 36 Sack of Rome by Gensoric, King of the Vandals, his naval depredations, secession of the last emperors of the west, Maximus, Aevitus, Majorian, Severus, Anthemius, Ulibrius, Glycerius, Nepos, Augustalis. Final Extinction of the Western Empire, Reign of Odoaker, 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 the Elenei, who followed the successful standard of Gensoric, had acquired a rich and fertile territory, which stretched along the coast above 90 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 the conquest of the Black Nations that might dwell beyond the Torrid Zone could not tempt the rational ambition of Gensoric, but he cast his eyes towards the sea, and 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, and his new subjects were skilled in the arts of navigation and shipbuilding. He animated his daring vandals to embrace a mode of warfare which could render every maritime country accessible to their arms. The Moors and Africans were lured by the hope 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 their 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 Gensuric. He immediately equipped a numerous fleet of vandals and moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Tiber, 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 the rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and illustrious, since it ascended from the Anichian 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 inestable 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 Praetorian Prefect 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 tranquility. 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 the Adotius. The imprudent Maximus disregarded these salutary considerations. He gratified his resentment and ambition. He saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet. 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 obtained 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 quister, Fogentius, 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 illusion which Fogentius 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 people, of the soldiers, and the Confederate barbarians. The marriage of his son Palladius with the oldest daughter of the late emperor might tend to establish the hereditary secession of his family, but the violence which he offered to the emperor Eudotia 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 descended from a line of emperors. From the east, however, Eudotia cannot hope to attain any effectual assistance. Her father and her aunt, Polcuria, were dead. Her mother languished at Jerusalem in disgrace and exile, and the scepter of Constance and Opel 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 Gensurik 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 defense, of negotiation, or of a timely retreat. When the vandals disembarked at the mouth of the typer, 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 examples 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 typer. The Roman people rejoiced in the punishment which they had inflicted on the author of the public calamities, and the domestics of Eudosia signalized their zeal in the service of their mistress. On the third day after the tumult, Gensurik boldly advanced from the port of Ostia to the gates of the defenseless city. Instead of a sally of the Roman youth, they were 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 Gensurik. 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 capital 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 Gensurik. 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 the 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. Eudotia 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 Theodotus, 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. Only a thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Gensaric, and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarians, who, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, the children from their parents. The charity of Deogratius, 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 insist the once-in-infirmities of a captive multitude, whose health was impaired by the hardships which they had suffered in the passage from Italy to Africa. By his order, two spacious churches were converted into hospitals. The sick were distributed in 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 Cannae, and judge between Hannibal and the successor of St. Cyprian. The deaths of Aetius 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 Alamani and the Franks, advanced from the Rhine to the Sain, 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 in Gaul. Aetius, the stranger whose merit was so nobly rewarded, descended from a wealthy and honorable family in the diocese of Valvania. 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 Aetius, after executing the most important embassies, was raised to the station of Praetorian Prefect of Gaul. Either the merit of Aetius 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 into 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 porticoes, 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 Aetius amused his leisure with books, rural sports, and 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 tranquility. 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 Toulouse in the character of an ambassador. He was received with courteous hospitality by Theodoric, the king of the Goths, but while Aetius 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 Aetius, they respected his virtues, and they were not insensible of the advantage as well as of honour 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. Aetius, 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 Aetius was indebted for the purple, had acquired the gothic scepter by the murder of his elder brother, Toresmond, 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 Toulouse, 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 was born a prince, his merit would dignify a private station. He is of 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 equiline 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 a 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 that he could perform himself. In 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 has served with the elegance of Greece, the plenty of gall, 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 Theotiric 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 at 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 the 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 Theotiric. 