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Chapter XXXII: Emperors Arcadius, Eutropius, Theodosius II.

Part I.

Arcadius Emperor Of The East. -- Administration And Disgrace Of
Eutropius. -- Revolt Of Gainas. -- Persecution Of St. John Chrysostom.
-- Theodosius II. Emperor Of The East. -- His Sister Pulcheria. -- His
Wife Eudocia. -- The Persian War, And Division Of Armenia.

The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the
final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of
Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one
thousand and fifty-eight years, in a state of premature and perpetual
decay. The sovereign of that empire assumed, and obstinately retained,
the vain, and at length fictitious, title of Emperor of the Romans; and
the hereditary appellation of Cæsar and Augustus continued to declare,
that he was the legitimate successor of the first of men, who had
reigned over the first of nations. The place of Constantinople rivalled,
and perhaps excelled, the magnificence of Persia; and the eloquent
sermons of St. Chrysostom  celebrate, while they condemn, the pompous
luxury of the reign of Arcadius. "The emperor," says he, "wears on his
head either a diadem, or a crown of gold, decorated with precious stones
of inestimable value. These ornaments, and his purple garments, are
reserved for his sacred person alone; and his robes of silk are
embroidered with the figures of golden dragons. His throne is of massy
gold. Whenever he appears in public, he is surrounded by his courtiers,
his guards, and his attendants. Their spears, their shields, their
cuirasses, the bridles and trappings of their horses, have either the
substance or the appearance of gold; and the large splendid boss in the
midst of their shield is encircled with smaller bosses, which represent
the shape of the human eye. The two mules that drew the chariot of the
monarch are perfectly white, and shining all over with gold. The chariot
itself, of pure and solid gold, attracts the admiration of the
spectators, who contemplate the purple curtains, the snowy carpet, the
size of the precious stones, and the resplendent plates of gold, that
glitter as they are agitated by the motion of the carriage. The Imperial
pictures are white, on a blue ground; the emperor appears seated on his
throne, with his arms, his horses, and his guards beside him; and his
vanquished enemies in chains at his feet." The successors of Constantine
established their perpetual residence in the royal city, which he had
erected on the verge of Europe and Asia. Inaccessible to the menaces of
their enemies, and perhaps to the complaints of their people, they
received, with each wind, the tributary productions of every climate;
while the impregnable strength of their capital continued for ages to
defy the hostile attempts of the Barbarians. Their dominions were
bounded by the Adriatic and the Tigris; and the whole interval of
twenty-five days' navigation, which separated the extreme cold of
Scythia from the torrid zone of Æthiopia,  was comprehended within the
limits of the empire of the East. The populous countries of that empire
were the seat of art and learning, of luxury and wealth; and the
inhabitants, who had assumed the language and manners of Greeks, styled
themselves, with some appearance of truth, the most enlightened and
civilized portion of the human species. The form of government was a
pure and simple monarchy; the name of the Roman Republic, which so long
preserved a faint tradition of freedom, was confined to the Latin
provinces; and the princes of Constantinople measured their greatness by
the servile obedience of their people. They were ignorant how much this
passive disposition enervates and degrades every faculty of the mind.
The subjects, who had resigned their will to the absolute commands of a
master, were equally incapable of guarding their lives and fortunes
against the assaults of the Barbarians, or of defending their reason
from the terrors of superstition.

The first events of the reign of Arcadius and Honorius are so intimately
connected, that the rebellion of the Goths, and the fall of Rufinus,
have already claimed a place in the history of the West. It has already
been observed, that Eutropius,  one of the principal eunuchs of the
palace of Constantinople, succeeded the haughty minister whose ruin he
had accomplished, and whose vices he soon imitated. Every order of the
state bowed to the new favorite; and their tame and obsequious
submission encouraged him to insult the laws, and, what is still more
difficult and dangerous, the manners of his country. Under the weakest
of the predecessors of Arcadius, the reign of the eunuchs had been
secret and almost invisible. They insinuated themselves into the
confidence of the prince; but their ostensible functions were confined
to the menial service of the wardrobe and Imperial bed-chamber. They
might direct, in a whisper, the public counsels, and blast, by their
malicious suggestions, the fame and fortunes of the most illustrious
citizens; but they never presumed to stand forward in the front of
empire,  or to profane the public honors of the state. Eutropius was the
first of his artificial sex, who dared to assume the character of a
Roman magistrate and general.  Sometimes, in the presence of the
blushing senate, he ascended the tribunal to pronounce judgment, or to
repeat elaborate harangues; and, sometimes, appeared on horseback, at
the head of his troops, in the dress and armor of a hero. The disregard
of custom and decency always betrays a weak and ill-regulated mind; nor
does Eutropius seem to have compensated for the folly of the design by
any superior merit or ability in the execution. His former habits of
life had not introduced him to the study of the laws, or the exercises
of the field; his awkward and unsuccessful attempts provoked the secret
contempt of the spectators; the Goths expressed their wish that such a
general might always command the armies of Rome; and the name of the
minister was branded with ridicule, more pernicious, perhaps, than
hatred, to a public character. The subjects of Arcadius were exasperated
by the recollection, that this deformed and decrepit eunuch,  who so
perversely mimicked the actions of a man, was born in the most abject
condition of servitude; that before he entered the Imperial palace, he
had been successively sold and purchased by a hundred masters, who had
exhausted his youthful strength in every mean and infamous office, and
at length dismissed him, in his old age, to freedom and poverty.  While
these disgraceful stories were circulated, and perhaps exaggerated, in
private conversation, the vanity of the favorite was flattered with the
most extraordinary honors. In the senate, in the capital, in the
provinces, the statues of Eutropius were erected, in brass, or marble,
decorated with the symbols of his civil and military virtues, and
inscribed with the pompous title of the third founder of Constantinople.
He was promoted to the rank of patrician, which began to signify in a
popular, and even legal, acceptation, the father of the emperor; and the
last year of the fourth century was polluted by the consulshipof a
eunuch and a slave. This strange and inexpiable prodigy  awakened,
however, the prejudices of the Romans. The effeminate consul was
rejected by the West, as an indelible stain to the annals of the
republic; and without invoking the shades of Brutus and Camillus, the
colleague of Eutropius, a learned and respectable magistrate,
sufficiently represented the different maxims of the two
administrations.

The bold and vigorous mind of Rufinus seems to have been actuated by a
more sanguinary and revengeful spirit; but the avarice of the eunuch was
not less insatiate than that of the præfect.  As long as he despoiled
the oppressors, who had enriched themselves with the plunder of the
people, Eutropius might gratify his covetous disposition without much
envy or injustice: but the progress of his rapine soon invaded the
wealth which had been acquired by lawful inheritance, or laudable
industry. The usual methods of extortion were practised and improved;
and Claudian has sketched a lively and original picture of the public
auction of the state. "The impotence of the eunuch," says that agreeable
satirist, "has served only to stimulate his avarice: the same hand which
in his servile condition, was exercised in petty thefts, to unlock the
coffers of his master, now grasps the riches of the world; and this
infamous broker of the empire appreciates and divides the Roman
provinces from Mount Hæmus to the Tigris. One man, at the expense of his
villa, is made proconsul of Asia; a second purchases Syria with his
wife's jewels; and a third laments that he has exchanged his paternal
estate for the government of Bithynia. In the antechamber of Eutropius,
a large tablet is exposed to public view, which marks the respective
prices of the provinces. The different value of Pontus, of Galatia, of
Lydia, is accurately distinguished. Lycia may be obtained for so many
thousand pieces of gold; but the opulence of Phrygia will require a more
considerable sum. The eunuch wishes to obliterate, by the general
disgrace, his personal ignominy; and as he has been sold himself, he is
desirous of selling the rest of mankind. In the eager contention, the
balance, which contains the fate and fortunes of the province, often
trembles on the beam; and till one of the scales is inclined, by a
superior weight, the mind of the impartial judge remains in anxious
suspense.  Such," continues the indignant poet, "are the fruits of Roman
valor, of the defeat of Antiochus, and of the triumph of Pompey." This
venal prostitution of public honors secured the impunity of
futurecrimes; but the riches, which Eutropius derived from confiscation,
were alreadystained with injustice; since it was decent to accuse, and
to condemn, the proprietors of the wealth, which he was impatient to
confiscate. Some noble blood was shed by the hand of the executioner;
and the most inhospitable extremities of the empire were filled with
innocent and illustrious exiles. Among the generals and consuls of the
East, Abundantius  had reason to dread the first effects of the
resentment of Eutropius. He had been guilty of the unpardonable crime of
introducing that abject slave to the palace of Constantinople; and some
degree of praise must be allowed to a powerful and ungrateful favorite,
who was satisfied with the disgrace of his benefactor. Abundantius was
stripped of his ample fortunes by an Imperial rescript, and banished to
Pityus, on the Euxine, the last frontier of the Roman world; where he
subsisted by the precarious mercy of the Barbarians, till he could
obtain, after the fall of Eutropius, a milder exile at Sidon, in
Phnicia. The destruction of Timasius  required a more serious and
regular mode of attack. That great officer, the master-general of the
armies of Theodosius, had signalized his valor by a decisive victory,
which he obtained over the Goths of Thessaly; but he was too prone,
after the example of his sovereign, to enjoy the luxury of peace, and to
abandon his confidence to wicked and designing flatterers. Timasius had
despised the public clamor, by promoting an infamous dependent to the
command of a cohort; and he deserved to feel the ingratitude of Bargus,
who was secretly instigated by the favorite to accuse his patron of a
treasonable conspiracy. The general was arraigned before the tribunal of
Arcadius himself; and the principal eunuch stood by the side of the
throne to suggest the questions and answers of his sovereign. But as
this form of trial might be deemed partial and arbitrary, the further
inquiry into the crimes of Timasius was delegated to Saturninus and
Procopius; the former of consular rank, the latter still respected as
the father-in-law of the emperor Valens. The appearances of a fair and
legal proceeding were maintained by the blunt honesty of Procopius; and
he yielded with reluctance to the obsequious dexterity of his colleague,
who pronounced a sentence of condemnation against the unfortunate
Timasius. His immense riches were confiscated in the name of the
emperor, and for the benefit of the favorite; and he was doomed to
perpetual exile a Oasis, a solitary spot in the midst of the sandy
deserts of Libya.  Secluded from all human converse, the master-general
of the Roman armies was lost forever to the world; but the circumstances
of his fate have been related in a various and contradictory manner. It
is insinuated that Eutropius despatched a private order for his secret
execution.  It was reported, that, in attempting to escape from Oasis,
he perished in the desert, of thirst and hunger; and that his dead body
was found on the sands of Libya.  It has been asserted, with more
confidence, that his son Syagrius, after successfully eluding the
pursuit of the agents and emissaries of the court, collected a band of
African robbers; that he rescued Timasius from the place of his exile;
and that both the father and the son disappeared from the knowledge of
mankind.  But the ungrateful Bargus, instead of being suffered to
possess the reward of guilt was soon after circumvented and destroyed,
by the more powerful villany of the minister himself, who retained sense
and spirit enough to abhor the instrument of his own crimes.

The public hatred, and the despair of individuals, continually
threatened, or seemed to threaten, the personal safety of Eutropius; as
well as of the numerous adherents, who were attached to his fortune, and
had been promoted by his venal favor. For their mutual defence, he
contrived the safeguard of a law, which violated every principal of
humanity and justice.  I. It is enacted, in the name, and by the
authority of Arcadius, that all those who should conspire, either with
subjects or with strangers, against the lives of any of the persons whom
the emperor considers as the members of his own body, shall be punished
with death and confiscation. This species of fictitious and metaphorical
treason is extended to protect, not only the illustriousofficers of the
state and army, who were admitted into the sacred consistory, but
likewise the principal domestics of the palace, the senators of
Constantinople, the military commanders, and the civil magistrates of
the provinces; a vague and indefinite list, which, under the successors
of Constantine, included an obscure and numerous train of subordinate
ministers. II. This extreme severity might perhaps be justified, had it
been only directed to secure the representatives of the sovereign from
any actual violence in the execution of their office. But the whole body
of Imperial dependants claimed a privilege, or rather impunity, which
screened them, in the loosest moments of their lives, from the hasty,
perhaps the justifiable, resentment of their fellow-citizens; and, by a
strange perversion of the laws, the same degree of guilt and punishment
was applied to a private quarrel, and to a deliberate conspiracy against
the emperor and the empire. The edicts of Arcadius most positively and
most absurdly declares, that in such cases of treason, thoughtsand
actionsought to be punished with equal severity; that the knowledge of a
mischievous intention, unless it be instantly revealed, becomes equally
criminal with the intention itself;  and that those rash men, who shall
presume to solicit the pardon of traitors, shall themselves be branded
with public and perpetual infamy. III. "With regard to the sons of the
traitors," (continues the emperor,) "although they ought to share the
punishment, since they will probably imitate the guilt, of their
parents, yet, by the special effect of our Imperial lenity, we grant
them their lives; but, at the same time, we declare them incapable of
inheriting, either on the father's or on the mother's side, or of
receiving any gift or legacy, from the testament either of kinsmen or of
strangers. Stigmatized with hereditary infamy, excluded from the hopes
of honors or fortune, let them endure the pangs of poverty and contempt,
till they shall consider life as a calamity, and death as a comfort and
relief." In such words, so well adapted to insult the feelings of
mankind, did the emperor, or rather his favorite eunuch, applaud the
moderation of a law, which transferred the same unjust and inhuman
penalties to the children of all those who had seconded, or who had not
disclosed, their fictitious conspiracies. Some of the noblest
regulations of Roman jurisprudence have been suffered to expire; but
this edict, a convenient and forcible engine of ministerial tyranny, was
carefully inserted in the codes of Theodosius and Justinian; and the
same maxims have been revived in modern ages, to protect the electors of
Germany, and the cardinals of the church of Rome.

Yet these sanguinary laws, which spread terror among a disarmed and
dispirited people, were of too weak a texture to restrain the bold
enterprise of Tribigild  the Ostrogoth. The colony of that warlike
nation, which had been planted by Theodosius in one of the most fertile
districts of Phrygia,  impatiently compared the slow returns of
laborious husbandry with the successful rapine and liberal rewards of
Alaric; and their leader resented, as a personal affront, his own
ungracious reception in the palace of Constantinople. A soft and wealthy
province, in the heart of the empire, was astonished by the sound of
war; and the faithful vassal who had been disregarded or oppressed, was
again respected, as soon as he resumed the hostile character of a
Barbarian. The vineyards and fruitful fields, between the rapid Marsyas
and the winding Mæander,  were consumed with fire; the decayed walls of
the cities crumbled into dust, at the first stroke of an enemy; the
trembling inhabitants escaped from a bloody massacre to the shores of
the Hellespont; and a considerable part of Asia Minor was desolated by
the rebellion of Tribigild. His rapid progress was checked by the
resistance of the peasants of Pamphylia; and the Ostrogoths, attacked in
a narrow pass, between the city of Selgæ,  a deep morass, and the craggy
cliffs of Mount Taurus, were defeated with the loss of their bravest
troops. But the spirit of their chief was not daunted by misfortune; and
his army was continually recruited by swarms of Barbarians and outlaws,
who were desirous of exercising the profession of robbery, under the
more honorable names of war and conquest. The rumors of the success of
Tribigild might for some time be suppressed by fear, or disguised by
flattery; yet they gradually alarmed both the court and the capital.
Every misfortune was exaggerated in dark and doubtful hints; and the
future designs of the rebels became the subject of anxious conjecture.
Whenever Tribigild advanced into the inland country, the Romans were
inclined to suppose that he meditated the passage of Mount Taurus, and
the invasion of Syria. If he descended towards the sea, they imputed,
and perhaps suggested, to the Gothic chief, the more dangerous project
of arming a fleet in the harbors of Ionia, and of extending his
depredations along the maritime coast, from the mouth of the Nile to the
port of Constantinople. The approach of danger, and the obstinacy of
Tribigild, who refused all terms of accommodation, compelled Eutropius
to summon a council of war.  After claiming for himself the privilege of
a veteran soldier, the eunuch intrusted the guard of Thrace and the
Hellespont to Gainas the Goth, and the command of the Asiatic army to
his favorite, Leo; two generals, who differently, but effectually,
promoted the cause of the rebels. Leo,  who, from the bulk of his body,
and the dulness of his mind, was surnamed the Ajax of the East, had
deserted his original trade of a woolcomber, to exercise, with much less
skill and success, the military profession; and his uncertain operations
were capriciously framed and executed, with an ignorance of real
difficulties, and a timorous neglect of every favorable opportunity. The
rashness of the Ostrogoths had drawn them into a disadvantageous
position between the Rivers Melas and Eurymedon, where they were almost
besieged by the peasants of Pamphylia; but the arrival of an Imperial
army, instead of completing their destruction, afforded the means of
safety and victory. Tribigild surprised the unguarded camp of the
Romans, in the darkness of the night; seduced the faith of the greater
part of the Barbarian auxiliaries, and dissipated, without much effort,
the troops, which had been corrupted by the relaxation of discipline,
and the luxury of the capital. The discontent of Gainas, who had so
boldly contrived and executed the death of Rufinus, was irritated by the
fortune of his unworthy successor; he accused his own dishonorable
patience under the servile reign of a eunuch; and the ambitious Goth was
convicted, at least in the public opinion, of secretly fomenting the
revolt of Tribigild, with whom he was connected by a domestic, as well
as by a national alliance.  When Gainas passed the Hellespont, to unite
under his standard the remains of the Asiatic troops, he skilfully
adapted his motions to the wishes of the Ostrogoths; abandoning, by his
retreat, the country which they desired to invade; or facilitating, by
his approach, the desertion of the Barbarian auxiliaries. To the
Imperial court he repeatedly magnified the valor, the genius, the
inexhaustible resources of Tribigild; confessed his own inability to
prosecute the war; and extorted the permission of negotiating with his
invincible adversary. The conditions of peace were dictated by the
haughty rebel; and the peremptory demand of the head of Eutropius
revealed the author and the design of this hostile conspiracy.

Chapter XXXII: Emperors Arcadius, Eutropius, Theodosius II. -- Part II.

The bold satirist, who has indulged his discontent by the partial and
passionate censure of the Christian emperors, violates the dignity,
rather than the truth, of history, by comparing the son of Theodosius to
one of those harmless and simple animals, who scarcely feel that they
are the property of their shepherd. Two passions, however, fear and
conjugal affection, awakened the languid soul of Arcadius: he was
terrified by the threats of a victorious Barbarian; and he yielded to
the tender eloquence of his wife Eudoxia, who, with a flood of
artificial tears, presenting her infant children to their father,
implored his justice for some real or imaginary insult, which she
imputed to the audacious eunuch.  The emperor's hand was directed to
sign the condemnation of Eutropius; the magic spell, which during four
years had bound the prince and the people, was instantly dissolved; and
the acclamations that so lately hailed the merit and fortune of the
favorite, were converted into the clamors of the soldiers and people,
who reproached his crimes, and pressed his immediate execution. In this
hour of distress and despair, his only refuge was in the sanctuary of
the church, whose privileges he had wisely or profanely attempted to
circumscribe; and the most eloquent of the saints, John Chrysostom,
enjoyed the triumph of protecting a prostrate minister, whose choice had
raised him to the ecclesiastical throne of Constantinople. The
archbishop, ascending the pulpit of the cathedral, that he might be
distinctly seen and heard by an innumerable crowd of either sex and of
every age, pronounced a seasonable and pathetic discourse on the
forgiveness of injuries, and the instability of human greatness. The
agonies of the pale and affrighted wretch, who lay grovelling under the
table of the altar, exhibited a solemn and instructive spectacle; and
the orator, who was afterwards accused of insulting the misfortunes of
Eutropius, labored to excite the contempt, that he might assuage the
fury, of the people.  The powers of humanity, of superstition, and of
eloquence, prevailed. The empress Eudoxia was restrained by her own
prejudices, or by those of her subjects, from violating the sanctuary of
the church; and Eutropius was tempted to capitulate, by the milder arts
of persuasion, and by an oath, that his life should be spared.  Careless
of the dignity of their sovereign, the new ministers of the palace
immediately published an edict to declare, that his late favorite had
disgraced the names of consul and patrician, to abolish his statues, to
confiscate his wealth, and to inflict a perpetual exile in the Island of
Cyprus.  A despicable and decrepit eunuch could no longer alarm the
fears of his enemies; nor was he capable of enjoying what yet remained,
the comforts of peace, of solitude, and of a happy climate. But their
implacable revenge still envied him the last moments of a miserable
life, and Eutropius had no sooner touched the shores of Cyprus, than he
was hastily recalled. The vain hope of eluding, by a change of place,
the obligation of an oath, engaged the empress to transfer the scene of
his trial and execution from Constantinople to the adjacent suburb of
Chalcedon. The consul Aurelian pronounced the sentence; and the motives
of that sentence expose the jurisprudence of a despotic government. The
crimes which Eutropius had committed against the people might have
justified his death; but he was found guilty of harnessing to his
chariot the sacredanimals, who, from their breed or color, were reserved
for the use of the emperor alone.

While this domestic revolution was transacted, Gainas  openly revolted
from his allegiance; united his forces at Thyatira in Lydia, with those
of Tribigild; and still maintained his superior ascendant over the
rebellious leader of the Ostrogoths. The confederate armies advanced,
without resistance, to the straits of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus;
and Arcadius was instructed to prevent the loss of his Asiatic
dominions, by resigning his authority and his person to the faith of the
Barbarians. The church of the holy martyr Euphemia, situate on a lofty
eminence near Chalcedon,  was chosen for the place of the interview.
Gainas bowed with reverence at the feet of the emperor, whilst he
required the sacrifice of Aurelian and Saturninus, two ministers of
consular rank; and their naked necks were exposed, by the haughty rebel,
to the edge of the sword, till he condescended to grant them a
precarious and disgraceful respite. The Goths, according to the terms of
the agreement, were immediately transported from Asia into Europe; and
their victorious chief, who accepted the title of master-general of the
Roman armies, soon filled Constantinople with his troops, and
distributed among his dependants the honors and rewards of the empire.
In his early youth, Gainas had passed the Danube as a suppliant and a
fugitive: his elevation had been the work of valor and fortune; and his
indiscreet or perfidious conduct was the cause of his rapid downfall.
Notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of the archbishop, he
importunately claimed for his Arian sectaries the possession of a
peculiar church; and the pride of the Catholics was offended by the
public toleration of heresy.  Every quarter of Constantinople was filled
with tumult and disorder; and the Barbarians gazed with such ardor on
the rich shops of the jewellers, and the tables of the bankers, which
were covered with gold and silver, that it was judged prudent to remove
those dangerous temptations from their sight. They resented the
injurious precaution; and some alarming attempts were made, during the
night, to attack and destroy with fire the Imperial palace.  In this
state of mutual and suspicious hostility, the guards and the people of
Constantinople shut the gates, and rose in arms to prevent or to punish
the conspiracy of the Goths. During the absence of Gainas, his troops
were surprised and oppressed; seven thousand Barbarians perished in this
bloody massacre. In the fury of the pursuit, the Catholics uncovered the
roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they
overwhelmed their adversaries, who had retreated to the church or
conventicle of the Arians. Gainas was either innocent of the design, or
too confident of his success; he was astonished by the intelligence that
the flower of his army had been ingloriously destroyed; that he himself
was declared a public enemy; and that his countryman, Fravitta, a brave
and loyal confederate, had assumed the management of the war by sea and
land. The enterprises of the rebel, against the cities of Thrace, were
encountered by a firm and well-ordered defence; his hungry soldiers were
soon reduced to the grass that grew on the margin of the fortifications;
and Gainas, who vainly regretted the wealth and luxury of Asia, embraced
a desperate resolution of forcing the passage of the Hellespont. He was
destitute of vessels; but the woods of the Chersonesus afforded
materials for rafts, and his intrepid Barbarians did not refuse to trust
themselves to the waves. But Fravitta attentively watched the progress
of their undertaking As soon as they had gained the middle of the
stream, the Roman galleys,  impelled by the full force of oars, of the
current, and of a favorable wind, rushed forwards in compact order, and
with irresistible weight; and the Hellespont was covered with the
fragments of the Gothic shipwreck. After the destruction of his hopes,
and the loss of many thousands of his bravest soldiers, Gainas, who
could no longer aspire to govern or to subdue the Romans, determined to
resume the independence of a savage life. A light and active body of
Barbarian horse, disengaged from their infantry and baggage, might
perform in eight or ten days a march of three hundred miles from the
Hellespont to the Danube;  the garrisons of that important frontier had
been gradually annihilated; the river, in the month of December, would
be deeply frozen; and the unbounded prospect of Scythia was opened to
the ambition of Gainas. This design was secretly communicated to the
national troops, who devoted themselves to the fortunes of their leader;
and before the signal of departure was given, a great number of
provincial auxiliaries, whom he suspected of an attachment to their
native country, were perfidiously massacred. The Goths advanced, by
rapid marches, through the plains of Thrace; and they were soon
delivered from the fear of a pursuit, by the vanity of Fravitta, * who,
instead of extinguishing the war, hastened to enjoy the popular
applause, and to assume the peaceful honors of the consulship. But a
formidable ally appeared in arms to vindicate the majesty of the empire,
and to guard the peace and liberty of Scythia.  The superior forces of
Uldin, king of the Huns, opposed the progress of Gainas; a hostile and
ruined country prohibited his retreat; he disdained to capitulate; and
after repeatedly attempting to cut his way through the ranks of the
enemy, he was slain, with his desperate followers, in the field of
battle. Eleven days after the naval victory of the Hellespont, the head
of Gainas, the inestimable gift of the conqueror, was received at
Constantinople with the most liberal expressions of gratitude; and the
public deliverance was celebrated by festivals and illuminations. The
triumphs of Arcadius became the subject of epic poems;  and the monarch,
no longer oppressed by any hostile terrors, resigned himself to the mild
and absolute dominion of his wife, the fair and artful Eudoxia, who was
sullied her fame by the persecution of St. John Chrysostom.

After the death of the indolent Nectarius, the successor of Gregory
Nazianzen, the church of Constantinople was distracted by the ambition
of rival candidates, who were not ashamed to solicit, with gold or
flattery, the suffrage of the people, or of the favorite. On this
occasion Eutropius seems to have deviated from his ordinary maxims; and
his uncorrupted judgment was determined only by the superior merit of a
stranger. In a late journey into the East, he had admired the sermons of
John, a native and presbyter of Antioch, whose name has been
distinguished by the epithet of Chrysostom, or the Golden Mouth.  A
private order was despatched to the governor of Syria; and as the people
might be unwilling to resign their favorite preacher, he was
transported, with speed and secrecy in a post- chariot, from Antioch to
Constantinople. The unanimous and unsolicited consent of the court, the
clergy, and the people, ratified the choice of the minister; and, both
as a saint and as an orator, the new archbishop surpassed the sanguine
expectations of the public. Born of a noble and opulent family, in the
capital of Syria, Chrysostom had been educated, by the care of a tender
mother, under the tuition of the most skilful masters. He studied the
art of rhetoric in the school of Libanius; and that celebrated sophist,
who soon discovered the talents of his disciple, ingenuously confessed
that John would have deserved to succeed him, had he not been stolen
away by the Christians. His piety soon disposed him to receive the
sacrament of baptism; to renounce the lucrative and honorable profession
of the law; and to bury himself in the adjacent desert, where he subdued
the lusts of the flesh by an austere penance of six years. His
infirmities compelled him to return to the society of mankind; and the
authority of Meletius devoted his talents to the service of the church:
but in the midst of his family, and afterwards on the archiepiscopal
throne, Chrysostom still persevered in the practice of the monastic
virtues. The ample revenues, which his predecessors had consumed in pomp
and luxury, he diligently applied to the establishment of hospitals; and
the multitudes, who were supported by his charity, preferred the
eloquent and edifying discourses of their archbishop to the amusements
of the theatre or the circus. The monuments of that eloquence, which was
admired near twenty years at Antioch and Constantinople, have been
carefully preserved; and the possession of near one thousand sermons, or
homilies has authorized the critics  of succeeding times to appreciate
the genuine merit of Chrysostom. They unanimously attribute to the
Christian orator the free command of an elegant and copious language;
the judgment to conceal the advantages which he derived from the
knowledge of rhetoric and philosophy; an inexhaustible fund of metaphors
and similitudes of ideas and images, to vary and illustrate the most
familiar topics; the happy art of engaging the passions in the service
of virtue; and of exposing the folly, as well as the turpitude, of vice,
almost with the truth and spirit of a dramatic representation.

The pastoral labors of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked, and
gradually united against him, two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy,
who envied his success, and the obstinate sinners, who were offended by
his reproofs. When Chrysostom thundered, from the pulpit of St. Sophia,
against the degeneracy of the Christians, his shafts were spent among
the crowd, without wounding, or even marking, the character of any
individual. When he declaimed against the peculiar vices of the rich,
poverty might obtain a transient consolation from his invectives; but
the guilty were still sheltered by their numbers; and the reproach
itself was dignified by some ideas of superiority and enjoyment. But as
the pyramid rose towards the summit, it insensibly diminished to a
point; and the magistrates, the ministers, the favorite eunuchs, the
ladies of the court,  the empress Eudoxia herself, had a much larger
share of guilt to divide among a smaller proportion of criminals. The
personal applications of the audience were anticipated, or confirmed, by
the testimony of their own conscience; and the intrepid preacher assumed
the dangerous right of exposing both the offence and the offender to the
public abhorrence. The secret resentment of the court encouraged the
discontent of the clergy and monks of Constantinople, who were too
hastily reformed by the fervent zeal of their archbishop. He had
condemned, from the pulpit, the domestic females of the clergy of
Constantinople, who, under the name of servants, or sisters, afforded a
perpetual occasion either of sin or of scandal. The silent and solitary
ascetics, who had secluded themselves from the world, were entitled to
the warmest approbation of Chrysostom; but he despised and stigmatized,
as the disgrace of their holy profession, the crowd of degenerate monks,
who, from some unworthy motives of pleasure or profit, so frequently
infested the streets of the capital. To the voice of persuasion, the
archbishop was obliged to add the terrors of authority; and his ardor,
in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was not always exempt
from passion; nor was it always guided by prudence. Chrysostom was
naturally of a choleric disposition.  Although he struggled, according
to the precepts of the gospel, to love his private enemies, he indulged
himself in the privilege of hating the enemies of God and of the church;
and his sentiments were sometimes delivered with too much energy of
countenance and expression. He still maintained, from some
considerations of health or abstinence, his former habits of taking his
repasts alone; and this inhospitable custom,  which his enemies imputed
to pride, contributed, at least, to nourish the infirmity of a morose
and unsocial humor. Separated from that familiar intercourse, which
facilitates the knowledge and the despatch of business, he reposed an
unsuspecting confidence in his deacon Serapion; and seldom applied his
speculative knowledge of human nature to the particular character,
either of his dependants, or of his equals. Conscious of the purity of
his intentions, and perhaps of the superiority of his genius, the
archbishop of Constantinople extended the jurisdiction of the Imperial
city, that he might enlarge the sphere of his pastoral labors; and the
conduct which the profane imputed to an ambitious motive, appeared to
Chrysostom himself in the light of a sacred and indispensable duty. In
his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed thirteen
bishops of Lydia and Phrygia; and indiscreetly declared that a deep
corruption of simony and licentiousness had infected the whole episcopal
order.  If those bishops were innocent, such a rash and unjust
condemnation must excite a well- grounded discontent. If they were
guilty, the numerous associates of their guilt would soon discover that
their own safety depended on the ruin of the archbishop; whom they
studied to represent as the tyrant of the Eastern church.

