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THE loss or desolation of the provinces from the Ocean to
the Alps impaired the glory and greatness of Rome: her
internal prosperity was irretrievably destroyed by the
separation of Africa. The rapacious Vandals confiscated the
patrimonial estates of the senators, and intercepted the
regular subsidies which relieved the poverty and encouraged
the idleness of the plebeians. The distress of the Romans
was soon aggravated by an unexpected attack; and the
province, so long cultivated for their use by industrious
and obedient subjects, was armed against them by an
ambitious barbarian. The Vandals and Alani, who followed the
successful standard of Genseric, had acquired a rich and
fertile territory, which stretched along the coast above
ninety days' journey from Tangier to Tripoli; but their
narrow limits were pressed and confined, on either side, by
the sandy desert and the Mediterranean. The discovery and
conquest of the Black nations, that might dwell beneath the
torrid zone, could not tempt the rational ambition of
Genseric; but he cast his eyes towards the sea; he resolved
to create a naval power, and his bold resolution was
executed with steady and active perseverance. The woods of
Mount Atlas afforded an inexhaustible nursery of timber; his
new subjects were skilled in the arts of navigation and
shipbuilding; he animated his daring Vandals to embrace a
mode of warfare which would render every maritime country
accessible to their arms; the Moors and Africans were
allured by the hopes of plunder; and, after an interval of
six centuries, the fleets that issued from the port of
Carthage again claimed the empire of the Mediterranean. The
success of the Vandals, the conquest of Sicily, the sack of
Palermo, and the frequent descents on the coast of Lucania,
awakened and alarmed the mother of Valentinian and the
sister of Theodosius. Alliances were formed; and armaments,
expensive and ineffectual, were prepared for the destruction
of the common enemy, who reserved his courage to encounter
those dangers which his policy could not prevent or elude.
The designs of the Roman government were repeatedly baffled
by his artful delays, ambiguous promises, and apparent
concessions; and the interposition of his formidable
confederate, the king of the Huns, recalled the emperors
from the conquest of Africa to the care of their domestic
safety. The revolutions of the palace, which left the
Western empire without a defender and without a lawful
prince, dispelled the apprehensions and stimulated the
avarice of Genseric. He immediately equipped a numerous
fleet of Vandals and Moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of
the 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(1) was
often alleged as a rare example of human felicity. His birth
was noble and illustrious, since he descended from the
Anician family; his dignity was supported by an adequate
patrimony in land and money; and these advantages of fortune
were accompanied with liberal arts and decent manners, which
adorn or imitate the inestimable gifts of genius and virtue.
The luxury of his palace and table was hospitable and
elegant. Whenever Maximus appeared in public, he was
surrounded by a train of grateful and obsequious clients;(2)
and it is possible that among these clients he might deserve
and possess some real friend. His merit was rewarded by the
favour of the prince and senate; he thrice exercised the
office of Praetorian praefect of Italy; he was twice
invested with the consulship, and he obtained the rank of
patrician. These civil honours were not incompatible with
the enjoyment of leisure and tranquillity; his hours,
according to the demands of pleasure or reason, were
accurately, distributed by a water-clock; and this avarice
of time may be allowed to prove the sense which Maximus
entertained of his own happiness. The injury which he
received from the emperor Valentinian appears to excuse the
most bloody revenge. Yet a philosopher might have reflected,
that, if the resistance of his wife had been sincere, her
chastity was still inviolate, and that it could never be
restored if she had consented tot the will of the adulterer.
A patriot would have hesitated before he plunged himself and
his country into those inevitable calamities which must
follow the extinction of the royal house of Theodosius.
The imprudent Maximus disregarded these salutary
considerations: he gratified his resentment and ambition; he
saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet; and he
heard himself saluted Emperor by the unanimous voice of the
senate and people. But the day of his inauguration was the
last day of his happiness. He was imprisoned (such is the
lively expression of Sidonius) in the palace; and after
passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he had attained
the summit of his wishes, and aspired only to descend from
the dangerous elevation. Oppressed by the weight of the
diadem, he communicated his anxious thoughts to his friend
and quaestor Fulgentius; and when he looked back with
unavailing regret on the secure pleasures of his former
life, the emperor exclaimed, "O fortunate Damocles, thy
reign began and ended with the same dinner;" a well-known
allusion, which Fulgentius afterwards repeated as an
instructive lesson for princes and subjects.(3)
The reign of Maximus continued about three months. His
hours, of which he had lost the command, were disturbed by
remorse, or guilt, or terror; and his throne was shaken by
the seditions of the soldiers, the people, and the
confederate barbarians. The marriage of his son Palladius
with the eldest daughter of the late emperor might tend to
establish the hereditary succession of his family; but the
violence which he offered to the empress Eudoxia could
proceed only from the blind impulse of lust or revenge. His
own wife, the cause of these tragic events, had been
seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian
was compelled to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her
real grief, and to submit to the embraces of a presumptuous
usurper, whom she suspected as the assassin of her deceased
husband. These suspicions were soon justified by the
indiscreet confession of Maximus himself; and he wantonly
provoked the hatred of his reluctant bride, who was still
conscious that she descended from a line of emperors. From
the East, however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any
effectual assistance: her father and her aunt Pulcheria were
dead; her mother languished at Jerusalem in disgrace and
exile; and the sceptre of Constantinople was in the hands of
a stranger. She directed her eyes towards Carthage; secretly
implored the aid of the king of the Vandals; and persuaded
Genseric to improve the fair opportunity of disguising his
rapacious designs by the specious names of honour, justice,
and compassion.(4) Whatever abilities Maximus might have
shown in a subordinate station, he was found incapable of
administering an empire: and though he might easily have
been informed of the naval preparations which were made on
the opposite shores of Africa, he expected with supine
indifference the approach of the enemy, without adopting any
measures of defence, of negotiation, or of a timely retreat.
When the Vandals disembarked at the mouth of the Tiber, the
emperor was suddenly roused from his lethargy by the
clamours of a trembling and exasperated multitude. The only
hope which presented itself to his astonished mind was that
of a precipitate flight, and he exhorted the senators to
imitate the example of their prince. But no sooner did
Maximus appear in the streets than he was assaulted by a
shower of stones: a Roman or a Burgundian soldier claimed
the honour of the first wound; his mangled body was
ignominiously cast into the Tiber; the Roman people rejoiced
in the punishment which they had inflicted on the author of
the public calamities; and the domestics of Eudoxia
signalised their zeal in the service of their mistress.(5)
On the third day after the tumult, Genseric boldly advanced
from the port of Ostia to the gates of the defenceless city.
Instead of a sally of the Roman youth, there issued from the
gates an unarmed and venerable procession of the bishop at
the head of his clergy. (6) The fearless spirit of Leo, his
authority and eloquence, again mitigated the fierceness of a
barbarian conqueror: the king of the Vandals promised to
spare the unresisting multitude, to protect the buildings
from fire, and to exempt the captives from torture; and
although such orders were neither seriously given, nor
strictly obeyed, the mediation of Leo was glorious to
himself, and in some degree beneficial to his country. But
Rome and its inhabitants were delivered to the
licentiousness of the Vandals and Moors, whose blind
passions revenged the injuries of Carthage. The pillage
lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained
of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure,
was diligently transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among
the spoils, the splendid relics of two temples, or rather of
two religions, exhibited a memorable example of the
vicissitudes of human and divine things. Since the abolition
of Paganism, the Capitol had been violated and abandoned;
yet the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected,
and the curious roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the
rapacious hands of Genseric. (7) The holy instruments of the
Jewish worship,(8) 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 an hundred pounds
weight, is an evidence of the damage which he attempted to
repair. In the forty-five years that had elapsed since the
Gothic invasion, the pomp and luxury of Rome were in some
measure restored; and it was difficult either to escape, or
to satisfy, the avarice of a conqueror who possessed leisure
to collect, and ships to transport, the wealth of the
capital. The Imperial ornaments of the palace, the
magnificent furniture and wardrobe, the sideboards of massy
plate, were accumulated with disorderly rapine: the gold and
silver amounted to several thousand talents; yet even the
brass and copper were laboriously removed. Eudoxia herself,
who advanced to meet her friend and deliverer, soon bewailed
the imprudence of her own conduct. She was rudely stripped
of her jewels; and the unfortunate empress, with her two
daughters, the only surviving remains of the great
Theodosius, was compelled, as a captive, to follow the
haughty Vandal, who immediately hoisted sail, and returned
with a prosperous navigation to the port of Carthage.(9) Many
thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or
agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the
fleet of Genseric; and their distress was aggravated by the
unfeeling barbarians, who, in the division of the booty,
separated the wives from their husbands, and the children
from their parents. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of
Carthage,(10) was their only consolation and support. He
generously sold the gold and silver plate of the church to
purchase the freedom of some, to alleviate the slavery of
others, and to assist the wants and infirmities of a captive
multitude, whose health was impaired by the hardships which
they had suffered in 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.(11)
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
Alemanni and the Franks advanced from the Rhine to the
Seine; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate more
extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus
relieved himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of
these distant cares; he silenced the solicitations of his
friends, listened to the voice of fame, and promoted a
stranger to the general command of the forces in Gaul.