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 Theotiric soon convinced the world that he had not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After the establishment of the Goths in Aquitaine, and the passage of the vandals into Africa, the Swayvi, who had fixed their kingdom in Galicia, aspired to the conquest of Spain, and threatened to extinguish the feeble remains of the Roman Dominion. The provincials of Caithigena and Tarragona, afflicted by an hostile invasion, represented their injuries and their apprehensions. Count Fronto was dispatched, in the name of the emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace and alliance, and Theotiric interposed his weighty mediation to declare that, unless his brother-in-law, the king of the Swayvi, immediately retired, he would be obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome. Tell him, replied the haute, Rechiarius, that I despise his friendship and his arms, but that I will soon try whether he will dare to expect my arrival under the walls of Toulouse. Such a challenge urged Theotiric to prevent the bold designs of his enemy. He passed the periodies at the head of the Visigoths. The Franks and Burgundians served under his standards. Although 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, 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 Swayvi. From the field of battle Theotiric advanced to Braga, their Metropolis, which still retained the splendid vestiges of his 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 Swayvi had escaped to one of the ports of the ocean, but the obscenity of the winds opposed his flight, and he was delivered to his implacable rival, and Recharius, 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, Theotiric carried his victorious arms as far as Marita, the principal town of Lusitania, without meeting any resistance except from the miraculous powers of Saint Aualia, 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 Palencia 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 interest of Theotiric were deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend whom he had seated on the throne of the Western Empire. CHAPTER XIII On the first day of January, his son-in-law, Sidonius Apollonaris, celebrated his praises in a panagiric 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 rarity, 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 the 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 Count Rickimer, one of the principal commanders of the barbarian troops who formed the military defense of Italy. The daughter of Wallia, king of the Visigoths, was the mother of Rickimer, but he was descended on his father's side from the nation of the Suivi. 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, Rickimer 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 Rickimer, 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 and his cause, but of securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of Julian, one of the tutular saints of Alvania. His, or the hand of the executioner, arrested him on the road, yet his remains were decently transported to Brivas, or Brioche, in his native province, and he reposed at the feet of his holy patron. Avitus left only one daughter, the wife of Sedanus Apollonaris, 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, Majorion, 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, that he excelled in every virtue all of 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. Majorion 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 Majorion, a respectable officer who administered the revenues of Gaul with skill and integrity, and generously preferred the friendship of Aetius to the tempting offers of an insidious court. His son, the future emperor, who was educated in the profession of arms, displayed from his early youth in trepid courage, premature wisdom, and unbounded liberality, and a scanty fortune. He followed the standard of Aetius, 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. Majorion, after the death of Aetius, was recalled and promoted, and his intimate connection with Count Rickimer was the immediate step by which he ascended the throne of the Western Empire. During the vacancy that succeeded the abdication of Aetius, 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 Majorion had solicited by a recent victory over the Alemani. 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 council's end offence 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 endeavours 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 diligence, and that of our father, the patrician rickamer, 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 insurances of a prince who has formally 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 of the judgment which you have pronounced in his favour. The emperor, who admised 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 distressed, who 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. One, 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, in universal amnesty, a final and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts which, under any pretense, the fiscal officers might demand from the people. The wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims improved and purified the sources of the public revenue, and the subject who can now look back without despair might labor with hope and gratitude for himself and for his country. Two, 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 Praetorian Prefects. 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, or 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 of the Antonines. The subject who was unprovided with these curious metals had recourse to the expedient of campounding 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. Three. 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 in 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 levering the tribute. But instead of being made responsible for the whole sum assessed on their district, they were only required to produce a regular account of the payments which they had actually received, and of the defaults who are still indebted to the public. Four. 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, and 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 theaters 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 porticoes. And the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation whose proposed 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 as steamed 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 of their own emolument, demolished with sacrilegious hands the labors of their ancestors. The Jorian, 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 50 pounds of gold, 2,000 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 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, 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 exceptional kind. The pious maids who had consecrated their virginity to Christ were restrained from taking the veil till they had reached their 40th year. Widows under that age were compelled to form a second alliance within a 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 Gensaric, from his character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of vandals and moors landed at the mouth of Deliris or Gregliano, 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 villains might announce the character of the new reign, but the strictest villains 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 a 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 Gensurek at the head of a Roman army. Such a reformation of the 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 exiliaries in the place of his unwar-like subjects, and his superior abilities could only be displayed in the vigor and dexterity with which he yielded 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 Boristhenes, and perhaps of the Taneus. Many thousands of the bravest subjects of Attila, the Gepidi, Austrogoths, the Rugeans, the Burgundians, the Suave, the Alunai, assembled on the plains of Ligoria, and their formidable strength was balanced in 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 Skiddians, who complained of the extreme cold, by the cheerful assurance that they should be satisfied with the heat of Africa. The citizens of Lyon had presumed to shut their gates. They soon implored and experienced the clemency of Majorian. He vanquished theotoric in the field, and