This ecclesiastical conspiracy was managed by Theophilus,  archbishop of
Alexandria, an active and ambitious prelate, who displayed the fruits of
rapine in monuments of ostentation. His national dislike to the rising
greatness of a city which degraded him from the second to the third rank
in the Christian world, was exasperated by some personal dispute with
Chrysostom himself.  By the private invitation of the empress,
Theophilus landed at Constantinople with a stout body of Egyptian
mariners, to encounter the populace; and a train of dependent bishops,
to secure, by their voices, the majority of a synod. The synod  was
convened in the suburb of Chalcedon, surnamed the Oak, where Rufinus had
erected a stately church and monastery; and their proceedings were
continued during fourteen days, or sessions. A bishop and a deacon
accused the archbishop of Constantinople; but the frivolous or
improbable nature of the forty-seven articles which they presented
against him, may justly be considered as a fair and unexceptional
panegyric. Four successive summons were signified to Chrysostom; but he
still refused to trust either his person or his reputation in the hands
of his implacable enemies, who, prudently declining the examination of
any particular charges, condemned his contumacious disobedience, and
hastily pronounced a sentence of deposition. The synod of the
Oakimmediately addressed the emperor to ratify and execute their
judgment, and charitably insinuated, that the penalties of treason might
be inflicted on the audacious preacher, who had reviled, under the name
of Jezebel, the empress Eudoxia herself. The archbishop was rudely
arrested, and conducted through the city, by one of the Imperial
messengers, who landed him, after a short navigation, near the entrance
of the Euxine; from whence, before the expiration of two days, he was
gloriously recalled.

The first astonishment of his faithful people had been mute and passive:
they suddenly rose with unanimous and irresistible fury. Theophilus
escaped, but the promiscuous crowd of monks and Egyptian mariners was
slaughtered without pity in the streets of Constantinople.  A seasonable
earthquake justified the interposition of Heaven; the torrent of
sedition rolled forwards to the gates of the palace; and the empress,
agitated by fear or remorse, threw herself at the feet of Arcadius, and
confessed that the public safety could be purchased only by the
restoration of Chrysostom. The Bosphorus was covered with innumerable
vessels; the shores of Europe and Asia were profusely illuminated; and
the acclamations of a victorious people accompanied, from the port to
the cathedral, the triumph of the archbishop; who, too easily, consented
to resume the exercise of his functions, before his sentence had been
legally reversed by the authority of an ecclesiastical synod. Ignorant,
or careless, of the impending danger, Chrysostom indulged his zeal, or
perhaps his resentment; declaimed with peculiar asperity against
femalevices; and condemned the profane honors which were addressed,
almost in the precincts of St. Sophia, to the statue of the empress. His
imprudence tempted his enemies to inflame the haughty spirit of Eudoxia,
by reporting, or perhaps inventing, the famous exordium of a sermon,
"Herodias is again furious; Herodias again dances; she once more
requires the head of John;" an insolent allusion, which, as a woman and
a sovereign, it was impossible for her to forgive.  The short interval
of a perfidious truce was employed to concert more effectual measures
for the disgrace and ruin of the archbishop. A numerous council of the
Eastern prelates, who were guided from a distance by the advice of
Theophilus, confirmed the validity, without examining the justice, of
the former sentence; and a detachment of Barbarian troops was introduced
into the city, to suppress the emotions of the people. On the vigil of
Easter, the solemn administration of baptism was rudely interrupted by
the soldiers, who alarmed the modesty of the naked catechumens, and
violated, by their presence, the awful mysteries of the Christian
worship. Arsacius occupied the church of St. Sophia, and the
archiepiscopal throne. The Catholics retreated to the baths of
Constantine, and afterwards to the fields; where they were still pursued
and insulted by the guards, the bishops, and the magistrates. The fatal
day of the second and final exile of Chrysostom was marked by the
conflagration of the cathedral, of the senate-house, and of the adjacent
buildings; and this calamity was imputed, without proof, but not without
probability, to the despair of a persecuted faction.

Cicero might claim some merit, if his voluntary banishment preserved the
peace of the republic;  but the submission of Chrysostom was the
indispensable duty of a Christian and a subject. Instead of listening to
his humble prayer, that he might be permitted to reside at Cyzicus, or
Nicomedia, the inflexible empress assigned for his exile the remote and
desolate town of Cucusus, among the ridges of Mount Taurus, in the
Lesser Armenia. A secret hope was entertained, that the archbishop might
perish in a difficult and dangerous march of seventy days, in the heat
of summer, through the provinces of Asia Minor, where he was continually
threatened by the hostile attacks of the Isaurians, and the more
implacable fury of the monks. Yet Chrysostom arrived in safety at the
place of his confinement; and the three years which he spent at Cucusus,
and the neighboring town of Arabissus, were the last and most glorious
of his life. His character was consecrated by absence and persecution;
the faults of his administration were no longer remembered; but every
tongue repeated the praises of his genius and virtue: and the respectful
attention of the Christian world was fixed on a desert spot among the
mountains of Taurus. From that solitude the archbishop, whose active
mind was invigorated by misfortunes, maintained a strict and frequent
correspondence  with the most distant provinces; exhorted the separate
congregation of his faithful adherents to persevere in their allegiance;
urged the destruction of the temples of Phnicia, and the extirpation of
heresy in the Isle of Cyprus; extended his pastoral care to the missions
of Persia and Scythia; negotiated, by his ambassadors, with the Roman
pontiff and the emperor Honorius; and boldly appealed, from a partial
synod, to the supreme tribunal of a free and general council. The mind
of the illustrious exile was still independent; but his captive body was
exposed to the revenge of the oppressors, who continued to abuse the
name and authority of Arcadius.  An order was despatched for the instant
removal of Chrysostom to the extreme desert of Pityus: and his guards so
faithfully obeyed their cruel instructions, that, before he reached the
sea-coast of the Euxine, he expired at Comana, in Pontus, in the
sixtieth year of his age. The succeeding generation acknowledged his
innocence and merit. The archbishops of the East, who might blush that
their predecessors had been the enemies of Chrysostom, were gradually
disposed, by the firmness of the Roman pontiff, to restore the honors of
that venerable name.  At the pious solicitation of the clergy and people
of Constantinople, his relics, thirty years after his death, were
transported from their obscure sepulchre to the royal city.  The emperor
Theodosius advanced to receive them as far as Chalcedon; and, falling
prostrate on the coffin, implored, in the name of his guilty parents,
Arcadius and Eudoxia, the forgiveness of the injured saint.

Chapter XXXII: Emperors Arcadius, Eutropius, Theodosius II. -- Part III.

Yet a reasonable doubt may be entertained, whether any stain of
hereditary guilt could be derived from Arcadius to his successor.
Eudoxia was a young and beautiful woman, who indulged her passions, and
despised her husband; Count John enjoyed, at least, the familiar
confidence of the empress; and the public named him as the real father
of Theodosius the younger.  The birth of a son was accepted, however, by
the pious husband, as an event the most fortunate and honorable to
himself, to his family, and to the Eastern world: and the royal infant,
by an unprecedented favor, was invested with the titles of Cæsar and
Augustus. In less than four years afterwards, Eudoxia, in the bloom of
youth, was destroyed by the consequences of a miscarriage; and this
untimely death confounded the prophecy of a holy bishop,  who, amidst
the universal joy, had ventured to foretell, that she should behold the
long and auspicious reign of her glorious son. The Catholics applauded
the justice of Heaven, which avenged the persecution of St. Chrysostom;
and perhaps the emperor was the only person who sincerely bewailed the
loss of the haughty and rapacious Eudoxia. Such a domestic misfortune
afflicted himmore deeply than the public calamities of the East;  the
licentious excursions, from Pontus to Palestine, of the Isaurian
robbers, whose impunity accused the weakness of the government; and the
earthquakes, the conflagrations, the famine, and the flights of locusts,
which the popular discontent was equally disposed to attribute to the
incapacity of the monarch. At length, in the thirty-first year of his
age, after a reign (if we may abuse that word) of thirteen years, three
months, and fifteen days, Arcadius expired in the palace of
Constantinople. It is impossible to delineate his character; since, in a
period very copiously furnished with historical materials, it has not
been possible to remark one action that properly belongs to the son of
the great Theodosius.

The historian Procopius  has indeed illuminated the mind of the dying
emperor with a ray of human prudence, or celestial wisdom. Arcadius
considered, with anxious foresight, the helpless condition of his son
Theodosius, who was no more than seven years of age, the dangerous
factions of a minority, and the aspiring spirit of Jezdegerd, the
Persian monarch. Instead of tempting the allegiance of an ambitious
subject, by the participation of supreme power, he boldly appealed to
the magnanimity of a king; and placed, by a solemn testament, the
sceptre of the East in the hands of Jezdegerd himself. The royal
guardian accepted and discharged this honorable trust with unexampled
fidelity; and the infancy of Theodosius was protected by the arms and
councils of Persia. Such is the singular narrative of Procopius; and his
veracity is not disputed by Agathias,  while he presumes to dissent from
his judgment, and to arraign the wisdom of a Christian emperor, who, so
rashly, though so fortunately, committed his son and his dominions to
the unknown faith of a stranger, a rival, and a heathen. At the distance
of one hundred and fifty years, this political question might be debated
in the court of Justinian; but a prudent historian will refuse to
examine the propriety, till he has ascertained the truth, of the
testament of Arcadius. As it stands without a parallel in the history of
the world, we may justly require, that it should be attested by the
positive and unanimous evidence of contemporaries. The strange novelty
of the event, which excites our distrust, must have attracted their
notice; and their universal silence annihilates the vain tradition of
the succeeding age.

The maxims of Roman jurisprudence, if they could fairly be transferred
from private property to public dominion, would have adjudged to the
emperor Honorius the guardianship of his nephew, till he had attained,
at least, the fourteenth year of his age. But the weakness of Honorius,
and the calamities of his reign, disqualified him from prosecuting this
natural claim; and such was the absolute separation of the two
monarchies, both in interest and affection, that Constantinople would
have obeyed, with less reluctance, the orders of the Persian, than those
of the Italian, court. Under a prince whose weakness is disguised by the
external signs of manhood and discretion, the most worthless favorites
may secretly dispute the empire of the palace; and dictate to submissive
provinces the commands of a master, whom they direct and despise. But
the ministers of a child, who is incapable of arming them with the
sanction of the royal name, must acquire and exercise an independent
authority. The great officers of the state and army, who had been
appointed before the death of Arcadius, formed an aristocracy, which
might have inspired them with the idea of a free republic; and the
government of the Eastern empire was fortunately assumed by the præfect
Anthemius,  who obtained, by his superior abilities, a lasting ascendant
over the minds of his equals. The safety of the young emperor proved the
merit and integrity of Anthemius; and his prudent firmness sustained the
force and reputation of an infant reign. Uldin, with a formidable host
of Barbarians, was encamped in the heart of Thrace; he proudly rejected
all terms of accommodation; and, pointing to the rising sun, declared to
the Roman ambassadors, that the course of that planet should alone
terminate the conquest of the Huns. But the desertion of his
confederates, who were privately convinced of the justice and liberality
of the Imperial ministers, obliged Uldin to repass the Danube: the tribe
of the Scyrri, which composed his rear-guard, was almost extirpated; and
many thousand captives were dispersed to cultivate, with servile labor,
the fields of Asia.  In the midst of the public triumph, Constantinople
was protected by a strong enclosure of new and more extensive walls; the
same vigilant care was applied to restore the fortifications of the
Illyrian cities; and a plan was judiciously conceived, which, in the
space of seven years, would have secured the command of the Danube, by
establishing on that river a perpetual fleet of two hundred and fifty
armed vessels.

But the Romans had so long been accustomed to the authority of a
monarch, that the first, even among the females, of the Imperial family,
who displayed any courage or capacity, was permitted to ascend the
vacant throne of Theodosius. His sister Pulcheria,  who was only two
years older than himself, received, at the age of sixteen, the title of
Augusta; and though her favor might be sometimes clouded by caprice or
intrigue, she continued to govern the Eastern empire near forty years;
during the long minority of her brother, and after his death, in her own
name, and in the name of Marcian, her nominal husband. From a motive
either of prudence or religion, she embraced a life of celibacy; and
notwithstanding some aspersions on the chastity of Pulcheria,  this
resolution, which she communicated to her sisters Arcadia and Marina,
was celebrated by the Christian world, as the sublime effort of heroic
piety. In the presence of the clergy and people, the three daughters of
Arcadius  dedicated their virginity to God; and the obligation of their
solemn vow was inscribed on a tablet of gold and gems; which they
publicly offered in the great church of Constantinople. Their palace was
converted into a monastery; and all males, except the guides of their
conscience, the saints who had forgotten the distinction of sexes, were
scrupulously excluded from the holy threshold. Pulcheria, her two
sisters, and a chosen train of favorite damsels, formed a religious
community: they denounced the vanity of dress; interrupted, by frequent
fasts, their simple and frugal diet; allotted a portion of their time to
works of embroidery; and devoted several hours of the day and night to
the exercises of prayer and psalmody. The piety of a Christian virgin
was adorned by the zeal and liberality of an empress. Ecclesiastical
history describes the splendid churches, which were built at the expense
of Pulcheria, in all the provinces of the East; her charitable
foundations for the benefit of strangers and the poor; the ample
donations which she assigned for the perpetual maintenance of monastic
societies; and the active severity with which she labored to suppress
the opposite heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. Such virtues were
supposed to deserve the peculiar favor of the Deity: and the relics of
martyrs, as well as the knowledge of future events, were communicated in
visions and revelations to the Imperial saint.  Yet the devotion of
Pulcheria never diverted her indefatigable attention from temporal
affairs; and she alone, among all the descendants of the great
Theodosius, appears to have inherited any share of his manly spirit and
abilities. The elegant and familiar use which she had acquired, both of
the Greek and Latin languages, was readily applied to the various
occasions of speaking or writing, on public business: her deliberations
were maturely weighed; her actions were prompt and decisive; and, while
she moved, without noise or ostentation, the wheel of government, she
discreetly attributed to the genius of the emperor the long tranquillity
of his reign. In the last years of his peaceful life, Europe was indeed
afflicted by the arms of war; but the more extensive provinces of Asia
still continued to enjoy a profound and permanent repose. Theodosius the
younger was never reduced to the disgraceful necessity of encountering
and punishing a rebellious subject: and since we cannot applaud the
vigor, some praise may be due to the mildness and prosperity, of the
administration of Pulcheria.

The Roman world was deeply interested in the education of its master. A
regular course of study and exercise was judiciously instituted; of the
military exercises of riding, and shooting with the bow; of the liberal
studies of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy: the most skilful masters
of the East ambitiously solicited the attention of their royal pupil;
and several noble youths were introduced into the palace, to animate his
diligence by the emulation of friendship. Pulcheria alone discharged the
important task of instructing her brother in the arts of government; but
her precepts may countenance some suspicions of the extent of her
capacity, or of the purity of her intentions. She taught him to maintain
a grave and majestic deportment; to walk, to hold his robes, to seat
himself on his throne, in a manner worthy of a great prince; to abstain
from laughter; to listen with condescension; to return suitable answers;
to assume, by turns, a serious or a placid countenance: in a word, to
represent with grace and dignity the external figure of a Roman emperor.
But Theodosius  was never excited to support the weight and glory of an
illustrious name: and, instead of aspiring to support his ancestors, he
degenerated (if we may presume to measure the degrees of incapacity)
below the weakness of his father and his uncle. Arcadius and Honorius
had been assisted by the guardian care of a parent, whose lessons were
enforced by his authority and example. But the unfortunate prince, who
is born in the purple, must remain a stranger to the voice of truth; and
the son of Arcadius was condemned to pass his perpetual infancy
encompassed only by a servile train of women and eunuchs. The ample
leisure which he acquired by neglecting the essential duties of his high
office, was filled by idle amusements and unprofitable studies. Hunting
was the only active pursuit that could tempt him beyond the limits of
the palace; but he most assiduously labored, sometimes by the light of a
midnight lamp, in the mechanic occupations of painting and carving; and
the elegance with which he transcribed religious books entitled the
Roman emperor to the singular epithet of Calligraphes, or a fair writer.
Separated from the world by an impenetrable veil, Theodosius trusted the
persons whom he loved; he loved those who were accustomed to amuse and
flatter his indolence; and as he never perused the papers that were
presented for the royal signature, the acts of injustice the most
repugnant to his character were frequently perpetrated in his name. The
emperor himself was chaste, temperate, liberal, and merciful; but these
qualities, which can only deserve the name of virtues when they are
supported by courage and regulated by discretion, were seldom
beneficial, and they sometimes proved mischievous, to mankind. His mind,
enervated by a royal education, was oppressed and degraded by abject
superstition: he fasted, he sung psalms, he blindly accepted the
miracles and doctrines with which his faith was continually nourished.
Theodosius devoutly worshipped the dead and living saints of the
Catholic church; and he once refused to eat, till an insolent monk, who
had cast an excommunication on his sovereign, condescended to heal the
spiritual wound which he had inflicted.

The story of a fair and virtuous maiden, exalted from a private
condition to the Imperial throne, might be deemed an incredible romance,
if such a romance had not been verified in the marriage of Theodosius.
The celebrated Athenais  was educated by her father Leontius in the
religion and sciences of the Greeks; and so advantageous was the opinion
which the Athenian philosopher entertained of his contemporaries, that
he divided his patrimony between his two sons, bequeathing to his
daughter a small legacy of one hundred pieces of gold, in the lively
confidence that her beauty and merit would be a sufficient portion. The
jealousy and avarice of her brothers soon compelled Athenais to seek a
refuge at Constantinople; and, with some hopes, either of justice or
favor, to throw herself at the feet of Pulcheria. That sagacious
princess listened to her eloquent complaint; and secretly destined the
daughter of the philosopher Leontius for the future wife of the emperor
of the East, who had now attained the twentieth year of his age. She
easily excited the curiosity of her brother, by an interesting picture
of the charms of Athenais; large eyes, a well- proportioned nose, a fair
complexion, golden locks, a slender person, a graceful demeanor, an
understanding improved by study, and a virtue tried by distress.
Theodosius, concealed behind a curtain in the apartment of his sister,
was permitted to behold the Athenian virgin: the modest youth
immediately declared his pure and honorable love; and the royal nuptials
were celebrated amidst the acclamations of the capital and the
provinces. Athenais, who was easily persuaded to renounce the errors of
Paganism, received at her baptism the Christian name of Eudocia; but the
cautious Pulcheria withheld the title of Augusta, till the wife of
Theodosius had approved her fruitfulness by the birth of a daughter, who
espoused, fifteen years afterwards, the emperor of the West. The
brothers of Eudocia obeyed, with some anxiety, her Imperial summons; but
as she could easily forgive their unfortunate unkindness, she indulged
the tenderness, or perhaps the vanity, of a sister, by promoting them to
the rank of consuls and præfects. In the luxury of the palace, she still
cultivated those ingenuous arts which had contributed to her greatness;
and wisely dedicated her talents to the honor of religion, and of her
husband. Eudocia composed a poetical paraphrase of the first eight books
of the Old Testament, and of the prophecies of Daniel and Zechariah; a
cento of the verses of Homer, applied to the life and miracles of
Christ, the legend of St. Cyprian, and a panegyric on the Persian
victories of Theodosius; and her writings, which were applauded by a
servile and superstitious age, have not been disdained by the candor of
impartial criticism.  The fondness of the emperor was not abated by time
and possession; and Eudocia, after the marriage of her daughter, was
permitted to discharge her grateful vows by a solemn pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. Her ostentatious progress through the East may seem
inconsistent with the spirit of Christian humility; she pronounced, from
a throne of gold and gems, an eloquent oration to the senate of Antioch,
declared her royal intention of enlarging the walls of the city,
bestowed a donative of two hundred pounds of gold to restore the public
baths, and accepted the statues, which were decreed by the gratitude of
Antioch. In the Holy Land, her alms and pious foundations exceeded the
munificence of the great Helena, and though the public treasure might be
impoverished by this excessive liberality, she enjoyed the conscious
satisfaction of returning to Constantinople with the chains of St.
Peter, the right arm of St. Stephen, and an undoubted picture of the
Virgin, painted by St. Luke.  But this pilgrimage was the fatal term of
the glories of Eudocia. Satiated with empty pomp, and unmindful,
perhaps, of her obligations to Pulcheria, she ambitiously aspired to the
government of the Eastern empire; the palace was distracted by female
discord; but the victory was at last decided, by the superior ascendant
of the sister of Theodosius. The execution of Paulinus, master of the
offices, and the disgrace of Cyrus, Prætorian præfect of the East,
convinced the public that the favor of Eudocia was insufficient to
protect her most faithful friends; and the uncommon beauty of Paulinus
encouraged the secret rumor, that his guilt was that of a successful
lover.  As soon as the empress perceived that the affection of
Theodosius was irretrievably lost, she requested the permission of
retiring to the distant solitude of Jerusalem. She obtained her request;
but the jealousy of Theodosius, or the vindictive spirit of Pulcheria,
pursued her in her last retreat; and Saturninus, count of the domestics,
was directed to punish with death two ecclesiastics, her most favored
servants. Eudocia instantly revenged them by the assassination of the
count; the furious passions which she indulged on this suspicious
occasion, seemed to justify the severity of Theodosius; and the empress,
ignominiously stripped of the honors of her rank,  was disgraced,
perhaps unjustly, in the eyes of the world. The remainder of the life of
Eudocia, about sixteen years, was spent in exile and devotion; and the
approach of age, the death of Theodosius, the misfortunes of her only
daughter, who was led a captive from Rome to Carthage, and the society
of the Holy Monks of Palestine, insensibly confirmed the religious
temper of her mind. After a full experience of the vicissitudes of human
life, the daughter of the philosopher Leontius expired, at Jerusalem, in
the sixty-seventh year of her age; protesting, with her dying breath,
that she had never transgressed the bounds of innocence and friendship.

The gentle mind of Theodosius was never inflamed by the ambition of
conquest, or military renown; and the slight alarm of a Persian war
scarcely interrupted the tranquillity of the East. The motives of this
war were just and honorable. In the last year of the reign of Jezdegerd,
the supposed guardian of Theodosius, a bishop, who aspired to the crown
of martyrdom, destroyed one of the fire-temples of Susa.  His zeal and
obstinacy were revenged on his brethren: the Magi excited a cruel
persecution; and the intolerant zeal of Jezdegerd was imitated by his
son Varanes, or Bahram, who soon afterwards ascended the throne. Some
Christian fugitives, who escaped to the Roman frontier, were sternly
demanded, and generously refused; and the refusal, aggravated by
commercial disputes, soon kindled a war between the rival monarchies.
The mountains of Armenia, and the plains of Mesopotamia, were filled
with hostile armies; but the operations of two successive campaigns were
not productive of any decisive or memorable events. Some engagements
were fought, some towns were besieged, with various and doubtful
success: and if the Romans failed in their attempt to recover the
long-lost possession of Nisibis, the Persians were repulsed from the
walls of a Mesopotamian city, by the valor of a martial bishop, who
pointed his thundering engine in the name of St. Thomas the Apostle. Yet
the splendid victories which the incredible speed of the messenger
Palladius repeatedly announced to the palace of Constantinople, were
celebrated with festivals and panegyrics. From these panegyrics the
historians  of the age might borrow their extraordinary, and, perhaps,
fabulous tales; of the proud challenge of a Persian hero, who was
entangled by the net, and despatched by the sword, of Areobindus the
Goth; of the ten thousand Immortals, who were slain in the attack of the
Roman camp; and of the hundred thousand Arabs, or Saracens, who were
impelled by a panic terror to throw themselves headlong into the
Euphrates. Such events may be disbelieved or disregarded; but the
charity of a bishop, Acacius of Amida, whose name might have dignified
the saintly calendar, shall not be lost in oblivion. Boldly declaring,
that vases of gold and silver are useless to a God who neither eats nor
drinks, the generous prelate sold the plate of the church of Amida;
employed the price in the redemption of seven thousand Persian captives;
supplied their wants with affectionate liberality; and dismissed them to
their native country, to inform their king of the true spirit of the
religion which he persecuted. The practice of benevolence in the midst
of war must always tend to assuage the animosity of contending nations;
and I wish to persuade myself, that Acacius contributed to the
restoration of peace. In the conference which was held on the limits of
the two empires, the Roman ambassadors degraded the personal character
of their sovereign, by a vain attempt to magnify the extent of his
power; when they seriously advised the Persians to prevent, by a timely
accommodation, the wrath of a monarch, who was yet ignorant of this
distant war. A truce of one hundred years was solemnly ratified; and
although the revolutions of Armenia might threaten the public
tranquillity, the essential conditions of this treaty were respected
near fourscore years by the successors of Constantine and Artaxerxes.

Since the Roman and Parthian standards first encountered on the banks of
the Euphrates, the kingdom of Armenia  was alternately oppressed by its
formidable protectors; and in the course of this History, several
events, which inclined the balance of peace and war, have been already
related. A disgraceful treaty had resigned Armenia to the ambition of
Sapor; and the scale of Persia appeared to preponderate. But the royal
race of Arsaces impatiently submitted to the house of Sassan; the
turbulent nobles asserted, or betrayed, their hereditary independence;
and the nation was still attached to the Christianprinces of
Constantinople. In the beginning of the fifth century, Armenia was
divided by the progress of war and faction;  and the unnatural division
precipitated the downfall of that ancient monarchy. Chosroes, the
Persian vassal, reigned over the Eastern and most extensive portion of
the country; while the Western province acknowledged the jurisdiction of
Arsaces, and the supremacy of the emperor Arcadius. * After the death of
Arsaces, the Romans suppressed the regal government, and imposed on
their allies the condition of subjects. The military command was
delegated to the count of the Armenian frontier; the city of
Theodosiopolis  was built and fortified in a strong situation, on a
fertile and lofty ground, near the sources of the Euphrates; and the
dependent territories were ruled by five satraps, whose dignity was
marked by a peculiar habit of gold and purple. The less fortunate
nobles, who lamented the loss of their king, and envied the honors of
their equals, were provoked to negotiate their peace and pardon at the
Persian court; and returning, with their followers, to the palace of
Artaxata, acknowledged Chosroes  for their lawful sovereign. About
thirty years afterwards, Artasires, the nephew and successor of
Chosroes, fell under the displeasure of the haughty and capricious
nobles of Armenia; and they unanimously desired a Persian governor in
the room of an unworthy king. The answer of the archbishop Isaac, whose
sanction they earnestly solicited, is expressive of the character of a
superstitious people. He deplored the manifest and inexcusable vices of
Artasires; and declared, that he should not hesitate to accuse him
before the tribunal of a Christian emperor, who would punish, without
destroying, the sinner. "Our king," continued Isaac, "is too much
addicted to licentious pleasures, but he has been purified in the holy
waters of baptism. He is a lover of women, but he does not adore the
fire or the elements. He may deserve the reproach of lewdness, but he is
an undoubted Catholic; and his faith is pure, though his manners are
flagitious. I will never consent to abandon my sheep to the rage of
devouring wolves; and you would soon repent your rash exchange of the
infirmities of a believer, for the specious virtues of a heathen."
Exasperated by the firmness of Isaac, the factious nobles accused both
the king and the archbishop as the secret adherents of the emperor; and
absurdly rejoiced in the sentence of condemnation, which, after a
partial hearing, was solemnly pronounced by Bahram himself. The
descendants of Arsaces were degraded from the royal dignity,  which they
had possessed above five hundred and sixty years;  and the dominions of
the unfortunate Artasires, * under the new and significant appellation
of Persarmenia, were reduced into the form of a province. This
usurpation excited the jealousy of the Roman government; but the rising
disputes were soon terminated by an amicable, though unequal, partition
of the ancient kingdom of Armenia:  and a territorial acquisition, which
Augustus might have despised, reflected some lustre on the declining
empire of the younger Theodosius.

Chapter XXXIII: Conquest Of Africa By The Vandals.

Part I.

Death Of Honorius. -- Valentinian III. -- Emperor Of The East. --
Administration Of His Mother Placidia -- Ætius And Boniface. -- Conquest
Of Africa By The Vandals.

During a long and disgraceful reign of twenty-eight years, Honorius,
emperor of the West, was separated from the friendship of his brother,
and afterwards of his nephew, who reigned over the East; and
Constantinople beheld, with apparent indifference and secret joy, the
calamities of Rome. The strange adventures of Placidia  gradually
renewed and cemented the alliance of the two empires. The daughter of
the great Theodosius had been the captive, and the queen, of the Goths;
she lost an affectionate husband; she was dragged in chains by his
insulting assassin; she tasted the pleasure of revenge, and was
exchanged, in the treaty of peace, for six hundred thousand measures of
wheat. After her return from Spain to Italy, Placidia experienced a new
persecution in the bosom of her family. She was averse to a marriage,
which had been stipulated without her consent; and the brave
Constantius, as a noble reward for the tyrants whom he had vanquished,
received, from the hand of Honorius himself, the struggling and the
reluctant hand of the widow of Adolphus. But her resistance ended with
the ceremony of the nuptials: nor did Placidia refuse to become the
mother of Honoria and Valentinian the Third, or to assume and exercise
an absolute dominion over the mind of her grateful husband. The generous
soldier, whose time had hitherto been divided between social pleasure
and military service, was taught new lessons of avarice and ambition: he
extorted the title of Augustus: and the servant of Honorius was
associated to the empire of the West. The death of Constantius, in the
seventh month of his reign, instead of diminishing, seemed to increase
the power of Placidia; and the indecent familiarity  of her brother,
which might be no more than the symptoms of a childish affection, were
universally attributed to incestuous love. On a sudden, by some base
intrigues of a steward and a nurse, this excessive fondness was
converted into an irreconcilable quarrel: the debates of the emperor and
his sister were not long confined within the walls of the palace; and as
the Gothic soldiers adhered to their queen, the city of Ravenna was
agitated with bloody and dangerous tumults, which could only be appeased
by the forced or voluntary retreat of Placidia and her children. The
royal exiles landed at Constantinople, soon after the marriage of
Theodosius, during the festival of the Persian victories. They were
treated with kindness and magnificence; but as the statues of the
emperor Constantius had been rejected by the Eastern court, the title of
Augusta could not decently be allowed to his widow. Within a few months
after the arrival of Placidia, a swift messenger announced the death of
Honorius, the consequence of a dropsy; but the important secret was not
divulged, till the necessary orders had been despatched for the march of
a large body of troops to the   `-coast of Dalmatia. The shops and the
gates of Constantinople remained shut during seven days; and the loss of
a foreign prince, who could neither be esteemed nor regretted, was
celebrated with loud and affected demonstrations of the public grief.