Avitus,(12) the stranger whose merit was so nobly rewarded,
descended from a wealthy and honourable family in the
diocese of Auvergne. The convulsions of the times urged him
to embrace, with the same ardour, 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 praefect of Gaul. Either the merit of
Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was desirous of
repose, since he calmly retired to an estate which he
possessed in the neighbourhood of Clermont. A copious
stream, issuing from the mountain, and falling headlong in
many a loud and foaming cascade, discharged its waters into
a lake about two miles in length, and the villa was
pleasantly seated on the margin of the lake. The baths, the
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.(13) In this retreat, where Avitus amused his leisure
with books, rural sports, the practice of husbandry, and the
society of his friends,(14) he received the Imperial diploma,
which constituted him master-general of the cavalry and
infantry of Gaul. He assumed the military command; the
barbarians suspended their fury; and whatever means he might
employ, whatever concessions he might be forced to make, the
people enjoyed the benefits of actual tranquillity. But the
fate of Gaul depended on the Visigoths; and the Roman
general, less attentive to his dignity than to the public
interest, did not disdain to visit Toulouse in the character
of an ambassador. He was received with courteous hospitality
by Theodoric, the king of the Goths; but while Avitus laid
the foundations of a solid alliance with that powerful
nation, he was astonished by the intelligence that the
emperor Maximus was slain, and that Rome had been pillaged
by the Vandals. A vacant throne, which he might ascend
without guilt or danger, tempted his ambition:(15) and the
Visigoths were easily persuaded to support his claim by
their irresistible suffrage. They loved the person of
Avitus; they respected his virtues; and they were not
insensible of the advantage, as well as 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. Avitus, after a decent resistance,
accepted the Imperial diadem from the representatives of
Gaul; and his election was ratified by the acclamations of
the barbarians and provincials. The formal consent of
Marcian, emperor of the East, was solicited and obtained;
but the senate, Rome, and Italy, though humbled by their
recent calamities, submitted with a secret murmur to the
presumption of the Gallic usurper.
Theodoric, to whom Avitis was indebted for the purple, had
acquired the Gothic sceptre by the murder of his elder
brother Torismond; and he justified this atrocious deed by
the design which his predecessor had formed of violating his
alliance with the empire. (16) 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 : (17) "By the majesty of his appearance,
Theodoric would command the respect of those who are
ignorant of his merit; and although he is born a prince, his
merit would dignify a private station. He is of a middle
stature, his body appears rather plump than fat, and in his
well-proportioned limbs agility is united with muscular
strength. (18) If you examine his countenance, you will
distinguish a high forehead, large shaggy eyebrows, an
aquiline nose, thin lips, a regular set of white teeth, and
a fair complexion, that blushes more frequently from modesty
than from anger. The ordinary distribution of his time, as
far as it is exposed to the public view, may be concisely
represented. Before daybreak he repairs, with a small train,
to his domestic chapel, where the service is performed by
the Arian clergy; but those who presume to interpret his
secret sentiments consider this assiduous devotion as the
effect of habit and policy. The rest of the morning is
employed in the administration of his kingdom. His chair is
surrounded by some military officers of decent aspect and
behaviour: 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
favourite youth; but when the game is marked, he bends it
with his own hand, and seldom misses the object of his aim:
as a king, he disdains to bear arms in such ignoble warfare;
but as a soldier he would blush to accept any military
service which he could perform himself. On common days his
dinner is not different from the repast of a private
citizen; but every Saturday many honourable guests are
invited to the royal table, which, on these occasions, is
served with the elegance of Greece, the plenty of Gaul, and
the order and diligence of Italy. (19) The gold or silver
plate is less remarkable for its weight than for the
brightness and curious workmanship: the taste is gratified
without the help of foreign and costly luxury; the size and
number of the cups of wine are regulated with a strict
regard to the laws of temperance; and the respectful silence
that prevails is interrupted only by grave and instructive
conversation. After dinner Theodoric sometimes indulges
himself in a short slumber; and as soon as he wakes he calls
for the dice and tables, encourages his friends to forget
the royal majesty, and is delighted when they freely express
the passions which are excited by the incidents of play. At
this game, which he loves as the image of war, he
alternately displays his eagerness, his skill, his patience,
and his cheerful temper. If he loses, he laughs: he is
modest and silent if he wins. Yet, notwithstanding this
seeming indifference, his courtiers choose to solicit any
favour in the moments of victory; and I myself, in my
applications to the king, have derived some benefit from my
losses.(20) About the ninth hour (three o'clock) the tide of
business again returns, and flows incessantly till after
sunset, when the signal of the royal supper dismisses the
weary crowd of suppliants and pleaders. At the supper, a
more familiar repast, buffoons and pantomimes are sometimes
introduced, to divert, not to offend, the company by their
ridiculous wit: but female singers, and the soft effeminate
modes of music, are severely banished, and such martial
tunes as animate the soul to deeds of valour are alone
grateful to the ear of Theodoric. He retires from table; and
the nocturnal guards are immediately posted at the entrance
of the treasury, the palace, and the private apartments."
When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume
the purple, he offered his person and his forces as a
faithful soldier of the republic. (21) The exploits of
Theodoric soon convinced the world that he had not
degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After
the establishment of the Goths in Aquitain, and the passage
of the Vandals into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their
kingdom in Gallicia, aspired to the conquest of Spain, and
threatened to extinguish the feeble remains of the Roman
dominion. The provincials of Carthagena and Tarragona,
afflicted by an hostile invasion, represented their injuries
and their apprehensions. Count Fronto was despatched, in the
name of the emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of
peace and alliance; and Theodoric interposed his weighty
mediation to declare that, unless his brother-in-law, the
king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be obliged
to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome. "Tell him,"
replied the haughty Rechiarius, "that I despise his
friendship and his arms; but that I shall soon try whether
he will dare to expect my arrival under the walls of
Toulouse." Such a challenge urged Theodoric to prevent the
bold designs of his enemy: he passed the Pyrenees at the
head of the Visigoths; the Franks and Burgundians served
under his standard; and though he professed himself the
dutiful servant of Avitus, he privately stipulated, for
himself and his successors, the absolute possession of his
Spanish conquests. The two armies, or rather the two
nations, encountered each other on the banks of the river
Urbicus, about twelve miles from Astorga; and the decisive
victory of the Goths appeared for a while to have extirpated
the name and kingdom of the Suevi. From the field of battle
Theodoric advanced to Braga, their metropolis, which still
retained the splendid vestiges of its ancient commerce and
dignity.(22) His entrance was not polluted with blood; and
the Goths respected the chastity of their female captives,
more especially of the consecrated virgins: but the greatest
part of the clergy and people were made slaves, and even the
churches and altars were confounded in the universal
pillage. The unfortunate king of the Suevi had escaped to
one of the ports of the ocean; but the obstinacy of the
winds opposed his flight: he was delivered to his implacable
rival; and Rechiarius, who neither desired nor expected
mercy, received, with manly constancy, the death which he
would probably have inflicted. After this bloody sacrifice
to policy or resentment, Theodoric carried his victorious
arms as far as Merida, the principal town of Lusitania,
without meeting any resistance, except from the miraculous
powers of St. Eulalia; but he was stopped in the full career
of success, and recalled from Spain before he could provide
for the security of his conquests. In his retreat towards
the Pyrenees he revenged his disappointment on the country
through which he passed; and, in the sack of Polentia 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 honour and interest of Theodoric were
deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend whom he had
seated on the throne of the Western empire.(23)
The pressing solicitations of the senate and people
persuaded the emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome,
and to accept the consulship for the ensuing year. On the
first day of January, his son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris,
celebrated his praises in a panegyric of six hundred verses;
but this composition, though it was rewarded with a brass
statue,(24) 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 pre-eminence of toil and
danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury:
age had not extinguished his amorous inclinations; and he is
accused of insulting, with indiscreet and ungenerous
raillery, the husbands whose wives he had seduced or
violated.(25) But the Romans were not inclined either to
excuse his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several
parts of the empire became every day more alienated from
each other; and the stranger of Gaul was the object of
popular hatred and contempt. The senate asserted their
legitimate claim in the election of an emperor; and their
authority, which had been originally derived from the old
constitution, was again fortified by the actual weakness of
a declining monarchy. Yet even such a monarchy might have
resisted the votes of an unarmed senate, if their discontent
had not been supported, or perhaps inflamed, by Count
Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the barbarian
troops who formed the military defence of Italy. The
daughter of Wallia, king of the Visigoths, was the mother of
Ricimer; but he was descended, on the father's side, from
the nation of the Suevi:(26) 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;
(27) and, after destroying on the coast of Corsica a fleet of
Vandals, which consisted of sixty galleys, Ricimer returned
in triumph with the appellation of the 'Deliverer of Italy'.