admitted to his friendship and alliance a king which he had found not unworthy of his arms. The beneficial, though precarious reunion of the greatest part of Gaul and Spain was the effect of persuasion as well as of force, and the independent Begoudai, 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 60 days, after the first stroke of the acts had been given in the forest, a fleet of 160 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 manufacturers of Ravenna, and Mycenaeum were restored. Italy and Gaul vied with each other in liberal contributions to the public service. In the imperial navy of 300 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 the confidence of victory, and if you 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 Gensrich was afterwards mortified by the discovery that he had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the Romans. Such an anecdote might be rejected as an improbable fiction, but it is a fiction which would not have been imagined alas in the life of a hero. CHAPTER 36 PART 3 OF THE DECLINING FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE VOLUME 3 This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Without the help of a personal interview, Gensrich 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 innervated by the luxury of the south. He suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an Aryan tyrant, and the desperate measures which he executed by 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 Gensrich 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 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 had all derived some advantage from the abuses which he endeavored to suppress. And the patrician, Rickimer, 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 magistrate of his rank. It was not, perhaps, with some regret that Rickimer 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 Libias 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 Majorium and the elevation of Anthemius. During that period the government was in the hands of Rickimer alone, and although the modest barbarian disclaimed the name of the 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 Adoacor and Theodoric. But his dominions were bounded by the Alps, and two Roman generals, Marcellinus and Aegidius, maintained their alliance 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 Aetius, in whose ruin he was involved. By a timely flight Marcellinus escaped the rage of Valentinian, and boldly asserted his liberty and must the convulsions of the Western Empire. His voluntary or reluctant submission to the authority of Majorium was rewarded by the government of Sicily, and the command of an army stationed in that island to oppose or attack the vandals. But his barbarian mercenaries, after the emperor's death, were tempted to revolt by the artful liberality of Rikamer. 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 mild and equitable reign, built a fleet which claimed the domination of the Adriatic, and alternately alarmed the coast of Italy and Africa. Aegidius, 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 Rikamer and the arms of Visigoths from marching to the gates of Rome, he maintained his independent sovereignty beyond the Alps, and rendered the name of Aegidius respectable both in peace and war. The Franks, who had punished with exile the youthful follies of children, 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 asquee-est in the restoration of the lawful prince. The authority of Aegidius ended only with his life, and the suspicions of poison and secret violence, which derived some countenance from the character of Rikamer, were eagerly entertained by the passionate crudulity of the Gauls. The kingdom of Italy, a name to which the Western Empire was gradually reduced, was afflicted under the reign of Rikamer by the incessant depredations of vandal pirates. In the spring of each year they equipped a formidable navy in the port of Carthage, and Gensaric 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 the pilot, which course she should steer? Leave the determination to the winds, replied the barbarian with pious arrogance. They will transport us to the guilty coast on whose inhabitants have provoked the divine justice. But if Gensaric 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, Lugoria, Tuscany, Campania, Lucania, Brutium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia, Damatia, Epirus, Greece, and Sicily. They were tempted to sedue the island of Sardinia, so advantageously placed in the center 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 an 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 soon as they had embarked a sufficient number of horses, they no sooner landed than they swept in this made country with a body of light cavalry. Yet, notwithstanding the example of their king, the native vandals and Elinai 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 valour of their fathers. Their place was readily supplied by 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 disgraced the victories of Gensaric. 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 Zante, or Zaxinthus, whose mangled bodies he cast into the Ionian Sea was imputed by the public indignation to his latest posterity. Such crimes would 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 eldest daughter, Eudoxia, became the reluctant wife of Hunaric, his eldest son, and the stern father asserted a legal claim which could not be easily refuted or satisfied, and added 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 division of 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 Halti Rickamer, who had long struggled with the difficulties of his situation, was at length reduced to address the throne of Constantinople in a humble language of a subject, and Italy submitted, as the price and security of the Alliance, 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. Polcaria had bestowed her hand and the scepter 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. The obstinate refusal of a brave and active Prince to draw his sword against the vandals was inscribed to a secret promise which had formerly been exacted from him when he was a captive in the power of Gensaric. 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 a candidate whose interest they supported. But Petrician Aspar might have placed the diadem on his own head if he would have submitted to the Nicene Creed. During three generations the armies of the East were successfully commanded by his father, himself, and by his son, Artiborius. His barbarian guards formed a military force that overalled 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 astounded to find that his influence could no longer appoint a prefect of Constance and Opal. 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 was 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 the 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 Isorians was secretly levied and introduced into Constance and Opal, 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 to their enemies. And 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 Gensurek. 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 dissent, which he could only deduced 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 as one of the most illustrious subjects of the east. His father Procopius obtained, after his Persian embassy, the rank of general and patrician. In the name of Anthemius was derived from his maternal grandfather, the celebrated prefect, who protected, with so much ability and success, the infant reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the prefect was raised above the condition of a private subject by his marriage with Euphemia, the daughter of the emperor Markiam. 