While the ministers of Constantinople deliberated, the vacant throne of
Honorius was usurped by the ambition of a stranger. The name of the
rebel was John; he filled the confidential office of Primicerius, or
principal secretary, and history has attributed to his character more
virtues, than can easily be reconciled with the violation of the most
sacred duty. Elated by the submission of Italy, and the hope of an
alliance with the Huns, John presumed to insult, by an embassy, the
majesty of the Eastern emperor; but when he understood that his agents
had been banished, imprisoned, and at length chased away with deserved
ignominy, John prepared to assert, by arms, the injustice of his claims.
In such a cause, the grandson of the great Theodosius should have
marched in person: but the young emperor was easily diverted, by his
physicians, from so rash and hazardous a design; and the conduct of the
Italian expedition was prudently intrusted to Ardaburius, and his son
Aspar, who had already signalized their valor against the Persians. It
was resolved, that Ardaburius should embark with the infantry; whilst
Aspar, at the head of the cavalry, conducted Placidia and her son
Valentinian along the sea-coast of the Adriatic. The march of the
cavalry was performed with such active diligence, that they surprised,
without resistance, the important city of Aquileia: when the hopes of
Aspar were unexpectedly confounded by the intelligence, that a storm had
dispersed the Imperial fleet; and that his father, with only two
galleys, was taken and carried a prisoner into the port of Ravenna. Yet
this incident, unfortunate as it might seem, facilitated the conquest of
Italy. Ardaburius employed, or abused, the courteous freedom which he
was permitted to enjoy, to revive among the troops a sense of loyalty
and gratitude; and as soon as the conspiracy was ripe for execution, he
invited, by private messages, and pressed the approach of, Aspar. A
shepherd, whom the popular credulity transformed into an angel, guided
the eastern cavalry by a secret, and, it was thought, an impassable
road, through the morasses of the Po: the gates of Ravenna, after a
short struggle, were thrown open; and the defenceless tyrant was
delivered to the mercy, or rather to the cruelty, of the conquerors. His
right hand was first cut off; and, after he had been exposed, mounted on
an ass, to the public derision, John was beheaded in the circus of
Aquileia. The emperor Theodosius, when he received the news of the
victory, interrupted the horse-races; and singing, as he marched through
the streets, a suitable psalm, conducted his people from the Hippodrome
to the church, where he spent the remainder of the day in grateful
devotion.

In a monarchy, which, according to various precedents, might be
considered as elective, or hereditary, or patrimonial, it was impossible
that the intricate claims of female and collateral succession should be
clearly defined;  and Theodosius, by the right of consanguinity or
conquest, might have reigned the sole legitimate emperor of the Romans.
For a moment, perhaps, his eyes were dazzled by the prospect of
unbounded sway; but his indolent temper gradually acquiesced in the
dictates of sound policy. He contented himself with the possession of
the East; and wisely relinquished the laborious task of waging a distant
and doubtful war against the Barbarians beyond the Alps; or of securing
the obedience of the Italians and Africans, whose minds were alienated
by the irreconcilable difference of language and interest. Instead of
listening to the voice of ambition, Theodosius resolved to imitate the
moderation of his grandfather, and to seat his cousin Valentinian on the
throne of the West. The royal infant was distinguished at Constantinople
by the title of Nobilissimus: he was promoted, before his departure from
Thessalonica, to the rank and dignity of Cæsar; and after the conquest
of Italy, the patrician Helion, by the authority of Theodosius, and in
the presence of the senate, saluted Valentinian the Third by the name of
Augustus, and solemnly invested him with the diadem and the Imperial
purple.  By the agreement of the three females who governed the Roman
world, the son of Placidia was betrothed to Eudoxia, the daughter of
Theodosius and Athenais; and as soon as the lover and his bride had
attained the age of puberty, this honorable alliance was faithfully
accomplished. At the same time, as a compensation, perhaps, for the
expenses of the war, the Western Illyricum was detached from the Italian
dominions, and yielded to the throne of Constantinople.  The emperor of
the East acquired the useful dominion of the rich and maritime province
of Dalmatia, and the dangerous sovereignty of Pannonia and Noricum,
which had been filled and ravaged above twenty years by a promiscuous
crowd of Huns, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Bavarians. Theodosius and
Valentinian continued to respect the obligations of their public and
domestic alliance; but the unity of the Roman government was finally
dissolved. By a positive declaration, the validity of all future laws
was limited to the dominions of their peculiar author; unless he should
think proper to communicate them, subscribed with his own hand, for the
approbation of his independent colleague.

Valentinian, when he received the title of Augustus, was no more than
six years of age; and his long minority was intrusted to the guardian
care of a mother, who might assert a female claim to the succession of
the Western empire. Placidia envied, but she could not equal, the
reputation and virtues of the wife and sister of Theodosius, the elegant
genius of Eudocia, the wise and successful policy of Pulcheria. The
mother of Valentinian was jealous of the power which she was incapable
of exercising;  she reigned twenty-five years, in the name of her son;
and the character of that unworthy emperor gradually countenanced the
suspicion that Placidia had enervated his youth by a dissolute
education, and studiously diverted his attention from every manly and
honorable pursuit. Amidst the decay of military spirit, her armies were
commanded by two generals, Ætius  and Boniface,  who may be deservedly
named as the last of the Romans. Their union might have supported a
sinking empire; their discord was the fatal and immediate cause of the
loss of Africa. The invasion and defeat of Attila have immortalized the
fame of Ætius; and though time has thrown a shade over the exploits of
his rival, the defence of Marseilles, and the deliverance of Africa,
attest the military talents of Count Boniface. In the field of battle,
in partial encounters, in single combats, he was still the terror of the
Barbarians: the clergy, and particularly his friend Augustin, were
edified by the Christian piety which had once tempted him to retire from
the world; the people applauded his spotless integrity; the army dreaded
his equal and inexorable justice, which may be displayed in a very
singular example. A peasant, who complained of the criminal intimacy
between his wife and a Gothic soldier, was directed to attend his
tribunal the following day: in the evening the count, who had diligently
informed himself of the time and place of the assignation, mounted his
horse, rode ten miles into the country, surprised the guilty couple,
punished the soldier with instant death, and silenced the complaints of
the husband by presenting him, the next morning, with the head of the
adulterer. The abilities of Ætius and Boniface might have been usefully
employed against the public enemies, in separate and important commands;
but the experience of their past conduct should have decided the real
favor and confidence of the empress Placidia. In the melancholy season
of her exile and distress, Boniface alone had maintained her cause with
unshaken fidelity: and the troops and treasures of Africa had
essentially contributed to extinguish the rebellion. The same rebellion
had been supported by the zeal and activity of Ætius, who brought an
army of sixty thousand Huns from the Danube to the confines of Italy,
for the service of the usurper. The untimely death of John compelled him
to accept an advantageous treaty; but he still continued, the subject
and the soldier of Valentinian, to entertain a secret, perhaps a
treasonable, correspondence with his Barbarian allies, whose retreat had
been purchased by liberal gifts, and more liberal promises. But Ætius
possessed an advantage of singular moment in a female reign; he was
present: he besieged, with artful and assiduous flattery, the palace of
Ravenna; disguised his dark designs with the mask of loyalty and
friendship; and at length deceived both his mistress and his absent
rival, by a subtle conspiracy, which a weak woman and a brave man could
not easily suspect. He had secretly persuaded  Placidia to recall
Boniface from the government of Africa; he secretly advised Boniface to
disobey the Imperial summons: to the one, he represented the order as a
sentence of death; to the other, he stated the refusal as a signal of
revolt; and when the credulous and unsuspectful count had armed the
province in his defence, Ætius applauded his sagacity in foreseeing the
rebellion, which his own perfidy had excited. A temperate inquiry into
the real motives of Boniface would have restored a faithful servant to
his duty and to the republic; but the arts of Ætius still continued to
betray and to inflame, and the count was urged, by persecution, to
embrace the most desperate counsels. The success with which he eluded or
repelled the first attacks, could not inspire a vain confidence, that at
the head of some loose, disorderly Africans, he should be able to
withstand the regular forces of the West, commanded by a rival, whose
military character it was impossible for him to despise. After some
hesitation, the last struggles of prudence and loyalty, Boniface
despatched a trusty friend to the court, or rather to the camp, of
Gonderic, king of the Vandals, with the proposal of a strict alliance,
and the offer of an advantageous and perpetual settlement.

After the retreat of the Goths, the authority of Honorius had obtained a
precarious establishment in Spain; except only in the province of
Gallicia, where the Suevi and the Vandals had fortified their camps, in
mutual discord and hostile independence. The Vandals prevailed; and
their adversaries were besieged in the Nervasian hills, between Leon and
Oviedo, till the approach of Count Asterius compelled, or rather
provoked, the victorious Barbarians to remove the scene of the war to
the plains of Btica. The rapid progress of the Vandals soon acquired a
more effectual opposition; and the master-general Castinus marched
against them with a numerous army of Romans and Goths. Vanquished in
battle by an inferior army, Castinus fled with dishonor to Tarragona;
and this memorable defeat, which has been represented as the punishment,
was most probably the effect, of his rash presumption.  Seville and
Carthagena became the reward, or rather the prey, of the ferocious
conquerors; and the vessels which they found in the harbor of Carthagena
might easily transport them to the Isles of Majorca and Minorca, where
the Spanish fugitives, as in a secure recess, had vainly concealed their
families and their fortunes. The experience of navigation, and perhaps
the prospect of Africa, encouraged the Vandals to accept the invitation
which they received from Count Boniface; and the death of Gonderic
served only to forward and animate the bold enterprise. In the room of a
prince not conspicuous for any superior powers of the mind or body, they
acquired his bastard brother, the terrible Genseric;  a name, which, in
the destruction of the Roman empire, has deserved an equal rank with the
names of Alaric and Attila. The king of the Vandals is described to have
been of a middle stature, with a lameness in one leg, which he had
contracted by an accidental fall from his horse. His slow and cautious
speech seldom declared the deep purposes of his soul; he disdained to
imitate the luxury of the vanquished; but he indulged the sterner
passions of anger and revenge. The ambition of Genseric was without
bounds and without scruples; and the warrior could dexterously employ
the dark engines of policy to solicit the allies who might be useful to
his success, or to scatter among his enemies the seeds of hatred and
contention. Almost in the moment of his departure he was informed that
Hermanric, king of the Suevi, had presumed to ravage the Spanish
territories, which he was resolved to abandon. Impatient of the insult,
Genseric pursued the hasty retreat of the Suevi as far as Merida;
precipitated the king and his army into the River Anas, and calmly
returned to the sea-shore to embark his victorious troops. The vessels
which transported the Vandals over the modern Straits of Gibraltar, a
channel only twelve miles in breadth, were furnished by the Spaniards,
who anxiously wished their departure; and by the African general, who
had implored their formidable assistance.

Our fancy, so long accustomed to exaggerate and multiply the martial
swarms of Barbarians that seemed to issue from the North, will perhaps
be surprised by the account of the army which Genseric mustered on the
coast of Mauritania. The Vandals, who in twenty years had penetrated
from the Elbe to Mount Atlas, were united under the command of their
warlike king; and he reigned with equal authority over the Alani, who
had passed, within the term of human life, from the cold of Scythia to
the excessive heat of an African climate. The hopes of the bold
enterprise had excited many brave adventurers of the Gothic nation; and
many desperate provincials were tempted to repair their fortunes by the
same means which had occasioned their ruin. Yet this various multitude
amounted only to fifty thousand effective men; and though Genseric
artfully magnified his apparent strength, by appointing eighty
chiliarchs, or commanders of thousands, the fallacious increase of old
men, of children, and of slaves, would scarcely have swelled his army to
the number of four-score thousand persons.  But his own dexterity, and
the discontents of Africa, soon fortified the Vandal powers, by the
accession of numerous and active allies. The parts of Mauritania which
border on the Great Desert and the Atlantic Ocean, were filled with a
fierce and untractable race of men, whose savage temper had been
exasperated, rather than reclaimed, by their dread of the Roman arms.
The wandering Moors,  as they gradually ventured to approach the
seashore, and the camp of the Vandals, must have viewed with terror and
astonishment the dress, the armor, the martial pride and discipline of
the unknown strangers who had landed on their coast; and the fair
complexions of the blue-eyed warriors of Germany formed a very singular
contrast with the swarthy or olive hue which is derived from the
neighborhood of the torrid zone. After the first difficulties had in
some measure been removed, which arose from the mutual ignorance of
their respective language, the Moors, regardless of any future
consequence, embraced the alliance of the enemies of Rome; and a crowd
of naked savages rushed from the woods and valleys of Mount Atlas, to
satiate their revenge on the polished tyrants, who had injuriously
expelled them from the native sovereignty of the land.

The persecution of the Donatists  was an event not less favorable to the
designs of Genseric. Seventeen years before he landed in Africa, a
public conference was held at Carthage, by the order of the magistrate.
The Catholics were satisfied, that, after the invincible reasons which
they had alleged, the obstinacy of the schismatics must be inexcusable
and voluntary; and the emperor Honorius was persuaded to inflict the
most rigorous penalties on a faction which had so long abused his
patience and clemency. Three hundred bishops,  with many thousands of
the inferior clergy, were torn from their churches, stripped of their
ecclesiastical possessions, banished to the islands, and proscribed by
the laws, if they presumed to conceal themselves in the provinces of
Africa. Their numerous congregations, both in cities and in the country,
were deprived of the rights of citizens, and of the exercise of
religious worship. A regular scale of fines, from ten to two hundred
pounds of silver, was curiously ascertained, according to the
distinction of rank and fortune, to punish the crime of assisting at a
schismatic conventicle; and if the fine had been levied five times,
without subduing the obstinacy of the offender, his future punishment
was referred to the discretion of the Imperial court.  By these
severities, which obtained the warmest approbation of St. Augustin,
great numbers of Donatists were reconciled to the Catholic Church; but
the fanatics, who still persevered in their opposition, were provoked to
madness and despair; the distracted country was filled with tumult and
bloodshed; the armed troops of Circumcellions alternately pointed their
rage against themselves, or against their adversaries; and the calendar
of martyrs received on both sides a considerable augmentation.  Under
these circumstances, Genseric, a Christian, but an enemy of the orthodox
communion, showed himself to the Donatists as a powerful deliverer, from
whom they might reasonably expect the repeal of the odious and
oppressive edicts of the Roman emperors.  The conquest of Africa was
facilitated by the active zeal, or the secret favor, of a domestic
faction; the wanton outrages against the churches and the clergy of
which the Vandals are accused, may be fairly imputed to the fanaticism
of their allies; and the intolerant spirit which disgraced the triumph
of Christianity, contributed to the loss of the most important province
of the West.

The court and the people were astonished by the strange intelligence,
that a virtuous hero, after so many favors, and so many services, had
renounced his allegiance, and invited the Barbarians to destroy the
province intrusted to his command. The friends of Boniface, who still
believed that his criminal behavior might be excused by some honorable
motive, solicited, during the absence of Ætius, a free conference with
the Count of Africa; and Darius, an officer of high distinction, was
named for the important embassy. In their first interview at Carthage,
the imaginary provocations were mutually explained; the opposite letters
of Ætius were produced and compared; and the fraud was easily detected.
Placidia and Boniface lamented their fatal error; and the count had
sufficient magnanimity to confide in the forgiveness of his sovereign,
or to expose his head to her future resentment. His repentance was
fervent and sincere; but he soon discovered that it was no longer in his
power to restore the edifice which he had shaken to its foundations.
Carthage and the Roman garrisons returned with their general to the
allegiance of Valentinian; but the rest of Africa was still distracted
with war and faction; and the inexorable king of the Vandals, disdaining
all terms of accommodation, sternly refused to relinquish the possession
of his prey. The band of veterans who marched under the standard of
Boniface, and his hasty levies of provincial troops, were defeated with
considerable loss; the victorious Barbarians insulted the open country;
and Carthage, Cirta, and Hippo Regius, were the only cities that
appeared to rise above the general inundation.

The long and narrow tract of the African coast was filled with frequent
monuments of Roman art and magnificence; and the respective degrees of
improvement might be accurately measured by the distance from Carthage
and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection will impress every thinking
mind with the clearest idea of fertility and cultivation: the country
was extremely populous; the inhabitants reserved a liberal subsistence
for their own use; and the annual exportation, particularly of wheat,
was so regular and plentiful, that Africa deserved the name of the
common granary of Rome and of mankind. On a sudden the seven fruitful
provinces, from Tangier to Tripoli, were overwhelmed by the invasion of
the Vandals; whose destructive rage has perhaps been exaggerated by
popular animosity, religious zeal, and extravagant declamation. War, in
its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice;
and the hostilities of Barbarians are inflamed by the fierce and lawless
spirit which incessantly disturbs their peaceful and domestic society.
The Vandals, where they found resistance, seldom gave quarter; and the
deaths of their valiant countrymen were expiated by the ruin of the
cities under whose walls they had fallen. Careless of the distinctions
of age, or sex, or rank, they employed every species of indignity and
torture, to force from the captives a discovery of their hidden wealth.
The stern policy of Genseric justified his frequent examples of military
execution: he was not always the master of his own passions, or of those
of his followers; and the calamities of war were aggravated by the
licentiousness of the Moors, and the fanaticism of the Donatists. Yet I
shall not easily be persuaded, that it was the common practice of the
Vandals to extirpate the olives, and other fruit trees, of a country
where they intended to settle: nor can I believe that it was a usual
stratagem to slaughter great numbers of their prisoners before the walls
of a besieged city, for the sole purpose of infecting the air, and
producing a pestilence, of which they themselves must have been the
first victims.

The generous mind of Count Boniface was tortured by the exquisite
distress of beholding the ruin which he had occasioned, and whose rapid
progress he was unable to check. After the loss of a battle he retired
into Hippo Regius; where he was immediately besieged by an enemy, who
considered him as the real bulwark of Africa. The maritime colony of
Hippo,  about two hundred miles westward of Carthage, had formerly
acquired the distinguishing epithet of Regius, from the residence of
Numidian kings; and some remains of trade and populousness still adhere
to the modern city, which is known in Europe by the corrupted name of
Bona. The military labors, and anxious reflections, of Count Boniface,
were alleviated by the edifying conversation of his friend St. Augustin;
till that bishop, the light and pillar of the Catholic church, was
gently released, in the third month of the siege, and in the
seventy-sixth year of his age, from the actual and the impending
calamities of his country. The youth of Augustin had been stained by the
vices and errors which he so ingenuously confesses; but from the moment
of his conversion to that of his death, the manners of the bishop of
Hippo were pure and austere: and the most conspicuous of his virtues was
an ardent zeal against heretics of every denomination; the Manichæans,
the Donatists, and the Pelagians, against whom he waged a perpetual
controversy. When the city, some months after his death, was burnt by
the Vandals, the library was fortunately saved, which contained his
voluminous writings; two hundred and thirty-two separate books or
treatises on theological subjects, besides a complete exposition of the
psalter and the gospel, and a copious magazine of epistles and homilies.
According to the judgment of the most impartial critics, the superficial
learning of Augustin was confined to the Latin language;  and his style,
though sometimes animated by the eloquence of passion, is usually
clouded by false and affected rhetoric. But he possessed a strong,
capacious, argumentative mind; he boldly sounded the dark abyss of
grace, predestination, free will, and original sin; and the rigid system
of Christianity which he framed or restored,  has been entertained, with
public applause, and secret reluctance, by the Latin church.

Chapter XXXIII: Conquest Of Africa By The Vandals. -- Part II.

By the skill of Boniface, and perhaps by the ignorance of the Vandals,
the siege of Hippo was protracted above fourteen months: the sea was
continually open; and when the adjacent country had been exhausted by
irregular rapine, the besiegers themselves were compelled by famine to
relinquish their enterprise. The importance and danger of Africa were
deeply felt by the regent of the West. Placidia implored the assistance
of her eastern ally; and the Italian fleet and army were reënforced by
Asper, who sailed from Constantinople with a powerful armament. As soon
as the force of the two empires was united under the command of
Boniface, he boldly marched against the Vandals; and the loss of a
second battle irretrievably decided the fate of Africa. He embarked with
the precipitation of despair; and the people of Hippo were permitted,
with their families and effects, to occupy the vacant place of the
soldiers, the greatest part of whom were either slain or made prisoners
by the Vandals. The count, whose fatal credulity had wounded the vitals
of the republic, might enter the palace of Ravenna with some anxiety,
which was soon removed by the smiles of Placidia. Boniface accepted with
gratitude the rank of patrician, and the dignity of master-general of
the Roman armies; but he must have blushed at the sight of those medals,
in which he was represented with the name and attributes of victory.
The discovery of his fraud, the displeasure of the empress, and the
distinguished favor of his rival, exasperated the haughty and perfidious
soul of Ætius. He hastily returned from Gaul to Italy, with a retinue,
or rather with an army, of Barbarian followers; and such was the
weakness of the government, that the two generals decided their private
quarrel in a bloody battle. Boniface was successful; but he received in
the conflict a mortal wound from the spear of his adversary, of which he
expired within a few days, in such Christian and charitable sentiments,
that he exhorted his wife, a rich heiress of Spain, to accept Ætius for
her second husband. But Ætius could not derive any immediate advantage
from the generosity of his dying enemy: he was proclaimed a rebel by the
justice of Placidia; and though he attempted to defend some strong
fortresses, erected on his patrimonial estate, the Imperial power soon
compelled him to retire into Pannonia, to the tents of his faithful
Huns. The republic was deprived, by their mutual discord, of the service
of her two most illustrious champions.

It might naturally be expected, after the retreat of Boniface, that the
Vandals would achieve, without resistance or delay, the conquest of
Africa. Eight years, however, elapsed, from the evacuation of Hippo to
the reduction of Carthage. In the midst of that interval, the ambitious
Genseric, in the full tide of apparent prosperity, negotiated a treaty
of peace, by which he gave his son Hunneric for a hostage; and consented
to leave the Western emperor in the undisturbed possession of the three
Mauritanias.  This moderation, which cannot be imputed to the justice,
must be ascribed to the policy, of the conqueror. His throne was
encompassed with domestic enemies, who accused the baseness of his
birth, and asserted the legitimate claims of his nephews, the sons of
Gonderic. Those nephews, indeed, he sacrificed to his safety; and their
mother, the widow of the deceased king, was precipitated, by his order,
into the river Ampsaga. But the public discontent burst forth in
dangerous and frequent conspiracies; and the warlike tyrant is supposed
to have shed more Vandal blood by the hand of the executioner, than in
the field of battle.  The convulsions of Africa, which had favored his
attack, opposed the firm establishment of his power; and the various
seditions of the Moors and Germans, the Donatists and Catholics,
continually disturbed, or threatened, the unsettled reign of the
conqueror. As he advanced towards Carthage, he was forced to withdraw
his troops from the Western provinces; the sea-coast was exposed to the
naval enterprises of the Romans of Spain and Italy; and, in the heart of
Numidia, the strong inland city of Corta still persisted in obstinate
independence.  These difficulties were gradually subdued by the spirit,
the perseverance, and the cruelty of Genseric; who alternately applied
the arts of peace and war to the establishment of his African kingdom.
He subscribed a solemn treaty, with the hope of deriving some advantage
from the term of its continuance, and the moment of its violation. The
vigilance of his enemies was relaxed by the protestations of friendship,
which concealed his hostile approach; and Carthage was at length
surprised by the Vandals, five hundred and eighty-five years after the
destruction of the city and republic by the younger Scipio.

A new city had arisen from its ruins, with the title of a colony; and
though Carthage might yield to the royal prerogatives of Constantinople,
and perhaps to the trade of Alexandria, or the splendor of Antioch, she
still maintained the second rank in the West; as the Rome(if we may use
the style of contemporaries) of the African world. That wealthy and
opulent metropolis  displayed, in a dependent condition, the image of a
flourishing republic. Carthage contained the manufactures, the arms, and
the treasures of the six provinces. A regular subordination of civil
honors gradually ascended from the procurators of the streets and
quarters of the city, to the tribunal of the supreme magistrate, who,
with the title of proconsul, represented the state and dignity of a
consul of ancient Rome. Schools and gymnasiawere instituted for the
education of the African youth; and the liberal arts and manners,
grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, were publicly taught in the Greek and
Latin languages. The buildings of Carthage were uniform and magnificent;
a shady grove was planted in the midst of the capital; the newport, a
secure and capacious harbor, was subservient to the commercial industry
of citizens and strangers; and the splendid games of the circus and
theatre were exhibited almost in the presence of the Barbarians. The
reputation of the Carthaginians was not equal to that of their country,
and the reproach of Punic faith still adhered to their subtle and
faithless character.  The habits of trade, and the abuse of luxury, had
corrupted their manners; but their impious contempt of monks, and the
shameless practice of unnatural lusts, are the two abominations which
excite the pious vehemence of Salvian, the preacher of the age.  The
king of the Vandals severely reformed the vices of a voluptuous people;
and the ancient, noble, ingenuous freedom of Carthage (these expressions
of Victor are not without energy) was reduced by Genseric into a state
of ignominious servitude. After he had permitted his licentious troops
to satiate their rage and avarice, he instituted a more regular system
of rapine and oppression. An edict was promulgated, which enjoined all
persons, without fraud or delay, to deliver their gold, silver, jewels,
and valuable furniture or apparel, to the royal officers; and the
attempt to secrete any part of their patrimony was inexorably punished
with death and torture, as an act of treason against the state. The
lands of the proconsular province, which formed the immediate district
of Carthage, were accurately measured, and divided among the Barbarians;
and the conqueror reserved for his peculiar domain the fertile territory
of Byzacium, and the adjacent parts of Numidia and Getulia.

It was natural enough that Genseric should hate those whom he had
injured: the nobility and senators of Carthage were exposed to his
jealousy and resentment; and all those who refused the ignominious
terms, which their honor and religion forbade them to accept, were
compelled by the Arian tyrant to embrace the condition of perpetual
banishment. Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the East, were filled with
a crowd of exiles, of fugitives, and of ingenuous captives, who
solicited the public compassion; and the benevolent epistles of
Theodoret still preserve the names and misfortunes of Cælestian and
Maria.  The Syrian bishop deplores the misfortunes of Cælestian, who,
from the state of a noble and opulent senator of Carthage, was reduced,
with his wife and family, and servants, to beg his bread in a foreign
country; but he applauds the resignation of the Christian exile, and the
philosophic temper, which, under the pressure of such calamities, could
enjoy more real happiness than was the ordinary lot of wealth and
prosperity. The story of Maria, the daughter of the magnificent Eudæmon,
is singular and interesting. In the sack of Carthage, she was purchased
from the Vandals by some merchants of Syria, who afterwards sold her as
a slave in their native country. A female attendant, transported in the
same ship, and sold in the same family, still continued to respect a
mistress whom fortune had reduced to the common level of servitude; and
the daughter of Eudæmon received from her grateful affection the
domestic services which she had once required from her obedience. This
remarkable behavior divulged the real condition of Maria, who, in the
absence of the bishop of Cyrrhus, was redeemed from slavery by the
generosity of some soldiers of the garrison. The liberality of Theodoret
provided for her decent maintenance; and she passed ten months among the
deaconesses of the church; till she was unexpectedly informed, that her
father, who had escaped from the ruin of Carthage, exercised an
honorable office in one of the Western provinces. Her filial impatience
was seconded by the pious bishop: Theodoret, in a letter still extant,
recommends Maria to the bishop of Ægæ, a maritime city of Cilicia, which
was frequented, during the annual fair, by the vessels of the West; most
earnestly requesting, that his colleague would use the maiden with a
tenderness suitable to her birth; and that he would intrust her to the
care of such faithful merchants, as would esteem it a sufficient gain,
if they restored a daughter, lost beyond all human hope, to the arms of
her afflicted parent.

Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to
distinguish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers;  whose imaginary
date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the
conquest of Africa by the Vandals.  When the emperor Decius persecuted
the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a
spacious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain; where they were
doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should
be firmly secured by the a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell
into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged without injuring
the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven
years. At the end of that time, the slaves of Adolius, to whom the
inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply
materials for some rustic edifice: the light of the sun darted into the
cavern, and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber,
as they thought of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of
hunger; and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should
secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his
companions. The youth (if we may still employ that appellation) could no
longer recognize the once familiar aspect of his native country; and his
surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly
erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress, and
obsolete language, confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient
medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on
the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their
mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were
almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the
rage of a Pagan tyrant. The bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the
magistrates, the people, and, as it is said, the emperor Theodosius
himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the Seven Sleepers; who
bestowed their benediction, related their story, and at the same instant
peaceably expired. The origin of this marvellous fable cannot be
ascribed to the pious fraud and credulity of the modernGreeks, since the
authentic tradition may be traced within half a century of the supposed
miracle. James of Sarug, a Syrian bishop, who was born only two years
after the death of the younger Theodosius, has devoted one of his two
hundred and thirty homilies to the praise of the young men of Ephesus.
Their legend, before the end of the sixth century, was translated from
the Syriac into the Latin language, by the care of Gregory of Tours. The
hostile communions of the East preserve their memory with equal
reverence; and their names are honorably inscribed in the Roman, the
Abyssinian, and the Russian calendar.  Nor has their reputation been
confined to the Christian world. This popular tale, which Mahomet might
learn when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria, is introduced as a
divine revelation, into the Koran.  The story of the Seven Sleepers has
been adopted and adorned by the nations, from Bengal to Africa, who
profess the Mahometan religion;  and some vestiges of a similar
tradition have been discovered in the remote extremities of Scandinavia.
This easy and universal belief, so expressive of the sense of mankind,
may be ascribed to the genuine merit of the fable itself. We
imperceptibly advance from youth to age, without observing the gradual,
but incessant, change of human affairs; and even in our larger
experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual
series of causes and effects, to unite the most distant revolutions. But
if the interval between two memorable æras could be instantly
annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of two
hundred years, to display the newworld to the eyes of a spectator, who
still retained a lively and recent impression of the old, his surprise
and his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a
philosophical romance. The scene could not be more advantageously
placed, than in the two centuries which elapsed between the reigns of
Decius and of Theodosius the Younger. During this period, the seat of
government had been transported from Rome to a new city on the banks of
the Thracian Bosphorus; and the abuse of military spirit had been
suppressed by an artificial system of tame and ceremonious servitude.
The throne of the persecuting Decius was filled by a succession of
Christian and orthodox princes, who had extirpated the fabulous gods of
antiquity: and the public devotion of the age was impatient to exalt the
saints and martyrs of the Catholic church, on the altars of Diana and
Hercules. The union of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was
humbled in the dust; and armies of unknown Barbarians, issuing from the
frozen regions of the North, had established their victorious reign over
the fairest provinces of Europe and Africa.

