Chapter XLVI: The Huns and the Vandals (2)

The field, from a gentle slope, gradually assumed the character of a hill. As the advantages presented by such conformation were by no means slight, both parties made this slope their objective, the Huns with their auxiliaries seizing upon the right flank, the Romans and Visigoths the left, leaving the crest for future decision. The contest commences, Aëtius on the left with his Romans, with the Visigoths as his right support, and Sangiban leader of the Alans between--a piece of military precaution by which they doubly flanked this rather doubtful leader, since fighting is the more probable where flight is impossible.

The battle array of the Huns was on a different plan. Attila with his bravest held the centre. By this arrangement he had his personal safety in view, trusting that a stand amid the valiant of his race would insure himself, at least as king, from imminent danger. On the flanks there deployed in disorder multitudes of subject nations and people, chief among whom were the Ostrogoths’ forces under the leadership of the three brothers, Walamir, Theodomir, and Widemir, nobler than the very king himself whom they served, since resplendent with the hereditary glories of the Amal race. There might be seen also at the head of countless bands of the Gepidæ their most renowned king, Ardaric, who from his all too great loyalty to Attila was of his inner counsels. For Attila, well aware of his wisdom, prized him and Walamir of the Ostrogoths above all the pettier royalties--Walamir, the reticent, the affable, the guileless, and Ardaric the knightly and the loyal. Not without reason was it that Attila trusted them to match their Visigothic kindred.

As for the rest,--the kingly mob, if I am not irreverent,--and the chiefs of this nation and that, retainers rather than kings, they hung on each move of Attila’s; and did his eye beckon them, then, speechless, terrified, and trembling they stood at call, or at least were subservient to his every order. Yet king of kings though he was, was Attila solitary amid all, and over all solicitous.

The battle began over the possession of the ridge already mentioned. Leading his men on to secure this summit, Attila was in this forestalled by Torismund and Aëtius who, striving with all their might to reach the crest, first won it, and from their superior vantage ground easily dispersed the Huns. When Attila beheld his troops disorganised by this occurrence, he thought a harangue at this juncture would rally them and said:

“Victorious so often over so many nations, and masters of the world, if to-day you flinch not, I should think myself a fool to rouse you to courage by speech as if you were raw recruits. Consign such conduct to the juvenile general and the untrained militia. It as little befits me to deal in commonplace as you to listen. You are warriors, or nothing, and what to such is more satisfying than to carve out his vengeance by the sword? Ah! Revenge, nature’s first gift and sweetest soother of the soul! Let your feet then be swift to the attack since ever is the attacker the bolder! Heed not that mongrel mass of foreign speech, who but prove their fear by herding together. Look at them! Look! how even before our first charge they are swayed to and fro from fear; they make for hill and height; again, too late for regret, are back for safety to the battle-field. You need no telling as to the flimsiness of Roman defence, or how, not a wound, but a speck of dust merely lays them low. Be your old selves, and, while they are punctiliously peddling away at formations and shield-locking, charge with your unflinching courage, laugh at their ‘formations.’ On against Visigoth and down with the Alans! There lies speedy victory for us, and there the struggle lies. Sunder the sinew and the limbs collapse; hack the bones and the body falls!

“Huns of mine! Rouse your rage, and let your fury swell as of old! Craftily now, and by the sword-stroke then! Some death mid the enemy let the wounded man seek, and the scatheless fight till he sicken with the slaughter! The child of victory the dart will not smite, but fate deals the doomed one his death at the board. Nor did fortune deal the Hun such a roll of victories, if not to make him blithe over this one victory the more. Who unbared the Mœtic swamp, the secret of the centuries? Who weaponless vanquished the weaponed? These herded outcasts dare not confront the Hun! That this shall be my new field of victory, the long tale of my former assures me! Yea! and first am I whose shaft shall be sped! And doomed is he who fights not when Attila leads the fight.”

Spurred on by this dithyramb, headlong into fight they rush.

The juncture had its terrors, yet the king’s presence overcame the fear even of the coward. It was soon a case of man to man. It was a battle, savage, tangled, widespread, dogged. Antiquity has not its parallel. Such deeds are told of, that he who has not been privileged to witness them, though witnessing much that is marvellous, yet must ever lack the marvel of this. For, to believe tradition, a brook whose feeble current rolled through the plain already spoken of, swollen by the blood of the wounded and enlarged not as usual by rains but by an all too rare flood, was converted into a torrent by this sanguine contribution. Those, moreover, parched by loss of blood, who were driven to its bank, were reduced to drinking this gruesome draught--drinking by an enforced fate the very gushings of their own wounds.