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 his fortune, claimed the honors of a victory which was obtained on the banks of the Danube over the Huns. Without indulging in extravagant ambition, the son-in-law of Markian might hope to be a successor. 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 in the barbarian confederates of Italy. The solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the nuptials of his daughter and the patrician rickamer, 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 theaters, the places of public and private resort resounded with hymenial songs and dances, and the royal bride, clothed in silken robes with a crown on her head, was conducted to the palace of rickamer, 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 Overnia, amidst the provincial deputies who addressed the throne with congratulations or complaints. The callons of January were now approaching, and the venal poet, who had loved Avitus, an 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 panageric 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 perfecture 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 a 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 reviving the ancient worship of the gods. These idols were crumbled in the 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 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, and, as it was supposed, the blessing of fecundity to the women whom they touched. The altar of Pan was erected, perhaps by a vander the Arcadian, and the dark recess in the side of the Palentine 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 silven 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 were pugnant to the spirit of Christianity. But their zeal was not supported by the authority of the civil magistrate, the inveterate abuse subsisted to the end of the fifth century, and the Pope Galatius, who purified the capital from the last stain of idolatry, appeased by a formal apology the murmurs of the senate and people. End of Chapter 36 Part 3 Chapter 36 Part 4 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 3 This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. 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 Gensuric, 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 by the perfect Heraclius. The troops of Egypt, Thebius, and Libya were embarked under his command. In 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 formally executed to join the imperial army under the walls of Carthage. The intelligence of this loss extorted from Gensuric some insidious and ineffectual propositions apiece, 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 Domacian fleet was received into the harbors of Italy. The active valour 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 de Mesnes, or private patrimony of the prince, supplied 17,000 pounds of gold. 47,000 pounds of gold and 700,000 of silver were levied and paid into the treasury by the Praetorian prefix. 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 a merciful administration. The whole expense, by whatsoever means it was defrayed, of the African campaign amounted to the sum of 130,000 pounds of gold, about 5,000,000 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 1113 ships, and the number of soldiers and marines exceeded 100,000 men. Basiliscus, the brother of the Empress Verena, was entrusted 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 Gensaric and to betray the last hope of the Western Empire. Experience has shown that success of an invader most commonly depends on the vigor and celerity of his operations. The strength and sharpness of the first impressions are blunted by delay. The health and spirit of the troops are insensibly languished in a distant climate. The naval and military force, a mighty effort which perhaps can never be repeated, is silently consumed, and every hour which is wasted in negotiation, accustoms the enemy to contemplate and examine those hostile tears which, on their first appearance, he deemed irresistible. The formidable navy of Basiliscus pursued its prosperous navigation from the Thracian Bosphorus to the coasts of Africa. He landed his troops at Cape Bona, or the Prometeria of Mercury, about 40 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 by 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. Gensurek 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 Gensurek. He manned his largest ships of war with the bravest of moors and vandals, and they towed after many of them many barks filled with combustible materials. In the obscurity of the night these destructive vessels were impelled against the unguarded and unsuspected 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, and the dissonant cries of the soldiers and mariners, who can neither command nor obey, increase 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 Gensurek assaulted them with temperate and disciplined valor, and many of the Romans, who would escape 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 Gensurek, the son of Gensurek, 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 Saint Sophia, till his sister, by her tears and in treaties, could obtain his pardon from the indignant emperor. Heraclius affected his retreat through the desert. Marcellinus returned to Sicily, where he was assassinated, perhaps at the instigation of Rickimer 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, Gensurek again became the tyrant of the sea. The coast of Italy, Greece, and Asia were again exposed to his revenge and avarice. Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his obedience, and he added Sicily to the number of his provinces, and before he died in the fullness 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 successfully reigned over that war-like nation, were easily persuaded by the sense of interest to forget the cruel affront which Gensurek 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 Rickimer encouraged him to invade the provinces, which were in the possession of Vigidius, his rival, but the active count by the defense of Arle and the victory of Orléans 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 Urik, who assassinated his brother Theodoric and displayed in 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 Pampaluna, vanquished in battle the martial nobles of the Terragonese province, carried his victorious arms into the heart of Lusitania and permitted the Suave to hold the kingdom of Galicia under the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The efforts of Urik were not less vigorous or successful in Gaul, and throughout the country that extends from the Pyrenees to the Rhône and the Loire, Bery and Avignon were the only cities or diocese which refused to acknowledge him as their master. In the defense of Clermont, their principal town, the inhabitants of Ovania, 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 youth of Aedictius, the son of the Emperor Avitus, who made a desperate sally with only 18 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 Ovania. From his victories alone, the faithful citizens of Gaul derived any hope 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, and the resources of the state were exhausted, and the Gauls had too much reason to believe that Anthemius, who resigned in Italy, was incapable of protecting his distressed subjects beyond the Alps. The feeble Emperor can only procure for their defense the service of twelve thousand British Auxiliaries. Rheothamus, 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 Bury, 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 Avandis, the Praetorian Prefect. 