Chapter XXXIV: Attila.

Part I.

The Character, Conquests, And Court Of Attila, King Of The Huns. --
Death Of Theodosius The Younger. -- Elevation Of Marcian To The Empire
Of The East.

The Western world was oppressed by the Goths and Vandals, who fled
before the Huns; but the achievements of the Huns themselves were not
adequate to their power and prosperity. Their victorious hordes had
spread from the Volga to the Danube; but the public force was exhausted
by the discord of independent chieftains; their valor was idly consumed
in obscure and predatory excursions; and they often degraded their
national dignity, by condescending, for the hopes of spoil, to enlist
under the banners of their fugitive enemies. In the reign of Attila,
the Huns again became the terror of the world; and I shall now describe
the character and actions of that formidable Barbarian; who alternately
insulted and invaded the East and the West, and urged the rapid downfall
of the Roman empire.

In the tide of emigration which impetuously rolled from the confines of
China to those of Germany, the most powerful and populous tribes may
commonly be found on the verge of the Roman provinces. The accumulated
weight was sustained for a while by artificial barriers; and the easy
condescension of the emperors invited, without satisfying, the insolent
demands of the Barbarians, who had acquired an eager appetite for the
luxuries of civilized life. The Hungarians, who ambitiously insert the
name of Attila among their native kings, may affirm with truth that the
hordes, which were subject to his uncle Roas, or Rugilas, had formed
their encampments within the limits of modern Hungary,  in a fertile
country, which liberally supplied the wants of a nation of hunters and
shepherds. In this advantageous situation, Rugilas, and his valiant
brothers, who continually added to their power and reputation, commanded
the alternative of peace or war with the two empires. His alliance with
the Romans of the West was cemented by his personal friendship for the
great Ætius; who was always secure of finding, in the Barbarian camp, a
hospitable reception and a powerful support. At his solicitation, and in
the name of John the usurper, sixty thousand Huns advanced to the
confines of Italy; their march and their retreat were alike expensive to
the state; and the grateful policy of Ætius abandoned the possession of
Pannonia to his faithful confederates. The Romans of the East were not
less apprehensive of the arms of Rugilas, which threatened the
provinces, or even the capital. Some ecclesiastical historians have
destroyed the Barbarians with lightning and pestilence;  but Theodosius
was reduced to the more humble expedient of stipulating an annual
payment of three hundred and fifty pounds of gold, and of disguising
this dishonorable tribute by the title of general, which the king of the
Huns condescended to accept. The public tranquillity was frequently
interrupted by the fierce impatience of the Barbarians, and the
perfidious intrigues of the Byzantine court. Four dependent nations,
among whom we may distinguish the Barbarians, disclaimed the sovereignty
of the Huns; and their revolt was encouraged and protected by a Roman
alliance; till the just claims, and formidable power, of Rugilas, were
effectually urged by the voice of Eslaw his ambassador. Peace was the
unanimous wish of the senate: their decree was ratified by the emperor;
and two ambassadors were named, Plinthas, a general of Scythian
extraction, but of consular rank; and the quæstor Epigenes, a wise and
experienced statesman, who was recommended to that office by his
ambitious colleague.

The death of Rugilas suspended the progress of the treaty. His two
nephews, Attila and Bleda, who succeeded to the throne of their uncle,
consented to a personal interview with the ambassadors of
Constantinople; but as they proudly refused to dismount, the business
was transacted on horseback, in a spacious plain near the city of
Margus, in the Upper Mæsia. The kings of the Huns assumed the solid
benefits, as well as the vain honors, of the negotiation. They dictated
the conditions of peace, and each condition was an insult on the majesty
of the empire. Besides the freedom of a safe and plentiful market on the
banks of the Danube, they required that the annual contribution should
be augmented from three hundred and fifty to seven hundred pounds of
gold; that a fine or ransom of eight pieces of gold should be paid for
every Roman captive who had escaped from his Barbarian master; that the
emperor should renounce all treaties and engagements with the enemies of
the Huns; and that all the fugitives who had taken refuge in the court
or provinces of Theodosius, should be delivered to the justice of their
offended sovereign. This justice was rigorously inflicted on some
unfortunate youths of a royal race. They were crucified on the
territories of the empire, by the command of Attila: and as soon as the
king of the Huns had impressed the Romans with the terror of his name,
he indulged them in a short and arbitrary respite, whilst he subdued the
rebellious or independent nations of Scythia and Germany.

Attila, the son of Mundzuk, deduced his noble, perhaps his regal,
descent  from the ancient Huns, who had formerly contended with the
monarchs of China. His features, according to the observation of a
Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin; and the
portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuk;  a
large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose,
a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square
body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty
step and demeanor of the king of the Huns expressed the consciousness of
his superiority above the rest of mankind; and he had a custom of
fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he
inspired. Yet this savage hero was not inaccessible to pity; his
suppliant enemies might confide in the assurance of peace or pardon; and
Attila was considered by his subjects as a just and indulgent master. He
delighted in war; but, after he had ascended the throne in a mature age,
his head, rather than his hand, achieved the conquest of the North; and
the fame of an adventurous soldier was usefully exchanged for that of a
prudent and successful general. The effects of personal valor are so
inconsiderable, except in poetry or romance, that victory, even among
Barbarians, must depend on the degree of skill with which the passions
of the multitude are combined and guided for the service of a single
man. The Scythian conquerors, Attila and Zingis, surpassed their rude
countrymen in art rather than in courage; and it may be observed that
the monarchies, both of the Huns and of the Moguls, were erected by
their founders on the basis of popular superstition The miraculous
conception, which fraud and credulity ascribed to the virgin-mother of
Zingis, raised him above the level of human nature; and the naked
prophet, who in the name of the Deity invested him with the empire of
the earth, pointed the valor of the Moguls with irresistible enthusiasm.
The religious arts of Attila were not less skillfully adapted to the
character of his age and country. It was natural enough that the
Scythians should adore, with peculiar devotion, the god of war; but as
they were incapable of forming either an abstract idea, or a corporeal
representation, they worshipped their tutelar deity under the symbol of
an iron cimeter.  One of the shepherds of the Huns perceived, that a
heifer, who was grazing, had wounded herself in the foot, and curiously
followed the track of the blood, till he discovered, among the long
grass, the point of an ancient sword, which he dug out of the ground and
presented to Attila. That magnanimous, or rather that artful, prince
accepted, with pious gratitude, this celestial favor; and, as the
rightful possessor of the sword of Mars, asserted his divine and
indefeasible claim to the dominion of the earth.  If the rites of
Scythia were practised on this solemn occasion, a lofty altar, or rather
pile of fagots, three hundred yards in length and in breadth, was raised
in a spacious plain; and the sword of Mars was placed erect on the
summit of this rustic altar, which was annually consecrated by the blood
of sheep, horses, and of the hundredth captive.  Whether human
sacrifices formed any part of the worship of Attila, or whether he
propitiated the god of war with the victims which he continually offered
in the field of battle, the favorite of Mars soon acquired a sacred
character, which rendered his conquests more easy and more permanent;
and the Barbarian princes confessed, in the language of devotion or
flattery, that they could not presume to gaze, with a steady eye, on the
divine majesty of the king of the Huns.  His brother Bleda, who reigned
over a considerable part of the nation, was compelled to resign his
sceptre and his life. Yet even this cruel act was attributed to a
supernatural impulse; and the vigor with which Attila wielded the sword
of Mars, convinced the world that it had been reserved alone for his
invincible arm.  But the extent of his empire affords the only remaining
evidence of the number and importance of his victories; and the Scythian
monarch, however ignorant of the value of science and philosophy, might
perhaps lament that his illiterate subjects were destitute of the art
which could perpetuate the memory of his exploits.

If a line of separation were drawn between the civilized and the savage
climates of the globe; between the inhabitants of cities, who cultivated
the earth, and the hunters and shepherds, who dwelt in tents, Attila
might aspire to the title of supreme and sole monarch of the Barbarians.
He alone, among the conquerors of ancient and modern times, united the
two mighty kingdoms of Germany and Scythia; and those vague
appellations, when they are applied to his reign, may be understood with
an ample latitude. Thuringia, which stretched beyond its actual limits
as far as the Danube, was in the number of his provinces; he interposed,
with the weight of a powerful neighbor, in the domestic affairs of the
Franks; and one of his lieutenants chastised, and almost exterminated,
the Burgundians of the Rhine. He subdued the islands of the ocean, the
kingdoms of Scandinavia, encompassed and divided by the waters of the
Baltic; and the Huns might derive a tribute of furs from that northern
region, which has been protected from all other conquerors by the
severity of the climate, and the courage of the natives. Towards the
East, it is difficult to circumscribe the dominion of Attila over the
Scythian deserts; yet we may be assured, that he reigned on the banks of
the Volga; that the king of the Huns was dreaded, not only as a warrior,
but as a magician;  that he insulted and vanquished the khan of the
formidable Geougen; and that he sent ambassadors to negotiate an equal
alliance with the empire of China. In the proud review of the nations
who acknowledged the sovereignty of Attila, and who never entertained,
during his lifetime, the thought of a revolt, the Gepidæand the
Ostrogoths were distinguished by their numbers, their bravery, and the
personal merits of their chiefs. The renowned Ardaric, king of the
Gepidæ, was the faithful and sagacious counsellor of the monarch, who
esteemed his intrepid genius, whilst he loved the mild and discreet
virtues of the noble Walamir, king of the Ostrogoths. The crowd of
vulgar kings, the leaders of so many martial tribes, who served under
the standard of Attila, were ranged in the submissive order of guards
and domestics round the person of their master. They watched his nod;
they trembled at his frown; and at the first signal of his will, they
executed, without murmur or hesitation, his stern and absolute commands.
In time of peace, the dependent princes, with their national troops,
attended the royal camp in regular succession; but when Attila collected
his military force, he was able to bring into the field an army of five,
or, according to another account, of seven hundred thousand Barbarians.

The ambassadors of the Huns might awaken the attention of Theodosius, by
reminding him that they were his neighbors both in Europe and Asia;
since they touched the Danube on one hand, and reached, with the other,
as far as the Tanais. In the reign of his father Arcadius, a band of
adventurous Huns had ravaged the provinces of the East; from whence they
brought away rich spoils and innumerable captives.  They advanced, by a
secret path, along the shores of the Caspian Sea; traversed the snowy
mountains of Armenia; passed the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Halys;
recruited their weary cavalry with the generous breed of Cappadocian
horses; occupied the hilly country of Cilicia, and disturbed the festal
songs and dances of the citizens of Antioch. Egypt trembled at their
approach; and the monks and pilgrims of the Holy Land prepared to
escaped their fury by a speedy embarkation. The memory of this invasion
was still recent in the minds of the Orientals. The subjects of Attila
might execute, with superior forces, the design which these adventurers
had so boldly attempted; and it soon became the subject of anxious
conjecture, whether the tempest would fall on the dominions of Rome, or
of Persia. Some of the great vassals of the king of the Huns, who were
themselves in the rank of powerful princes, had been sent to ratify an
alliance and society of arms with the emperor, or rather with the
general of the West. They related, during their residence at Rome, the
circumstances of an expedition, which they had lately made into the
East. After passing a desert and a morass, supposed by the Romans to be
the Lake Mæotis, they penetrated through the mountains, and arrived, at
the end of fifteen days' march, on the confines of Media; where they
advanced as far as the unknown cities of Basic and Cursic. * They
encountered the Persian army in the plains of Media and the air,
according to their own expression, was darkened by a cloud of arrows.
But the Huns were obliged to retire before the numbers of the enemy.
Their laborious retreat was effected by a different road; they lost the
greatest part of their booty; and at length returned to the royal camp,
with some knowledge of the country, and an impatient desire of revenge.
In the free conversation of the Imperial ambassadors, who discussed, at
the court of Attila, the character and designs of their formidable
enemy, the ministers of Constantinople expressed their hope, that his
strength might be diverted and employed in a long and doubtful contest
with the princes of the house of Sassan. The more sagacious Italians
admonished their Eastern brethren of the folly and danger of such a
hope; and convinced them, thatthe Medes and Persians were incapable of
resisting the arms of the Huns; and thatthe easy and important
acquisition would exalt the pride, as well as power, of the conqueror.
Instead of contenting himself with a moderate contribution, and a
military title, which equalled him only to the generals of Theodosius,
Attila would proceed to impose a disgraceful and intolerable yoke on the
necks of the prostrate and captive Romans, who would then be
encompassed, on all sides, by the empire of the Huns.

While the powers of Europe and Asia were solicitous to avert the
impending danger, the alliance of Attila maintained the Vandals in the
possession of Africa. An enterprise had been concerted between the
courts of Ravenna and Constantinople, for the recovery of that valuable
province; and the ports of Sicily were already filled with the military
and naval forces of Theodosius. But the subtle Genseric, who spread his
negotiations round the world, prevented their designs, by exciting the
king of the Huns to invade the Eastern empire; and a trifling incident
soon became the motive, or pretence, of a destructive war.  Under the
faith of the treaty of Margus, a free market was held on the Northern
side of the Danube, which was protected by a Roman fortress surnamed
Constantia. A troop of Barbarians violated the commercial security;
killed, or dispersed, the unsuspecting traders; and levelled the
fortress with the ground. The Huns justified this outrage as an act of
reprisal; alleged, that the bishop of Margus had entered their
territories, to discover and steal a secret treasure of their kings; and
sternly demanded the guilty prelate, the sacrilegious spoil, and the
fugitive subjects, who had escaped from the justice of Attila. The
refusal of the Byzantine court was the signal of war; and the Mæsians at
first applauded the generous firmness of their sovereign. But they were
soon intimidated by the destruction of Viminiacum and the adjacent
towns; and the people was persuaded to adopt the convenient maxim, that
a private citizen, however innocent or respectable, may be justly
sacrificed to the safety of his country. The bishop of Margus, who did
not possess the spirit of a martyr, resolved to prevent the designs
which he suspected. He boldly treated with the princes of the Huns:
secured, by solemn oaths, his pardon and reward; posted a numerous
detachment of Barbarians, in silent ambush, on the banks of the Danube;
and, at the appointed hour, opened, with his own hand, the gates of his
episcopal city. This advantage, which had been obtained by treachery,
served as a prelude to more honorable and decisive victories. The
Illyrian frontier was covered by a line of castles and fortresses; and
though the greatest part of them consisted only of a single tower, with
a small garrison, they were commonly sufficient to repel, or to
intercept, the inroads of an enemy, who was ignorant of the art, and
impatient of the delay, of a regular siege. But these slight obstacles
were instantly swept away by the inundation of the Huns.  They
destroyed, with fire and sword, the populous cities of Sirmium and
Singidunum, of Ratiaria and Marcianopolis, of Naissus and Sardica; where
every circumstance of the discipline of the people, and the construction
of the buildings, had been gradually adapted to the sole purpose of
defence. The whole breadth of Europe, as it extends above five hundred
miles from the Euxine to the Hadriatic, was at once invaded, and
occupied, and desolated, by the myriads of Barbarians whom Attila led
into the field. The public danger and distress could not, however,
provoke Theodosius to interrupt his amusements and devotion, or to
appear in person at the head of the Roman legions. But the troops, which
had been sent against Genseric, were hastily recalled from Sicily; the
garrisons, on the side of Persia, were exhausted; and a military force
was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the
generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the
duty of obedience. The armies of the Eastern empire were vanquished in
three successive engagements; and the progress of Attila may be traced
by the fields of battle. The two former, on the banks of the Utus, and
under the walls of Marcianopolis, were fought in the extensive plains
between the Danube and Mount Hæmus. As the Romans were pressed by a
victorious enemy, they gradually, and unskilfully, retired towards the
Chersonesus of Thrace; and that narrow peninsula, the last extremity of
the land, was marked by their third, and irreparable, defeat. By the
destruction of this army, Attila acquired the indisputable possession of
the field. From the Hellespont to Thermopylæ, and the suburbs of
Constantinople, he ravaged, without resistance, and without mercy, the
provinces of Thrace and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople might,
perhaps, escape this dreadful irruption of the Huns; but the words, the
most expressive of total extirpation and erasure, are applied to the
calamities which they inflicted on seventy cities of the Eastern empire.
Theodosius, his court, and the unwarlike people, were protected by the
walls of Constantinople; but those walls had been shaken by a recent
earthquake, and the fall of fifty-eight towers had opened a large and
tremendous breach. The damage indeed was speedily repaired; but this
accident was aggravated by a superstitious fear, that Heaven itself had
delivered the Imperial city to the shepherds of Scythia, who were
strangers to the laws, the language, and the religion, of the Romans.

In all their invasions of the civilized empires of the South, the
Scythian shepherds have been uniformly actuated by a savage and
destructive spirit. The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of
national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial
interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained
by a moderate use of conquest; and a just apprehension, lest the
desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on
our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in
the pastoral state of nations. The Huns of Attila may, without
injustice, be compared to the Moguls and Tartars, before their primitive
manners were changed by religion and luxury; and the evidence of
Oriental history may reflect some light on the short and imperfect
annals of Rome. After the Moguls had subdued the northern provinces of
China, it was seriously proposed, not in the hour of victory and
passion, but in calm deliberate council, to exterminate all the
inhabitants of that populous country, that the vacant land might be
converted to the pasture of cattle. The firmness of a Chinese mandarin,
who insinuated some principles of rational policy into the mind of
Zingis, diverted him from the execution of this horrid design. But in
the cities of Asia, which yielded to the Moguls, the inhuman abuse of
the rights of war was exercised with a regular form of discipline, which
may, with equal reason, though not with equal authority, be imputed to
the victorious Huns. The inhabitants, who had submitted to their
discretion, were ordered to evacuate their houses, and to assemble in
some plain adjacent to the city; where a division was made of the
vanquished into three parts. The first class consisted of the soldiers
of the garrison, and of the young men capable of bearing arms; and their
fate was instantly decided they were either enlisted among the Moguls,
or they were massacred on the spot by the troops, who, with pointed
spears and bended bows, had formed a circle round the captive multitude.
The second class, composed of the young and beautiful women, of the
artificers of every rank and profession, and of the more wealthy or
honorable citizens, from whom a private ransom might be expected, was
distributed in equal or proportionable lots. The remainder, whose life
or death was alike useless to the conquerors, were permitted to return
to the city; which, in the mean while, had been stripped of its valuable
furniture; and a tax was imposed on those wretched inhabitants for the
indulgence of breathing their native air. Such was the behavior of the
Moguls, when they were not conscious of any extraordinary rigor.  But
the most casual provocation, the slightest motive of caprice or
convenience, often provoked them to involve a whole people in an
indiscriminate massacre; and the ruin of some flourishing cities was
executed with such unrelenting perseverance, that, according to their
own expression, horses might run, without stumbling, over the ground
where they had once stood. The three great capitals of Khorasan, Maru,
Neisabour, and Herat, were destroyed by the armies of Zingis; and the
exact account which was taken of the slain amounted to four millions
three hundred and forty-seven thousand persons.  Timur, or Tamerlane,
was educated in a less barbarous age, and in the profession of the
Mahometan religion; yet, if Attila equalled the hostile ravages of
Tamerlane,  either the Tartar or the Hun might deserve the epithet of
the Scourge of God.

Chapter XXXIV: Attila. -- Part II.

It may be affirmed, with bolder assurance, that the Huns depopulated the
provinces of the empire, by the number of Roman subjects whom they led
away into captivity. In the hands of a wise legislator, such an
industrious colony might have contributed to diffuse through the deserts
of Scythia the rudiments of the useful and ornamental arts; but these
captives, who had been taken in war, were accidentally dispersed among
the hordes that obeyed the empire of Attila. The estimate of their
respective value was formed by the simple judgment of unenlightened and
unprejudiced Barbarians. Perhaps they might not understand the merit of
a theologian, profoundly skilled in the controversies of the Trinity and
the Incarnation; yet they respected the ministers of every religion and
the active zeal of the Christian missionaries, without approaching the
person or the palace of the monarch, successfully labored in the
propagation of the gospel.  The pastoral tribes, who were ignorant of
the distinction of landed property, must have disregarded the use, as
well as the abuse, of civil jurisprudence; and the skill of an eloquent
lawyer could excite only their contempt or their abhorrence.  The
perpetual intercourse of the Huns and the Goths had communicated the
familiar knowledge of the two national dialects; and the Barbarians were
ambitious of conversing in Latin, the military idiom even of the Eastern
empire.  But they disdained the language and the sciences of the Greeks;
and the vain sophist, or grave philosopher, who had enjoyed the
flattering applause of the schools, was mortified to find that his
robust servant was a captive of more value and importance than himself.
The mechanic arts were encouraged and esteemed, as they tended to
satisfy the wants of the Huns. An architect in the service of Onegesius,
one of the favorites of Attila, was employed to construct a bath; but
this work was a rare example of private luxury; and the trades of the
smith, the carpenter, the armorer, were much more adapted to supply a
wandering people with the useful instruments of peace and war. But the
merit of the physician was received with universal favor and respect:
the Barbarians, who despised death, might be apprehensive of disease;
and the haughty conqueror trembled in the presence of a captive, to whom
he ascribed, perhaps, an imaginary power of prolonging or preserving his
life.  The Huns might be provoked to insult the misery of their slaves,
over whom they exercised a despotic command;  but their manners were not
susceptible of a refined system of oppression; and the efforts of
courage and diligence were often recompensed by the gift of freedom. The
historian Priscus, whose embassy is a source of curious instruction, was
accosted in the camp of Attila by a stranger, who saluted him in the
Greek language, but whose dress and figure displayed the appearance of a
wealthy Scythian. In the siege of Viminiacum, he had lost, according to
his own account, his fortune and liberty; he became the slave of
Onegesius; but his faithful services, against the Romans and the
Acatzires, had gradually raised him to the rank of the native Huns; to
whom he was attached by the domestic pledges of a new wife and several
children. The spoils of war had restored and improved his private
property; he was admitted to the table of his former lord; and the
apostate Greek blessed the hour of his captivity, since it had been the
introduction to a happy and independent state; which he held by the
honorable tenure of military service. This reflection naturally produced
a dispute on the advantages and defects of the Roman government, which
was severely arraigned by the apostate, and defended by Priscus in a
prolix and feeble declamation. The freedman of Onegesius exposed, in
true and lively colors, the vices of a declining empire, of which he had
so long been the victim; the cruel absurdity of the Roman princes,
unable to protect their subjects against the public enemy, unwilling to
trust them with arms for their own defence; the intolerable weight of
taxes, rendered still more oppressive by the intricate or arbitrary
modes of collection; the obscurity of numerous and contradictory laws;
the tedious and expensive forms of judicial proceedings; the partial
administration of justice; and the universal corruption, which increased
the influence of the rich, and aggravated the misfortunes of the poor. A
sentiment of patriotic sympathy was at length revived in the breast of
the fortunate exile; and he lamented, with a flood of tears, the guilt
or weakness of those magistrates who had perverted the wisest and most
salutary institutions.

The timid or selfish policy of the Western Romans had abandoned the
Eastern empire to the Huns.  The loss of armies, and the want of
discipline or virtue, were not supplied by the personal character of the
monarch. Theodosius might still affect the style, as well as the title,
of Invincible Augustus; but he was reduced to solicit the clemency of
Attila, who imperiously dictated these harsh and humiliating conditions
of peace. I. The emperor of the East resigned, by an express or tacit
convention, an extensive and important territory, which stretched along
the southern banks of the Danube, from Singidunum, or Belgrade, as far
as Novæ, in the diocese of Thrace. The breadth was defined by the vague
computation of fifteen * days' journey; but, from the proposal of Attila
to remove the situation of the national market, it soon appeared, that
he comprehended the ruined city of Naissus within the limits of his
dominions. II. The king of the Huns required and obtained, that his
tribute or subsidy should be augmented from seven hundred pounds of gold
to the annual sum of two thousand one hundred; and he stipulated the
immediate payment of six thousand pounds of gold, to defray the
expenses, or to expiate the guilt, of the war. One might imagine, that
such a demand, which scarcely equalled the measure of private wealth,
would have been readily discharged by the opulent empire of the East;
and the public distress affords a remarkable proof of the impoverished,
or at least of the disorderly, state of the finances. A large proportion
of the taxes extorted from the people was detained and intercepted in
their passage, though the foulest channels, to the treasury of
Constantinople. The revenue was dissipated by Theodosius and his
favorites in wasteful and profuse luxury; which was disguised by the
names of Imperial magnificence, or Christian charity. The immediate
supplies had been exhausted by the unforeseen necessity of military
preparations. A personal contribution, rigorously, but capriciously,
imposed on the members of the senatorian order, was the only expedient
that could disarm, without loss of time, the impatient avarice of
Attila; and the poverty of the nobles compelled them to adopt the
scandalous resource of exposing to public auction the jewels of their
wives, and the hereditary ornaments of their palaces.  III. The king of
the Huns appears to have established, as a principle of national
jurisprudence, that he could never lose the property, which he had once
acquired, in the persons who had yielded either a voluntary, or
reluctant, submission to his authority. From this principle he
concluded, and the conclusions of Attila were irrevocable laws, that the
Huns, who had been taken prisoner in war, should be released without
delay, and without ransom; that every Roman captive, who had presumed to
escape, should purchase his right to freedom at the price of twelve
pieces of gold; and that all the Barbarians, who had deserted the
standard of Attila, should be restored, without any promise or
stipulation of pardon. In the execution of this cruel and ignominious
treaty, the Imperial officers were forced to massacre several loyal and
noble deserters, who refused to devote themselves to certain death; and
the Romans forfeited all reasonable claims to the friendship of any
Scythian people, by this public confession, that they were destitute
either of faith, or power, to protect the suppliant, who had embraced
the throne of Theodosius.

The firmness of a single town, so obscure, that, except on this
occasion, it has never been mentioned by any historian or geographer,
exposed the disgrace of the emperor and empire. Azimus, or Azimuntium, a
small city of Thrace on the Illyrian borders,  had been distinguished by
the martial spirit of its youth, the skill and reputation of the leaders
whom they had chosen, and their daring exploits against the innumerable
host of the Barbarians. Instead of tamely expecting their approach, the
Azimuntines attacked, in frequent and successful sallies, the troops of
the Huns, who gradually declined the dangerous neighborhood, rescued
from their hands the spoil and the captives, and recruited their
domestic force by the voluntary association of fugitives and deserters.
After the conclusion of the treaty, Attila still menaced the empire with
implacable war, unless the Azimuntines were persuaded, or compelled, to
comply with the conditions which their sovereign had accepted. The
ministers of Theodosius confessed with shame, and with truth, that they
no longer possessed any authority over a society of men, who so bravely
asserted their natural independence; and the king of the Huns
condescended to negotiate an equal exchange with the citizens of Azimus.
They demanded the restitution of some shepherds, who, with their cattle,
had been accidentally surprised. A strict, though fruitless, inquiry was
allowed: but the Huns were obliged to swear, that they did not detain
any prisoners belonging to the city, before they could recover two
surviving countrymen, whom the Azimuntines had reserved as pledges for
the safety of their lost companions. Attila, on his side, was satisfied,
and deceived, by their solemn asseveration, that the rest of the
captives had been put to the sword; and that it was their constant
practice, immediately to dismiss the Romans and the deserters, who had
obtained the security of the public faith. This prudent and officious
dissimulation may be condemned, or excused, by the casuists, as they
incline to the rigid decree of St. Augustin, or to the milder sentiment
of St. Jerom and St. Chrysostom: but every soldier, every statesman,
must acknowledge, that, if the race of the Azimuntines had been
encouraged and multiplied, the Barbarians would have ceased to trample
on the majesty of the empire.

It would have been strange, indeed, if Theodosius had purchased, by the
loss of honor, a secure and solid tranquillity, or if his tameness had
not invited the repetition of injuries. The Byzantine court was insulted
by five or six successive embassies;  and the ministers of Attila were
uniformly instructed to press the tardy or imperfect execution of the
last treaty; to produce the names of fugitives and deserters, who were
still protected by the empire; and to declare, with seeming moderation,
that, unless their sovereign obtained complete and immediate
satisfaction, it would be impossible for him, were it even his wish, to
check the resentment of his warlike tribes. Besides the motives of pride
and interest, which might prompt the king of the Huns to continue this
train of negotiation, he was influenced by the less honorable view of
enriching his favorites at the expense of his enemies. The Imperial
treasury was exhausted, to procure the friendly offices of the
ambassadors and their principal attendants, whose favorable report might
conduce to the maintenance of peace. The Barbarian monarch was flattered
by the liberal reception of his ministers; he computed, with pleasure,
the value and splendor of their gifts, rigorously exacted the
performance of every promise which would contribute to their private
emolument, and treated as an important business of state the marriage of
his secretary Constantius.  That Gallic adventurer, who was recommended
by Ætius to the king of the Huns, had engaged his service to the
ministers of Constantinople, for the stipulated reward of a wealthy and
noble wife; and the daughter of Count Saturninus was chosen to discharge
the obligations of her country. The reluctance of the victim, some
domestic troubles, and the unjust confiscation of her fortune, cooled
the ardor of her interested lover; but he still demanded, in the name of
Attila, an equivalent alliance; and, after many ambiguous delays and
excuses, the Byzantine court was compelled to sacrifice to this insolent
stranger the widow of Armatius, whose birth, opulence, and beauty,
placed her in the most illustrious rank of the Roman matrons. For these
importunate and oppressive embassies, Attila claimed a suitable return:
he weighed, with suspicious pride, the character and station of the
Imperial envoys; but he condescended to promise that he would advance as
far as Sardica to receive any ministers who had been invested with the
consular dignity. The council of Theodosius eluded this proposal, by
representing the desolate and ruined condition of Sardica, and even
ventured to insinuate that every officer of the army or household was
qualified to treat with the most powerful princes of Scythia. Maximin,
a respectable courtier, whose abilities had been long exercised in civil
and military employments, accepted, with reluctance, the troublesome,
and perhaps dangerous, commission of reconciling the angry spirit of the
king of the Huns. His friend, the historian Priscus,  embraced the
opportunity of observing the Barbarian hero in the peaceful and domestic
scenes of life: but the secret of the embassy, a fatal and guilty
secret, was intrusted only to the interpreter Vigilius. The two last
ambassadors of the Huns, Orestes, a noble subject of the Pannonian
province, and Edecon, a valiant chieftain of the tribe of the Scyrri,
returned at the same time from Constantinople to the royal camp. Their
obscure names were afterwards illustrated by the extraordinary fortune
and the contrast of their sons: the two servants of Attila became the
fathers of the last Roman emperor of the West, and of the first
Barbarian king of Italy.