Then, too, King Theodoric, riding up and down his ranks in cheering exhortation, fell from his steed and was trampled under foot by his own soldiery, terminating his career at an advanced age. Another tale has it that he fell by the javelin of Andagis, Attila’s lieutenant. Thus was accomplished the prediction of Attila’s augurs, which Attila had set down to Aëtius.

Next the Visigoths, leaving the Alans, fell on the Hunnish bands with fury, and Attila himself were as good as dead, had not his prudence led him to take refuge with his followers within his camp and its fortification of wagons. Weak as was this shelter, yet there, for protection of their lives, trooped the warriors whom but a little previously no ordinary obstacle could withstand.

Torismond, son of Theodoric, who, with Aëtius, had seized the hill and repelled the enemy from its summit, in the belief that he was rejoining his men, and misled by the darkness of the night, stepped inside the wagon enclosure of the Huns. While fighting bravely, he fell to the ground from his wounded horse, but though rescued by his men he was persuaded to give up further fighting. Aëtius, too, during the night’s confusion, wandered amid the enemy. Dreading some disaster to the Goths, he persisted in his search for the correct way, arriving at length at the allied camp, where under the protection of shields he passed the night.

At dawn a plain is seen heaped and covered with corpses, but the Huns do not venture to issue from their retreat, and so the confederates judge the victory theirs. They judged, too, that it was no common disaster which had induced the flight of Attila from the battle-field. Yet was his action not that of one who acknowledged defeat.

He showed his usual courage, for within his camp was the clash of arms, the brattle of the trumpet, ever threatening a sortie; as a lion might, when hard beset by the hunters, ramp and rave at entrance to his den, without venturing to emerge, yet nevertheless terrifying the neighbourhood by his roaring, so did the warlike king, secure in his retreat, supply a source of fear to his conquerors. These latter resolved to wear him out by a siege, since he lacked provisions, and as he could from his archers placed inside the barrier rain down showers of missiles on them should they attempt an assault by force. It is reported, however, that the king, haughty as ever even in a situation so desperate, had formed a pyre from saddlery, having resolved to throw himself into its flames should the enemy force his camp, that none might boast of having wounded him, or that the lord of so many nations should have ever been in an enemy’s power.

Whilst this siege bred delay, the Visigoths busied themselves in search for their king,--the father of Torismond,--wondering at his absence while success had crowned their arms. When after long search they found him, as is not infrequent among brave men, amid a dense heap of bodies, they honoured him in song, bearing away his body under the eyes of the enemy. Then it was possible to see crowds of Goths, with uncouth accent that rent the air in song, render the last and most sacred rites to the dead while all around was war. Tears there were, but such as a warrior merits. The death was ours, to be sure, but even to the Hun it was glorious, nor did Attila’s pride feel aught but humbled to see the Goths bear to burial with all its trappings the body of a mighty king. These Goths, while paying last and merited honours to Theodoric, at the same hour made over to his son the royal dignity, and amid clash of arms the brave and glorious warrior Torismond followed the funeral rites of his dear father as was fitting for a son.

These rites accomplished, urged by grief through his bereavement and impelled by natural valour, Torismond resolved to avenge the death of his father upon the remnant of the Huns. On this point he consulted the patrician Aëtius, his senior in years and of riper experience, and craved advice as to his action. He in his fear lest the thorough overthrow of the Huns might leave the Roman power at the mercy of the Goths, advised him as follows:

That he should retrace his steps to his own state, and firmly secure the throne now vacant by his father’s death, as otherwise his brothers might seize upon the royal treasure, and usurp the regal power over the Visigoths, in which case was no alternative left but a laborious contest made all the more squalid as being between relatives. Torismond listened to this advice not as to a piece of duplicity but as if it advanced his own interests, and leaving the Huns behind him, he returned to his district of Gaul. Thus does man’s weakness give way to suspicion, and amid momentous events lose the opportune hour.

In this most famous battle, waged between the bravest of races, report says that one hundred and sixty-five thousand men fell on both sides, not to mention fifteen thousand of the Gepids and Franks, who one night before the general engagement meeting by chance fell by mutual assault, the Franks siding with Romans, the Gepids with the Huns.

On Attila’s learning the departure of the Goths, he pursued such course as is customary in abnormal circumstances. He suspected a ruse, and so for some time longer lurked in camp. But when the enemy’s absence was conjoined to lengthened quiet, the spirit of a victor returned to him, gaiety gained the upper hand, and the musings of this mighty monarch resumed the path of their ancient destiny.