He chose that moment to signify to Avitus that his reign was
at an end; and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his
Gothic allies, was compelled, after a short and unavailing
struggle, to abdicate the purple. By the clemency, however,
or the contempt of Ricimer,(28) he was permitted to descend
from the throne to the more desirable station of bishop of
Placentia: but the resentment of the senate was still
unsatisfied; and their inflexible severity pronounced the
sentence of his death. He fled towards the Alps, with the
humble hope, not of arming the Visigoths in his cause, but
of securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of
Julian, one of the tutelar saints of Auvergne.(29) Disease,
or the hand of the executioner, arrested him on the road;
yet his remains were decently transported to Brivas, or
Brioude, in his native province, and he reposed at the feet
of his holy patron. (30) Avitus left only one daughter, the
wife of Sidonius Apollinaris, who inherited the patrimony of
his father-in-law; lamenting, at the same time, the
disappointment of his public and private expectations. His
resentment prompted him to join, or at least to countenance,
the measures of a rebellious faction in Gaul; and the poet
had contracted some guilt, which it was incumbent on him to
expiate by a new tribute of flattery to the succeeding
emperor.(31)
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 honour of the human
species. The emperor Majorian has deserved the praises of
his contemporaries and of posterity; and these praises may
be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and
disinterested historian: "That he was gentle to his
subjects; that he was terrible to his enemies; and that he
excelled in every virtue all his predecessors who had
reigned over the Romans."(32) 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.(33) Majorian derived
his name from his maternal grandfather, who, in the reign of
the great Theodosius, had commanded the troops of the
Illyrian frontier. He gave his daughter in marriage to the
father of Majorian, a respectable officer, who administered
the revenues of Gaul with skill and integrity; and
generously preferred the friendship of 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, intrepid courage, premature
wisdom, and unbounded liberality in 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. (34)
Majorian, after the death of Aetius, was recalled and
promoted: and his intimate connection with Count Ricimer was
the immediate step by which he ascended the throne of the
Western empire. During the vacancy that succeeded the
abdication of Avitus, the ambitious barbarian, whose birth
excluded him from the Imperial dignity, governed Italy, with
the title of Patrician; resigned to his friend the
conspicuous station of master-general of the cavalry and
infantry, and, after an interval of some months, consented
to the unanimous wish of the Romans, whose favour Majorian
had solicited by a recent victory over the Alemanni.(35) 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.(36) May the
propitious Deity direct and prosper the counsels and events
of my administration to your advantage and to the public
welfare ! For my own part I did not aspire, I have
submitted, to reign; nor should I have discharged the
obligations of a citizen if I had refused, with base and
selfish ingratitude, to support the weight of those labours
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 vigour, and that virtue shall become not only
innocent but meritorious. Let none, except the authors
themselves, be apprehensive of 'delations',(37) which, as a
subject, I have always condemned, and, as a prince, will
severely punish. Our own vigilance, and that of our father,
the patrician Ricimer, shall regulate all military affairs
and provide for the safety of the Roman world, which we have
saved from foreign and domestic enemies. (38) You now
understand the maxims of my government: you may confide in
the faithful love and sincere assurances of a prince who has
formerly been the companion of your life and dangers, who
still glories in the name of senator, and who is anxious
that you should never repent of the judgment which you have
pronounced in his favour." The emperor, who, amidst the
ruins of the Roman world, revived the ancient language of
law and liberty, which Trajan would not have disclaimed,
must have derived those generous sentiments from his own
heart, since they were not suggested to his imitation by the
customs of his age or the example of his predecessors.(39)
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
sympathised in their distress, who had studied the causes of
the decline of the empire, and who was capable of applying
(as far as such reformation was practicable) judicious and
effectual remedies to the public disorders. (40) His
regulations concerning the finances manifestly tended to
remove, or at least to mitigate, the most intolerable
grievances I. From the first hour of his reign he was
solicitous (I translate his own words) to relieve the weary
fortunes of the provincials, oppressed by the accumulated
weight of indictions and superindictions.(41) With this view,
he granted an universal amnesty, a final and absolute
discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts which,
under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from
the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious,
and unprofitable claims, improved and purified the sources
of the public revenue; and the subject, who could now look
back without despair, might labour with hope and gratitude
for himself and for his country. II. In the assessment and
collection of taxes Majorian restored the ordinary
jurisdiction of the provincial magistrates, and suppressed
the extraordinary commissions which had been introduced in
the name of the emperor himself or of the Praetorian
praefects. The favourite servants who obtained such
irregular powers were insolent in their behaviour and
arbitrary in their demands: they affected to despise the
subordinate tribunals, and they were discontented if their
fees and profits did not twice exceed the sum which they
condescended to pay into the treasury. One instance of their
extortion would appear incredible were it not authenticated
by the legislator himself. They exacted the whole payment in
gold: but they refused the current coin of the empire, and
would accept only such ancient pieces as were stamped with
the names of Faustina or the Antonines. The subject who was
unprovided with these curious medals had recourse to the
expedient of compounding with their rapacious demands; or,
if he succeeded in the research, his imposition was doubled
according to the weight and value of the money of former
times. (42) III. "The municipal corporations (says the
emperor), the lesser senates (so antiquity has justly styled
them), deserve to be considered as the heart of the cities
and the sinews of the republic. And yet so low are they now
reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the venality of
collectors, that many of their members, renouncing their
dignity and their country, have taken refuge in distant and
obscure exile." He urges, and even compels, their return to
their respective cities; but he removes the grievance which
had forced them to desert the exercise of their municipal
functions. They are directed, under the authority of the
provincial magistrates, to resume their office of levying
the tribute; but, instead of being made responsible for the
whole sum assessed on their district, they are only required
to produce a regular account of the payments which they have
actually received, and of the defaulters who are still
indebted to the public. IV. But Majorian was not ignorant
that these Corporate bodies were too much inclined to
retaliate the injustice and oppression which they had
suffered, and he therefore revives the useful office of the
defenders of cities. He exhorts the people to elect, in a
full and free assembly, some man of discretion and integrity
who would dare to assert their privileges, to represent
their grievances, to protect the poor from the tyranny of
the rich, and to inform the emperor of the abuses that were
committed under the sanction of his name and authority.
The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of
ancient Rome is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths
and Vandals for the mischief which they had neither leisure,
nor power, nor perhaps inclination, to perpetrate. The
tempest of war might strike some lofty turrets to the
ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations
of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently,
during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of
interest, that afterwards operated without shame or control,
were severely checked by the taste and spirit of the emperor
Majorian. The decay of the city had gradually impaired the
value of the public works. The circus and theatres might
still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of the
people: and 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 repose was seldom disturbed either by study
or business. The monuments of consular or Imperial greatness
were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the capital;
they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of
materials, cheaper, and more convenient, than the distant
quarry. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the
easy magistrates of Rome which stated the want of stones or
bricks for some necessary service: the fairest forms of
architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry
or pretended repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who
converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with
sacrilegious hands, the labours of their ancestor. Majorian,
who had often sighed over the desolation of the city,
applied a severe remedy to the growing evil.(43) He reserved
to the prince and senate the sole cognisance of the extreme
cases which might justify the destruction of an ancient
edifice; imposed a fine of fifty pounds of gold (two
thousand pounds sterling) on every magistrate who should
presume to grant such illegal and scandalous licence; and
threatened to chastise the criminal obedience of their
subordinate officers by a severe whipping and the amputation
of both their hands. In the last instance the legislator
might seem to forget the proportion of guilt and punishment;
but his zeal arose from a generous principle, and Majorian
was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages in which
he would have desired and deserved to live. The emperor
conceived that it was his interest to increase the number of
his subjects; that it was his duty to guard the purity of
the marriage-bed: but the means which he employed to
accomplish these salutary purposes are of an ambiguous, and
perhaps exceptionable, kind. The pious maids who consecrated
their virginity to Christ were restrained from taking the
veil till they had reached their fortieth year. Widows under
that age were compelled to form a second alliance within the
term of five years, by the forfeiture of half their wealth
to their nearest relations or to the state. Unequal
marriages were condemned or annulled. The punishment of
confiscation and exile was deemed so inadequate to the guilt
of adultery, that, if the criminal returned to Italy, he
might, by the express declaration of Majorian, be slain with
impunity.(44)
While the emperor Majorian assiduously laboured to restore
the happiness and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the
arms of Genseric, from his character and situation their
most formidable enemy. A fleet of Vandals and Moors landed
at the mouth of the Liris or Garigliano; but the Imperial
troops surprised and attacked the disorderly barbarians, who
were encumbered with the spoils of Campania, they were
chased with slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the
king's brother-in-law, was found in the number of the slain.