The ambassadors, who were followed by a numerous train of men and
horses, made their first halt at Sardica, at the distance of three
hundred and fifty miles, or thirteen days' journey, from Constantinople.
As the remains of Sardica were still included within the limits of the
empire, it was incumbent on the Romans to exercise the duties of
hospitality. They provided, with the assistance of the provincials, a
sufficient number of sheep and oxen, and invited the Huns to a splendid,
or at least, a plentiful supper. But the harmony of the entertainment
was soon disturbed by mutual prejudice and indiscretion. The greatness
of the emperor and the empire was warmly maintained by their ministers;
the Huns, with equal ardor, asserted the superiority of their victorious
monarch: the dispute was inflamed by the rash and unseasonable flattery
of Vigilius, who passionately rejected the comparison of a mere mortal
with the divine Theodosius; and it was with extreme difficulty that
Maximin and Priscus were able to divert the conversation, or to soothe
the angry minds, of the Barbarians. When they rose from table, the
Imperial ambassador presented Edecon and Orestes with rich gifts of silk
robes and Indian pearls, which they thankfully accepted. Yet Orestes
could not forbear insinuating that he had not always been treated with
such respect and liberality: and the offensive distinction which was
implied, between his civil office and the hereditary rank of his
colleague seems to have made Edecon a doubtful friend, and Orestes an
irreconcilable enemy. After this entertainment, they travelled about one
hundred miles from Sardica to Naissus. That flourishing city, which has
given birth to the great Constantine, was levelled with the ground: the
inhabitants were destroyed or dispersed; and the appearance of some sick
persons, who were still permitted to exist among the ruins of the
churches, served only to increase the horror of the prospect. The
surface of the country was covered with the bones of the slain; and the
ambassadors, who directed their course to the north-west, were obliged
to pass the hills of modern Servia, before they descended into the flat
and marshy grounds which are terminated by the Danube. The Huns were
masters of the great river: their navigation was performed in large
canoes, hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree; the ministers of
Theodosius were safely landed on the opposite bank; and their Barbarian
associates immediately hastened to the camp of Attila, which was equally
prepared for the amusements of hunting or of war. No sooner had Maximin
advanced about two miles * from the Danube, than he began to experience
the fastidious insolence of the conqueror. He was sternly forbid to
pitch his tents in a pleasant valley, lest he should infringe the
distant awe that was due to the royal mansion.  The ministers of Attila
pressed them to communicate the business, and the instructions, which he
reserved for the ear of their sovereign When Maximin temperately urged
the contrary practice of nations, he was still more confounded to find
that the resolutions of the Sacred Consistory, those secrets (says
Priscus) which should not be revealed to the gods themselves, had been
treacherously disclosed to the public enemy. On his refusal to comply
with such ignominious terms, the Imperial envoy was commanded instantly
to depart; the order was recalled; it was again repeated; and the Huns
renewed their ineffectual attempts to subdue the patient firmness of
Maximin. At length, by the intercession of Scotta, the brother of
Onegesius, whose friendship had been purchased by a liberal gift, he was
admitted to the royal presence; but, in stead of obtaining a decisive
answer, he was compelled to undertake a remote journey towards the
north, that Attila might enjoy the proud satisfaction of receiving, in
the same camp, the ambassadors of the Eastern and Western empires. His
journey was regulated by the guides, who obliged him to halt, to hasten
his march, or to deviate from the common road, as it best suited the
convenience of the king. The Romans, who traversed the plains of
Hungary, suppose that they passed severalnavigable rivers, either in
canoes or portable boats; but there is reason to suspect that the
winding stream of the Teyss, or Tibiscus, might present itself in
different places under different names. From the contiguous villages
they received a plentiful and regular supply of provisions; mead instead
of wine, millet in the place of bread, and a certain liquor named camus,
which according to the report of Priscus, was distilled from barley.
Such fare might appear coarse and indelicate to men who had tasted the
luxury of Constantinople; but, in their accidental distress, they were
relieved by the gentleness and hospitality of the same Barbarians, so
terrible and so merciless in war. The ambassadors had encamped on the
edge of a large morass. A violent tempest of wind and rain, of thunder
and lightning, overturned their tents, immersed their baggage and
furniture in the water, and scattered their retinue, who wandered in the
darkness of the night, uncertain of their road, and apprehensive of some
unknown danger, till they awakened by their cries the inhabitants of a
neighboring village, the property of the widow of Bleda. A bright
illumination, and, in a few moments, a comfortable fire of reeds, was
kindled by their officious benevolence; the wants, and even the desires,
of the Romans were liberally satisfied; and they seem to have been
embarrassed by the singular politeness of Bleda's widow, who added to
her other favors the gift, or at least the loan, of a sufficient number
of beautiful and obsequious damsels. The sunshine of the succeeding day
was dedicated to repose, to collect and dry the baggage, and to the
refreshment of the men and horses: but, in the evening, before they
pursued their journey, the ambassadors expressed their gratitude to the
bounteous lady of the village, by a very acceptable present of silver
cups, red fleeces, dried fruits, and Indian pepper. Soon after this
adventure, they rejoined the march of Attila, from whom they had been
separated about six days, and slowly proceeded to the capital of an
empire, which did not contain, in the space of several thousand miles, a
single city.

As far as we may ascertain the vague and obscure geography of Priscus,
this capital appears to have been seated between the Danube, the Teyss,
and the Carpathian hills, in the plains of Upper Hungary, and most
probably in the neighborhood of Jezberin, Agria, or Tokay.  In its
origin it could be no more than an accidental camp, which, by the long
and frequent residence of Attila, had insensibly swelled into a huge
village, for the reception of his court, of the troops who followed his
person, and of the various multitude of idle or industrious slaves and
retainers.  The baths, constructed by Onegesius, were the only edifice
of stone; the materials had been transported from Pannonia; and since
the adjacent country was destitute even of large timber, it may be
presumed, that the meaner habitations of the royal village consisted of
straw, or mud, or of canvass. The wooden houses of the more illustrious
Huns were built and adorned with rude magnificence, according to the
rank, the fortune, or the taste of the proprietors. They seem to have
been distributed with some degree of order and symmetry; and each spot
became more honorable as it approached the person of the sovereign. The
palace of Attila, which surpassed all other houses in his dominions, was
built entirely of wood, and covered an ample space of ground. The
outward enclosure was a lofty wall, or palisade, of smooth square
timber, intersected with high towers, but intended rather for ornament
than defence. This wall, which seems to have encircled the declivity of
a hill, comprehended a great variety of wooden edifices, adapted to the
uses of royalty. A separate house was assigned to each of the numerous
wives of Attila; and, instead of the rigid and illiberal confinement
imposed by Asiatic jealousy they politely admitted the Roman ambassadors
to their presence, their table, and even to the freedom of an innocent
embrace. When Maximin offered his presents to Cerca, * the principal
queen, he admired the singular architecture on her mansion, the height
of the round columns, the size and beauty of the wood, which was
curiously shaped or turned or polished or carved; and his attentive eye
was able to discover some taste in the ornaments and some regularity in
the proportions. After passing through the guards, who watched before
the gate, the ambassadors were introduced into the private apartment of
Cerca. The wife of Attila received their visit sitting, or rather lying,
on a soft couch; the floor was covered with a carpet; the domestics
formed a circle round the queen; and her damsels, seated on the ground,
were employed in working the variegated embroidery which adorned the
dress of the Barbaric warriors. The Huns were ambitious of displaying
those riches which were the fruit and evidence of their victories: the
trappings of their horses, their swords, and even their shoes, were
studded with gold and precious stones; and their tables were profusely
spread with plates, and goblets, and vases of gold and silver, which had
been fashioned by the labor of Grecian artists. The monarch alone
assumed the superior pride of still adhering to the simplicity of his
Scythian ancestors.  The dress of Attila, his arms, and the furniture of
his horse, were plain, without ornament, and of a single color. The
royal table was served in wooden cups and platters; flesh was his only
food; and the conqueror of the North never tasted the luxury of bread.

When Attila first gave audience to the Roman ambassadors on the banks of
the Danube, his tent was encompassed with a formidable guard. The
monarch himself was seated in a wooden chair. His stern countenance,
angry gestures, and impatient tone, astonished the firmness of Maximin;
but Vigilius had more reason to tremble, since he distinctly understood
the menace, that if Attila did not respect the law of nations, he would
nail the deceitful interpreter to the cross. and leave his body to the
vultures. The Barbarian condescended, by producing an accurate list, to
expose the bold falsehood of Vigilius, who had affirmed that no more
than seventeen deserters could be found. But he arrogantly declared,
that he apprehended only the disgrace of contending with his fugitive
slaves; since he despised their impotent efforts to defend the provinces
which Theodosius had intrusted to their arms: "For what fortress,"
(added Attila,) "what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire, can
hope to exist, secure and impregnable, if it is our pleasure that it
should be erased from the earth?" He dismissed, however, the
interpreter, who returned to Constantinople with his peremptory demand
of more complete restitution, and a more splendid embassy. His anger
gradually subsided, and his domestic satisfaction in a marriage which he
celebrated on the road with the daughter of Eslam, * might perhaps
contribute to mollify the native fierceness of his temper. The entrance
of Attila into the royal village was marked by a very singular ceremony.
A numerous troop of women came out to meet their hero and their king.
They marched before him, distributed into long and regular files; the
intervals between the files were filled by white veils of thin linen,
which the women on either side bore aloft in their hands, and which
formed a canopy for a chorus of young virgins, who chanted hymns and
songs in the Scythian language. The wife of his favorite Onegesius, with
a train of female attendants, saluted Attila at the door of her own
house, on his way to the palace; and offered, according to the custom of
the country, her respectful homage, by entreating him to taste the wine
and meat which she had prepared for his reception. As soon as the
monarch had graciously accepted her hospitable gift, his domestics
lifted a small silver table to a convenient height, as he sat on
horseback; and Attila, when he had touched the goblet with his lips,
again saluted the wife of Onegesius, and continued his march. During his
residence at the seat of empire, his hours were not wasted in the
recluse idleness of a seraglio; and the king of the Huns could maintain
his superior dignity, without concealing his person from the public
view. He frequently assembled his council, and gave audience to the
ambassadors of the nations; and his people might appeal to the supreme
tribunal, which he held at stated times, and, according to the Eastern
custom, before the principal gate of his wooden palace. The Romans, both
of the East and of the West, were twice invited to the banquets, where
Attila feasted with the princes and nobles of Scythia. Maximin and his
colleagues were stopped on the threshold, till they had made a devout
libation to the health and prosperity of the king of the Huns; and were
conducted, after this ceremony, to their respective seats in a spacious
hall. The royal table and couch, covered with carpets and fine linen,
was raised by several steps in the midst of the hall; and a son, an
uncle, or perhaps a favorite king, were admitted to share the simple and
homely repast of Attila. Two lines of small tables, each of which
contained three or four guests, were ranged in order on either hand; the
right was esteemed the most honorable, but the Romans ingenuously
confess, that they were placed on the left; and that Beric, an unknown
chieftain, most probably of the Gothic race, preceded the
representatives of Theodosius and Valentinian. The Barbarian monarch
received from his cup-bearer a goblet filled with wine, and courteously
drank to the health of the most distinguished guest; who rose from his
seat, and expressed, in the same manner, his loyal and respectful vows.
This ceremony was successively performed for all, or at least for the
illustrious persons of the assembly; and a considerable time must have
been consumed, since it was thrice repeated as each course or service
was placed on the table. But the wine still remained after the meat had
been removed; and the Huns continued to indulge their intemperance long
after the sober and decent ambassadors of the two empires had withdrawn
themselves from the nocturnal banquet. Yet before they retired, they
enjoyed a singular opportunity of observing the manners of the nation in
their convivial amusements. Two Scythians stood before the couch of
Attila, and recited the verses which they had composed, to celebrate his
valor and his victories. * A profound silence prevailed in the hall; and
the attention of the guests was captivated by the vocal harmony, which
revived and perpetuated the memory of their own exploits; a martial
ardor flashed from the eyes of the warriors, who were impatient for
battle; and the tears of the old men expressed their generous despair,
that they could no longer partake the danger and glory of the field.
This entertainment, which might be considered as a school of military
virtue, was succeeded by a farce, that debased the dignity of human
nature. A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon * successively excited the
mirth of the rude spectators, by their deformed figure, ridiculous
dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange, unintelligible
confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the
hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst
of this intemperate riot, Attila alone, without a change of countenance,
maintained his steadfast and inflexible gravity; which was never
relaxed, except on the entrance of Irnac, the youngest of his sons: he
embraced the boy with a smile of paternal tenderness, gently pinched him
by the cheek, and betrayed a partial affection, which was justified by
the assurance of his prophets, that Irnac would be the future support of
his family and empire. Two days afterwards, the ambassadors received a
second invitation; and they had reason to praise the politeness, as well
as the hospitality, of Attila. The king of the Huns held a long and
familiar conversation with Maximin; but his civility was interrupted by
rude expressions and haughty reproaches; and he was provoked, by a
motive of interest, to support, with unbecoming zeal, the private claims
of his secretary Constantius. "The emperor" (said Attila) "has long
promised him a rich wife: Constantius must not be disappointed; nor
should a Roman emperor deserve the name of liar." On the third day, the
ambassadors were dismissed; the freedom of several captives was granted,
for a moderate ransom, to their pressing entreaties; and, besides the
royal presents, they were permitted to accept from each of the Scythian
nobles the honorable and useful gift of a horse. Maximin returned, by
the same road, to Constantinople; and though he was involved in an
accidental dispute with Beric, the new ambassador of Attila, he
flattered himself that he had contributed, by the laborious journey, to
confirm the peace and alliance of the two nations.

Chapter XXXIV: Attila. -- Part III.

But the Roman ambassador was ignorant of the treacherous design, which
had been concealed under the mask of the public faith. The surprise and
satisfaction of Edecon, when he contemplated the splendor of
Constantinople, had encouraged the interpreter Vigilius to procure for
him a secret interview with the eunuch Chrysaphius,  who governed the
emperor and the empire. After some previous conversation, and a mutual
oath of secrecy, the eunuch, who had not, from his own feelings or
experience, imbibed any exalted notions of ministerial virtue, ventured
to propose the death of Attila, as an important service, by which Edecon
might deserve a liberal share of the wealth and luxury which he admired.
The ambassador of the Huns listened to the tempting offer; and
professed, with apparent zeal, his ability, as well as readiness, to
execute the bloody deed; the design was communicated to the master of
the offices, and the devout Theodosius consented to the assassination of
his invincible enemy. But this perfidious conspiracy was defeated by the
dissimulation, or the repentance, of Edecon; and though he might
exaggerate his inward abhorrence for the treason, which he seemed to
approve, he dexterously assumed the merit of an early and voluntary
confession. If we nowreview the embassy of Maximin, and the behavior of
Attila, we must applaud the Barbarian, who respected the laws of
hospitality, and generously entertained and dismissed the minister of a
prince who had conspired against his life. But the rashness of Vigilius
will appear still more extraordinary, since he returned, conscious of
his guilt and danger, to the royal camp, accompanied by his son, and
carrying with him a weighty purse of gold, which the favorite eunuch had
furnished, to satisfy the demands of Edecon, and to corrupt the fidelity
of the guards. The interpreter was instantly seized, and dragged before
the tribunal of Attila, where he asserted his innocence with specious
firmness, till the threat of inflicting instant death on his son
extorted from him a sincere discovery of the criminal transaction. Under
the name of ransom, or confiscation, the rapacious king of the Huns
accepted two hundred pounds of gold for the life of a traitor, whom he
disdained to punish. He pointed his just indignation against a nobler
object. His ambassadors, Eslaw and Orestes, were immediately despatched
to Constantinople, with a peremptory instruction, which it was much
safer for them to execute than to disobey. They boldly entered the
Imperial presence, with the fatal purse hanging down from the neck of
Orestes; who interrogated the eunuch Chrysaphius, as he stood beside the
throne, whether he recognized the evidence of his guilt. But the office
of reproof was reserved for the superior dignity of his colleague Eslaw,
who gravely addressed the emperor of the East in the following words:
"Theodosius is the son of an illustrious and respectable parent: Attila
likewise is descended from a noble race; and hehas supported, by his
actions, the dignity which he inherited from his father Mundzuk. But
Theodosius has forfeited his paternal honors, and, by consenting to pay
tribute has degraded himself to the condition of a slave. It is
therefore just, that he should reverence the man whom fortune and merit
have placed above him; instead of attempting, like a wicked slave,
clandestinely to conspire against his master." The son of Arcadius, who
was accustomed only to the voice of flattery, heard with astonishment
the severe language of truth: he blushed and trembled; nor did he
presume directly to refuse the head of Chrysaphius, which Eslaw and
Orestes were instructed to demand. A solemn embassy, armed with full
powers and magnificent gifts, was hastily sent to deprecate the wrath of
Attila; and his pride was gratified by the choice of Nomius and
Anatolius, two ministers of consular or patrician rank, of whom the one
was great treasurer, and the other was master-general of the armies of
the East. He condescended to meet these ambassadors on the banks of the
River Drenco; and though he at first affected a stern and haughty
demeanor, his anger was insensibly mollified by their eloquence and
liberality. He condescended to pardon the emperor, the eunuch, and the
interpreter; bound himself by an oath to observe the conditions of
peace; released a great number of captives; abandoned the fugitives and
deserters to their fate; and resigned a large territory, to the south of
the Danube, which he had already exhausted of its wealth and
inhabitants. But this treaty was purchased at an expense which might
have supported a vigorous and successful war; and the subjects of
Theodosius were compelled to redeem the safety of a worthless favorite
by oppressive taxes, which they would more cheerfully have paid for his
destruction.

The emperor Theodosius did not long survive the most humiliating
circumstance of an inglorious life. As he was riding, or hunting, in the
neighborhood of Constantinople, he was thrown from his horse into the
River Lycus: the spine of the back was injured by the fall; and he
expired some days afterwards, in the fiftieth year of his age, and the
forty-third of his reign.  His sister Pulcheria, whose authority had
been controlled both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs by the
pernicious influence of the eunuchs, was unanimously proclaimed Empress
of the East; and the Romans, for the first time, submitted to a female
reign. No sooner had Pulcheria ascended the throne, than she indulged
her own and the public resentment, by an act of popular justice. Without
any legal trial, the eunuch Chrysaphius was executed before the gates of
the city; and the immense riches which had been accumulated by the
rapacious favorite, served only to hasten and to justify his punishment.
Amidst the general acclamations of the clergy and people, the empress
did not forget the prejudice and disadvantage to which her sex was
exposed; and she wisely resolved to prevent their murmurs by the choice
of a colleague, who would always respect the superior rank and virgin
chastity of his wife. She gave her hand to Marcian, a senator, about
sixty years of age; and the nominal husband of Pulcheria was solemnly
invested with the Imperial purple. The zeal which he displayed for the
orthodox creed, as it was established by the council of Chalcedon, would
alone have inspired the grateful eloquence of the Catholics. But the
behavior of Marcian in a private life, and afterwards on the throne, may
support a more rational belief, that he was qualified to restore and
invigorate an empire, which had been almost dissolved by the successive
weakness of two hereditary monarchs. He was born in Thrace, and educated
to the profession of arms; but Marcian's youth had been severely
exercised by poverty and misfortune, since his only resource, when he
first arrived at Constantinople, consisted in two hundred pieces of
gold, which he had borrowed of a friend. He passed nineteen years in the
domestic and military service of Aspar, and his son Ardaburius; followed
those powerful generals to the Persian and African wars; and obtained,
by their influence, the honorable rank of tribune and senator. His mild
disposition, and useful talents, without alarming the jealousy,
recommended Marcian to the esteem and favor of his patrons; he had seen,
perhaps he had felt, the abuses of a venal and oppressive
administration; and his own example gave weight and energy to the laws,
which he promulgated for the reformation of manners.

Chapter XXXV: Invasion By Attila.

Part I.

Invasion Of Gaul By Attila. -- He Is Repulsed By Ætius And The
Visigoths. -- Attila Invades And Evacuates Italy. -- The Deaths Of
Attila, Ætius, And Valentinian The Third.

It was the opinion of Marcian, that war should be avoided, as long as it
is possible to preserve a secure and honorable peace; but it was
likewise his opinion, that peace cannot be honorable or secure, if the
sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war. This temperate
courage dictated his reply to the demands of Attila, who insolently
pressed the payment of the annual tribute. The emperor signified to the
Barbarians, that they must no longer insult the majesty of Rome by the
mention of a tribute; that he was disposed to reward, with becoming
liberality, the faithful friendship of his allies; but that, if they
presumed to violate the public peace, they should feel that he possessed
troops, and arms, and resolution, to repel their attacks. The same
language, even in the camp of the Huns, was used by his ambassador
Apollonius, whose bold refusal to deliver the presents, till he had been
admitted to a personal interview, displayed a sense of dignity, and a
contempt of danger, which Attila was not prepared to expect from the
degenerate Romans.  He threatened to chastise the rash successor of
Theodosius; but he hesitated whether he should first direct his
invincible arms against the Eastern or the Western empire. While mankind
awaited his decision with awful suspense, he sent an equal defiance to
the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople; and his ministers saluted the
two emperors with the same haughty declaration. "Attila, mylord, and
thylord, commands thee to provide a palace for his immediate reception."
But as the Barbarian despised, or affected to despise, the Romans of the
East, whom he had so often vanquished, he soon declared his resolution
of suspending the easy conquest, till he had achieved a more glorious
and important enterprise. In the memorable invasions of Gaul and Italy,
the Huns were naturally attracted by the wealth and fertility of those
provinces; but the particular motives and provocations of Attila can
only be explained by the state of the Western empire under the reign of
Valentinian, or, to speak more correctly, under the administration of
Ætius.

After the death of his rival Boniface, Ætius had prudently retired to
the tents of the Huns; and he was indebted to their alliance for his
safety and his restoration. Instead of the suppliant language of a
guilty exile, he solicited his pardon at the head of sixty thousand
Barbarians; and the empress Placidia confessed, by a feeble resistance,
that the condescension, which might have been ascribed to clemency, was
the effect of weakness or fear. She delivered herself, her son
Valentinian, and the Western empire, into the hands of an insolent
subject; nor could Placidia protect the son- in-law of Boniface, the
virtuous and faithful Sebastian,  from the implacable persecution which
urged him from one kingdom to another, till he miserably perished in the
service of the Vandals. The fortunate Ætius, who was immediately
promoted to the rank of patrician, and thrice invested with the honors
of the consulship, assumed, with the title of master of the cavalry and
infantry, the whole military power of the state; and he is sometimes
styled, by contemporary writers, the duke, or general, of the Romans of
the West. His prudence, rather than his virtue, engaged him to leave the
grandson of Theodosius in the possession of the purple; and Valentinian
was permitted to enjoy the peace and luxury of Italy, while the
patrician appeared in the glorious light of a hero and a patriot, who
supported near twenty years the ruins of the Western empire. The Gothic
historian ingenuously confesses, that Ætius was born for the salvation
of the Roman republic;  and the following portrait, though it is drawn
in the fairest colors, must be allowed to contain a much larger
proportion of truth than of flattery. * "His mother was a wealthy and
noble Italian, and his father Gaudentius, who held a distinguished rank
in the province of Scythia, gradually rose from the station of a
military domestic, to the dignity of master of the cavalry. Their son,
who was enrolled almost in his infancy in the guards, was given as a
hostage, first to Alaric, and afterwards to the Huns;  and he
successively obtained the civil and military honors of the palace, for
which he was equally qualified by superior merit. The graceful figure of
Ætius was not above the middle stature; but his manly limbs were
admirably formed for strength, beauty, and agility; and he excelled in
the martial exercises of managing a horse, drawing the bow, and darting
the javelin. He could patiently endure the want of food, or of sleep;
and his mind and body were alike capable of the most laborious efforts.
He possessed the genuine courage that can despise not only dangers, but
injuries: and it was impossible either to corrupt, or deceive, or
intimidate the firm integrity of his soul."  The Barbarians, who had
seated themselves in the Western provinces, were insensibly taught to
respect the faith and valor of the patrician Ætius. He soothed their
passions, consulted their prejudices, balanced their interests, and
checked their ambition. * A seasonable treaty, which he concluded with
Genseric, protected Italy from the depredations of the Vandals; the
independent Britons implored and acknowledged his salutary aid; the
Imperial authority was restored and maintained in Gaul and Spain; and he
compelled the Franks and the Suevi, whom he had vanquished in the field,
to become the useful confederates of the republic.

From a principle of interest, as well as gratitude, Ætius assiduously
cultivated the alliance of the Huns. While he resided in their tents as
a hostage, or an exile, he had familiarly conversed with Attila himself,
the nephew of his benefactor; and the two famous antagonists appeared to
have been connected by a personal and military friendship, which they
afterwards confirmed by mutual gifts, frequent embassies, and the
education of Carpilio, the son of Ætius, in the camp of Attila. By the
specious professions of gratitude and voluntary attachment, the
patrician might disguise his apprehensions of the Scythian conqueror,
who pressed the two empires with his innumerable armies. His demands
were obeyed or eluded. When he claimed the spoils of a vanquished city,
some vases of gold, which had been fraudulently embezzled, the civil and
military governors of Noricum were immediately despatched to satisfy his
complaints:  and it is evident, from their conversation with Maximin and
Priscus, in the royal village, that the valor and prudence of Ætius had
not saved the Western Romans from the common ignominy of tribute. Yet
his dexterous policy prolonged the advantages of a salutary peace; and a
numerous army of Huns and Alani, whom he had attached to his person, was
employed in the defence of Gaul. Two colonies of these Barbarians were
judiciously fixed in the territories of Valens and Orleans;  and their
active cavalry secured the important passages of the Rhone and of the
Loire. These savage allies were not indeed less formidable to the
subjects than to the enemies of Rome. Their original settlement was
enforced with the licentious violence of conquest; and the province
through which they marched was exposed to all the calamities of a
hostile invasion.  Strangers to the emperor or the republic, the Alani
of Gaul was devoted to the ambition of Ætius, and though he might
suspect, that, in a contest with Attila himself, they would revolt to
the standard of their national king, the patrician labored to restrain,
rather than to excite, their zeal and resentment against the Goths, the
Burgundians, and the Franks.

The kingdom established by the Visigoths in the southern provinces of
Gaul, had gradually acquired strength and maturity; and the conduct of
those ambitious Barbarians, either in peace or war, engaged the
perpetual vigilance of Ætius. After the death of Wallia, the Gothic
sceptre devolved to Theodoric, the son of the great Alaric;  and his
prosperous reign of more than thirty years, over a turbulent people, may
be allowed to prove, that his prudence was supported by uncommon vigor,
both of mind and body. Impatient of his narrow limits, Theodoric aspired
to the possession of Arles, the wealthy seat of government and commerce;
but the city was saved by the timely approach of Ætius; and the Gothic
king, who had raised the siege with some loss and disgrace, was
persuaded, for an adequate subsidy, to divert the martial valor of his
subjects in a Spanish war. Yet Theodoric still watched, and eagerly
seized, the favorable moment of renewing his hostile attempts. The Goths
besieged Narbonne, while the Belgic provinces were invaded by the
Burgundians; and the public safety was threatened on every side by the
apparent union of the enemies of Rome. On every side, the activity of
Ætius, and his Scythian cavalry, opposed a firm and successful
resistance. Twenty thousand Burgundians were slain in battle; and the
remains of the nation humbly accepted a dependent seat in the mountains
of Savoy.  The walls of Narbonne had been shaken by the battering
engines, and the inhabitants had endured the last extremities of famine,
when Count Litorius, approaching in silence, and directing each horseman
to carry behind him two sacks of flour, cut his way through the
intrenchments of the besiegers. The siege was immediately raised; and
the more decisive victory, which is ascribed to the personal conduct of
Ætius himself, was marked with the blood of eight thousand Goths. But in
the absence of the patrician, who was hastily summoned to Italy by some
public or private interest, Count Litorius succeeded to the command; and
his presumption soon discovered that far different talents are required
to lead a wing of cavalry, or to direct the operations of an important
war. At the head of an army of Huns, he rashly advanced to the gates of
Thoulouse, full of careless contempt for an enemy whom his misfortunes
had rendered prudent, and his situation made desperate. The predictions
of the augurs had inspired Litorius with the profane confidence that he
should enter the Gothic capital in triumph; and the trust which he
reposed in his Pagan allies, encouraged him to reject the fair
conditions of peace, which were repeatedly proposed by the bishops in
the name of Theodoric. The king of the Goths exhibited in his distress
the edifying contrast of Christian piety and moderation; nor did he lay
aside his sackcloth and ashes till he was prepared to arm for the
combat. His soldiers, animated with martial and religious enthusiasm,
assaulted the camp of Litorius. The conflict was obstinate; the
slaughter was mutual. The Roman general, after a total defeat, which
could be imputed only to his unskilful rashness, was actually led
through the streets of Thoulouse, not in his own, but in a hostile
triumph; and the misery which he experienced, in a long and ignominious
captivity, excited the compassion of the Barbarians themselves.  Such a
loss, in a country whose spirit and finances were long since exhausted,
could not easily be repaired; and the Goths, assuming, in their turn,
the sentiments of ambition and revenge, would have planted their
victorious standards on the banks of the Rhone, if the presence of Ætius
had not restored strength and discipline to the Romans.  The two armies
expected the signal of a decisive action; but the generals, who were
conscious of each other's force, and doubtful of their own superiority,
prudently sheathed their swords in the field of battle; and their
reconciliation was permanent and sincere. Theodoric, king of the
Visigoths, appears to have deserved the love of his subjects, the
confidence of his allies, and the esteem of mankind. His throne was
surrounded by six valiant sons, who were educated with equal care in the
exercises of the Barbarian camp, and in those of the Gallic schools:
from the study of the Roman jurisprudence, they acquired the theory, at
least, of law and justice; and the harmonious sense of Virgil
contributed to soften the asperity of their native manners.  The two
daughters of the Gothic king were given in marriage to the eldest sons
of the kings of the Suevi and of the Vandals, who reigned in Spain and
Africa: but these illustrious alliances were pregnant with guilt and
discord. The queen of the Suevi bewailed the death of a husband
inhumanly massacred by her brother. The princess of the Vandals was the
victim of a jealous tyrant, whom she called her father. The cruel
Genseric suspected that his son's wife had conspired to poison him; the
supposed crime was punished by the amputation of her nose and ears; and
the unhappy daughter of Theodoric was ignominiously returned to the
court of Thoulouse in that deformed and mutilated condition. This horrid
act, which must seem incredible to a civilized age drew tears from every
spectator; but Theodoric was urged, by the feelings of a parent and a
king, to revenge such irreparable injuries. The Imperial ministers, who
always cherished the discord of the Barbarians, would have supplied the
Goths with arms, and ships, and treasures, for the African war; and the
cruelty of Genseric might have been fatal to himself, if the artful
Vandal had not armed, in his cause, the formidable power of the Huns.
His rich gifts and pressing solicitations inflamed the ambition of
Attila; and the designs of Ætius and Theodoric were prevented by the
invasion of Gaul.

