Chapter XXV: Part III: , European Nations; of which only 1 volume, Greeks, has (17)

After the death of Valentinian, Maximus was proclaimed emperor; but as
he wished to compel Eudoxia, Valentinian's widow, to marry him, she
called over Genseric from Africa, who took and pillaged Rome, and
Maximus perished after a reign of three months, 455. He was succeeded
by M. Avitus, who ascended the throne at Arles; and he again was soon
deposed by Ricimer, 456, who, just before, had defeated the fleet of
the Vandals. Ricimer now placed upon the throne, first Julianus
Majorianus, April 1, 457; but he, having distinguished himself in the
wars against the Vandals, 461, was set aside, and Libius Severus put
in his place, who, however, died in 465, probably of poison. His
death was followed by an interregnum of two years, during which
Ricimer ruled, though without the title of emperor. At length the
patrician Anthemius, then at Constantinople (where they never gave up
their pretensions to the right of naming or confirming the sovereigns
of the west), was, though not without the consent of the powerful
Ricimer, named emperor of the west, April 12, 467, by the emperor Leo.
But differences having arisen between him and Ricimer, the latter
retired to Milan, 469, and commenced a war, in which he took and
pillaged Rome, and Anthemius was slain. Ricimer himself followed soon
after, ! Aug. 18, 472. Upon this, Anicius Olybrius, son-in-law of
Valentinian III. was proclaimed Augustus, but dying in three
months, Oct. 472, Glycerius assumed the purple at Ravenna, without,
however, being acknowledged at Constantinople, where they in
preference named Julius Nepos Augustus. The latter, in 474, having
expelled Glycerius, became also in his turn expelled by his own
general Orestes, 475, who gave the diadem to his son Romulus
Momyllus, who, as the last in the succession of Augusti, acquired
the surname of Augustulus. In 476, however, Odoacer, the leader of
the Germans in the Roman pay at Rome, sent him, after the execution
of Orestes, into captivity, and allowed him a pension. Odoacer now
remained master of Italy till the year 492, when the Ostrogoths,
under their king Theodoric, founded there a new empire.

25. Thus fell the Roman empire of the west, while that of the east, pressed on every side, and in a situation almost similar, endured a thousand years, notwithstanding its intestine broils, which would alone have sufficed to destroy any other, and the hosts of barbarians who attacked it during the middle ages. The impregnable situation of its capital, which usually decides the fate of such kingdoms, joined to its despotism, which is not unfrequently the main support of a kingdom in its decline, can alone, in some measure, explain a phenomenon which has no equal in the history of the world.