Meanwhile Torismond, who had succeeded to the throne, marched into Tolosa, and none was found to dispute his succession.[d]

THE INVASION OF ITALY: THE FOUNDATION OF VENICE

[Sidenote: [451-452 A.D.]]

Neither the spirit, nor the forces, nor the reputation of Attila were impaired by the failure of the Gallic expedition. In the ensuing spring, he repeated his demand of the princess Honoria and her patrimonial treasures. The demand was again rejected, or eluded; and the indignant lover immediately took the field, passed the Alps, invaded Italy, and besieged Aquileia with an innumerable host of barbarians. Those barbarians were unskilled in the methods of conducting a regular siege, which, even among the ancients, required some knowledge, or at least some practice, of the mechanical arts. But the labour of many thousand provincials and captives, whose lives were sacrificed without pity, might execute the most painful and dangerous work. The skill of the Roman artists might be corrupted to the destruction of their country. The walls of Aquileia were assaulted by a formidable train of battering-rams, movable turrets, and engines, that threw stones, darts, and fire; and the monarch of the Huns employed the forcible impulse of hope, fear, emulation, and interest to subvert the only barrier which delayed the conquest of Italy.

Aquileia was at that period one of the richest, the most populous, and the strongest of the maritime cities of the Adriatic coast. The Gothic auxiliaries, who appeared to have served under their native princes Alaric and Antala, communicated their intrepid spirit; and the citizens still remembered the glorious and successful resistance which their ancestors had opposed to a fierce, inexorable barbarian who disgraced the majesty of the Roman purple. Three months were consumed without effect in the siege of Aquileia; till the want of provisions and the clamours of his army compelled Attila to relinquish the enterprise, and reluctantly to issue his orders that the troops should strike their tents the next morning, and begin their retreat. But, as he rode round the walls, pensive, angry, and disappointed, he observed a stork preparing to leave her nest in one of the towers, and to fly with her infant family towards the country. He seized, with the ready penetration of a statesman, this trifling incident which chance had offered to superstition, and exclaimed, in a loud and cheerful tone, that such a domestic bird, so constantly attached to human society, would never have abandoned her ancient seats unless these towers had been devoted to impending ruin and solitude.

The favourable omen inspired an assurance of victory; the siege was renewed and prosecuted with fresh vigour; a large breach was made in the part of the wall from whence the stork had taken her flight; the Huns mounted to the assault with irresistible fury; and the succeeding generation could scarcely discover the ruins of Aquileia. After this dreadful chastisement, Attila pursued his march; and, as he passed, the cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Patavium (Padua) were reduced into heaps of stones and ashes. The inland towns, Vicentia (Vicenza), Verona, and Bergomum (Bergamo) were exposed to the rapacious cruelty of the Huns. Mediolanum and Ticinum submitted without resistance to the loss of their wealth; and applauded the unusual clemency which preserved from the flames the public as well as private buildings, and spared the lives of the captive multitude. The popular traditions of Comum, Turin, or Modena may justly be suspected; yet they concur with more authentic evidence to prove that Attila spread his ravages over the rich plains of modern Lombardy, which are divided by the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Apennine. When he took possession of the royal palace of Mediolanum, he was surprised and offended at the sight of a picture, which represented the Cæsars seated on their throne and the princes of Scythia prostrate at their feet. The revenge which Attila inflicted on this monument of Roman vanity was harmless and ingenious. He commanded a painter to reverse the figures and the attitudes; and the emperors were delineated, on the same canvas, approaching in a suppliant posture to empty their bags of tributary gold before the throne of the Scythian monarch. The spectators must have confessed the truth and propriety of the alteration; and were perhaps tempted to apply, on this singular occasion, the well-known fable of the dispute between the lion and the man.

It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila that the grass never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. Yet the savage destroyer undesignedly laid the foundation of a republic which revived, in the feudal state of Europe, the art and spirit of commercial industry. The celebrated name of Venice, or Venetia, was formerly diffused over a large and fertile province of Italy, from the confines of Pannonia to the river Addua, and from the Po to the Rætian and Julian Alps. Before the irruption of the barbarians, fifty Venetian cities flourished in peace and prosperity; Aquileia was placed in the most conspicuous station, but the ancient dignity of Patavium was supported by agriculture and manufactures; and the property of five hundred citizens who were entitled to the equestrian rank must have amounted, at the strictest computation, to 1,700,000 pounds. Many families of Aquileia, Patavium, and the adjacent towns, who fled from the sword of the Huns, found a safe though obscure refuge in the neighbouring islands.