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. In the perils which he had escaped, Avandis 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 prefecture 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 disgraced 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 Praetorian rank, and on his arrival at Rome Avandis was committed to the hospitality rather than to the custody of Flavius Acellus, the count of the sacred largesse who resided in the capital. 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 punishments 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 a secretary to have been dictated by Avandis himself. The author of this letter seemed to dissuade the king of the gods 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 paliate by the reproaches of vanity and indiscretion, were susceptible of a reasonable interpretation, and the deputies had artfully resolved not to produce their most formidable weapons till the decisive moment of the conquest. 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 Avandis, who rejected and even resented the salutary advice of his friends. Ignorant of his real situation, Avandis showed himself in the capital 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 indiverance of his spectator, and sometimes with the intention of a purchaser, and complained of the times of the senate, and of the prince, and of the delays of justice. His complaints were soon removed. An early day was fixed for his trial, and Avandis appeared with his accusers before a numerous assembly of the Roman senate. The mournful garb which they affected excited the compassion of the judges, and they were scandalized by the gay and splendid dress of their adversary, and when the prefect Avandis, with the first of the Golic deputies, was 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 obscenity of Avandis 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 offense. By their decree, he was degraded from the rank of a prefect to the obscure condition of a plebeian, and ignominiously dragged by servile hands to the public prison. After fortnight's adjournment, the senate was again convened to pronounce the sentence of his death, but while he expected, in the island of Iscalapius, the expiration of the thirty days allowed by an ancient law to the vileless malifactors, his friends interposed, the enthperor, Anthemius relented, and the prefect of Gaul obtained the milder punishment of exile and confiscation. The faults of Avandis might deserve compassion, but the impunity of Seronitus accused the justice of the republic, till he was condemned and executed on the complaint of the people of Overnia. That plagicious minister, the cataline of his age and country, held secret correspondence with the Visigoths to betray the province which he oppressed. His industry was continuously exercised by the discovery of new taxes and obsolete offenses, 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 fault of Rickimer, 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. Rickimer, 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 which receded beyond the Alps and the Danube. Italy was gradually divided between two independent and hostile kingdoms, and the nobles of Liguria, who trembled at the near approach of a civil war, fell prostrate to the feet of the patrician and conjured him to spare their unhappy country. From my own part, replied Rickimer, 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 might prevail against the strongest opposition, either of interest or passion. The recommendation was improved, 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 might 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. And Themius acknowledged the truth of his maxims. But he deeply felt, with grief and indignation, the behavior of Rickimer, 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 internal attachment of Rickimer, has exasperated him against his benefactor. What wars is 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 Themius 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 Rickimer suspended his ambitious designs till he had secretly prepared the engines, with which he resolved to subvert the throne of Themius. The mask of peace and moderation was then thrown aside. The army of Rickimer was fortified by a numerous reinforcement of Burgundians and Oriental Swevy. 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 Olybius, his imperial candidate. The senator Olybius, of the Ancien family, might esteem himself the lawful heir of the Western Empire. He had married Placidia, the younger daughter of Valentinian, after she was restored by Gensaric, who still detained her sister Eudotia as the wife, or rather as the captive of his son. The king of the vandal supported by threats and solicitations the fair pretensions of his Roman ally, and, assigned, as one of the motives of the war, the refusal of the Senate and people to acknowledge their lawful prince and the unworthy preference what they had given to a stranger. The friendship of the public enemy might render Olybius still more unpopular to the Italians, but when Rickimer mediated the ruin of the emperor and Themius, he tempted, with the offer of a diadem, the candidate who could justify his rebellion by an illustrious name and a royal alliance. The husband of Placidia, who, like most of his ancestors, had been invested with the consular dignity, might have continued to enjoy a secure and splendid fortune in the peaceful residence of Constantinople, nor does he appear to have been tormented by such a genius as cannot be amused or occupied unless by the administration of an empire. Yet Olybius yielded to the importunities of his friends, perhaps of his wife, rashly plunged into the dangers and calamities of a civil war, and with the secret connivance of the emperor Leo, accepted the Italian purple, which was bestowed and resumed at the capricious will of a barbarian. He landed without obstacle, for Gensuric was the master of the sea, either at Ravenna or the port of Ostia, and immediately proceeded to the camp of Rickimer, where he was received as the sovereign of the Western world. The patrician who had extended his posts from the Anio to the Milvian bridge already possessed two quarters of Rome, the Vatican and the Geniculum, which are separated by the Tiber from the rest of the city, and it may be conjectured that an assembly of seceding senators imitated, in the choice of Olybius, the forms of a legal election. But the body of the senate and people firmly adhered to the cause of Anthemius, and the more effectual support of a gothic army enabled him to prolong his reign and the public distress by a resistance of three months, which produced the concomitted evils of famine and pestilence. At length Rickimer made a furious assault on the bridge of Hadrian or St. Angelo, and the narrow pass was defended with equal valor by the Goths, till the death of Gilomir, their leader. The victorious troops, breaking down every barrier, rushed with irresistible violence into the heart of the city, and Rome, if we may use the language of a contemporary pope, was subverted by the civil fury of Anthemius and Rickimer. The