(45) Such vigilance might announce the character of the new
reign, but the strictest vigilance and the most numerous
forces were insufficient to protect the long-extended coast
of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public
opinion had imposed a nobler and more arduous task on the
genius of Majorian. Rome expected from him alone the
restitution of Africa, and the design which he formed of
attacking the Vandals in their new settlements was the
result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor
could have infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy;
if he could have revived in the field of Mars the manly
exercises in which he had always surpassed his equals; he
might have marched against Genseric at the head of a Roman
army. Such a reformation of national manners might be
embraced by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune
of those princes who laboriously sustain a declining
monarchy, that, to obtain some immediate advantage, or to
avert some impending danger, they are forced to countenance,
and even to multiply, the most pernicious abuses. Majorian,
like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the
disgraceful expedient of substituting barbarian auxiliaries
in the place of his unwarlike subjects: and his superior
abilities could only be displayed in the vigour and
dexterity with which he wielded a dangerous instrument, so
apt to recoil on the hand that used it. Besides the
confederates who were already engaged in the service of the
empire, the fame of his liberality and valour attracted the
nations of the Danube, the Borysthenes, and perhaps of the
Tanais. Many thousands of the bravest subjects of Attila,
the Gepidae, the Ostrogoths, the Rugians, the Burgundians,
the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the plains of Liguria,
and their formidable strength was balanced by their mutual
animosities.(46) They passed the Alps in a severe winter. The
emperor led the way on foot and in complete armour, sounding
with his long staff the depth of the ice or snow, and
encouraging the Scythians, who complained of the extreme
cold, by the cheerful assurance that they should be
satisfied with the heat of Africa. The citizens of Lyons had
presumed to shut their gates: they soon implored, and
experienced, the clemency of Majorian. He vanquished
Theodoric in the field, and admitted to his friendship and
alliance a king whom he had found not unworthy of his arms.
The beneficial though precarious reunion of the greatest
part of Gaul and Spain was the effect of persuasion as well
as of force;(47) and the independent Bagaudae, who had
escaped or resisted the oppression of former reigns, were
disposed to confide in the virtues of Majorian. His camp was
filled with barbarian allies; his throne was supported by
the zeal of an affectionate people; but the emperor had
foreseen that it was impossible without a maritime power to
achieve the conquest of Africa. In the first Punic war the
republic had exerted such incredible diligence that, within
sixty days after the first stroke of the axe had been given
in the forest, a fleet of one hundred and sixty galleys
proudly rode at anchor in the sea.(48) Under circumstances
much less favourable, Majorian equalled the spirit and
perseverance of the ancient Romans. The woods of the
Apennine were felled, the arsenals and manufactures of
Ravenna and Misenum were restored; Italy and Gaul vied with
each other in liberal contributions to the public service;
and the Imperial navy of three hundred large galleys, with
an adequate proportion of transports and smaller vessels,
was collected in the secure and capacious harbour of
Carthagena in Spain.(49) The intrepid countenance of Majorian
animated his troops with a confidence of victory; and if we
might credit the historian Procopius, his courage sometimes
hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious to
explore with his own eyes the state of the Vandals, he
ventured, after disguising the colour of his hair, to visit
Carthage in the character of his own ambassador: and
Genseric was afterwards mortified by the discovery that he
had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the Romans.
Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction,
but it is a fiction which would not have been imagined
unless in the life of a hero.(50)
Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was
sufficiently acquainted with the genius and designs of his
adversary. He practised his customary arts of fraud and
delay, but he practised 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 valour of his native subjects, who
were enervated by the luxury of the South;(51) he suspected
the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as
an Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure which he executed
of reducing Mauritania into a desert(52) could not defeat the
operations of the Roman emperor, who was at liberty to land
his troops on any part of the African coast. But Genseric
was saved from impending and inevitable ruin by the
treachery of some powerful subjects, envious or apprehensive
of their master's success. Guided by their secret
intelligence, he surprised the unguarded fleet in the bay of
Carthagena: many of the ships were sunk, or taken, or burnt;
and the preparations of three years were destroyed in a
single day.(53) After this event the behaviour of the two
antagonists showed them superior to their fortune. The
Vandal, instead of being elated by this accidental victory,
immediately renewed his solicitations for peace. The emperor
of the West, who was capable of forming great designs and of
supporting heavy disappointments, consented to a treaty, or
rather to a suspension of arms, in the full assurance that
before he could restore his navy he should be supplied with
provocations to justify a second war. Majorian returned to
Italy to prosecute his labours for the public happiness; and
as he was conscious of his own integrity, he might long
remain ignorant of the dark conspiracy which threatened his
throne and his life. The recent misfortune of Carthagena
sullied the glory which had dazzled the eyes of the
multitude: almost every description of civil and military
officers were exasperated against the Reformer, since they
all derived some advantage from the abuses which he
endeavoured to suppress; and the patrician Ricimer impelled
the inconstant passions of the barbarians against a prince
whom he esteemed and hated. The virtues of Majorian could
not protect him from the impetuous sedition which broke out
in the camp near Tortona at the foot of the Alps. He was
compelled to abdicate the Imperial purple; five days after
his abdication it was reported that he died of a dysentery,
(54) and the humble tomb which covered his remains was
consecrated by the respect and gratitude of succeeding
generations.(55) The private character of Majorian inspired
love and respect. Malicious calumny and satire excited his
indignation, or if he himself were the object, his contempt;
but he protected the freedom of wit, and in the hours which
the emperor gave to the familiar society of his friends he
could indulge his taste for pleasantry without degrading the
majesty of his rank.(56)
It was not perhaps without some regret that Ricimer
sacrificed his friend to the interest of his ambition: but
he resolved in a second choice to avoid the imprudent
preference of superior virtue and merit. At his command the
obsequious senate of Rome bestowed the Imperial title on
Libius Severus, who ascended the throne of the West without
emerging from the obscurity of a private condition. History
has scarcely deigned to notice his birth, his elevation, his
character, or his death. Severus expired as soon as his life
became inconvenient to his patron; (57) and it would be
useless to discriminate his nominal reign in the vacant
interval of six years between the death of Majorian and the
elevation of Anthemius. During that period the government
was in the hands of Ricimer alone; and although the modest
barbarian disclaimed the name of king, he accumulated
treasures, formed a separate army, negotiated private
alliances, and ruled Italy with the same independent and
despotic authority which was afterwards exercised by Odoacer
and Theodoric But his dominions were bounded by the Alps;
and two Roman generals, Marcellinus and Agidius, maintained
their allegiance to the republic, by rejecting with disdain
the phantom which he styled an emperor. Marcellinus still
adhered to the old religion; and the devout Pagans, who
secretly disobeyed the laws of the church and state,
applauded his profound skill in the science of divination.
But he possessed the more valuable qualifications of
learning, virtue, and courage; (58) 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 amidst the convulsions of the
Western empire. His voluntary or reluctant submission to the
authority of Majorian was rewarded by the government of
Sicily and the command of an army stationed in that island
to oppose or to attack the Vandals; but his barbarian
mercenaries, after the emperor's death, were tempted to
revolt by the artful liberality of Ricimer. At the head of a
band of faithful followers the intrepid Marcellinus occupied
the province of Dalmatia, assumed the title of patrician of
the West, secured the love of his subjects by a mild and
equitable reign, built a fleet which claimed the dominion of
the Hadriatic, and alternately alarmed the coasts of Italy
and of Africa. (59) Aegidius, the master-general of Gaul, who
equalled, or at least who imitated, the heroes of ancient
Rome,(60) proclaimed his immortal resentment against the
assassins of his beloved master. A brave and numerous army
was attached to his standard and though he was prevented by
the arts of Ricimer and the arms of the Visigoths from
marching to the gates of Rome, he maintained his independent
sovereignty beyond the Alps and rendered the name of
Aegidius respectable both in peace and war. The Franks, who
had punished with exile the youthful follies of Childeric,
elected the Roman general for their king; his vanity rather
than his ambition was gratified by that singular honour; and
when the nation at the end of four years repented of the
injury which they had offered to the Merovingian family, he
patiently acquiesced in the restoration of the lawful
prince. The authority of Aegidius ended only with his life,
and the suspicions of poison and secret violence, which
derived some countenance from the character of Ricimer, were
eagerly entertained by the passionate credulity of the
Gauls.(61)
The kingdom of Italy, a name to which the Western empire was
gradually reduced, was afflicted under the reign of Ricimer,
by the incessant depredations of the Vandal pirates.(62) In
the spring of each year they equipped a formidable navy in
the port of Carthage, and Genseric himself, though in a very
advanced age, still commanded in person the most important
expeditions. His designs were concealed with impenetrable
secrecy till the moment that he hoisted sail. When he was
asked by his pilot what course he should steer "Leave the
determination to the winds (replied the barbarian, with
pious arrogance): they will transport us to the guilty coast
whose inhabitants have provoked the divine justice"; but if
Genseric himself deigned to issue more precise orders, he
judged the most wealthy to be the most criminal. The Vandals
repeatedly visited the coasts of Spain, Liguria, Tuscany,
Campania, Lucania, Bruttium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia
Dalmatia, Epirus, Greece, and Sicily: they were tempted to
subdue the island of Sardinia, so advantageously placed in
the centre of the Mediterranean; and their arms spread
desolation or terror from the Columns of Hercules to the
mouth of the Nile. As they were more ambitious of spoil than
of glory, they seldom attacked any fortified cities, or
engaged any regular troops in the open field. But the
celerity of their motions enabled them almost at the same
time to threaten and to attack the most distant objects
which attracted their desires; and as they always embarked a
sufficient number of horses, they had no sooner landed than
they swept the dismayed country with a body of light
cavalry. Yet, notwithstanding the example of their king, the
native Vandals and Alani insensibly declined this toilsome
and perilous warfare; the hardy generation of the first
conquerors was almost extinguished, and their sons, who were
born in Africa, enjoyed the delicious baths and gardens
which had been acquired by the valour of their fathers.