The Franks, whose monarchy was still confined to the neighborhood of the
Lower Rhine, had wisely established the right of hereditary succession
in the noble family of the Merovingians.  These princes were elevated on
a buckler, the symbol of military command;  and the royal fashion of
long hair was the ensign of their birth and dignity. Their flaxen locks,
which they combed and dressed with singular care, hung down in flowing
ringlets on their back and shoulders; while the rest of the nation were
obliged, either by law or custom, to shave the hinder part of their
head, to comb their hair over the forehead, and to content themselves
with the ornament of two small whiskers.  The lofty stature of the
Franks, and their blue eyes, denoted a Germanic origin; their close
apparel accurately expressed the figure of their limbs; a weighty sword
was suspended from a broad belt; their bodies were protected by a large
shield; and these warlike Barbarians were trained, from their earliest
youth, to run, to leap, to swim; to dart the javelin, or battle-axe,
with unerring aim; to advance, without hesitation, against a superior
enemy; and to maintain, either in life or death, the invincible
reputation of their ancestors.  Clodion, the first of their long-haired
kings, whose name and actions are mentioned in authentic history, held
his residence at Dispargum,  a village or fortress, whose place may be
assigned between Louvain and Brussels. From the report of his spies, the
king of the Franks was informed, that the defenceless state of the
second Belgic must yield, on the slightest attack, to the valor of his
subjects. He boldly penetrated through the thickets and morasses of the
Carbonarian forest;  occupied Tournay and Cambray, the only cities which
existed in the fifth century, and extended his conquests as far as the
River Somme, over a desolate country, whose cultivation and populousness
are the effects of more recent industry.  While Clodion lay encamped in
the plains of Artois,  and celebrated, with vain and ostentatious
security, the marriage, perhaps, of his son, the nuptial feast was
interrupted by the unexpected and unwelcome presence of Ætius, who had
passed the Somme at the head of his light cavalry. The tables, which had
been spread under the shelter of a hill, along the banks of a pleasant
stream, were rudely overturned; the Franks were oppressed before they
could recover their arms, or their ranks; and their unavailing valor was
fatal only to themselves. The loaded wagons, which had followed their
march, afforded a rich booty; and the virgin- bride, with her female
attendants, submitted to the new lovers, who were imposed on them by the
chance of war. This advance, which had been obtained by the skill and
activity of Ætius, might reflect some disgrace on the military prudence
of Clodion; but the king of the Franks soon regained his strength and
reputation, and still maintained the possession of his Gallic kingdom
from the Rhine to the Somme.  Under his reign, and most probably from
the thee enterprising spirit of his subjects, his three capitals, Mentz,
Treves, and Cologne, experienced the effects of hostile cruelty and
avarice. The distress of Cologne was prolonged by the perpetual dominion
of the same Barbarians, who evacuated the ruins of Treves; and Treves,
which in the space of forty years had been four times besieged and
pillaged, was disposed to lose the memory of her afflictions in the vain
amusements of the Circus.  The death of Clodion, after a reign of twenty
years, exposed his kingdom to the discord and ambition of his two sons.
Meroveus, the younger,  was persuaded to implore the protection of Rome;
he was received at the Imperial court, as the ally of Valentinian, and
the adopted son of the patrician Ætius; and dismissed to his native
country, with splendid gifts, and the strongest assurances of friendship
and support. During his absence, his elder brother had solicited, with
equal ardor, the formidable aid of Attila; and the king of the Huns
embraced an alliance, which facilitated the passage of the Rhine, and
justified, by a specious and honorable pretence, the invasion of Gaul.

Chapter XXXV: Invasion By Attila. -- Part II.

When Attila declared his resolution of supporting the cause of his
allies, the Vandals and the Franks, at the same time, and almost in the
spirit of romantic chivalry, the savage monarch professed himself the
lover and the champion of the princess Honoria. The sister of
Valentinian was educated in the palace of Ravenna; and as her marriage
might be productive of some danger to the state, she was raised, by the
title of Augusta,  above the hopes of the most presumptuous subject. But
the fair Honoria had no sooner attained the sixteenth year of her age,
than she detested the importunate greatness which must forever exclude
her from the comforts of honorable love; in the midst of vain and
unsatisfactory pomp, Honoria sighed, yielded to the impulse of nature,
and threw herself into the arms of her chamberlain Eugenius. Her guilt
and shame (such is the absurd language of imperious man) were soon
betrayed by the appearances of pregnancy; but the disgrace of the royal
family was published to the world by the imprudence of the empress
Placidia who dismissed her daughter, after a strict and shameful
confinement, to a remote exile at Constantinople. The unhappy princess
passed twelve or fourteen years in the irksome society of the sisters of
Theodosius, and their chosen virgins; to whose crownHonoria could no
longer aspire, and whose monastic assiduity of prayer, fasting, and
vigils, she reluctantly imitated. Her impatience of long and hopeless
celibacy urged her to embrace a strange and desperate resolution. The
name of Attila was familiar and formidable at Constantinople; and his
frequent embassies entertained a perpetual intercourse between his camp
and the Imperial palace. In the pursuit of love, or rather of revenge,
the daughter of Placidia sacrificed every duty and every prejudice; and
offered to deliver her person into the arms of a Barbarian, of whose
language she was ignorant, whose figure was scarcely human, and whose
religion and manners she abhorred. By the ministry of a faithful eunuch,
she transmitted to Attila a ring, the pledge of her affection; and
earnestly conjured him to claim her as a lawful spouse, to whom he had
been secretly betrothed. These indecent advances were received, however,
with coldness and disdain; and the king of the Huns continued to
multiply the number of his wives, till his love was awakened by the more
forcible passions of ambition and avarice. The invasion of Gaul was
preceded, and justified, by a formal demand of the princess Honoria,
with a just and equal share of the Imperial patrimony. His predecessors,
the ancient Tanjous, had often addressed, in the same hostile and
peremptory manner, the daughters of China; and the pretensions of Attila
were not less offensive to the majesty of Rome. A firm, but temperate,
refusal was communicated to his ambassadors. The right of female
succession, though it might derive a specious argument from the recent
examples of Placidia and Pulcheria, was strenuously denied; and the
indissoluble engagements of Honoria were opposed to the claims of her
Scythian lover.  On the discovery of her connection with the king of the
Huns, the guilty princess had been sent away, as an object of horror,
from Constantinople to Italy: her life was spared; but the ceremony of
her marriage was performed with some obscure and nominal husband, before
she was immured in a perpetual prison, to bewail those crimes and
misfortunes, which Honoria might have escaped, had she not been born the
daughter of an emperor.

A native of Gaul, and a contemporary, the learned and eloquent Sidonius,
who was afterwards bishop of Clermont, had made a promise to one of his
friends, that he would compose a regular history of the war of Attila.
If the modesty of Sidonius had not discouraged him from the prosecution
of this interesting work,  the historian would have related, with the
simplicity of truth, those memorable events, to which the poet, in vague
and doubtful metaphors, has concisely alluded.  The kings and nations of
Germany and Scythia, from the Volga perhaps to the Danube, obeyed the
warlike summons of Attila. From the royal village, in the plains of
Hungary his standard moved towards the West; and after a march of seven
or eight hundred miles, he reached the conflux of the Rhine and the
Neckar, where he was joined by the Franks, who adhered to his ally, the
elder of the sons of Clodion. A troop of light Barbarians, who roamed in
quest of plunder, might choose the winter for the convenience of passing
the river on the ice; but the innumerable cavalry of the Huns required
such plenty of forage and provisions, as could be procured only in a
milder season; the Hercynian forest supplied materials for a bridge of
boats; and the hostile myriads were poured, with resistless violence,
into the Belgic provinces.  The consternation of Gaul was universal; and
the various fortunes of its cities have been adorned by tradition with
martyrdoms and miracles.  Troyes was saved by the merits of St. Lupus;
St. Servatius was removed from the world, that he might not behold the
ruin of Tongres; and the prayers of St. Genevieve diverted the march of
Attila from the neighborhood of Paris. But as the greatest part of the
Gallic cities were alike destitute of saints and soldiers, they were
besieged and stormed by the Huns; who practised, in the example of Metz,
their customary maxims of war. They involved, in a promiscuous massacre,
the priests who served at the altar, and the infants, who, in the hour
of danger, had been providently baptized by the bishop; the flourishing
city was delivered to the flames, and a solitary chapel of St. Stephen
marked the place where it formerly stood. From the Rhine and the
Moselle, Attila advanced into the heart of Gaul; crossed the Seine at
Auxerre; and, after a long and laborious march, fixed his camp under the
walls of Orleans. He was desirous of securing his conquests by the
possession of an advantageous post, which commanded the passage of the
Loire; and he depended on the secret invitation of Sangiban, king of the
Alani, who had promised to betray the city, and to revolt from the
service of the empire. But this treacherous conspiracy was detected and
disappointed: Orleans had been strengthened with recent fortifications;
and the assaults of the Huns were vigorously repelled by the faithful
valor of the soldiers, or citizens, who defended the place. The pastoral
diligence of Anianus, a bishop of primitive sanctity and consummate
prudence, exhausted every art of religious policy to support their
courage, till the arrival of the expected succors. After an obstinate
siege, the walls were shaken by the battering rams; the Huns had already
occupied the suburbs; and the people, who were incapable of bearing
arms, lay prostrate in prayer. Anianus, who anxiously counted the days
and hours, despatched a trusty messenger to observe, from the rampart,
the face of the distant country. He returned twice, without any
intelligence that could inspire hope or comfort; but, in his third
report, he mentioned a small cloud, which he had faintly descried at the
extremity of the horizon. "It is the aid of God!" exclaimed the bishop,
in a tone of pious confidence; and the whole multitude repeated after
him, "It is the aid of God." The remote object, on which every eye was
fixed, became each moment larger, and more distinct; the Roman and
Gothic banners were gradually perceived; and a favorable wind blowing
aside the dust, discovered, in deep array, the impatient squadrons of
Ætius and Theodoric, who pressed forwards to the relief of Orleans.

The facility with which Attila had penetrated into the heart of Gaul,
may be ascribed to his insidious policy, as well as to the terror of his
arms. His public declarations were skilfully mitigated by his private
assurances; he alternately soothed and threatened the Romans and the
Goths; and the courts of Ravenna and Thoulouse, mutually suspicious of
each other's intentions, beheld, with supine indifference, the approach
of their common enemy. Ætius was the sole guardian of the public safety;
but his wisest measures were embarrassed by a faction, which, since the
death of Placidia, infested the Imperial palace: the youth of Italy
trembled at the sound of the trumpet; and the Barbarians, who, from fear
or affection, were inclined to the cause of Attila, awaited with
doubtful and venal faith, the event of the war. The patrician passed the
Alps at the head of some troops, whose strength and numbers scarcely
deserved the name of an army.  But on his arrival at Arles, or Lyons, he
was confounded by the intelligence, that the Visigoths, refusing to
embrace the defence of Gaul, had determined to expect, within their own
territories, the formidable invader, whom they professed to despise. The
senator Avitus, who, after the honorable exercise of the Prætorian
præfecture, had retired to his estate in Auvergne, was persuaded to
accept the important embassy, which he executed with ability and
success. He represented to Theodoric, that an ambitious conqueror, who
aspired to the dominion of the earth, could be resisted only by the firm
and unanimous alliance of the powers whom he labored to oppress. The
lively eloquence of Avitus inflamed the Gothic warriors, by the
description of the injuries which their ancestors had suffered from the
Huns; whose implacable fury still pursued them from the Danube to the
foot of the Pyrenees. He strenuously urged, that it was the duty of
every Christian to save, from sacrilegious violation, the churches of
God, and the relics of the saints: that it was the interest of every
Barbarian, who had acquired a settlement in Gaul, to defend the fields
and vineyards, which were cultivated for his use, against the desolation
of the Scythian shepherds. Theodoric yielded to the evidence of truth;
adopted the measure at once the most prudent and the most honorable; and
declared, that, as the faithful ally of Ætius and the Romans, he was
ready to expose his life and kingdom for the common safety of Gaul.  The
Visigoths, who, at that time, were in the mature vigor of their fame and
power, obeyed with alacrity the signal of war; prepared their arms and
horses, and assembled under the standard of their aged king, who was
resolved, with his two eldest sons, Torismond and Theodoric, to command
in person his numerous and valiant people. The example of the Goths
determined several tribes or nations, that seemed to fluctuate between
the Huns and the Romans. The indefatigable diligence of the patrician
gradually collected the troops of Gaul and Germany, who had formerly
acknowledged themselves the subjects, or soldiers, of the republic, but
who now claimed the rewards of voluntary service, and the rank of
independent allies; the Læti, the Armoricans, the Breones the Saxons,
the Burgundians, the Sarmatians, or Alani, the Ripuarians, and the
Franks who followed Meroveus as their lawful prince. Such was the
various army, which, under the conduct of Ætius and Theodoric, advanced,
by rapid marches to relieve Orleans, and to give battle to the
innumerable host of Attila.

On their approach the king of the Huns immediately raised the siege, and
sounded a retreat to recall the foremost of his troops from the pillage
of a city which they had already entered.  The valor of Attila was
always guided by his prudence; and as he foresaw the fatal consequences
of a defeat in the heart of Gaul, he repassed the Seine, and expected
the enemy in the plains of Châlons, whose smooth and level surface was
adapted to the operations of his Scythian cavalry. But in this
tumultuary retreat, the vanguard of the Romans and their allies
continually pressed, and sometimes engaged, the troops whom Attila had
posted in the rear; the hostile columns, in the darkness of the night
and the perplexity of the roads, might encounter each other without
design; and the bloody conflict of the Franks and Gepidæ, in which
fifteen thousand  Barbarians were slain, was a prelude to a more general
and decisive action. The Catalaunian fields  spread themselves round
Châlons, and extend, according to the vague measurement of Jornandes, to
the length of one hundred and fifty, and the breadth of one hundred
miles, over the whole province, which is entitled to the appellation of
a champaigncountry.  This spacious plain was distinguished, however, by
some inequalities of ground; and the importance of a height, which
commanded the camp of Attila, was understood and disputed by the two
generals. The young and valiant Torismond first occupied the summit; the
Goths rushed with irresistible weight on the Huns, who labored to ascend
from the opposite side: and the possession of this advantageous post
inspired both the troops and their leaders with a fair assurance of
victory. The anxiety of Attila prompted him to consult his priests and
haruspices. It was reported, that, after scrutinizing the entrails of
victims, and scraping their bones, they revealed, in mysterious
language, his own defeat, with the death of his principal adversary; and
that the Barbarians, by accepting the equivalent, expressed his
involuntary esteem for the superior merit of Ætius. But the unusual
despondency, which seemed to prevail among the Huns, engaged Attila to
use the expedient, so familiar to the generals of antiquity, of
animating his troops by a military oration; and his language was that of
a king, who had often fought and conquered at their head.  He pressed
them to consider their past glory, their actual danger, and their future
hopes. The same fortune, which opened the deserts and morasses of
Scythia to their unarmed valor, which had laid so many warlike nations
prostrate at their feet, had reserved the joysof this memorable field
for the consummation of their victories. The cautious steps of their
enemies, their strict alliance, and their advantageous posts, he
artfully represented as the effects, not of prudence, but of fear. The
Visigoths alone were the strength and nerves of the opposite army; and
the Huns might securely trample on the degenerate Romans, whose close
and compact order betrayed their apprehensions, and who were equally
incapable of supporting the dangers or the fatigues of a day of battle.
The doctrine of predestination, so favorable to martial virtue, was
carefully inculcated by the king of the Huns; who assured his subjects,
that the warriors, protected by Heaven, were safe and invulnerable
amidst the darts of the enemy; but that the unerring Fates would strike
their victims in the bosom of inglorious peace. "I myself," continued
Attila, "will throw the first javelin, and the wretch who refuses to
imitate the example of his sovereign, is devoted to inevitable death."
The spirit of the Barbarians was rekindled by the presence, the voice,
and the example of their intrepid leader; and Attila, yielding to their
impatience, immediately formed his order of battle. At the head of his
brave and faithful Huns, he occupied in person the centre of the line.
The nations subject to his empire, the Rugians, the Heruli, the
Thuringians, the Franks, the Burgundians, were extended on either hand,
over the ample space of the Catalaunian fields; the right wing was
commanded by Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ; and the three valiant
brothers, who reigned over the Ostrogoths, were posted on the left to
oppose the kindred tribes of the Visigoths. The disposition of the
allies was regulated by a different principle. Sangiban, the faithless
king of the Alani, was placed in the centre, where his motions might be
strictly watched, and that the treachery might be instantly punished.
Ætius assumed the command of the left, and Theodoric of the right wing;
while Torismond still continued to occupy the heights which appear to
have stretched on the flank, and perhaps the rear, of the Scythian army.
The nations from the Volga to the Atlantic were assembled on the plain
of Châlons; but many of these nations had been divided by faction, or
conquest, or emigration; and the appearance of similar arms and ensigns,
which threatened each other, presented the image of a civil war.

The discipline and tactics of the Greeks and Romans form an interesting
part of their national manners. The attentive study of the military
operations of Xenophon, or Cæsar, or Frederic, when they are described
by the same genius which conceived and executed them, may tend to
improve (if such improvement can be wished) the art of destroying the
human species. But the battle of Châlons can only excite our curiosity
by the magnitude of the object; since it was decided by the blind
impetuosity of Barbarians, and has been related by partial writers,
whose civil or ecclesiastical profession secluded them from the
knowledge of military affairs. Cassiodorus, however, had familiarly
conversed with many Gothic warriors, who served in that memorable
engagement; "a conflict," as they informed him, "fierce, various,
obstinate, and bloody; such as could not be paralleled either in the
present or in past ages." The number of the slain amounted to one
hundred and sixty-two thousand, or, according to another account, three
hundred thousand persons;  and these incredible exaggerations suppose a
real and effective loss sufficient to justify the historian's remark,
that whole generations may be swept away by the madness of kings, in the
space of a single hour. After the mutual and repeated discharge of
missile weapons, in which the archers of Scythia might signalize their
superior dexterity, the cavalry and infantry of the two armies were
furiously mingled in closer combat. The Huns, who fought under the eyes
of their king pierced through the feeble and doubtful centre of the
allies, separated their wings from each other, and wheeling, with a
rapid effort, to the left, directed their whole force against the
Visigoths. As Theodoric rode along the ranks, to animate his troops, he
received a mortal stroke from the javelin of Andages, a noble Ostrogoth,
and immediately fell from his horse. The wounded king was oppressed in
the general disorder, and trampled under the feet of his own cavalry;
and this important death served to explain the ambiguous prophecy of the
haruspices. Attila already exulted in the confidence of victory, when
the valiant Torismond descended from the hills, and verified the
remainder of the prediction. The Visigoths, who had been thrown into
confusion by the flight or defection of the Alani, gradually restored
their order of battle; and the Huns were undoubtedly vanquished, since
Attila was compelled to retreat. He had exposed his person with the
rashness of a private soldier; but the intrepid troops of the centre had
pushed forwards beyond the rest of the line; their attack was faintly
supported; their flanks were unguarded; and the conquerors of Scythia
and Germany were saved by the approach of the night from a total defeat.
They retired within the circle of wagons that fortified their camp; and
the dismounted squadrons prepared themselves for a defence, to which
neither their arms, nor their temper, were adapted. The event was
doubtful: but Attila had secured a last and honorable resource. The
saddles and rich furniture of the cavalry were collected, by his order,
into a funeral pile; and the magnanimous Barbarian had resolved, if his
intrenchments should be forced, to rush headlong into the flames, and to
deprive his enemies of the glory which they might have acquired, by the
death or captivity of Attila.

But his enemies had passed the night in equal disorder and anxiety. The
inconsiderate courage of Torismond was tempted to urge the pursuit, till
he unexpectedly found himself, with a few followers, in the midst of the
Scythian wagons. In the confusion of a nocturnal combat, he was thrown
from his horse; and the Gothic prince must have perished like his
father, if his youthful strength, and the intrepid zeal of his
companions, had not rescued him from this dangerous situation. In the
same manner, but on the left of the line, Ætius himself, separated from
his allies, ignorant of their victory, and anxious for their fate,
encountered and escaped the hostile troops that were scattered over the
plains of Châlons; and at length reached the camp of the Goths, which he
could only fortify with a slight rampart of shields, till the dawn of
day. The Imperial general was soon satisfied of the defeat of Attila,
who still remained inactive within his intrenchments; and when he
contemplated the bloody scene, he observed, with secret satisfaction,
that the loss had principally fallen on the Barbarians. The body of
Theodoric, pierced with honorable wounds, was discovered under a heap of
the slain: is subjects bewailed the death of their king and father; but
their tears were mingled with songs and acclamations, and his funeral
rites were performed in the face of a vanquished enemy. The Goths,
clashing their arms, elevated on a buckler his eldest son Torismond, to
whom they justly ascribed the glory of their success; and the new king
accepted the obligation of revenge as a sacred portion of his paternal
inheritance. Yet the Goths themselves were astonished by the fierce and
undaunted aspect of their formidable antagonist; and their historian has
compared Attila to a lion encompassed in his den, and threatening his
hunters with redoubled fury. The kings and nations who might have
deserted his standard in the hour of distress, were made sensible that
the displeasure of their monarch was the most imminent and inevitable
danger. All his instruments of martial music incessantly sounded a loud
and animating strain of defiance; and the foremost troops who advanced
to the assault were checked or destroyed by showers of arrows from every
side of the intrenchments. It was determined, in a general council of
war, to besiege the king of the Huns in his camp, to intercept his
provisions, and to reduce him to the alternative of a disgraceful treaty
or an unequal combat. But the impatience of the Barbarians soon
disdained these cautious and dilatory measures; and the mature policy of
Ætius was apprehensive that, after the extirpation of the Huns, the
republic would be oppressed by the pride and power of the Gothic nation.
The patrician exerted the superior ascendant of authority and reason to
calm the passions, which the son of Theodoric considered as a duty;
represented, with seeming affection and real truth, the dangers of
absence and delay and persuaded Torismond to disappoint, by his speedy
return, the ambitious designs of his brothers, who might occupy the
throne and treasures of Thoulouse.  After the departure of the Goths,
and the separation of the allied army, Attila was surprised at the vast
silence that reigned over the plains of Châlons: the suspicion of some
hostile stratagem detained him several days within the circle of his
wagons, and his retreat beyond the Rhine confessed the last victory
which was achieved in the name of the Western empire. Meroveus and his
Franks, observing a prudent distance, and magnifying the opinion of
their strength by the numerous fires which they kindled every night,
continued to follow the rear of the Huns till they reached the confines
of Thuringia. The Thuringians served in the army of Attila: they
traversed, both in their march and in their return, the territories of
the Franks; and it was perhaps in this war that they exercised the
cruelties which, about fourscore years afterwards, were revenged by the
son of Clovis. They massacred their hostages, as well as their captives:
two hundred young maidens were tortured with exquisite and unrelenting
rage; their bodies were torn asunder by wild horses, or their bones were
crushed under the weight of rolling wagons; and their unburied limbs
were abandoned on the public roads, as a prey to dogs and vultures. Such
were those savage ancestors, whose imaginary virtues have sometimes
excited the praise and envy of civilized ages.

Chapter XXXV: Invasion By Attila. -- Part III.

Neither the spirit, nor the forces, nor the reputation, of Attila, were
impaired by the failure of the Gallic expedition In the ensuing spring
he repeated his demand of the princess Honoria, and her patrimonial
treasures. The demand was again rejected, or eluded; and the indignant
lover immediately took the field, passed the Alps, invaded Italy, and
besieged Aquileia with an innumerable host of Barbarians. Those
Barbarians were unskilled in the methods of conducting a regular siege,
which, even among the ancients, required some knowledge, or at least
some practice, of the mechanic arts. But the labor of many thousand
provincials and captives, whose lives were sacrificed without pity,
might execute the most painful and dangerous work. The skill of the
Roman artists might be corrupted to the destruction of their country.
The walls of Aquileia were assaulted by a formidable train of battering
rams, movable turrets, and engines, that threw stones, darts, and fire;
and the monarch of the Huns employed the forcible impulse of hope, fear,
emulation, and interest, to subvert the only barrier which delayed the
conquest of Italy. Aquileia was at that period one of the richest, the
most populous, and the strongest of the maritime cities of the Adriatic
coast. The Gothic auxiliaries, who appeared to have served under their
native princes, Alaric and Antala, communicated their intrepid spirit;
and the citizens still remembered the glorious and successful resistance
which their ancestors had opposed to a fierce, inexorable Barbarian, who
disgraced the majesty of the Roman purple. Three months were consumed
without effect in the siege of the Aquileia; till the want of
provisions, and the clamors of his army, compelled Attila to relinquish
the enterprise; and reluctantly to issue his orders, that the troops
should strike their tents the next morning, and begin their retreat. But
as he rode round the walls, pensive, angry, and disappointed, he
observed a stork preparing to leave her nest, in one of the towers, and
to fly with her infant family towards the country. He seized, with the
ready penetration of a statesman, this trifling incident, which chance
had offered to superstition; and exclaimed, in a loud and cheerful tone,
that such a domestic bird, so constantly attached to human society,
would never have abandoned her ancient seats, unless those towers had
been devoted to impending ruin and solitude.  The favorable omen
inspired an assurance of victory; the siege was renewed and prosecuted
with fresh vigor; a large breach was made in the part of the wall from
whence the stork had taken her flight; the Huns mounted to the assault
with irresistible fury; and the succeeding generation could scarcely
discover the ruins of Aquileia.  After this dreadful chastisement,
Attila pursued his march; and as he passed, the cities of Altinum,
Concordia, and Padua, were reduced into heaps of stones and ashes. The
inland towns, Vicenza, Verona, and Bergamo, were exposed to the
rapacious cruelty of the Huns. Milan and Pavia submitted, without
resistance, to the loss of their wealth; and applauded the unusual
clemency which preserved from the flames the public, as well as private,
buildings, and spared the lives of the captive multitude. The popular
traditions of Comum, Turin, or Modena, may justly be suspected; yet they
concur with more authentic evidence to prove, that Attila spread his
ravages over the rich plains of modern Lombardy; which are divided by
the Po, and bounded by the Alps and Apennine.  When he took possession
of the royal palace of Milan, he was surprised and offended at the sight
of a picture which represented the Cæsars seated on their throne, and
the princes of Scythia prostrate at their feet. The revenge which Attila
inflicted on this monument of Roman vanity, was harmless and ingenious.
He commanded a painter to reverse the figures and the attitudes; and the
emperors were delineated on the same canvas, approaching in a suppliant
posture to empty their bags of tributary gold before the throne of the
Scythian monarch.  The spectators must have confessed the truth and
propriety of the alteration; and were perhaps tempted to apply, on this
singular occasion, the well-known fable of the dispute between the lion
and the man.

It is a saying worthy of the ferocious pride of Attila, that the grass
never grew on the spot where his horse had trod. Yet the savage
destroyer undesignedly laid the foundation of a republic, which revived,
in the feudal state of Europe, the art and spirit of commercial
industry. The celebrated name of Venice, or Venetia,  was formerly
diffused over a large and fertile province of Italy, from the confines
of Pannonia to the River Addua, and from the Po to the Rhætian and
Julian Alps. Before the irruption of the Barbarians, fifty Venetian
cities flourished in peace and prosperity: Aquileia was placed in the
most conspicuous station: but the ancient dignity of Padua was supported
by agriculture and manufactures; and the property of five hundred
citizens, who were entitled to the equestrian rank, must have amounted,
at the strictest computation, to one million seven hundred thousand
pounds. Many families of Aquileia, Padua, and the adjacent towns, who
fled from the sword of the Huns, found a safe, though obscure, refuge in
the neighboring islands.  At the extremity of the Gulf, where the
Adriatic feebly imitates the tides of the ocean, near a hundred small
islands are separated by shallow water from the continent, and protected
from the waves by several long slips of land, which admit the entrance
of vessels through some secret and narrow channels.  Till the middle of
the fifth century, these remote and sequestered spots remained without
cultivation, with few inhabitants, and almost without a name. But the
manners of the Venetian fugitives, their arts and their government, were
gradually formed by their new situation; and one of the epistles of
Cassiodorus,  which describes their condition about seventy years
afterwards, may be considered as the primitive monument of the republic.
* The minister of Theodoric compares them, in his quaint declamatory
style, to water-fowl, who had fixed their nests on the bosom of the
waves; and though he allows, that the Venetian provinces had formerly
contained many noble families, he insinuates, that they were now reduced
by misfortune to the same level of humble poverty. Fish was the common,
and almost the universal, food of every rank: their only treasure
consisted in the plenty of salt, which they extracted from the sea: and
the exchange of that commodity, so essential to human life, was
substituted in the neighboring markets to the currency of gold and
silver. A people, whose habitations might be doubtfully assigned to the
earth or water, soon became alike familiar with the two elements; and
the demands of avarice succeeded to those of necessity. The islanders,
who, from Grado to Chiozza, were intimately connected with each other,
penetrated into the heart of Italy, by the secure, though laborious,
navigation of the rivers and inland canals. Their vessels, which were
continually increasing in size and number, visited all the harbors of
the Gulf; and the marriage which Venice annually celebrates with the
Adriatic, was contracted in her early infancy. The epistle of
Cassiodorus, the Prætorian præfect, is addressed to the maritime
tribunes; and he exhorts them, in a mild tone of authority, to animate
the zeal of their countrymen for the public service, which required
their assistance to transport the magazines of wine and oil from the
province of Istria to the royal city of Ravenna. The ambiguous office of
these magistrates is explained by the tradition, that, in the twelve
principal islands, twelve tribunes, or judges, were created by an annual
and popular election. The existence of the Venetian republic under the
Gothic kingdom of Italy, is attested by the same authentic record, which
annihilates their lofty claim of original and perpetual independence.