unfortunate Anthemius was dragged from his concealment and inhumally massacred by the command of his son-in-law, who thus added a third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number of his victims. The soldiers who united the rage of factious citizens with the savage manners of barbarians were indulged without control in the license of rapine and murder. The crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the incdiscriminate pillage, and the face of the city exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty and disillute intemperance. Forty days after this calamitous event, the subject, not of glory but of guilt, Italy was delivered by a painful disease from the tyrant Rickimer, who bequeathed the command of his army to his nephew, Gondobald, one of the princes of the Burgundians. In the same year, all the principal actors in this great revolution were removed from the stage, and the whole reign of Alibrius, whose death does not betray any symptoms of violence, is included within the term of seven months. He left one daughter, the offspring of his marriage with Placidia, and the family of the great Theodosius, transplanted from Spain to Constantinople, was propagated in the female line as far as the eighth generation. End of Chapter 36 Part 4 Chapter 36 Part 5 of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 3 This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Wills to the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless barbarians. The election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the Council of Leo. The Empress Verina, studious to promote the greatness of her own family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who succeeded his uncle Marcellinus in the Soventry of Dalmatia, a more solid possession than the title which he was persuaded to accept of Emperor of the West. But the measures of the Byzantine court were so languid and o' resolute that many months elapsed after the death of Anthemius and even of Alibrius, before their destined successor can show himself with a respectable force to his Italian subjects. During that interval, Glycarius, an obscure soldier, was invested with the purple by his patron Gundobald. But the Burgundian prince was unable or unwilling to support his nomination by a civil war. The pursuits of domestic ambition recalled him beyond the Alps, and his client was permitted to exchange the Roman scepter for the bishopric of Salona. After extinguishing such a competitor, the Emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the Senate and the Italians and by the provincials of Gaul. His moral virtues and military talents were loudly celebrated, and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced in prophetic strains the restoration of the public felicity. Their hopes, if such hopes had been entertained, were confounded within the term of a single year, and the Treaty of Peace, which ceded Avernia to the Visigoths, is the only event of his short and inglorious reign. The most faithful subjects of Gaul were sacrificed by the Italian Emperor to the hopes of domestic security. But his repose was soon invaded by a furious sedition of the barbarian Confederates, who, under the command of Orestes, their general, were in full march from Rome to Revena. Nepos trembled at their approach, and instead of placing a just confidence in the strength of Revena, he hastily escaped to his ships and retired to his damnation principality on the opposite coast of the Hadriatic. By this shameful abdication he protracted his life about five years in a very ambiguous state between an Emperor and an exile, till he was assassinated at Solona by the ungrateful Glycarius, who was translated, perhaps as the reward of his crime, to the archbishopric of Milan. The nations who had asserted their independence after the death of Attila were established by the right of possession or conquest in the boundless countries to the north of the Danube, or in the Roman provinces between the river and the Alps. But the bravest of their youth enlisted in the army of Confederates, who formed the defense and the terror of Italy. And in this queues multitude, the names of the Heruli, the Sceari, the Alani, the Tukkalingi, and the Rugeans appear to have predominated. The example of these warriors was imitated by Orestes, the son of Tatulis, and the father of the last Roman Emperor of the West. Orestes, who had already been mentioned in this history, had never deserted his country. His birth and fortunes rendered him one of the most illustrious subjects of Pannonia. When that province was ceded to the Huns, he entered into the service of Attila, his lawful sovereign, obtained the office of his secretary, and was repeatedly sent ambassador to Constantinople to represent the person and signify the commands of the Imperius Monarch. The death of that conqueror restored him to his freedom, and Orestes might honorably refuse either to follow the sons of Attila into the Skithian Desert or to obey the Ostrogoths, who had usurped the dominion of Pannonia. He preferred the service of the Italian princes, the successors of Valentinian, and as he possessed the qualifications of courage, industry, and experience, he advanced with rapid steps in the military profession, till he was elevated by the favor of Nepos himself to the dignities of patrician and master general of the troops. These troops had been long accustomed to reverence the character and authority of Orestes, who affected their manners, conversed with them in their own language, and was intimately connected with their national chieftains by long habits of familiarity and friendship. At his solicitation they rose in arms against the obscure Greek who presumed to claim their obedience, and when Orestes, from some secret motive, declined the purple they consented with the same faculty to acknowledge his son, Augustulus, as the Emperor of the West. By the abdication of Nepos, Orestes had now obtained the summit of his ambitious hopes, but he soon discovered, before the end of the first year, that the lessons of perjury and ingratitude which are revel must inculcate will be retorted against himself, and that the precarious sovereign of Italy was only permitted to choose whether he would be the slave or the victim of his barbarian mercenaries. The dangerous alliance of those strangers had oppressed and insulted the last remains of Roman freedom and dignity. At each revolution their pay and privileges were augmented, but their insolence increased in a still more extravagant degree. They envied the fortune of their brethren in Gaul, Spain, and Africa, whose victorious arms had acquired an independent and perpetual inheritance, and they insisted on their peremptory demand that a third part of the lands of Italy should be immediately divided among them. Orestes, with the spirit which, in another situation, might be entitled to our esteem, chose rather to encounter the rage of an arm altitude than to subscribe the ruin of an innocent people. He rejected the audacious demand, and his refusal was favorable to the ambition of Odoliker, a bold barbarian who assured his fellow soldiers that, if they dared to associate under his command, they might soon extort the justice which had been denied to their dutiful petitions. From all the camps in garrisons of Italy, the Confederates, exuated by the same resentment and the same hopes, impatiently flocked to the standard of this popular leader, and the unfortunate patrician, overwhelmed by the torrent, hastily retreated to the strong city of