Their place was readily supplied by a various multitude of
Moors and Romans, of captives and outlaws; and those
desperate wretches, who had already violated the laws of
their country, were the most eager to promote the atrocious
acts which disgraced the victories of Genseric. In the
treatment of his unhappy prisoners he sometimes consulted
his avarice, and sometimes indulged his cruelty; and the
massacre of five hundred noble citizens of Zante or
Zacynthus, whose mangled bodies he cast into the Ionian Sea,
was imputed by the public indignation to his latest
posterity.
Such crimes could not be excused by any provocations, but
the war which the king of the Vandals prosecuted against the
Roman empire was justified by a specious and reasonable
motive. The widow of Valentinian, Eudoxia, whom he had led
captive from Rome to Carthage, was the sole heiress of the
Theodosian house; her eldest daughter, Eudocia, became the
reluctant wife of Hunneric, his eldest son; and the stern
father, asserting a legal claim which could not easily be
refuted or satisfied, demanded a just proportion of the
Imperial patrimony. An adequate, or at least a valuable,
compensation was offered by the Eastern emperor to purchase
a necessary peace. Eudoxia and her younger daughter Placidia
were honourably 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 the two empires had alienated their interest and
their inclinations; the faith of a recent treaty was
alleged; and the Western Romans, instead of arms and ships,
could only obtain the assistance of a cold and ineffectual
mediation. The haughty Ricimer, who had long struggled with
the difficulties of his situation, was at length reduced to
address the throne of Constantinople in the humble language
of a subject; and Italy submitted, as the price and security
of the alliance, to accept a master from the choice of the
emperor of the East.(63) 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.(64)
Since the death of the younger Theodosius, the domestic
repose of Constantinople had never been interrupted by war
or faction. Pulcheria had bestowed her hand, and the sceptre
of the East, on the modest virtue of Marcian: he gratefully
reverenced her august rank and virgin chastity; and, after
her death, he gave his people the example of the religious
worship that was due to the memory of the Imperial saint.(65)
Attentive to the prosperity of his own dominions, Marcian
seemed to behold with indifference the misfortunes of Rome;
and the obstinate refusal of a brave and active prince to
draw his sword against the Vandals was ascribed to a secret
promise which had formerly been exacted from him when he was
a captive in the power of Genseric.(66) 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
favour of the candidate whose interest they supported. The
patrician Aspar might have placed the diadem on his own
head, if he would have subscribed the Nicene creed.(67)
During three generations the armies of the East were
successively commanded by his father, by himself, and by his
son Ardaburius his barbarian guards formed a military force
that overawed the palace and the capital; and the liberal
distribution of his immense treasures rendered Aspar as
popular as he was powerful. He recommended the obscure name
of Leo of Thrace, a military tribune, and the principal
steward of his household. His nomination was unanimously
ratified by the senate; and the servant of Aspar received
the Imperial crown from the hands of the patriarch or
bishop, who was permitted to express, by this unusual
ceremony, the suffrage of the Deity.(68) This emperor, the
first of the name of Leo, has been distinguished by the
title of the Great, from a succession of princes who
gradually fixed in the opinion of the Greeks a very humble
standard of heroic, or at least of royal, perfection. Yet
the temperate firmness with which Leo resisted the
oppression of his benefactor showed that he was conscious of
his duty and of his prerogative. Aspar was astonished to
find that his influence could no longer appoint a praefect
of Constantinople: he presumed to reproach his sovereign
with a breach of promise, and, insolently shaking his
purple, "It is not proper (said he) that the man who is
invested with this garment should be guilty of lying." "Nor
is it proper (replied Leo) that a prince should be compelled
to resign his own judgment, and the public interest, to the
will of a subject." (69) After this extraordinary scene, it
was impossible that the reconciliation of the emperor and
the patrician could be sincere; or, at least, that it could
be solid and permanent. An army of Isaurians(70) was secretly
levied and introduced into Constantinople; and while Leo
undermined the authority, and prepared the disgrace, of the
family of Aspar, his mild and cautious behaviour restrained
them from any rash and desperate attempts, which might have
been fatal to themselves or their enemies. The measures of
peace and war were affected by this internal revolution. As
long as Aspar degraded the majesty of the throne, the secret
correspondence of religion and interest engaged him to
favour the cause of Genseric. When Leo had delivered himself
from the ignominious servitude, he listened to the
complaints of the Italians; resolved to extirpate the
tyranny of the Vandals; and declared his alliance with his
colleague Anthemius, whom he solemnly invested with the
diadem and purple of the West.
The virtues of Anthemius have perhaps been magnified, since
the Imperial descent, which he could only deduce from the
usurper Procopius, has been swelled into a line of emperors.
(71) But the merit of his immediate parents, their honours,
and their riches, rendered Anthemius one of the most
illustrious subjects of the East, His father, Procopius,
obtained, after his Persian embassy, the rank of general and
patrician; and the name of Anthemius was derived from his
maternal grandfather, the celebrated praefect, who
protected, with so much ability and success, the infant
reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the praefect was raised
above the condition of a private subject by his marriage
with Euphemia, the daughter of the emperor Marcian. This
splendid alliance, which might supersede the necessity of
merit, hastened the promotion of Anthemius to the successive
dignities of count, of master-general, of consul, and of
patrician; and his merit or fortune claimed the honours of a
victory which was obtained on the banks of the Danube over
the Huns. Without indulging an extravagant ambition, the
son-in-law of Marcian might hope to be his successor; but
Anthemius supported the disappointment with courage and
patience; and his subsequent elevation was universally
approved by the public, who esteemed him worthy to reign
till he ascended the throne. (72) The emperor of the West
marched from Constantinople, attended by several counts of
high distinction and a body of guards almost equal to the
strength and numbers of a regular army: he entered Rome in
triumph, and the choice of Leo was confirmed by the senate,
the people, and the barbarian confederates of Italy.(73) The
solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the
nuptials of his daughter and the patrician Ricimer; a
fortunate event, which was considered as the firmest
security of the union and happiness of the state. The wealth
of two empires was ostentatiously displayed; and many
senators completed their ruin, by an expensive effort to
disguise their poverty. All serious business was suspended
during this festival; the courts of justice were shut; the
streets of Rome, the theatres, the places of public and
private resort, resounded with hymenaeal song and dances:
and the royal bride, clothed in silken robes, with a crown
on her head, was conducted to the palace of Ricimer, who had
changed his military dress for the habit of a consul and a
senator. On this memorable occasion, Sidonius, whose early
ambition had been so fatally blasted, appeared as the orator
of Auvergne, among the provincial deputies who addressed the
throne with congratulations or complaints.(74) The calends of
January were now approaching, and the venal poet, who had
loved Avitus and esteemed Majorian, was persuaded by his
friends to celebrate, in heroic verse, the merit, the
felicity, the second consulship, and the future triumphs of
the emperor Anthemius. Sidonius pronounced, with assurance
and success, a panegyric which is still extant; and whatever
might be the imperfections, either of the subject or of the
composition, the welcome flatterer was immediately rewarded
with the praefecture 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.(75)
The Greeks ambitiously commend the piety and catholic faith
of the emperor whom they gave to the West; nor do they
forget to observe that, when he left Constantinople, he
converted his palace into the pious foundation of a public
bath, a church, and an hospital for old men.(76) 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.(77) Even the Pagans,
a feeble and obscure remnant, conceived some vain hopes,
from the indifference, or partiality, of Anthemius; and his
singular friendship for the philosopher Severus, whom he
promoted to the consulship, was ascribed to a secret project
of reviving the ancient worship of the gods.(78) These idols
were crumbled into dust: and the mythology which had once
been the creed of nations was so universally disbelieved,
that it might be employed without scandal, or at least
without suspicion, by Christian poets.(79) Yet the vestiges
of superstition were not absolutely obliterated, and the
festival of the Lupercalia, whose origin had preceded the
foundation of Rome, was still celebrated under the reign of
Anthemius. The savage and simple rites were expressive of an
early state of society before the invention of arts and
agriculture. The rustic deities who presided over the toils
and pleasures of the pastoral life, Pan, Faunus, and their
train of satyrs, were such as the fancy of shepherds might
create, sportive, petulant, and lascivious; whose power was
limited, and whose malice was inoffensive. A goat was the
offering the best adapted to their character and attributes;
the flesh of the victim was roasted on willow spits; and the
riotous youths, who crowded to the feast, ran naked about
the fields, with leather thongs in their hands,
communicating, as it was supposed, the blessing of fecundity
to the women whom they touched. (80) The altar of Pan was
erected, perhaps by Evander the Arcadian, in a dark recess
in the side of the Palatine hill, watered by a perpetual
fountain, and shaded by a hanging grove. A tradition that,