At the extremity of the gulf, where the Adriatic feebly imitates the tides of the ocean, near a hundred small islands are separated by shallow water from the continent, and protected from the waves by several long slips of land, which admit the entrance of vessels through some secret and narrow channels. Till the middle of the fifth century, these remote and sequestered spots remained without cultivation, with few inhabitants, and almost without a name. But the manners of the Venetian fugitives, their arts and their government, were gradually formed by their new situation; and one of the epistles of Cassiodorus, which describes their condition about seventy years afterwards, may be considered as the primitive monument of the republic.

THE RETREAT OF ATTILA

[Sidenote: [452-453 A.D.]]

The Italians, who had long since renounced the exercise of arms, were surprised, after forty years’ peace, by the approach of a formidable barbarian, whom they abhorred as the enemy of their religion as well as of their republic. Amidst the general consternation, Aëtius alone was incapable of fear; but it was impossible that he should achieve, alone and unassisted, any military exploits worthy of his former renown. The barbarians, who had defended Gaul, refused to march to the relief of Italy; and the succours promised by the Eastern emperor were distant and doubtful. Since Aëtius, at the head of his domestic troops, still maintained the field, and harassed or retarded the march of Attila, he never showed himself more truly great than at the time when his conduct was blamed by an ignorant and ungrateful people.

If the mind of Valentinian had been susceptible of any generous sentiments, he would have chosen such a general for his example and his guide. But the timid grandson of Theodosius, instead of sharing the dangers escaped from the sound of war; and his hasty retreat from Ravenna to Rome, from an impregnable fortress to an open capital, betrayed his secret intention of abandoning Italy, as soon as the danger should approach his imperial person. This shameful abdication was suspended, however, by the spirit of doubt and delay, which commonly adheres to pusillanimous counsels and sometimes corrects their pernicious tendency. The Western emperor, with the senate and people of Rome, embraced the more salutary resolution of deprecating, by a solemn and suppliant embassy, the wrath of Attila. This important commission was accepted by Avienus, who, from his birth and riches, his consular dignity, the numerous train of his clients, and his personal abilities, held the first rank in the Roman senate.

The specious and artful character of Avienus was admirably qualified to conduct a negotiation either of public or private interest; his colleague Trigetius had exercised the prætorian prefecture of Italy; and Leo, bishop of Rome, consented to expose his life for the safety of his flock. The genius of Leo was exercised and displayed in the public misfortunes; and he has deserved the appellation of “great,” by the successful zeal with which he laboured to establish his opinions and his authority, under the venerable names of orthodox faith and ecclesiastical discipline. The Roman ambassadors were introduced to the tent of Attila, as he lay encamped at the place where the slow-winding Mincius is lost in the foaming waves of the lake Benacus, and trampled, with the Scythian cavalry, the farms of Catullus and Virgil. The barbarian monarch listened with favourable, and even respectful, attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense ransom, or dowry, of the princess Honoria. The state of his army might facilitate the treaty and hasten his retreat. Their martial spirit was relaxed by the wealth and indolence of a warm climate.

The shepherds of the north, whose ordinary food consisted of milk and raw flesh, indulged themselves too freely in the use of bread, of wine, and of meat prepared and seasoned by the arts of cookery; and the progress of disease revenged in some measure the injuries of the Italians. When Attila declared his resolution of carrying his victorious arms to the gates of Rome, he was admonished by his friends as well as by his enemies that Alaric had not long survived the conquest of the Eternal City. His mind, superior to real danger, was assaulted by imaginary terrors; nor could he escape the influence of superstition, which had so often been subservient to his designs. The pressing eloquence of Leo, his majestic aspect and sacerdotal robes, excited the veneration of Attila for the spiritual father of the Christians. The apparition of the two Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who menaced the barbarian with instant death if he rejected the prayer of their successor, is one of the noblest legends of ecclesiastical tradition. The safety of Rome might deserve the interposition of celestial beings; and some indulgence is due to a fable which has been represented by the pencil of Raphael and the chisel of Algardi.

Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return more dreadful and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria, were not delivered to his ambassadors within the term stipulated by the treaty. Yet, in the meantime, Attila relieved his tender anxiety by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour from the banquet to the nuptial bed. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures or his repose the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger as well as the death of the king, who had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst; and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. His body was solemnly exposed in the midst of the plain, under a silken pavilion, and the chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions, chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero glorious in his life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world. According to their national custom, the barbarians cut off a part of their hair, gashed their faces with unseemly wounds, and bewailed their valiant leader as he deserved, not with the tears of women but with the blood of warriors (453).