Pavia, the episcopal seat of the holy Epiphantes. Pavia was immediately besieged, the fortifications were stormed, the town was pillaged, and although the bishop might labor with much zeal and some success to save the property of the church and the chastity of the female captives, the tumult could only be appeased by the execution of Orestes. His brother Paul was slain in an action near Ravenna, and the hopeless Augustalis, who could no longer command the respect, was reduced to implore the clemency of Indochor. That successful barbarian was the son of Edacon, who, in some remarkable transactions, particularly described in a preceding chapter, had been the colleague of Orestes himself. The honor of an ambassador should be exempt from suspicion, and Edacon had listened to the conspiracy against the life of his sovereign, but this apparent guilt was expiated by his merit or repentance. As rank was eminent and conspicuous, he enjoyed the favor of Attila, and the troops under his command, who guarded in their turn the royal village, consisted of a tribe of the Sceery, his immediate and hereditary subjects. In the revolt of the nation, they still adhered to the Huns, and more than 12 years afterwards the name of Edacon is honorably mentioned in their unequal contest with the Ostrogoths, which was terminated after two bloody battles by the defeat and dispersion of the Sceery. Their gallant leader, who did not survive this national calamity, left two sons, Onof and Odoaker, to struggle with adversity, and to maintain, as they might, by rapine or service the faithful followers of their exile. Onof directed his steps towards Constance and Opal, where he sullied by the assassination of a generous benefactor the fame which he had acquired in arms. His brother, Odoaker, had a wandering life among the barbarians of Noricum, with a mind and a fortune suited to the most desperate adventures, and when he fixed his choice, he piously visited the cell of Severinus, the popular saint of the country, to solicit his approbation and blessing. The lowness of the door would not admit the lofty stature of Odoaker. He was obliged to stoop, but in that humble attitude the saint could discern the symptoms of his future greatness, and addressing him in a prophetic tone, Pursue, said he, your design, proceed to Italy, you will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins, and your wealth will be adequate to the liberality of your mind. The barbarian, whose daring spirit accepted and ratified the petition, was admitted into the service of the Western Empire, and soon obtained an honorable rank in the guards. His manners were gradually polished, his military skill was improved. And the Confederates of Italy would not have elected him for their general, unless the exploits of Odoaker had established a high opinion of his courage and capacity. Their military acclamations saluted him with the title of King, but he abstained during his whole reign from the use of the Purple and Diadem, lest he should offend those princes whose subjects, by their accidental mixture, had formed the victorious army which time and policy might insensibly unite into a great nation. Royalty was familiar to the barbarians, and the submissive people of Italy was prepared to obey, without a murmur, the authority which he should condescend to exercise as the vice-regent of the Emperor of the West. But Odoaker had resolved to abolish that useless and expensive office, and such is the weight of antique prejudice that it required some boldness and penetration to discover the extreme faculty of the enterprise. The unfortunate Augustulus was made the instrument of his own disgrace. He signified his resignation to the Senate, and that assembly, in their last act of obedience to a Roman prince, still affected the spirit of freedom in the forms of the Constitution. An epistle was addressed by their unanimous decree to the Emperor Zeno, the Senate law and successor of Leo, who had lately been restored after a short rebellion to the Byzantine throne. They solemnly disclaim the necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the imperial secession in Italy, since, in their opinion, the majesty of a sole monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect, at the same time both the East and West. In their own name, and in the name of the people, they consent that the seat of universal empire shall be transferred from Rome to Constantinople, and they basically renounce the right of choosing their master, the only vestige that yet remained of the authority, which had given laws to the world. The Republic, they repeat that name without a blush, might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of a doaker, and they humbly request that the Emperor would invest him with the title of patrician, and the administration of the diocese of Italy. The deputies of the Senate were received at Constantinople with some marks of displeasure and indignation, and when they were admitted to the audience of Zeno, he sternly reproached them with their treatment of the two emperors, Anthemius and Nepos, whom the East had successively granted to the prayers of Italy. The first continued he, you have murdered. The second you have expelled. But the second is still alive, and whilst he lives, he is your lawful sovereign. But the Prudence Zeno soon deserted the hopeless cause of his abdicated colleague. His vanity was gratified by the title of sole emperor, and by the statues erected to his honor, in the several quarters of Rome, he entertained a friendly, though ambiguous correspondent with the patrician, a doaker, and he gratefully accepted the imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the throne and palace, which the barbarian was not unwilling to remove from the sight of the people. In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian, nine emperors had successively disappeared, and the son of Orestes, a youth recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of the Roman Empire in the West, did not leave a memorable era in the history of mankind. The patrician Orestes had married the daughter of Count Romulus, Epetovio in Noricum. The name of Augustus, notwithstanding the jealousy of power, was known at Aqualia as a familiar surname, and the appellations of the two great founders of the city and of the monarchy were thus strangely united in the last of their successors. The son of Orestes assumed and disgraced the names of Romulus Augustus, but the first was corrupted into Momulus by the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the Lantons into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of this inoffensive youth was spared by the generous clemency of a doaker, who dismissed him with his whole family from the imperial palace, fixed his annual allowance at 6,000 pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of Lecullus in Campania for the place of his exile or a retirement. As soon as the Romans breathed from the toils of the Punic War, they were attracted by the beauties and the pleasures of Campania. In the country house of the Elder Scipio and Latternium exhibited a lasting model of their rustic simplicity. The delicious shores of the Bay of Naples was crowded with villas. Insila applauded the masterly skill of his rival, who had seated himself on the lofty promontory of Missinum that commands on every side the sea and land as far as the boundaries of the horizon. The villa of Marius was purchased within a few years by Lecullus, and the price had increased from 2,500 to more than four score a