The Italians, who had long since renounced the exercise of arms, were
surprised, after forty years' peace, by the approach of a formidable
Barbarian, whom they abhorred, as the enemy of their religion, as well
as of their republic. Amidst the general consternation, Ætius alone was
incapable of fear; but it was impossible that he should achieve, alone
and unassisted, any military exploits worthy of his former renown. The
Barbarians who had defended Gaul, refused to march to the relief of
Italy; and the succors promised by the Eastern emperor were distant and
doubtful. Since Ætius, at the head of his domestic troops, still
maintained the field, and harassed or retarded the march of Attila, he
never showed himself more truly great, than at the time when his conduct
was blamed by an ignorant and ungrateful people.  If the mind of
Valentinian had been susceptible of any generous sentiments, he would
have chosen such a general for his example and his guide. But the timid
grandson of Theodosius, instead of sharing the dangers, escaped from the
sound of war; and his hasty retreat from Ravenna to Rome, from an
impregnable fortress to an open capital, betrayed his secret intention
of abandoning Italy, as soon as the danger should approach his Imperial
person. This shameful abdication was suspended, however, by the spirit
of doubt and delay, which commonly adheres to pusillanimous counsels,
and sometimes corrects their pernicious tendency. The Western emperor,
with the senate and people of Rome, embraced the more salutary
resolution of deprecating, by a solemn and suppliant embassy, the wrath
of Attila. This important commission was accepted by Avienus, who, from
his birth and riches, his consular dignity, the numerous train of his
clients, and his personal abilities, held the first rank in the Roman
senate. The specious and artful character of Avienus  was admirably
qualified to conduct a negotiation either of public or private interest:
his colleague Trigetius had exercised the Prætorian præfecture of Italy;
and Leo, bishop of Rome, consented to expose his life for the safety of
his flock. The genius of Leo  was exercised and displayed in the public
misfortunes; and he has deserved the appellation of Great, by the
successful zeal with which he labored to establish his opinions and his
authority, under the venerable names of orthodox faith and
ecclesiastical discipline. The Roman ambassadors were introduced to the
tent of Attila, as he lay encamped at the place where the slow-winding
Mincius is lost in the foaming waves of the Lake Benacus,  and trampled,
with his Scythian cavalry, the farms of Catullus and Virgil.  The
Barbarian monarch listened with favorable, and even respectful,
attention; and the deliverance of Italy was purchased by the immense
ransom, or dowry, of the princess Honoria. The state of his army might
facilitate the treaty, and hasten his retreat. Their martial spirit was
relaxed by the wealth and indolence of a warm climate. The shepherds of
the North, whose ordinary food consisted of milk and raw flesh, indulged
themselves too freely in the use of bread, of wine, and of meat,
prepared and seasoned by the arts of cookery; and the progress of
disease revenged in some measure the injuries of the Italians.  When
Attila declared his resolution of carrying his victorious arms to the
gates of Rome, he was admonished by his friends, as well as by his
enemies, that Alaric had not long survived the conquest of the eternal
city. His mind, superior to real danger, was assaulted by imaginary
terrors; nor could he escape the influence of superstition, which had so
often been subservient to his designs.  The pressing eloquence of Leo,
his majestic aspect and sacerdotal robes, excited the veneration of
Attila for the spiritual father of the Christians. The apparition of the
two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, who menaced the Barbarian with
instant death, if he rejected the prayer of their successor, is one of
the noblest legends of ecclesiastical tradition. The safety of Rome
might deserve the interposition of celestial beings; and some indulgence
is due to a fable, which has been represented by the pencil of Raphael,
and the chisel of Algardi.

Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return
more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria,
were not delivered to his ambassadors within the term stipulated by the
treaty. Yet, in the mean while, Attila relieved his tender anxiety, by
adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his
innumerable wives.  Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and
festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch,
oppressed with wine and sleep, retired at a late hour from the banquet
to the nuptial bed. His attendants continued to respect his pleasures,
or his repose, the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual
silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to
awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the
royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside,
hiding her face with her veil, and lamenting her own danger, as well as
the death of the king, who had expired during the night.  An artery had
suddenly burst: and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated
by a torrent of blood, which, instead of finding a passage through the
nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. His body was solemnly
exposed in the midst of the plain, under a silken pavilion; and the
chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions,
chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious in his life,
invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his
enemies, and the terror of the world. According to their national
custom, the Barbarians cut off a part of their hair, gashed their faces
with unseemly wounds, and bewailed their valiant leader as he deserved,
not with the tears of women, but with the blood of warriors. The remains
of Attila were enclosed within three coffins, of gold, of silver, and of
iron, and privately buried in the night: the spoils of nations were
thrown into his grave; the captives who had opened the ground were
inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns, who had indulged such excessive
grief, feasted, with dissolute and intemperate mirth, about the recent
sepulchre of their king. It was reported at Constantinople, that on the
fortunate night on which he expired, Marcian beheld in a dream the bow
of Attila broken asunder: and the report may be allowed to prove, how
seldom the image of that formidable Barbarian was absent from the mind
of a Roman emperor.

The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns, established the
fame of Attila, whose genius alone had sustained the huge and disjointed
fabric. After his death, the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of
kings; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior; and
the numerous sons, whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased
monarch, divided and disputed, like a private inheritance, the sovereign
command of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and
represented the disgrace of this servile partition; and his subjects,
the warlike Gepidæ, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three
valiant brothers, encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of
freedom and royalty. In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of
the River Netad, in Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidæ, the sword of the
Goths, the arrows of the Huns, the Suevic infantry, the light arms of
the Heruli, and the heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported
each other; and the victory of the Ardaric was accompanied with the
slaughter of thirty thousand of his enemies. Ellac, the eldest son of
Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad: his
early valor had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian
people, whom he subdued; and his father, who loved the superior merit,
would have envied the death of Ellac.  His brother, Dengisich, with an
army of Huns, still formidable in their flight and ruin, maintained his
ground above fifteen years on the banks of the Danube. The palace of
Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the
Euxine, became the seat of a new power, which was erected by Ardaric,
king of the Gepidæ. The Pannonian conquests from Vienna to Sirmium, were
occupied by the Ostrogoths; and the settlements of the tribes, who had
so bravely asserted their native freedom, were irregularly distributed,
according to the measure of their respective strength. Surrounded and
oppressed by the multitude of his father's slaves, the kingdom of
Dengisich was confined to the circle of his wagons; his desperate
courage urged him to invade the Eastern empire: he fell in battle; and
his head ignominiously exposed in the Hippodrome, exhibited a grateful
spectacle to the people of Constantinople. Attila had fondly or
superstitiously believed, that Irnac, the youngest of his sons, was
destined to perpetuate the glories of his race. The character of that
prince, who attempted to moderate the rashness of his brother Dengisich,
was more suitable to the declining condition of the Huns; and Irnac,
with his subject hordes, retired into the heart of the Lesser Scythia.
They were soon overwhelmed by a torrent of new Barbarians, who followed
the same road which their own ancestors had formerly discovered. The
Geougen, or Avares, whose residence is assigned by the Greek writers to
the shores of the ocean, impelled the adjacent tribes; till at length
the Igours of the North, issuing from the cold Siberian regions, which
produce the most valuable furs, spread themselves over the desert, as
far as the Borysthenes and the Caspian gates; and finally extinguished
the empire of the Huns.

Such an event might contribute to the safety of the Eastern empire,
under the reign of a prince who conciliated the friendship, without
forfeiting the esteem, of the Barbarians. But the emperor of the West,
the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, who had reached his thirty-fifth
year without attaining the age of reason or courage, abused this
apparent security, to undermine the foundations of his own throne, by
the murder of the patrician Ætius. From the instinct of a base and
jealous mind, he hated the man who was universally celebrated as the
terror of the Barbarians, and the support of the republic; * and his new
favorite, the eunuch Heraclius, awakened the emperor from the supine
lethargy, which might be disguised, during the life of Placidia,  by the
excuse of filial piety. The fame of Ætius, his wealth and dignity, the
numerous and martial train of Barbarian followers, his powerful
dependants, who filled the civil offices of the state, and the hopes of
his son Gaudentius, who was already contracted to Eudoxia, the emperor's
daughter, had raised him above the rank of a subject. The ambitious
designs, of which he was secretly accused, excited the fears, as well as
the resentment, of Valentinian. Ætius himself, supported by the
consciousness of his merit, his services, and perhaps his innocence,
seems to have maintained a haughty and indiscreet behavior. The
patrician offended his sovereign by a hostile declaration; he aggravated
the offence, by compelling him to ratify, with a solemn oath, a treaty
of reconciliation and alliance; he proclaimed his suspicions, he
neglected his safety; and from a vain confidence that the enemy, whom he
despised, was incapable even of a manly crime, he rashly ventured his
person in the palace of Rome. Whilst he urged, perhaps with intemperate
vehemence, the marriage of his son; Valentinian, drawing his sword, the
first sword he had ever drawn, plunged it in the breast of a general who
had saved his empire: his courtiers and eunuchs ambitiously struggled to
imitate their master; and Ætius, pierced with a hundred wounds, fell
dead in the royal presence. Boethius, the Prætorian præfect, was killed
at the same moment, and before the event could be divulged, the
principal friends of the patrician were summoned to the palace, and
separately murdered. The horrid deed, palliated by the specious names of
justice and necessity, was immediately communicated by the emperor to
his soldiers, his subjects, and his allies. The nations, who were
strangers or enemies to Ætius, generously deplored the unworthy fate of
a hero: the Barbarians, who had been attached to his service, dissembled
their grief and resentment: and the public contempt, which had been so
long entertained for Valentinian, was at once converted into deep and
universal abhorrence. Such sentiments seldom pervade the walls of a
palace; yet the emperor was confounded by the honest reply of a Roman,
whose approbation he had not disdained to solicit. "I am ignorant, sir,
of your motives or provocations; I only know, that you have acted like a
man who cuts off his right hand with his left."

The luxury of Rome seems to have attracted the long and frequent visits
of Valentinian; who was consequently more despised at Rome than in any
other part of his dominions. A republican spirit was insensibly revived
in the senate, as their authority, and even their supplies, became
necessary for the support of his feeble government. The stately demeanor
of an hereditary monarch offended their pride; and the pleasures of
Valentinian were injurious to the peace and honor of noble families. The
birth of the empress Eudoxia was equal to his own, and her charms and
tender affection deserved those testimonies of love which her inconstant
husband dissipated in vague and unlawful amours. Petronius Maximus, a
wealthy senator of the Anician family, who had been twice consul, was
possessed of a chaste and beautiful wife: her obstinate resistance
served only to irritate the desires of Valentinian; and he resolved to
accomplish them, either by stratagem or force. Deep gaming was one of
the vices of the court: the emperor, who, by chance or contrivance, had
gained from Maximus a considerable sum, uncourteously exacted his ring
as a security for the debt; and sent it by a trusty messenger to his
wife, with an order, in her husband's name, that she should immediately
attend the empress Eudoxia. The unsuspecting wife of Maximus was
conveyed in her litter to the Imperial palace; the emissaries of her
impatient lover conducted her to a remote and silent bed-chamber; and
Valentinian violated, without remorse, the laws of hospitality. Her
tears, when she returned home, her deep affliction, and her bitter
reproaches against a husband whom she considered as the accomplice of
his own shame, excited Maximus to a just revenge; the desire of revenge
was stimulated by ambition; and he might reasonably aspire, by the free
suffrage of the Roman senate, to the throne of a detested and despicable
rival. Valentinian, who supposed that every human breast was devoid,
like his own, of friendship and gratitude, had imprudently admitted
among his guards several domestics and followers of Ætius. Two of these,
of Barbarian race were persuaded to execute a sacred and honorable duty,
by punishing with death the assassin of their patron; and their intrepid
courage did not long expect a favorable moment. Whilst Valentinian
amused himself, in the field of Mars, with the spectacle of some
military sports, they suddenly rushed upon him with drawn weapons,
despatched the guilty Heraclius, and stabbed the emperor to the heart,
without the least opposition from his numerous train, who seemed to
rejoice in the tyrant's death. Such was the fate of Valentinian the
Third,  the last Roman emperor of the family of Theodosius. He
faithfully imitated the hereditary weakness of his cousin and his two
uncles, without inheriting the gentleness, the purity, the innocence,
which alleviate, in their characters, the want of spirit and ability.
Valentinian was less excusable, since he had passions, without virtues:
even his religion was questionable; and though he never deviated into
the paths of heresy, he scandalized the pious Christians by his
attachment to the profane arts of magic and divination.

As early as the time of Cicero and Varro, it was the opinion of the
Roman augurs, that the twelve vultureswhich Romulus had seen,
represented the twelve centuries, assigned for the fatal period of his
city.  This prophecy, disregarded perhaps in the season of health and
prosperity, inspired the people with gloomy apprehensions, when the
twelfth century, clouded with disgrace and misfortune, was almost
elapsed;  and even posterity must acknowledge with some surprise, that
the arbitrary interpretation of an accidental or fabulous circumstance
has been seriously verified in the downfall of the Western empire. But
its fall was announced by a clearer omen than the flight of vultures:
the Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies,
more odious and oppressive to its subjects.  The taxes were multiplied
with the public distress; economy was neglected in proportion as it
became necessary; and the injustice of the rich shifted the unequal
burden from themselves to the people, whom they defrauded of the
indulgencesthat might sometimes have alleviated their misery. The severe
inquisition which confiscated their goods, and tortured their persons,
compelled the subjects of Valentinian to prefer the more simple tyranny
of the Barbarians, to fly to the woods and mountains, or to embrace the
vile and abject condition of mercenary servants. They abjured and
abhorred the name of Roman citizens, which had formerly excited the
ambition of mankind. The Armorican provinces of Gaul, and the greatest
part of Spain, were-thrown into a state of disorderly independence, by
the confederations of the Bagaudæ; and the Imperial ministers pursued
with proscriptive laws, and ineffectual arms, the rebels whom they had
made.  If all the Barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same
hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the
West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of
virtue, and of honor.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.

Part I.

Sack Of Rome By Genseric, King Of The Vandals. -- His Naval
Depredations. -- Succession Of The Last Emperors Of The West, Maximus,
Avitus, Majorian, Severus, Anthemius, Olybrius, Glycerius, Nepos,
Augustulus. -- Total Extinction Of The Western Empire. -- Reign Of
Odoacer, The First Barbarian King Of Italy.

The loss or desolation of the provinces, from the Ocean to the Alps,
impaired the glory and greatness of Rome: her internal prosperity was
irretrievably destroyed by the separation of Africa. The rapacious
Vandals confiscated the patrimonial estates of the senators, and
intercepted the regular subsidies, which relieved the poverty and
encouraged the idleness of the plebeians. The distress of the Romans was
soon aggravated by an unexpected attack; and the province, so long
cultivated for their use by industrious and obedient subjects, was armed
against them by an ambitious Barbarian. The Vandals and Alani, who
followed the successful standard of Genseric, had acquired a rich and
fertile territory, which stretched along the coast above ninety days'
journey from Tangier to Tripoli; but their narrow limits were pressed
and confined, on either side, by the sandy desert and the Mediterranean.
The discovery and conquest of the Black nations, that might dwell
beneath the torrid zone, could not tempt the rational ambition of
Genseric; but he cast his eyes towards the sea; he resolved to create a
naval power, and his bold resolution was executed with steady and active
perseverance. The woods of Mount Atlas afforded an inexhaustible nursery
of timber: his new subjects were skilled in the arts of navigation and
ship-building; he animated his daring Vandals to embrace a mode of
warfare which would render every maritime country accessible to their
arms; the Moors and Africans were allured by the hopes of plunder; and,
after an interval of six centuries, the fleets that issued from the port
of Carthage again claimed the empire of the Mediterranean. The success
of the Vandals, the conquest of Sicily, the sack of Palermo, and the
frequent descents on the coast of Lucania, awakened and alarmed the
mother of Valentinian, and the sister of Theodosius. Alliances were
formed; and armaments, expensive and ineffectual, were prepared, for the
destruction of the common enemy; who reserved his courage to encounter
those dangers which his policy could not prevent or elude. The designs
of the Roman government were repeatedly baffled by his artful delays,
ambiguous promises, and apparent concessions; and the interposition of
his formidable confederate, the king of the Huns, recalled the emperors
from the conquest of Africa to the care of their domestic safety. The
revolutions of the palace, which left the Western empire without a
defender, and without a lawful prince, dispelled the apprehensions, and
stimulated the avarice, of Genseric. He immediately equipped a numerous
fleet of Vandals and Moors, and cast anchor at the mouth of the Tyber,
about three months after the death of Valentinian, and the elevation of
Maximus to the Imperial throne.

The private life of the senator Petronius Maximus  was often alleged as
a rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and illustrious,
since he descended from the Anician family; his dignity was supported by
an adequate patrimony in land and money; and these advantages of fortune
were accompanied with liberal arts and decent manners, which adorn or
imitate the inestimable gifts of genius and virtue. The luxury of his
palace and table was hospitable and elegant. Whenever Maximus appeared
in public, he was surrounded by a train of grateful and obsequious
clients;  and it is possible that among these clients, he might deserve
and possess some real friends. His merit was rewarded by the favor of
the prince and senate: he thrice exercised the office of Prætorian
præfect of Italy; he was twice invested with the consulship, and he
obtained the rank of patrician. These civil honors were not incompatible
with the enjoyment of leisure and tranquillity; his hours, according to
the demands of pleasure or reason, were accurately distributed by a
water-clock; and this avarice of time may be allowed to prove the sense
which Maximus entertained of his own happiness. The injury which he
received from the emperor Valentinian appears to excuse the most bloody
revenge. Yet a philosopher might have reflected, that, if the resistance
of his wife had been sincere, her chastity was still inviolate, and that
it could never be restored if she had consented to the will of the
adulterer. A patriot would have hesitated before he plunged himself and
his country into those inevitable calamities which must follow the
extinction of the royal house of Theodosius. The imprudent Maximus
disregarded these salutary considerations; he gratified his resentment
and ambition; he saw the bleeding corpse of Valentinian at his feet; and
he heard himself saluted Emperor by the unanimous voice of the senate
and people. But the day of his inauguration was the last day of his
happiness. He was imprisoned (such is the lively expression of Sidonius)
in the palace; and after passing a sleepless night, he sighed that he
had attained the summit of his wishes, and aspired only to descend from
the dangerous elevation. Oppressed by the weight of the diadem, he
communicated his anxious thoughts to his friend and quæstor Fulgentius;
and when he looked back with unavailing regret on the secure pleasures
of his former life, the emperor exclaimed, "O fortunate Damocles,  thy
reign began and ended with the same dinner;" a well-known allusion,
which Fulgentius afterwards repeated as an instructive lesson for
princes and subjects.

The reign of Maximus continued about three months. His hours, of which
he had lost the command, were disturbed by remorse, or guilt, or terror,
and his throne was shaken by the seditions of the soldiers, the people,
and the confederate Barbarians. The marriage of his son Paladius with
the eldest daughter of the late emperor, might tend to establish the
hereditary succession of his family; but the violence which he offered
to the empress Eudoxia, could proceed only from the blind impulse of
lust or revenge. His own wife, the cause of these tragic events, had
been seasonably removed by death; and the widow of Valentinian was
compelled to violate her decent mourning, perhaps her real grief, and to
submit to the embraces of a presumptuous usurper, whom she suspected as
the assassin of her deceased husband. These suspicions were soon
justified by the indiscreet confession of Maximus himself; and he
wantonly provoked the hatred of his reluctant bride, who was still
conscious that she was descended from a line of emperors. From the East,
however, Eudoxia could not hope to obtain any effectual assistance; her
father and her aunt Pulcheria were dead; her mother languished at
Jerusalem in disgrace and exile; and the sceptre of Constantinople was
in the hands of a stranger. She directed her eyes towards Carthage;
secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals; and persuaded
Genseric to improve the fair opportunity of disguising his rapacious
designs by the specious names of honor, justice, and compassion.
Whatever abilities Maximus might have shown in a subordinate station, he
was found incapable of administering an empire; and though he might
easily have been informed of the naval preparations which were made on
the opposite shores of Africa, he expected with supine indifference the
approach of the enemy, without adopting any measures of defence, of
negotiation, or of a timely retreat. When the Vandals disembarked at the
mouth of the Tyber, the emperor was suddenly roused from his lethargy by
the clamors of a trembling and exasperated multitude. The only hope
which presented itself to his astonished mind was that of a precipitate
flight, and he exhorted the senators to imitate the example of their
prince. But no sooner did Maximus appear in the streets, than he was
assaulted by a shower of stones; a Roman, or a Burgundian soldier,
claimed the honor of the first wound; his mangled body was ignominiously
cast into the Tyber; the Roman people rejoiced in the punishment which
they had inflicted on the author of the public calamities; and the
domestics of Eudoxia signalized their zeal in the service of their
mistress.

On the third day after the tumult, Genseric boldly advanced from the
port of Ostia to the gates of the defenceless city. Instead of a sally
of the Roman youth, there issued from the gates an unarmed and venerable
procession of the bishop at the head of his clergy.  The fearless spirit
of Leo, his authority and eloquence, againmitigated the fierceness of a
Barbarian conqueror; the king of the Vandals promised to spare the
unresisting multitude, to protect the buildings from fire, and to exempt
the captives from torture; and although such orders were neither
seriously given, nor strictly obeyed, the mediation of Leo was glorious
to himself, and in some degree beneficial to his country. But Rome and
its inhabitants were delivered to the licentiousness of the Vandals and
Moors, whose blind passions revenged the injuries of Carthage. The
pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained of
public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, was diligently
transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid
relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited a memorable
example of the vicissitudes of human and divine things. Since the
abolition of Paganism, the Capitol had been violated and abandoned; yet
the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious
roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric.
The holy instruments of the Jewish worship,  the gold table, and the
gold candlestick with seven branches, originally framed according to the
particular instructions of God himself, and which were placed in the
sanctuary of his temple, had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman
people in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the
temple of Peace; and at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of
Jerusalem were transferred from Rome to Carthage, by a Barbarian who
derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. These ancient
monuments might attract the notice of curiosity, as well as of avarice.
But the Christian churches, enriched and adorned by the prevailing
superstition of the times, afforded more plentiful materials for
sacrilege; and the pious liberality of Pope Leo, who melted six silver
vases, the gift of Constantine, each of a hundred pounds weight, is an
evidence of the damage which he attempted to repair. In the forty-five
years that had elapsed since the Gothic invasion, the pomp and luxury of
Rome were in some measure restored; and it was difficult either to
escape, or to satisfy, the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure
to collect, and ships to transport, the wealth of the capital. The
Imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture and
wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were accumulated with
disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to several thousand
talents; yet even the brass and copper were laboriously removed. Eudoxia
herself, who advanced to meet her friend and deliverer, soon bewailed
the imprudence of her own conduct. She was rudely stripped of her
jewels; and the unfortunate empress, with her two daughters, the only
surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled, as a captive,
to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail, and returned
with a prosperous navigation to the port of Carthage.  Many thousand
Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable
qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and
their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling Barbarians, who, in the
division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, and the
children from their parents. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of
Carthage,  was their only consolation and support. He generously sold
the gold and silver plate of the church to purchase the freedom of some,
to alleviate the slavery of others, and to assist the wants and
infirmities of a captive multitude, whose health was impaired by the
hardships which they had suffered in their passage from Italy to Africa.
By his order, two spacious churches were converted into hospitals; the
sick were distributed into convenient beds, and liberally supplied with
food and medicines; and the aged prelate repeated his visits both in the
day and night, with an assiduity that surpassed his strength, and a
tender sympathy which enhanced the value of his services. Compare this
scene with the field of Cannæ; and judge between Hannibal and the
successor of St. Cyprian.

The deaths of Ætius and Valentinian had relaxed the ties which held the
Barbarians of Gaul in peace and subordination. The sea-coast was
infested by the Saxons; the Alemanni and the Franks advanced from the
Rhine to the Seine; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate
more extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus relieved
himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of these distant cares;
he silenced the solicitations of his friends, listened to the voice of
fame, and promoted a stranger to the general command of the forces of
Gaul. Avitus,  the stranger, whose merit was so nobly rewarded,
descended from a wealthy and honorable family in the diocese of
Auvergne. The convulsions of the times urged him to embrace, with the
same ardor, the civil and military professions: and the indefatigable
youth blended the studies of literature and jurisprudence with the
exercise of arms and hunting. Thirty years of his life were laudably
spent in the public service; he alternately displayed his talents in war
and negotiation; and the soldier of Ætius, after executing the most
important embassies, was raised to the station of Prætorian præfect of
Gaul. Either the merit of Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was
desirous of repose, since he calmly retired to an estate, which he
possessed in the neighborhood of Clermont. A copious stream, issuing
from the mountain, and falling headlong in many a loud and foaming
cascade, discharged its waters into a lake about two miles in length,
and the villa was pleasantly seated on the margin of the lake. The
baths, the porticos, the summer and winter apartments, were adapted to
the purposes of luxury and use; and the adjacent country afforded the
various prospects of woods, pastures, and meadows.  In this retreat,
where Avitus amused his leisure with books, rural sports, the practice
of husbandry, and the society of his friends,  he received the Imperial
diploma, which constituted him master-general of the cavalry and
infantry of Gaul. He assumed the military command; the Barbarians
suspended their fury; and whatever means he might employ, whatever
concessions he might be forced to make, the people enjoyed the benefits
of actual tranquillity. But the fate of Gaul depended on the Visigoths;
and the Roman general, less attentive to his dignity than to the public
interest, did not disdain to visit Thoulouse in the character of an
ambassador. He was received with courteous hospitality by Theodoric, the
king of the Goths; but while Avitus laid the foundations of a solid
alliance with that powerful nation, he was astonished by the
intelligence, that the emperor Maximus was slain, and that Rome had been
pillaged by the Vandals. A vacant throne, which he might ascend without
guilt or danger, tempted his ambition;  and the Visigoths were easily
persuaded to support his claim by their irresistible suffrage. They
loved the person of Avitus; they respected his virtues; and they were
not insensible of the advantage, as well as honor, of giving an emperor
to the West. The season was now approaching, in which the annual
assembly of the seven provinces was held at Arles; their deliberations
might perhaps be influenced by the presence of Theodoric and his martial
brothers; but their choice would naturally incline to the most
illustrious of their countrymen. Avitus, after a decent resistance,
accepted the Imperial diadem from the representatives of Gaul; and his
election was ratified by the acclamations of the Barbarians and
provincials. The formal consent of Marcian, emperor of the East, was
solicited and obtained; but the senate, Rome, and Italy, though humbled
by their recent calamities, submitted with a secret murmur to the
presumption of the Gallic usurper.

Theodoric, to whom Avitus was indebted for the purple, had acquired the
Gothic sceptre by the murder of his elder brother Torismond; and he
justified this atrocious deed by the design which his predecessor had
formed of violating his alliance with the empire.  Such a crime might
not be incompatible with the virtues of a Barbarian; but the manners of
Theodoric were gentle and humane; and posterity may contemplate without
terror the original picture of a Gothic king, whom Sidonius had
intimately observed, in the hours of peace and of social intercourse. In
an epistle, dated from the court of Thoulouse, the orator satisfies the
curiosity of one of his friends, in the following description:  "By the
majesty of his appearance, Theodoric would command the respect of those
who are ignorant of his merit; and although he is born a prince, his
merit would dignify a private station. He is of a middle stature, his
body appears rather plump than fat, and in his well-proportioned limbs
agility is united with muscular strength.  If you examine his
countenance, you will distinguish a high forehead, large shaggy
eyebrows, an aquiline nose, thin lips, a regular set of white teeth, and
a fair complexion, that blushes more frequently from modesty than from
anger. The ordinary distribution of his time, as far as it is exposed to
the public view, may be concisely represented. Before daybreak, he
repairs, with a small train, to his domestic chapel, where the service
is performed by the Arian clergy; but those who presume to interpret his
secret sentiments, consider this assiduous devotion as the effect of
habit and policy. The rest of the morning is employed in the
administration of his kingdom. His chair is surrounded by some military
officers of decent aspect and behavior: the noisy crowd of his Barbarian
guards occupies the hall of audience; but they are not permitted to
stand within the veils or curtains that conceal the council-chamber from
vulgar eyes. The ambassadors of the nations are successively introduced:
Theodoric listens with attention, answers them with discreet brevity,
and either announces or delays, according to the nature of their
business, his final resolution. About eight (the second hour) he rises
from his throne, and visits either his treasury or his stables. If he
chooses to hunt, or at least to exercise himself on horseback, his bow
is carried by a favorite youth; but when the game is marked, he bends it
with his own hand, and seldom misses the object of his aim: as a king,
he disdains to bear arms in such ignoble warfare; but as a soldier, he
would blush to accept any military service which he could perform
himself. On common days, his dinner is not different from the repast of
a private citizen, but every Saturday, many honorable guests are invited
to the royal table, which, on these occasions, is served with the
elegance of Greece, the plenty of Gaul, and the order and diligence of
Italy.  The gold or silver plate is less remarkable for its weight than
for the brightness and curious workmanship: the taste is gratified
without the help of foreign and costly luxury; the size and number of
the cups of wine are regulated with a strict regard to the laws of
temperance; and the respectful silence that prevails, is interrupted
only by grave and instructive conversation. After dinner, Theodoric
sometimes indulges himself in a short slumber; and as soon as he wakes,
he calls for the dice and tables, encourages his friends to forget the
royal majesty, and is delighted when they freely express the passions
which are excited by the incidents of play. At this game, which he loves
as the image of war, he alternately displays his eagerness, his skill,
his patience, and his cheerful temper. If he loses, he laughs; he is
modest and silent if he wins. Yet, notwithstanding this seeming
indifference, his courtiers choose to solicit any favor in the moments
of victory; and I myself, in my applications to the king, have derived
some benefit from my losses.  About the ninth hour (three o'clock) the
tide of business again returns, and flows incessantly till after sunset,
when the signal of the royal supper dismisses the weary crowd of
suppliants and pleaders. At the supper, a more familiar repast, buffoons
and pantomimes are sometimes introduced, to divert, not to offend, the
company, by their ridiculous wit: but female singers, and the soft,
effeminate modes of music, are severely banished, and such martial tunes
as animate the soul to deeds of valor are alone grateful to the ear of
Theodoric. He retires from table; and the nocturnal guards are
immediately posted at the entrance of the treasury, the palace, and the
private apartments."