[Sidenote: [453-454 A.D.]]

The remains of Attila were enclosed within three coffins, of gold, of silver, and of iron, and privately buried in the night: the spoils of nations were thrown into his grave; the captives who had opened the ground were inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns who had indulged such excessive grief, feasted with dissolute and intemperate mirth about the recent sepulchre of their king. It was reported at Constantinople that, on the fortunate night on which he expired, Marcian beheld in a dream the bow of Attila broken asunder; and the report may be allowed to prove how seldom the image of that formidable barbarian was absent from the mind of a Roman emperor.

The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns established the fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed fabric. After his death the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of kings; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior; and the numerous sons whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased monarch divided and disputed, like a private inheritance, the sovereign command of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and resented the disgrace of this servile partition; and his subjects, the warlike Gepidæ, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three valiant brothers, encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of freedom and royalty.

In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of the river Netad, in Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidæ, the sword of the Goths, the arrows of the Huns, the Suevic infantry, the light arms of the Heruli, and the heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported each other; and the victory of Ardaric was accompanied with the slaughter of thirty thousand of his enemies. Ellac, the eldest son of Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad; his early valour had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian people whom he subdued, and his father, who loved the superior merit, would have envied the death of Ellac. His brother Dengisich, with an army of Huns, still formidable in their flight and ruin, maintained his ground above fifteen years on the banks of the Danube. The palace of Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Euxine, became the seat of a new power which was erected by Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ. The Pannonian conquests, from Vindobona to Sirmium, were occupied by the Ostrogoths; and the settlements of the tribes who had so bravely asserted their native freedom were irregularly distributed, according to the measure of their respective strength. Surrounded and oppressed by the multitude of his father’s slaves, the kingdom of Dengisich was confined to the circle of his wagons; his desperate courage urged him to invade the Eastern Empire; he fell in battle; and his head, ignominiously exposed in the Hippodrome, exhibited a grateful spectacle to the people of Constantinople.

Attila had fondly or superstitiously believed that Irnac, the youngest of his sons, was destined to perpetuate the glories of his race. The character of that prince, who attempted to moderate the rashness of his brother Dengisich, was more suitable to the declining condition of the Huns; and Irnac, with his subject hordes, retired into the heart of the Lesser Scythia. They were soon overwhelmed by a torrent of new barbarians, who followed the same road which their own ancestors had formerly discovered. The Geougen or Avars, whose residence is assigned by the Greek writers to the shores of the ocean, impelled the adjacent tribes; till at length the Igours of the north, issuing from the cold Siberian regions, which produce the most valuable furs, spread themselves over the desert, as far as the Borysthenes and the Caspian gates; and finally extinguished the empire of the Huns.

Such an event might contribute to the safety of the Eastern Empire, under the reign of a prince who conciliated the friendship without forfeiting the esteem of the barbarians. But the emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, who had reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage, abused this apparent security to undermine the foundations of his own throne by the murder of the patrician Aëtius. From the instinct of a base and jealous mind, he hated the man who was universally celebrated as the terror of the barbarians, and the support of the republic; and his new favourite, the eunuch Heraclius, awakened the emperor from the supine lethargy which might be disguised, during the life of Placidia, by the excuse of filial piety. The fame of Aëtius, his wealth and dignity, the numerous and martial train of barbarian followers, his powerful dependents, who filled the civil offices of the state, and the hopes of his son Gaudentius, who was already contracted to Eudoxia, the emperor’s daughter, had raised him above the rank of a subject.

The ambitious designs of which he was secretly accused, excited the fears, as well as the resentment, of Valentinian. Aëtius himself, supported by the consciousness of his merit, his services, and perhaps his innocence, seems to have maintained a haughty and indiscreet behaviour. The patrician offended his sovereign by a hostile declaration; he aggravated the offence, by compelling him to ratify with a solemn oath a treaty of reconciliation and alliance; he proclaimed his suspicions; he neglected his safety; and from a vain confidence that the enemy whom he despised was incapable even of a manly crime, he rashly ventured his person in the palace of Rome. Whilst he urged, perhaps with intemperate vehemence, the marriage of his son, Valentinian, drawing his sword, the first sword he had ever drawn, plunged it in the breast of a general who had saved his empire; his courtiers and eunuchs ambitiously struggled to imitate their master; and Aëtius, pierced with a hundred wounds, fell dead in the royal presence. Boethius, the prætorian prefect, was killed at the same moment; and before the event could be divulged, the principal friends of the patrician were summoned to the palace and separately murdered. The horrid deed, palliated by the specious names of justice and necessity, was immediately communicated by the emperor to his soldiers, his subjects, and his allies.