in the same place, Romulus and Remus were suckled by the
wolf, rendered it still more sacred and venerable in the
eyes of the Romans; and this sylvan spot was gradually
surrounded by the stately edifices of the Forum.(81) After
the conversion of the Imperial city, the Christians still
continued, in the month of February, the annual celebration
of the Lupercalia; to which they ascribed a secret and
mysterious influence on the genial powers of the animal and
vegetable world. The bishops of Rome were solicitous to
abolish a profane custom so repugnant to the spirit of
Christianity; but their zeal was not supported by the
authority of the civil magistrate: the inveterate abuse
subsisted till the end of the fifth century, and pope
Gelasius, who purified the capital from the last stain of
idolatry, appeased, by a formal apology, the murmurs of the
senate and people.(82)
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. (83) The situation, and perhaps the
character, of Leo dissuaded him from exposing his person to
the toils and dangers of an African war. But the powers of
the Eastern empire were strenuously exerted to deliver Italy
and the Mediterranean from the Vandals; and Genseric, who
had so long oppressed both the land and sea, was threatened
from every side with a formidable invasion. The campaign was
opened by a bold and successful enterprise of the praefect
Heraclius.(84) The troops of Egypt, Thebais, and Libya were
embarked under this command and the Arabs, with a train of
horses and camels opened the roads of the desert. Heraclius
landed on the coast of Tripoli, surprised and subdued the
cities of that province, and prepared, by a laborious march,
which Cato had formerly executed, (85) to join the Imperial
army under the walls of Carthage. The intelligence of this
loss extorted from Genseric some insidious and in. effectual
propositions of peace: but he was still more seriously
alarmed by the reconciliation of Marcellinus with the two
empires. The independent patrician had been persuaded to
acknowledge the legitimate title of Anthemius whom he
accompanied in his journey to Rome, the Dalmatian fleet was
received into the harbours 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 demesnes, or private patrimony of the
prince, supplied seventeen thousand pounds of gold;
forty-seven thousand pounds of gold, and seven hundred
thousand of silver, were levied and paid into the treasury
by the Praetorian praefects. But the cities were reduced to
extreme poverty; and the diligent calculation of fines and
forfeitures, as a valuable object of the revenue, does not
suggest the idea of a just, or merciful, administration. The
whole expense, by whatsoever means it was defrayed, of the
African campaign, amounted to the sum of one hundred and
thirty thousand pounds of gold, about five millions two
hundred thousand pounds sterling, at a time when the value
of money appears, from the comparative price of corn, to
have been somewhat higher than in the present age.(86) The
fleet that sailed from Constantinople to Carthage consisted
of eleven hundred and thirteen ships, and the number of
soldiers and mariners exceeded one hundred thousand men.
Basiliscus, the brother of the empress Verina, was intrusted
with this important command. His sister, the wife of Leo,
had exaggerated the merit of his former exploits against the
Scythians. But the discovery of his guilt, or incapacity,
was reserved for the African war; and his friends could only
save his military reputation by asserting that he had
conspired with Aspar to spare Genseric, and to betray the
last hope of the Western empire.
Experience has shown that the success of an invader most
commonly depends on the vigour and celerity of his
operations. The strength and sharpness of the first
impression are blunted by delay; the health and spirit of
the troops insensibly languish in a distant climate; the
naval and military force, a mighty effort which perhaps can
never be repeated, is silently consumed, and every hour that
is wasted in negotiation accustoms the enemy to contemplate
and examine those hostile terrors which, on their first
appearance, he deemed irresistible. The formidable navy of
Basiliscus pursued its prosperous navigation from the
Thracian Bosphorus to the coast of Africa. He landed his
troops at Cape Bona, or the promontory of Mercury, about
forty miles from Carthage.(87) The army of Heraclius, and the
fleet of Marcellinus, either joined or seconded the Imperial
lieutenant; and the Vandals who opposed his progress by sea
or land were successively vanquished.(88) If Basiliscus had
seized the moment of consternation, and boldly advanced to
the capital, Carthage must have surrendered, and the kingdom
of the Vandals was extinguished. Genseric beheld the danger
with firmness, and eluded it with his veteran dexterity. He
protested, in the most respectful language, that he was
ready to submit his person and his dominions to the will of
the emperor; but he requested a truce of five days to
regulate the terms of his submission; and it was universally
believed that his secret liberality contributed to the
success of this public negotiation Instead of obstinately
refusing whatever indulgence his enemy so earnestly
solicited, the guilty, or the credulous, Basiliscus
consented to the fatal truce; and his imprudent security
seemed to proclaim that he already considered himself as the
conqueror of Africa. During this short interval the wind
became favourable to the designs of Genseric. He manned his
largest ships of war with the bravest of the Moors and
Vandals; and they towed after them many large barks filled
with combustible materials. In the obscurity of the night,
these destructive vessels were impelled against the
unguarded and unsuspecting fleet of the Romans, who were
awakened by the sense of their instant danger. Their close
and crowded order assisted the progress of the fire, which
was communicated with rapid and irresistible violence; and
the noise of the wind, the crackling of the flames the
dissonant cries of the soldiers and mariners, who could
neither command nor obey, increased the horror of the
nocturnal tumult. Whilst they laboured to extricate
themselves from the fire-ships, and to save at least a part
of the navy, the galleys of Genseric assaulted them with
temperate and disciplined valour; and many of the Romans,
who escaped the fury of the flames, were destroyed or taken
by the victorious Vandals. Among the events of that
disastrous night, the heroic, or rather desperate, courage
of John, one of the principal officers of Basiliscus, has
rescued his name from oblivion. When the ship which he had
bravely defended was almost consumed, he threw himself in
his armour into the sea, disdainfully rejected the esteem
and pity of Genso, the son of Genseric, who pressed him to
accept honourable quarter, and sunk under the waves;
exclaiming, with his last breath, that he would never fall
alive into the hands of those impious dogs. Actuated by a
far different spirit, Basiliscus, whose station was the most
remote from danger, disgracefully fled in the beginning of
the engagement, returned to Constantinople with the loss of
more than half of his fleet and army, and sheltered his
guilty head in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, till his sister,
by her tears and entreaties, could obtain his pardon from
the indignant emperor. Heraclius effected his retreat
through the desert; Marcellinus retired to Sicily, where he
was assassinated, perhaps at the instigation of Ricimer, by
one of his own captains; and the king of the Vandals
expressed his surprise and satisfaction that the Romans
themselves should remove from the world his most formidable
antagonists.(89) After the failure of this great expedition,
Genseric again became the tyrant of the sea: the coasts of
Italy, Greece, and Asia, were again exposed to his revenge
and avarice; Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his obedience;
he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and, before
he died, in the fulness of years and of glory, he beheld the
final extinction of the empire of the West.(90)
During his long and active reign the African monarch had
studiously cultivated the friendship of the barbarians of
Europe, whose arms he might employ in a seasonable and
effectual diversion against the two empires. After the death
of Attila he renewed his alliance with the Visigoths of
Gaul; and the sons of the elder Theodoric, who successively
reigned over that warlike nation, were easily persuaded, by
the sense of interest, to forget the cruel affront which
Genseric had inflicted on their sister.(91) The death of the
emperor Majorian delivered Theodoric the Second from the
restraint of fear, and perhaps of honour; he violated his
recent treaty with the Romans; and the ample territory of
Narbonne, which he firmly united to his dominions, became
the immediate reward of his perfidy. The selfish policy of
Ricimer encouraged him to invade the provinces which were in
the possession of Aegidius, his rival; but the active count,
by the defence of Arles and the victory of Orleans, saved
Gaul, and checked during his lifetime the progress of the
Visigoths. Their ambition was soon rekindled; and the design
of extinguishing the Roman empire in Spain and Gaul was
conceived and almost completed in the reign of Euric, who
assassinated his brother Theodoric, and displayed, with a
more savage temper, superior abilities both in peace and
war. He passed the Pyrenees at the head of a numerous army,
subdued the cities of Saragossa and Pampeluna, vanquished in
battle the martial nobles of the Tarragonese province,
carried his victorious arms into the heart of Lusitania, and
permitted the Suevi to hold the kingdom of Gallicia under
the Gothic monarchy of Spain.(92) The efforts of Euric were
not less vigorous or less successful in Gaul; and throughout
the country that extends from the Pyrenees to the Rhone and
the Loire, Berry and Auvergne were the only cities or
dioceses which refused to acknowledge him as their master.
(93) In the defence of Clermont, their principal town, the
inhabitants of Auvergne sustained with inflexible resolution
the miseries of war, pestilence, and famine; and the
Visigoths, relinquishing the fruitless siege, suspended the
hopes of that important conquest. The youth of the province
were animated by the heroic and almost incredible valour of
Ecdicius, the son of the emperor Avitus, (94) who made a
desperate sally with only eighteen horsemen, boldly attacked
the Gothic army, and, after maintaining a flying skirmish,
retired safe and victorious within the walls of Clermont.