thousand pounds sterling. It was adorned by the new proprietor with Grecian arts and Asiatic treasures, and the houses and gardens of Lecullus obtained at the distinguished rank in the list of imperial palaces. When the vandals became formidable to the sea coast, the Lecullan villa on the promontory of Missinum gradually assumed the strength and appellation of a strong castle, the obscure retreat of the last emperor of the West. About twenty years after that great revolution it was converted into a church and monastery to receive the bones of St. Severinus. They secretly reposed, amidst the broken trophies of Kimbrick and Armenian victories, to the beginning of the tenth century when the fortifications which might afford a dangerous shelter to the Saracens were demolished by the people of Naples. Odoaquer was the first barbarian who reigned in Italy over people who had once asserted their just superiority above the rest of mankind. The disgrace of the Romans still excites our respectful compassion, and we fondly sympathize with the imaginary grief and indignation of their degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had gradually subdued the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of Roman virtue, the provinces were subject to the arms and the citizens to the laws of the republic, till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both the city and the provinces became the servile property of a tyrant. The forms of the Constitution, which alleviated or disguised their abject slavery, were abolished by time and violence. The Italians alternately lamented the presence or the absence of the sovereigns whom they detested or despised, and the secession of five centuries inflicted the various evils of military license, capricious despotism, and elaborate oppression. During the same period, the barbarians had emerged from obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and Syria were introduced into the provinces as the servants, the allies, and at length the masters of the Romans, whom they insulted or protected. The hatred of the people was suppressed by fear. They respected the spirit and splendor of the martial chiefs who were invested with the honors of the empire, and the fate of Rome had long depended on the sword of those formidable strangers. The stern rickamer, who trampled on the ruins of Italy, had exercised the power without assuming the title of a king, and the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the royalty of a doerker and his barbaric successors. The king of Italy was not unworthy of the high station to which his valor and fortune had exalted him. His savage manners were polished by the habits of conversation, and he respected, though a conqueror and a barbarian, the institutions, and even the prejudices of his subjects. After an interval of seven years, a doerker restored the consulship of the West. For himself, he modestly or proudly declined the honor, which was still accepted by the emperors of the East. But the Curio chair was successfully filled by eleven of the most illustrious senators, and the list is adorned by the respectful name of Basilis, whose virtues claim the friendship and the grateful applause of Sidonius, his client. The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil administration of Italy was still exercised by the praetorian prefect and his subordinate officers. O doerker devolved on the Roman magistrates the odious and oppressive task of collecting the public revenue, but he reserved for himself the merit of seasonable and popular indulgence. Like the rest of the barbarians, he had been instructed in the Aryan heresy, but he revered the monastic and episcopal characters, and the silence of the Catholics attest the toleration which they enjoyed. The peace of the city required the interposition of his prefect Basilis in the choice of a Roman pontiff, the decree which restrained the clergy from alienating their lands was ultimately designed for the benefit of the people whose devotion would have been taxed to repair the dilapidations of the church. Italy was protected by the arms of its conqueror, and its frontiers were respected by the barbarians of Gaul and Germany, who had so long insulted the feeble race of theodosius. O doerker passed the Hadriatic to chastise the assassins of the Emperor Nepos and to acquire the maritime province of Dalmatia. He passed the Alps to rescue the remains of Noricum from Fava, or Phyletheus, king of the Rugeans, who had held his residence beyond the Danube. The king was vanquished in battle and led away a prisoner. A numerous colony of captives and subjects were transplanted into Italy. In Rome, after a long period of defeat and disgrace, might claim the triumph of her barbarian master. Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoerker, his kingdom exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation. Since the age of Tiberius, the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy, and it was a just subject of complaint that the life of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and waves. In the division and the decline of the Empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were withdrawn, the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence, and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, famine, and pestilence. St. Ambrose had deplored the ruin of a populist district, which had once adorned with the flourishing cities of Bologna, Modena, Regia, and Placentia. Pope Galatius was a subject of Odoerker, and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated. The plebeians of Rome, who were fed by the hand of their master, perished or disappeared as soon as his liberality was suppressed. The decline of the arts reduced the industrious mechanics to idleness and want, and the senators, who might support with patience the ruin of their country, bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury. One-third of those ample estates, to which the ruin of Italy is originally imputed, was extorted for the use of the conquerors. Injuries were aggravated by insults. The sense of actual sufferings was embittered by the fear of more dreadful evils, and as new lands were allotted to new swarms of barbarians, each senator was apprehensive, lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favorite villa or his most profitable farm. The least unfortunate were those who submitted, without a murmur to the power which it was impossible to resist. Since they desired to live, they owed some gratitude to the tyrant, who had spared their lives, and since he was the absolute master of their fortunes, the portion which he left must be accepted as his pure and voluntary gift. The distress of Italy was mitigated by the prudence and humanity of a doerker, who had bound himself, as the price of his elevation, to satisfy the demands of a licentious and turbulent multitude. The kings of the barbarians were frequently resisted, deposed or murdered by their native subjects, and the various bands of Italian mercenaries, who associated, under the banner of an elective general, claimed a larger privilege of freedom and rapine, a monarchy destitute of national union and hereditary right hastened to its dissolution. After a reign of fourteen years, a doerker was oppressed by the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, a hero, alike excellent in the arts of war and of government, who restored an age of peace and prosperity, and whose name still excites and deserves the attention of mankind. End of Chapter 36, Part 5