissuade the

king of the Goths from a peace with the Greek emperor: he suggested the

attack of the Britons on the Loire; and he recommended a division of

Gaul, according to the law of nations, between the Visigoths and

the Burgundians. These pernicious schemes, which a friend could only

palliate by the reproaches of vanity and indiscretion, were susceptible

of a treasonable interpretation; and the deputies had artfully resolved

not to produce their most formidable weapons till the decisive moment

of the contest. But their intentions were discovered by the zeal of

Sidonius. He immediately apprised the unsuspecting criminal of his

danger; and sincerely lamented, without any mixture of anger, the

haughty presumption of Arvandus, who rejected, and even resented, the

salutary advice of his friends. Ignorant of his real situation, Arvandus

showed himself in the Capitol in the white robe of a candidate, accepted

indiscriminate salutations and offers of service, examined the shops of

the merchants, the silks and gems, sometimes with the indifference of

a spectator, and sometimes with the attention of a purchaser; and

complained of the times, of the senate, of the prince, and of the delays

of justice. His complaints were soon removed. An early day was fixed for

his trial; and Arvandus appeared, with his accusers, before a numerous

assembly of the Roman senate. The mournful garb which they affected,

excited the compassion of the judges, who were scandalized by the gay

and splendid dress of their adversary: and when the præfect Arvandus,

with the first of the Gallic deputies, were directed to take their

places on the senatorial benches, the same contrast of pride and modesty

was observed in their behavior. In this memorable judgment, which

presented a lively image of the old republic, the Gauls exposed, with

force and freedom, the grievances of the province; and as soon as the

minds of the audience were sufficiently inflamed, they recited the

fatal epistle. The obstinacy of Arvandus was founded on the strange

supposition, that a subject could not be convicted of treason, unless he

had actually conspired to assume the purple. As the paper was read,

he repeatedly, and with a loud voice, acknowledged it for his genuine

composition; and his astonishment was equal to his dismay, when the

unanimous voice of the senate declared him guilty of a capital offence.

By their decree, he was degraded from the rank of a præfect to the

obscure condition of a plebeian, and ignominiously dragged by servile

hands to the public prison. After a fortnight's adjournment, the senate

was again convened to pronounce the sentence of his death; but while

he expected, in the Island of Æsculapius, the expiration of the thirty

days allowed by an ancient law to the vilest malefactors, his friends

interposed, the emperor Anthemius relented, and the præfect of Gaul

obtained the milder punishment of exile and confiscation. The faults of

Arvandus might deserve compassion; but the impunity of Seronatus accused

the justice of the republic, till he was condemned and executed, on

the complaint of the people of Auvergne. That flagitious minister, the

Catiline of his age and country, held a secret correspondence with the

Visigoths, to betray the province which he oppressed: his industry

was continually exercised in the discovery of new taxes and obsolete

offences; and his extravagant vices would have inspired contempt, if

they had not excited fear and abhorrence.

Such criminals were not beyond the reach of justice; but whatever might

be the guilt of Ricimer, that powerful Barbarian was able to contend

or to negotiate with the prince, whose alliance he had condescended to

accept. The peaceful and prosperous reign which Anthemius had promised

to the West, was soon clouded by misfortune and discord. Ricimer,

apprehensive, or impatient, of a superior, retired from Rome, and fixed

his residence at Milan; an advantageous situation either to invite or

to repel the warlike tribes that were seated between the Alps and the

Danube. Italy was gradually divided into two independent and hostile

kingdoms; and the nobles of Liguria, who trembled at the near approach

of a civil war, fell prostrate at the feet of the patrician, and

conjured him to spare their unhappy country. "For my own part," replied

Ricimer, in a tone of insolent moderation, "I am still inclined to

embrace the friendship of the Galatian; but who will undertake to

appease his anger, or to mitigate the pride, which always rises in

proportion to our submission?" They informed him, that Epiphanius,

bishop of Pavia, united the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence

of the dove; and appeared confident, that the eloquence of such an

ambassador must prevail against the strongest opposition, either of

interest or passion. Their recommendation was approved; and Epiphanius,

assuming the benevolent office of mediation, proceeded without delay

to Rome, where he was received with the honors due to his merit and

reputation. The oration of a bishop in favor of peace may be easily

supposed; he argued, that, in all possible circumstances, the

forgiveness of injuries must be an act of mercy, or magnanimity, or

prudence; and he seriously admonished the emperor to avoid a contest

with a fierce Barbarian, which might be fatal to himself, and must

be ruinous to his dominions. Anthemius acknowledged the truth of his

maxims; but he deeply felt, with grief and indignation, the behavior

of Ricimer, and his passion gave eloquence and energy to his discourse.

"What favors," he warmly exclaimed, "have we refused to this ungrateful

man? What provocations have we not endured! Regardless of the majesty of

the purple, I gave my daughter to a Goth; I sacrificed my own blood to

the safety of the republic. The liberality which ought to have secured

the eternal attachment of Ricimer has exasperated him against his

benefactor. What wars has he not excited against the empire! How often

has he instigated and assisted the fury of hostile nations! Shall I now

accept his perfidious friendship? Can I hope that he will respect the

engagements of a treaty, who has already violated the duties of a son?"

But the anger of Anthemius evaporated in these passionate exclamations:

he insensibly yielded to the proposals of Epiphanius; and the bishop

returned to his diocese with the satisfaction of restoring the peace of

Italy, by a reconciliation, of which the sincerity and continuance might

be reasonably suspected. The clemency of the emperor was extorted from

his weakness; and Ricimer suspended his ambitious designs till he had

secretly prepared the engines with which he resolved to subvert the

throne of Anthemius. The mask of peace and moderation was then thrown

aside. The army of Ricimer was fortified by a numerous reenforcement

of Burgundians and Oriental Suevi: he disclaimed all allegiance to the

Greek emperor, marched from Milan to the Gates of Rome, and fixing

his camp on the banks of the Anio, impatiently expected the arrival of

Olybrius, his Imperial candidate.