His charity was equal to his courage: in a time of extreme
scarcity four thousand poor were fed at his expense; and his
private influence levied an army of Burgundians for the
deliverance of Auvergne. From his virtues alone the faithful
citizens of Gaul derived any hopes of safety or freedom; and
even such virtues were insufficient to avert the impending
ruin of their country, since they were anxious to learn,
from his authority and example, whether they should prefer
the alternative of exile or servitude. (95) The public
confidence was lost; the resources of the state were
exhausted; and the Gauls had too much reason to believe that
Anthemius, who reigned in Italy, was incapable of protecting
his distressed subjects beyond the Alps. The feeble emperor
could only procure for their defence the service of twelve
thousand British auxiliaries. Riothamus, one of the
independent kings or chieftains of the island, was persuaded
to transport his troops to the continent of Gaul: he sailed
up the Loire and established his quarters in Berry, where
the people complained of these oppressive allies, till they
were destroyed or dispersed by the arms of the Visigoths.(96)
One of the last acts of jurisdiction which the Roman senate
exercised over their subjects of Gaul was the trial and
condemnation of Arvandus, the Praetorian praefect. 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.(97) From the perils which he had escaped,
Arvandus imbibed confidence rather than wisdom; and such was
the various, though uniform, imprudence of his behaviour,
that his prosperity must appear much more surprising than
his downfall. The second praefecture, which he obtained
within the term of five years, abolished the merit and
popularity of his preceding administration. His easy temper
was corrupted by flattery and exasperated by opposition; he
was forced to satisfy his importunate creditors with the
spoils of the province; his capricious insolence offended
the nobles of Gaul; and he sunk under the weight of the
public hatred. The mandate of his disgrace summoned him to
justify his conduct before the senate; and he passed the sea
of Tuscany with a favourable wind, the presage, as he vainly
imagined, of his future fortunes. A decent respect was still
observed for the Praefectorian rank; and on his arrival at
Rome Arvandus was committed to the hospitality, rather than
to the custody, of Flavius Asellus, the count of the sacred
largesses, who resided in the Capitol. (98) He was eagerly
pursued by his accusers, the four deputies of Gaul, who were
all distinguished by their birth, their dignities, or their
eloquence. In the name of a great province, and according to
the forms of Roman jurisprudence, they instituted a civil
and criminal action, requiring such restitution as might
compensate the losses of individuals, and such punishment as
might satisfy the justice of the state. Their charges of
corrupt oppression were numerous and weighty; but they
placed their secret dependence on a letter which they had
intercepted, and which they could prove, by the evidence of
his secretary, to have been dictated by Arvandus himself.
The author of this letter seemed to dissuade the king of the
Goths from a peace with the Greek emperor: he suggested the
attack of the Britons on the Loire and he recommended a
division of Gaul, according to the law of nations, between
the Visigoths and the Burgundians. (99) These pernicious
schemes, which a friend could only palliate by the
reproaches of vanity and indiscretion, were susceptible of a
treasonable interpretation; and the deputies had artfully
resolved not to produce their most formidable weapons till
the decisive moment of the contest. But their intentions
were discovered by the zeal of Sidonius. He immediately
apprised the unsuspecting criminal of his danger; and
sincerely lamented, without any mixture of anger, the
haughty presumption of Arvandus, who rejected, and even
resented, the salutary advice of his friends. Ignorant of
his real situation, Arvandus showed himself in the Capitol
in the white robe of a candidate, accepted indiscriminate
salutations and offers of service, examined the shops of the
merchants, the silks, and gems, sometimes with the
indifference of a spectator and sometimes with the attention
of a purchaser; and complained of the times, of the senate,
of the prince, and of the delays of justice. His complaints
were soon removed. An early day was fixed for his trial; and
Arvandus appeared, with his accusers, before a numerous
assembly of the Roman senate. The mournful garb which they
affected excited the compassion of the judges, who were
scandalised by the gay and splendid dress of their
adversary: and when the praefect Arvandus, with the first of
the Gallic deputies, were directed to take their places on
the senatorial benches, the same contrast of pride and
modesty was observed in their behaviour. In this memorable
judgment, which presented a lively image of the old
republic, the Gauls exposed, with force and freedom, the
grievances of the province; and as soon as the minds of the
audience were sufficiently inflamed, they recited the fatal
epistle. The obstinacy of Arvandus was founded on the
strange supposition that a subject could not be convicted of
treason, unless he had actually conspired to assume the
purple. As the paper was read, he repeatedly, and with a
loud voice, acknowledged it for his genuine composition; and
his astonishment was equal to his dismay when the unanimous
voice of the senate declared him guilty of a capital
offence. By their decree he was degraded from the rank of a
praefect to the obscure condition of a plebeian, and
ignominiously dragged by servile hands to the public Prison.
After a fortnight's adjournment the senate was again
convened to pronounce the sentence of his death: but while
he expected, in the island of Alsculapius, the expiration of
the thirty days allowed by an ancient law to the vilest
malefactors, (100) his friends interposed, the emperor
Anthemius relented, and the praefect of Gaul obtained the
milder punishment of exile and confiscation. The faults of
Arvandus might deserve compassion; but the impunity of
Seronatus accused the justice of the republic, till he was
condemned and executed on the complaint of the people of
Auvergne. That flagitious minister, the Catiline of his age
and country, held a secret correspondence with the Visigoths
to betray the province which he oppressed: his industry was
continually exercised in the discovery of new taxes and
obsolete offences; and his extravagant vices would have
inspired contempt if they had not excited fear and
abhorrence.(101)
Such criminals were not beyond the reach of justice; but
whatever might be the guilt of Ricimer, that powerful
barbarian was able to contend or to negotiate with the
prince whose alliance he had condescended to accept. The
peaceful and prosperous reign which Anthemius had promised
to the West was soon clouded by misfortune and discord.
Ricimer, apprehensive or impatient of a superior, retired
from Rome and fixed his residence at Milan; an advantageous
situation, either to invite or to repel the warlike tribes
that were seated between the Alps and the Danube.(102) Italy
was gradually divided into two independent and hostile
kingdoms; and the nobles of Liguria, who trembled at the
near approach of a civil war, fell prostrate at the feet of
the patrician, and conjured him to spare their unhappy
country. "For my own part," replied Ricimer, in a tone of
insolent moderation, "I am still inclined to embrace the
friendship of the Galatian; (103) 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,(104) united the wisdom of
the serpent with the innocence of the dove; and appeared
confident that the eloquence of such an ambassador must
prevail against the strongest opposition, either of interest
or passion. Their recommendation was approved; and
Epiphanius, assuming the benevolent office of mediation,
proceeded without delay to Rome where he was received with
the honours due to his merit and reputation. The oration of
a bishop in favour of peace may be easily supposed: he
argued that, in all possible circumstances, the forgiveness
of injuries must be an act of mercy, or magnanimity, or
prudence; and he seriously admonished the emperor to avoid a
contest with a fierce barbarian, which might be fatal to
himself, and must be ruinous to his dominions. Anthemius
acknowledged the truth of his maxims; but he deeply felt,
with grief and indignation, the behaviour of Ricimer; and
his passion gave eloquence and energy to his discourse.
"What favours," he warmly exclaimed, "have we refused to
this ungrateful man? What provocations have we not endured?
Regardless of the majesty of the purple, I gave my daughter
to a Goth; I sacrificed my own blood to the safety of the
republic. The liberality which ought to have secured the
eternal attachment of Ricimer has exasperated him against
his benefactor. What wars has he not excited against the
empire? How often has he instigated and assisted the fury of
hostile nations? Shall I now accept his perfidious
friendship? Can I hope that he will respect the engagements
of a treaty, who has already violated the duties of a son?"
But the anger of Anthemius evaporated in these passionate
exclamations: he insensibly yielded to the proposals of
Epiphanius; and the bishop returned to his diocese with the
satisfaction of restoring the peace of Italy by a
reconciliation,(105) of which the sincerity and continuance
might be reasonably suspected. The clemency of the emperor
was extorted from his weakness; and Ricimer suspended his
ambitious designs till he had secretly prepared the engines
with which he resolved to subvert the throne of Anthemius.
The mask of peace and moderation was then thrown aside. The
army of Ricimer was fortified by a numerous reinforcement of
Burgundians and Oriental Suevi: he disclaimed all allegiance
to the Greek emperor, marched from Milan to the gates of
Rome, and, fixing his camp on the banks of the Anio,
impatiently expected the arrival of Olybrius, his Imperial
candidate.
The senator Olybrius, of the Anician 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 Genseric, who still detained her sister
Eudoxia, as the wife, or rather as the captive, of his son.