[Sidenote: [454-455 A.D.]]

The nations who were strangers or enemies to Aëtius generously deplored the unworthy fate of a hero; the barbarians who had been attached to his service dissembled their grief and resentment; and the public contempt which had been so long entertained for Valentinian, was at once converted into deep and universal abhorrence. Such sentiments seldom pervade the walls of a palace; yet the emperor was confounded by the honest reply of a Roman, whose approbation he had not disdained to solicit: “I am ignorant, sir, of your motives or provocations; I only know that you have acted like a man who cuts off his right hand with his left.”

The luxury of Rome seems to have attracted the long and frequent visits of Valentinian; who was consequently more despised at Rome than in any other part of his dominions. A republican spirit was insensibly revived in the senate, as their authority, and even their supplies, became necessary for the support of his feeble government. The stately demeanour of an hereditary monarch offended their pride; and the pleasures of Valentinian were injurious to the peace and honour of noble families. The birth of the empress Eudoxia was equal to his own, and her charms and tender affection deserved those testimonies of love which her inconstant husband dissipated in vague and unlawful amours.

Petronius Maximus, a wealthy senator of the Anician family, who had been twice consul, was possessed of a chaste and beautiful wife; her obstinate resistance served only to irritate the desires of Valentinian, and he resolved to accomplish them either by stratagem or force. Deep gaming was one of the vices of the court; the emperor, who by chance or contrivance had gained from Maximus a considerable sum, uncourteously exacted his ring as a security for the debt; and sent it by a trusty messenger to his wife, with an order in her husband’s name that she should immediately attend the empress Eudoxia. The unsuspecting wife of Maximus was conveyed in her litter to the imperial palace; the emissaries of her impatient lover conducted her to a remote and silent bedchamber; and Valentinian violated, without remorse, the laws of hospitality. Her tears when she returned home, her deep affliction, and her bitter reproaches against her husband, whom she considered as the accomplice of his own shame, excited Maximus to a just revenge; the desire of revenge was stimulated by ambition; and he might reasonably aspire by the free suffrage of the Roman senate to the throne of a detested and despicable rival. Valentinian, who supposed that every human breast was devoid, like his own, of friendship and gratitude, had imprudently admitted among his guards several domestics and followers of Aëtius. Two of these, of barbarian race, were persuaded to execute a sacred and honourable duty by punishing with death the assassin of their patron; and their intrepid courage did not long expect a favourable moment. Whilst Valentinian amused himself in the Field of Mars with the spectacle of some military sports, they suddenly rushed upon him with drawn weapons, despatched the guilty Heraclius, and stabbed the emperor to the heart, without the least opposition from his numerous train, who seemed to rejoice in the tyrant’s death.

Such was the fate of Valentinian III, the last Roman emperor of the family of Theodosius. He faithfully imitated the hereditary weakness of his cousin and his two uncles, without inheriting the gentleness, the purity, the innocence, which alleviate in their characters the want of spirit and ability. Valentinian was less excusable, since he had passions without virtues; even his religion was questionable; and though he never deviated into the paths of heresy, he scandalised the pious Christians by his attachment to the profane arts of magic and divination.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[66] [This story of the feud between Boniface and Aëtius was the subject of a severe onslaught by Freeman, who calls it “the Procopian legend.” Hodgkin, however, thinks that it “has still a reasonable claim to be accepted as history.” _Italy and her Invaders_, Vol. I, pp. 889-898.]

[67] [See Procopius _de Bell. Vandal._ I. 1. c. 4, p. 186. Valentinian published several humane laws, to relieve the distress of his Numidian and Mauretanian subjects; he discharged them, in a great measure, from the payment of their debts, reduced their tribute to one-eighth, and gave them a right of appeal from the provincial magistrates to the prefect of Rome.]

[68] [The place which we now call Châlons was probably under the Romans named Duro-Catalaunum. It was the chief place of the Catalauni, a tribe who dwelt next to the Suessiones. In Roman miles (10 of which are about equal to 9 English), and by the Roman roads, Châlons was 170 miles distant from Metz, and 51 from Troyes.[c]]