The king of the Vandals 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 which they had given to a
stranger.(106) The friendship of the public enemy might
render Olybrius still more unpopular to the Italians; but
when Ricimer meditated the ruin of the emperor Anthemius, 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 Olybrius 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 Genseric was
master of the sea) either at Ravenna or the port of Ostia,
and immediately proceeded to the camp of Ricimer, where he
was received as the sovereign of the Western world.(107)
The patrician, who had extended his posts from the Anio to
the Milvian bridge, already possessed two quarters of Rome,
the Vatican and the Faniculum, which are separated by the
Tiber from the rest of the city; (108) and it may be
conjectured that an assembly of seceding senators imitated,
in the choice of Olybrius, 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 concomitant evils of famine and pestilence. At length
Ricimer made a furious assault on the bridge of Hadrian, or
St. Angelo; and the narrow pass was defended with equal
valour by the Goths till the death of Gilimer, 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 Ricimer.(109)
The unfortunate Anthemius was dragged from his concealment
and inhumanly 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 licence of rapine and
murder: the crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were
unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the
indiscriminate pillage; and the face of the city exhibited
the strange contrast of stern cruelty and dissolute
intemperance.(110) Forty days after this calamitous event,
the subject, not of glory, but of guilt, Italy was
delivered, by a painful disease, from the tyrant Ricimer,
who bequeathed the command of his army to his nephew
Gundobald, 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
Olybrius, whose death does not betray any symptoms of
violence, is included within the term of seven months. He
left one daughter, the off-spring 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.(111)
Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless
barbarians, (112) 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 sovereignty 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 irresolute, that many
months elapsed after the death of Anthemius, and even of
Olybrius, before their destined successor could show
himself, with a respectable force, to his Italian subjects.
During that interval, Glycerius, an obscure soldier, was
invested with the purple by his patron Guniobald; 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, (113) and his client was
permitted to exchange the Roman sceptre for the bishopric of
Salona. After extinguishing such a competitor, the emperor
Nepos was acknowledged by the senate, by 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.(114) Their
hopes ( if such hopes had been entertained) were confounded
within the term of a single year, and the treaty of peace,
which ceded Auvergne 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 he hope of
domestic security;(115) 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 Ravenna. Nepos trembled at their approach; and,
instead of placing a just confidence in the strength of
Ravenna, he hastily escaped to his ships, and retired to his
Dalmatian 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 Salona by
the ungrateful Glycerius, who was translated, perhaps as the
reward of his crime, to the archbishopric of Milan.(116)
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 defence and the terror of
Italy;(117) and in this promiscuous multitude, the names of
the Heruli, the Sciri, the Alani, the Turcilingi, and the
Rugians, appear to have predominated. The example of these
warriors was imitated by Orestes,(118) the son of Tatullus,
and the father of the last Roman emperor of the West.
Orestes, who has been already 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 imperious monarch. The death of that
conqueror restored him to his freedom; and Orestes might
honourably refuse either to follow the sons of Attila into
the Scythian 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 favour 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 facility, to acknowledge his son
Augustulus as the emperor of the West. By the abdication of
Nepos, Orestes had now attained 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 a
rebel 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 these
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 a spirit which, in another
situation, might be entitled to our esteem, chose rather to
encounter the rage of an armed multitude than to subscribe
the ruin of an innocent people. He rejected the audacious
demand; and his refusal was favourable to the ambition of
Odoacer, 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 and garrisons of Italy
the confederates, actuated 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 Epiphanites. Pavia was
immediately besieged, the fortifications were stormed, the
town was pillaged; and although the bishop might labour,
with much zeal and some success, to save the property of the
church and the chastity of female captives, the tumult could
only be appeased by the execution of Orestes. (119) His
brother Paul was slain in an action near Ravenna; and the
helpless Augustulus, who could no longer command the
respect, was reduced to implore the clemency, of Odoacer.
That successful barbarian was the son of Edecon; who, in
some remarkable transactions, particularly described in a
preceding chapter had been the colleague of Orestes himself.
The honour of an ambassador should be exempt from suspicion;
and Edecon had listened to a conspiracy against the life of
his sovereign. But this apparent guilt was expiated by his
merit or repentance: his rank was eminent and conspicuous;
he enjoyed the favour of Attila; and the troops under his
command, who guarded in their turn the royal village,
consisted of a tribe of Sciri, his immediate and hereditary
subjects. In the revolt of the nations they still adhered to
the Huns; and, more than twelve years afterwards, the name
of Edecon is honourably mentioned in their unequal contest
with the Ostrogoths; which was terminated, after two bloody
battles, by the defeat and dispersion of the Sciri.(120)
Their gallant leader, who did not survive this national
calamity, left two sons, Onulf and Odoacer, to struggle with
adversity, and to maintain as they might, by rapine or
service, the faithful followers of their exile. Onulf
directed his steps towards Constantinople, where he sullied,
by the assassination of a generous benefactor, the fame
which he had acquired in arms. His brother Odoacer led a
wandering life among the barbarians of Noricum, with a mind
and a fortune suited to the most desperate adventures; and
when he had 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 Odoacer: 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.''(121) The barbarian, whose daring spirit accepted and
ratified the prediction, was admitted into the service of
the Western empire, and soon obtained an honourable 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 Odoacer had established a high opinion of his
courage and capacity. (122) 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,(123)
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
vicegerent of the emperor of the West. But Odoacer 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
facility 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 and the forms of the constitution. An
epistle was addressed, by their unanimous decree, to the
emperor Zeno, the son-in-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
succession 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 the 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 basely 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 Odoacer;
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 mark 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 prudent 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 honour in the several quarters of
Rome; he entertained a friendly, though ambiguous,
correspondence with the 'patrician' Odoacer; 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.(124)
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.(125) The patrician Orestes had married the daughter
of Count Romulus, of Petovio in Noricum; the name of
Augustus, notwithstanding the jealousy of power, was known
at Aquileia 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.
(126) The son or Orestes assumed and disgraced the names of
Romulus Augustus; but the first was corrupted into Momyllus
by the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the Latins
into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of
this inoffensive youth was spared by the generous clemency
of Odoacer; who dismissed him, with his whole family, from
the Imperial palace, fixed his annual allowance at six
thousand pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of
Lucullus, in Campania, for the place of his exile or
retirement.(127) As soon as the Romans breathed from the
toils of the Punic war, they were attracted by the beauties
and the pleasures of Campania; and the country-house of the
elder Scipio at Liternum exhibited a lasting model of their
rustic simplicity.(128) The delicious shores of the bay of
Naples were crowded with villas; and Sylla applauded the
masterly skill of his rival, who had seated himself on the
lofty promontory of Misenum, that commands, on every side,
the sea and land, as far as the boundaries of the horizon.
(129) The villa of Marius was purchased within a few years, by
Lucullus, and the price had increased from two thousand five
hundred, to more than four-score thousand, pounds sterling.
(130) It was adorned by the new proprietor with Grecian arts
and Asiatic treasures; and the houses and gardens of
Lucullus obtained a distinguished rank in the list of
Imperial palaces.(131) When the Vandals became formidable to
the seacoast, the Lucullan villa, on the promontory of
Misenum, 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 securely reposed, amidst the
broken trophies of Cimbric and Armenian victories, till 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.(132)
Odoacer was the first barbarian who reigned in Italy, over a
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 sympathise
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
succession of five centuries inflicted the various evils of
military licence, capricious despotism, and elaborate
oppression. During the same period, the barbarians had
emerged from obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of
Germany and Scythia 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
splendour of the martial chiefs who were invested with the
honours of the empire; and the fate of Rome had long
depended on the sword of those formidable strangers. The
stern Ricimer, 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 Odoacer and his barbaric
successors.
The king of Italy was not unworthy of the high station to
which his valour 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, Odoacer restored the
consulship of the West. For himself he modestly, or proudly,
declined an honour which was still accepted by the emperors
of the East; but the curule chair was successively filled by
eleven of the most illustrious senators;(133) and the list is
adorned by the respectable name of Basilius, whose virtues
claimed the friendship and grateful applause of Sidonius,
his client.(134) The laws of the emperors were strictly
enforced, and the civil administration of Italy was still
exercised by the Praetorian praefect and his subordinate
officers. Odoacer 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.(135) Like the rest of the barbarians, he
had been instructed in the Arian heresy; but he revered the
monastic and episcopal characters; and the silence of the
catholics attests the toleration which they enjoyed. The
peace of the city required the interposition of his praefect
Basilius 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. (136) 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. Odoacer 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 Feletheus, king
of the Rugians, who held his residence beyond the Danube.
The king was vanquished in battle, and led away prisoner; a
numerous colony of captives and subjects was transplanted
into Italy; and Rome, after a long period of defeat and
disgrace, might claim the triumph of her barbarian master.
(137)
Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoacer, 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.(138) 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,
(139) and pestilence. St. Ambrose has deplored the ruin of a
populous district, which had been once adorned with the
flourishing cities of Bologna, Modena, Rhegium, and
Placentia.(140) Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer; and
he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Aemilia,
Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces. the human species was
almost extirpated.(141) The plebians 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 mechanic 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,(142) 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 favourite 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.(143) The distress of Italy was mitigated by
the prudence and humanity of Odoacer, 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 standard 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 Odoacer 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.