When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume the purple,
he offered his person and his forces, as a faithful soldier of the
republic.  The exploits of Theodoric soon convinced the world that he
had not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After the
establishment of the Goths in Aquitain, and the passage of the Vandals
into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom in Gallicia, aspired
to the conquest of Spain, and threatened to extinguish the feeble
remains of the Roman dominion. The provincials of Carthagena and
Tarragona, afflicted by a hostile invasion, represented their injuries
and their apprehensions. Count Fronto was despatched, in the name of the
emperor Avitus, with advantageous offers of peace and alliance; and
Theodoric interposed his weighty mediation, to declare, that, unless his
brother-in-law, the king of the Suevi, immediately retired, he should be
obliged to arm in the cause of justice and of Rome. "Tell him," replied
the haughty Rechiarius, "that I despise his friendship and his arms; but
that I shall soon try whether he will dare to expect my arrival under
the walls of Thoulouse." Such a challenge urged Theodoric to prevent the
bold designs of his enemy; he passed the Pyrenees at the head of the
Visigoths: the Franks and Burgundians served under his standard; and
though he professed himself the dutiful servant of Avitus, he privately
stipulated, for himself and his successors, the absolute possession of
his Spanish conquests. The two armies, or rather the two nations,
encountered each other on the banks of the River Urbicus, about twelve
miles from Astorga; and the decisive victory of the Goths appeared for a
while to have extirpated the name and kingdom of the Suevi. From the
field of battle Theodoric advanced to Braga, their metropolis, which
still retained the splendid vestiges of its ancient commerce and
dignity.  His entrance was not polluted with blood; and the Goths
respected the chastity of their female captives, more especially of the
consecrated virgins: but the greatest part of the clergy and people were
made slaves, and even the churches and altars were confounded in the
universal pillage. The unfortunate king of the Suevi had escaped to one
of the ports of the ocean; but the obstinacy of the winds opposed his
flight: he was delivered to his implacable rival; and Rechiarius, who
neither desired nor expected mercy, received, with manly constancy, the
death which he would probably have inflicted. After this bloody
sacrifice to policy or resentment, Theodoric carried his victorious arms
as far as Merida, the principal town of Lusitania, without meeting any
resistance, except from the miraculous powers of St. Eulalia; but he was
stopped in the full career of success, and recalled from Spain before he
could provide for the security of his conquests. In his retreat towards
the Pyrenees, he revenged his disappointment on the country through
which he passed; and, in the sack of Pollentia and Astorga, he showed
himself a faithless ally, as well as a cruel enemy. Whilst the king of
the Visigoths fought and vanquished in the name of Avitus, the reign of
Avitus had expired; and both the honor and the interest of Theodoric
were deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend, whom he had seated on
the throne of the Western empire.

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

The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the
emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the
consulship for the ensuing year. On the first day of January, his
son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, celebrated his praises in a panegyric
of six hundred verses; but this composition, though it was rewarded with
a brass statue,  seems to contain a very moderate proportion, either of
genius or of truth. The poet, if we may degrade that sacred name,
exaggerates the merit of a sovereign and a father; and his prophecy of a
long and glorious reign was soon contradicted by the event. Avitus, at a
time when the Imperial dignity was reduced to a preeminence of toil and
danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury: age had not
extinguished his amorous inclinations; and he is accused of insulting,
with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he had
seduced or violated.  But the Romans were not inclined either to excuse
his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several parts of the
empire became every day more alienated from each other; and the stranger
of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and contempt. The senate
asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor; and their
authority, which had been originally derived from the old constitution,
was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining monarchy. Yet
even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an unarmed senate,
if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps inflamed, by the
Count Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the Barbarian troops,
who formed the military defence of Italy. The daughter of Wallia, king
of the Visigoths, was the mother of Ricimer; but he was descended, on
the father's side, from the nation of the Suevi;  his pride or
patriotism might be exasperated by the misfortunes of his countrymen;
and he obeyed, with reluctance, an emperor in whose elevation he had not
been consulted. His faithful and important services against the common
enemy rendered him still more formidable;  and, after destroying on the
coast of Corsica a fleet of Vandals, which consisted of sixty galleys,
Ricimer returned in triumph with the appellation of the Deliverer of
Italy. He chose that moment to signify to Avitus, that his reign was at
an end; and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his Gothic allies,
was compelled, after a short and unavailing struggle to abdicate the
purple. By the clemency, however, or the contempt, of Ricimer,  he was
permitted to descend from the throne to the more desirable station of
bishop of Placentia: but the resentment of the senate was still
unsatisfied; and their inflexible severity pronounced the sentence of
his death He fled towards the Alps, with the humble hope, not of arming
the Visigoths in his cause, but of securing his person and treasures in
the sanctuary of Julian, one of the tutelar saints of Auvergne.
Disease, or the hand of the executioner, arrested him on the road; yet
his remains were decently transported to Brivas, or Brioude, in his
native province, and he reposed at the feet of his holy patron.  Avitus
left only one daughter, the wife of Sidonius Apollinaris, who inherited
the patrimony of his father-in-law; lamenting, at the same time, the
disappointment of his public and private expectations. His resentment
prompted him to join, or at least to countenance, the measures of a
rebellious faction in Gaul; and the poet had contracted some guilt,
which it was incumbent on him to expiate, by a new tribute of flattery
to the succeeding emperor.

The successor of Avitus presents the welcome discovery of a great and
heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to
vindicate the honor of the human species. The emperor Majorian has
deserved the praises of his contemporaries, and of posterity; and these
praises may be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and
disinterested historian: "That he was gentle to his subjects; that he
was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled, in every virtue,
allhis predecessors who had reigned over the Romans."  Such a testimony
may justify at least the panegyric of Sidonius; and we may acquiesce in
the assurance, that, although the obsequious orator would have
flattered, with equal zeal, the most worthless of princes, the
extraordinary merit of his object confined him, on this occasion, within
the bounds of truth.  Majorian derived his name from his maternal
grandfather, who, in the reign of the great Theodosius, had commanded
the troops of the Illyrian frontier. He gave his daughter in marriage to
the father of Majorian, a respectable officer, who administered the
revenues of Gaul with skill and integrity; and generously preferred the
friendship of Ætius to the tempting offer of an insidious court. His
son, the future emperor, who was educated in the profession of arms,
displayed, from his early youth, intrepid courage, premature wisdom, and
unbounded liberality in a scanty fortune. He followed the standard of
Ætius, contributed to his success, shared, and sometimes eclipsed, his
glory, and at last excited the jealousy of the patrician, or rather of
his wife, who forced him to retire from the service.  Majorian, after
the death of Ætius, was recalled and promoted; and his intimate
connection with Count Ricimer was the immediate step by which he
ascended the throne of the Western empire. During the vacancy that
succeeded the abdication of Avitus, the ambitious Barbarian, whose birth
excluded him from the Imperial dignity, governed Italy with the title of
Patrician; resigned to his friend the conspicuous station of
master-general of the cavalry and infantry; and, after an interval of
some months, consented to the unanimous wish of the Romans, whose favor
Majorian had solicited by a recent victory over the Alemanni.  He was
invested with the purple at Ravenna: and the epistle which he addressed
to the senate, will best describe his situation and his sentiments.
"Your election, Conscript Fathers! and the ordinance of the most valiant
army, have made me your emperor.  May the propitious Deity direct and
prosper the counsels and events of my administration, to your advantage
and to the public welfare! For my own part, I did not aspire, I have
submitted to reign; nor should I have discharged the obligations of a
citizen if I had refused, with base and selfish ingratitude, to support
the weight of those labors, which were imposed by the republic. Assist,
therefore, the prince whom you have made; partake the duties which you
have enjoined; and may our common endeavors promote the happiness of an
empire, which I have accepted from your hands. Be assured, that, in our
times, justice shall resume her ancient vigor, and that virtue shall
become, not only innocent, but meritorious. Let none, except the authors
themselves, be apprehensive of delations,  which, as a subject, I have
always condemned, and, as a prince, will severely punish. Our own
vigilance, and that of our father, the patrician Ricimer, shall regulate
all military affairs, and provide for the safety of the Roman world,
which we have saved from foreign and domestic enemies.  You now
understand the maxims of my government; you may confide in the faithful
love and sincere assurances of a prince who has formerly been the
companion of your life and dangers; who still glories in the name of
senator, and who is anxious that you should never repent the judgment
which you have pronounced in his favor." The emperor, who, amidst the
ruins of the Roman world, revived the ancient language of law and
liberty, which Trajan would not have disclaimed, must have derived those
generous sentiments from his own heart; since they were not suggested to
his imitation by the customs of his age, or the example of his
predecessors.

The private and public actions of Majorian are very imperfectly known:
but his laws, remarkable for an original cast of thought and expression,
faithfully represent the character of a sovereign who loved his people,
who sympathized in their distress, who had studied the causes of the
decline of the empire, and who was capable of applying (as far as such
reformation was practicable) judicious and effectual remedies to the
public disorders.  His regulations concerning the finances manifestly
tended to remove, or at least to mitigate, the most intolerable
grievances. I. From the first hour of his reign, he was solicitous (I
translate his own words) to relieve the wearyfortunes of the
provincials, oppressed by the accumulated weight of indictions and
superindictions.  With this view he granted a universal amnesty, a final
and absolute discharge of all arrears of tribute, of all debts, which,
under any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people.
This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims,
improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject
who could now look back without despair, might labor with hope and
gratitude for himself and for his country. II. In the assessment and
collection of taxes, Majorian restored the ordinary jurisdiction of the
provincial magistrates; and suppressed the extraordinary commissions
which had been introduced, in the name of the emperor himself, or of the
Prætorian præfects. The favorite servants, who obtained such irregular
powers, were insolent in their behavior, and arbitrary in their demands:
they affected to despise the subordinate tribunals, and they were
discontented, if their fees and profits did not twice exceed the sum
which they condescended to pay into the treasury. One instance of their
extortion would appear incredible, were it not authenticated by the
legislator himself. They exacted the whole payment in gold: but they
refused the current coin of the empire, and would accept only such
ancient pieces as were stamped with the names of Faustina or the
Antonines. The subject, who was unprovided with these curious medals,
had recourse to the expedient of compounding with their rapacious
demands; or if he succeeded in the research, his imposition was doubled,
according to the weight and value of the money of former times.  III.
"The municipal corporations, (says the emperor,) the lesser senates, (so
antiquity has justly styled them,) deserve to be considered as the heart
of the cities, and the sinews of the republic. And yet so low are they
now reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the venality of
collectors, that many of their members, renouncing their dignity and
their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure exile." He
urges, and even compels, their return to their respective cities; but he
removes the grievance which had forced them to desert the exercise of
their municipal functions. They are directed, under the authority of the
provincial magistrates, to resume their office of levying the tribute;
but, instead of being made responsible for the whole sum assessed on
their district, they are only required to produce a regular account of
the payments which they have actually received, and of the defaulters
who are still indebted to the public. IV. But Majorian was not ignorant
that these corporate bodies were too much inclined to retaliate the
injustice and oppression which they had suffered; and he therefore
revives the useful office of the defenders of cities. He exhorts the
people to elect, in a full and free assembly, some man of discretion and
integrity, who would dare to assert their privileges, to represent their
grievances, to protect the poor from the tyranny of the rich, and to
inform the emperor of the abuses that were committed under the sanction
of his name and authority.

The spectator who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome,
is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals, for the
mischief which they had neither leisure, nor power, nor perhaps
inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some lofty
turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the
foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently,
during a period of ten centuries; and the motives of interest, that
afterwards operated without shame or control, were severely checked by
the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian. The decay of the city had
gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and
theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of
the people: the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians,
were no longer inhabited, either by gods or men; the diminished crowds
of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and
porticos; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless
to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either by
study or business. The monuments of consular, or Imperial, greatness
were no longer revered, as the immortal glory of the capital: they were
only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper, and more
convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually
addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of
stones or bricks, for some necessary service: the fairest forms of
architecture were rudely defaced, for the sake of some paltry, or
pretended, repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil
to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labors
of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation
of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil.  He reserved
to the prince and senate the sole cognizance of the extreme cases which
might justify the destruction of an ancient edifice; imposed a fine of
fifty pounds of gold (two thousand pounds sterling) on every magistrate
who should presume to grant such illegal and scandalous license, and
threatened to chastise the criminal obedience of their subordinate
officers, by a severe whipping, and the amputation of both their hands.
In the last instance, the legislator might seem to forget the proportion
of guilt and punishment; but his zeal arose from a generous principle,
and Majorian was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages, in
which he would have desired and deserved to live. The emperor conceived,
that it was his interest to increase the number of his subjects; and
that it was his duty to guard the purity of the marriage-bed: but the
means which he employed to accomplish these salutary purposes are of an
ambiguous, and perhaps exceptionable, kind. The pious maids, who
consecrated their virginity to Christ, were restrained from taking the
veil till they had reached their fortieth year. Widows under that age
were compelled to form a second alliance within the term of five years,
by the forfeiture of half their wealth to their nearest relations, or to
the state. Unequal marriages were condemned or annulled. The punishment
of confiscation and exile was deemed so inadequate to the guilt of
adultery, that, if the criminal returned to Italy, he might, by the
express declaration of Majorian, be slain with impunity.

While the emperor Majorian assiduously labored to restore the happiness
and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the arms of Genseric, from his
character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of Vandals
and Moors landed at the mouth of the Liris, or Garigliano; but the
Imperial troops surprised and attacked the disorderly Barbarians, who
were encumbered with the spoils of Campania; they were chased with
slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the king's brother-in-law,
was found in the number of the slain.  Such vigilance might announce the
character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance, and the most
numerous forces, were insufficient to protect the long-extended coast of
Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion had
imposed a nobler and more arduous task on the genius of Majorian. Rome
expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design, which
he formed, of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements, was the
result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could have
infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy; if he could have revived
in the field of Mars, the manly exercises in which he had always
surpassed his equals; he might have marched against Genseric at the head
of a Romanarmy. Such a reformation of national manners might be embraced
by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune of those princes who
laboriously sustain a declining monarchy, that, to obtain some immediate
advantage, or to avert some impending danger, they are forced to
countenance, and even to multiply, the most pernicious abuses. Majorian,
like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the disgraceful
expedient of substituting Barbarian auxiliaries in the place of his
unwarlike subjects: and his superior abilities could only be displayed
in the vigor and dexterity with which he wielded a dangerous instrument,
so apt to recoil on the hand that used it. Besides the confederates, who
were already engaged in the service of the empire, the fame of his
liberality and valor attracted the nations of the Danube, the
Borysthenes, and perhaps of the Tanais. Many thousands of the bravest
subjects of Attila, the Gepidæ, the Ostrogoths, the Rugians, the
Burgundians, the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the plains of Liguria;
and their formidable strength was balanced by their mutual animosities.
They passed the Alps in a severe winter. The emperor led the way, on
foot, and in complete armor; sounding, with his long staff, the depth of
the ice, or snow, and encouraging the Scythians, who complained of the
extreme cold, by the cheerful assurance, that they should be satisfied
with the heat of Africa. The citizens of Lyons had presumed to shut
their gates; they soon implored, and experienced, the clemency of
Majorian. He vanquished Theodoric in the field; and admitted to his
friendship and alliance a king whom he had found not unworthy of his
arms. The beneficial, though precarious, reunion of the greater part of
Gaul and Spain, was the effect of persuasion, as well as of force;  and
the independent Bagaudæ, who had escaped, or resisted, the oppression,
of former reigns, were disposed to confide in the virtues of Majorian.
His camp was filled with Barbarian allies; his throne was supported by
the zeal of an affectionate people; but the emperor had foreseen, that
it was impossible, without a maritime power, to achieve the conquest of
Africa. In the first Punic war, the republic had exerted such incredible
diligence, that, within sixty days after the first stroke of the axe had
been given in the forest, a fleet of one hundred and sixty galleys
proudly rode at anchor in the sea.  Under circumstances much less
favorable, Majorian equalled the spirit and perseverance of the ancient
Romans. The woods of the Apennine were felled; the arsenals and
manufactures of Ravenna and Misenum were restored; Italy and Gaul vied
with each other in liberal contributions to the public service; and the
Imperial navy of three hundred large galleys, with an adequate
proportion of transports and smaller vessels, was collected in the
secure and capacious harbor of Carthagena in Spain.  The intrepid
countenance of Majorian animated his troops with a confidence of
victory; and, if we might credit the historian Procopius, his courage
sometimes hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious to explore,
with his own eyes, the state of the Vandals, he ventured, after
disguising the color of his hair, to visit Carthage, in the character of
his own ambassador: and Genseric was afterwards mortified by the
discovery, that he had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the
Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but
it is a fiction which would not have been imagined, unless in the life
of a hero.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire. -- Part III.

Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was sufficiently
acquainted with the genius and designs of his adversary. He practiced
his customary arts of fraud and delay, but he practiced them without
success. His applications for peace became each hour more submissive,
and perhaps more sincere; but the inflexible Majorian had adopted the
ancient maxim, that Rome could not be safe, as long as Carthage existed
in a hostile state. The king of the Vandals distrusted the valor of his
native subjects, who were enervated by the luxury of the South;  he
suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an
Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure, which he executed, of reducing
Mauritania into a desert,  could not defeat the operations of the Roman
emperor, who was at liberty to land his troops on any part of the
African coast. But Genseric was saved from impending and inevitable ruin
by the treachery of some powerful subjects, envious, or apprehensive, of
their master's success. Guided by their secret intelligence, he
surprised the unguarded fleet in the Bay of Carthagena: many of the
ships were sunk, or taken, or burnt; and the preparations of three years
were destroyed in a single day.  After this event, the behavior of the
two antagonists showed them superior to their fortune. The Vandal,
instead of being elated by this accidental victory, immediately renewed
his solicitations for peace. The emperor of the West, who was capable of
forming great designs, and of supporting heavy disappointments,
consented to a treaty, or rather to a suspension of arms; in the full
assurance that, before he could restore his navy, he should be supplied
with provocations to justify a second war. Majorian returned to Italy,
to prosecute his labors for the public happiness; and, as he was
conscious of his own integrity, he might long remain ignorant of the
dark conspiracy which threatened his throne and his life. The recent
misfortune of Carthagena sullied the glory which had dazzled the eyes of
the multitude; almost every description of civil and military officers
were exasperated against the Reformer, since they all derived some
advantage from the abuses which he endeavored to suppress; and the
patrician Ricimer impelled the inconstant passions of the Barbarians
against a prince whom he esteemed and hated. The virtues of Majorian
could not protect him from the impetuous sedition, which broke out in
the camp near Tortona, at the foot of the Alps. He was compelled to
abdicate the Imperial purple: five days after his abdication, it was
reported that he died of a dysentery;  and the humble tomb, which
covered his remains, was consecrated by the respect and gratitude of
succeeding generations.  The private character of Majorian inspired love
and respect. Malicious calumny and satire excited his indignation, or,
if he himself were the object, his contempt; but he protected the
freedom of wit, and, in the hours which the emperor gave to the familiar
society of his friends, he could indulge his taste for pleasantry,
without degrading the majesty of his rank.

It was not, perhaps, without some regret, that Ricimer sacrificed his
friend to the interest of his ambition: but he resolved, in a second
choice, to avoid the imprudent preference of superior virtue and merit.
At his command, the obsequious senate of Rome bestowed the Imperial
title on Libius Severus, who ascended the throne of the West without
emerging from the obscurity of a private condition. History has scarcely
deigned to notice his birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.
Severus expired, as soon as his life became inconvenient to his patron;
and it would be useless to discriminate his nominal reign in the vacant
interval of six years, between the death of Majorian and the elevation
of Anthemius. During that period, the government was in the hands of
Ricimer alone; and, although the modest Barbarian disclaimed the name of
king, he accumulated treasures, formed a separate army, negotiated
private alliances, and ruled Italy with the same independent and
despotic authority, which was afterwards exercised by Odoacer and
Theodoric. But his dominions were bounded by the Alps; and two Roman
generals, Marcellinus and Ægidius, maintained their allegiance to the
republic, by rejecting, with disdain, the phantom which he styled an
emperor. Marcellinus still adhered to the old religion; and the devout
Pagans, who secretly disobeyed the laws of the church and state,
applauded his profound skill in the science of divination. But he
possessed the more valuable qualifications of learning, virtue, and
courage;  the study of the Latin literature had improved his taste; and
his military talents had recommended him to the esteem and confidence of
the great Ætius, in whose ruin he was involved. By a timely flight,
Marcellinus escaped the rage of Valentinian, and boldly asserted his
liberty amidst the convulsions of the Western empire. His voluntary, or
reluctant, submission to the authority of Majorian, was rewarded by the
government of Sicily, and the command of an army, stationed in that
island to oppose, or to attack, the Vandals; but his Barbarian
mercenaries, after the emperor's death, were tempted to revolt by the
artful liberality of Ricimer. At the head of a band of faithful
followers, the intrepid Marcellinus occupied the province of Dalmatia,
assumed the title of patrician of the West, secured the love of his
subjects by a mild and equitable reign, built a fleet which claimed the
dominion of the Adriatic, and alternately alarmed the coasts of Italy
and of Africa.  Ægidius, the master-general of Gaul, who equalled, or at
least who imitated, the heroes of ancient Rome,  proclaimed his immortal
resentment against the assassins of his beloved master. A brave and
numerous army was attached to his standard: and, though he was prevented
by the arts of Ricimer, and the arms of the Visigoths, from marching to
the gates of Rome, he maintained his independent sovereignty beyond the
Alps, and rendered the name of Ægidius, respectable both in peace and
war. The Franks, who had punished with exile the youthful follies of
Childeric, elected the Roman general for their king: his vanity, rather
than his ambition, was gratified by that singular honor; and when the
nation, at the end of four years, repented of the injury which they had
offered to the Merovingian family, he patiently acquiesced in the
restoration of the lawful prince. The authority of Ægidius ended only
with his life, and the suspicions of poison and secret violence, which
derived some countenance from the character of Ricimer, were eagerly
entertained by the passionate credulity of the Gauls.

The kingdom of Italy, a name to which the Western empire was gradually
reduced, was afflicted, under the reign of Ricimer, by the incessant
depredations of the Vandal pirates.  In the spring of each year, they
equipped a formidable navy in the port of Carthage; and Genseric
himself, though in a very advanced age, still commanded in person the
most important expeditions. His designs were concealed with impenetrable
secrecy, till the moment that he hoisted sail. When he was asked, by his
pilot, what course he should steer, "Leave the determination to the
winds, (replied the Barbarian, with pious arrogance;) theywill transport
us to the guilty coast, whose inhabitants have provoked the divine
justice;" but if Genseric himself deigned to issue more precise orders,
he judged the most wealthy to be the most criminal. The Vandals
repeatedly visited the coasts of Spain, Liguria, Tuscany, Campania,
Lucania, Bruttium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia, Dalmatia, Epirus, Greece,
and Sicily: they were tempted to subdue the Island of Sardinia, so
advantageously placed in the centre of the Mediterranean; and their arms
spread desolation, or terror, from the columns of Hercules to the mouth
of the Nile. As they were more ambitious of spoil than of glory, they
seldom attacked any fortified cities, or engaged any regular troops in
the open field. But the celerity of their motions enabled them, almost
at the same time, to threaten and to attack the most distant objects,
which attracted their desires; and as they always embarked a sufficient
number of horses, they had no sooner landed, than they swept the
dismayed country with a body of light cavalry. Yet, notwithstanding the
example of their king, the native Vandals and Alani insensibly declined
this toilsome and perilous warfare; the hardy generation of the first
conquerors was almost extinguished, and their sons, who were born in
Africa, enjoyed the delicious baths and gardens which had been acquired
by the valor of their fathers. Their place was readily supplied by a
various multitude of Moors and Romans, of captives and outlaws; and
those desperate wretches, who had already violated the laws of their
country, were the most eager to promote the atrocious acts which
disgrace the victories of Genseric. In the treatment of his unhappy
prisoners, he sometimes consulted his avarice, and sometimes indulged
his cruelty; and the massacre of five hundred noble citizens of Zant or
Zacynthus, whose mangled bodies he cast into the Ionian Sea, was
imputed, by the public indignation, to his latest posterity.

Such crimes could not be excused by any provocations; but the war, which
the king of the Vandals prosecuted against the Roman empire was
justified by a specious and reasonable motive. The widow of Valentinian,
Eudoxia, whom he had led captive from Rome to Carthage, was the sole
heiress of the Theodosian house; her elder daughter, Eudocia, became the
reluctant wife of Hunneric, his eldest son; and the stern father,
asserting a legal claim, which could not easily be refuted or satisfied,
demanded a just proportion of the Imperial patrimony. An adequate, or at
least a valuable, compensation, was offered by the Eastern emperor, to
purchase a necessary peace. Eudoxia and her younger daughter, Placidia,
were honorably restored, and the fury of the Vandals was confined to the
limits of the Western empire. The Italians, destitute of a naval force,
which alone was capable of protecting their coasts, implored the aid of
the more fortunate nations of the East; who had formerly acknowledged,
in peace and war, the supremacy of Rome. But the perpetual divisions of
the two empires had alienated their interest and their inclinations; the
faith of a recent treaty was alleged; and the Western Romans, instead of
arms and ships, could only obtain the assistance of a cold and
ineffectual mediation. The haughty Ricimer, who had long struggled with
the difficulties of his situation, was at length reduced to address the
throne of Constantinople, in the humble language of a subject; and Italy
submitted, as the price and security to accept a master from the choice
of the emperor of the East.  It is not the purpose of the present
chapter, or even of the present volume, to continue the distinct series
of the Byzantine history; but a concise view of the reign and character
of the emperor Leo, may explain the last efforts that were attempted to
save the falling empire of the West.

Since the death of the younger Theodosius, the domestic repose of
Constantinople had never been interrupted by war or faction. Pulcheria
had bestowed her hand, and the sceptre of the East, on the modest virtue
of Marcian: he gratefully reverenced her august rank and virgin
chastity; and, after her death, he gave his people the example of the
religious worship that was due to the memory of the Imperial saint.
Attentive to the prosperity of his own dominions, Marcian seemed to
behold, with indifference, the misfortunes of Rome; and the obstinate
refusal of a brave and active prince, to draw his sword against the
Vandals, was ascribed to a secret promise, which had formerly been
exacted from him when he was a captive in the power of Genseric.  The
death of Marcian, after a reign of seven years, would have exposed the
East to the danger of a popular election; if the superior weight of a
single family had not been able to incline the balance in favor of the
candidate whose interest they supported. The patrician Aspar might have
placed the diadem on his own head, if he would have subscribed the
Nicene creed.  During three generations, the armies of the East were
successively commanded by his father, by himself, and by his son
Ardaburius; his Barbarian guards formed a military force that overawed
the palace and the capital; and the liberal distribution of his immense
treasures rendered Aspar as popular as he was powerful. He recommended
the obscure name of Leo of Thrace, a military tribune, and the principal
steward of his household. His nomination was unanimously ratified by the
senate; and the servant of Aspar received the Imperial crown from the
hands of the patriarch or bishop, who was permitted to express, by this
unusual ceremony, the suffrage of the Deity.  This emperor, the first of
the name of Leo, has been distinguished by the title of the Great; from
a succession of princes, who gradually fixed in the opinion of the
Greeks a very humble standard of heroic, or at least of royal,
perfection. Yet the temperate firmness with which Leo resisted the
oppression of his benefactor, showed that he was conscious of his duty
and of his prerogative. Aspar was astonished to find that his influence
could no longer appoint a præfect of Constantinople: he presumed to
reproach his sovereign with a breach of promise, and insolently shaking
his purple, "It is not proper, (said he,) that the man who is invested
with this garment, should be guilty of lying." "Nor is it proper,
(replied Leo,) that a prince should be compelled to resign his own
judgment, and the public interest, to the will of a subject." After this
extraordinary scene, it was impossible that the reconciliation of the
emperor and the patrician could be sincere; or, at least, that it could
be solid and permanent. An army of Isaurians  was secretly levied, and
introduced into Constantinople; and while Leo undermined the authority,
and prepared the disgrace, of the family of Aspar, his mild and cautious
behavior restrained them from any rash and desperate attempts, which
might have been fatal to themselves, or their enemies. The measures of
peace and war were affected by this internal revolution. As long as
Aspar degraded the majesty of the throne, the secret correspondence of
religion and interest engaged him to favor the cause of Genseric. When
Leo had delivered himself from that ignominious servitude, he listened
to the complaints of the Italians; resolved to extirpate the tyranny of
the Vandals; and declared his alliance with his colleague, Anthemius,
whom he solemnly invested with the diadem and purple of the West.

The virtues of Anthemius have perhaps been magnified, since the Imperial
descent, which he could only deduce from the usurper Procopius, has been
swelled into a line of emperors.  But the merit of his immediate
parents, their honors, and their riches, rendered Anthemius one of the
most illustrious subjects of the East. His father, Procopius, obtained,
after his Persian embassy, the rank of general and patrician; and the
name of Anthemius was derived from his maternal grandfather, the
celebrated præfect, who protected, with so much ability and success, the
infant reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the præfect was raised above
the condition of a private subject, by his marriage with Euphemia, the
daughter of the emperor Marcian. This splendid alliance, which might
supersede the necessity of merit, hastened the promotion of Anthemius to
the successive dignities of count, of master-general, of consul, and of
patrician; and his merit or fortune claimed the honors of a victory,
which was obtained on the banks of the Danube, over the Huns. Without
indulging an extravagant ambition, the son-in-law of Marcian might hope
to be his successor; but Anthemius supported the disappointment with
courage and patience; and his subsequent elevation was universally
approved by the public, who esteemed him worthy to reign, till he
ascended the throne.  The emperor of the West marched from
Constantinople, attended by several counts of high distinction, and a
body of guards almost equal to the strength and numbers of a regular
army: he entered Rome in triumph, and the choice of Leo was confirmed by
the senate, the people, and the Barbarian confederates of Italy.  The
solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the nuptials of his
daughter and the patrician Ricimer; a fortunate event, which was
considered as the firmest security of the union and happiness of the
state. The wealth of two empires was ostentatiously displayed; and many
senators completed their ruin, by an expensive effort to disguise their
poverty. All serious business was suspended during this festival; the
courts of justice were shut; the streets of Rome, the theatres, the
places of public and private resort, resounded with hymeneal songs and
dances: and the royal bride, clothed in silken robes, with a crown on
her head, was conducted to the palace of Ricimer, who had changed his
military dress for the habit of a consul and a senator. On this
memorable occasion, Sidonius, whose early ambition had been so fatally
blasted, appeared as the orator of Auvergne, among the provincial
deputies who addressed the throne with congratulations or complaints.
The calends of January were now approaching, and the venal poet, who had
loved Avitus, and esteemed Majorian, was persuaded by his friends to
celebrate, in heroic verse, the merit, the felicity, the second
consulship, and the future triumphs, of the emperor Anthemius. Sidonius
pronounced, with assurance and success, a panegyric which is still
extant; and whatever might be the imperfections, either of the subject
or of the composition, the welcome flatterer was immediately rewarded
with the præfecture of Rome; a dignity which placed him among the
illustrious personages of the empire, till he wisely preferred the more
respectable character of a bishop and a saint.

The Greeks ambitiously commend the piety and catholic faith of the
emperor whom they gave to the West; nor do they forget to observe, that
when he left Constantinople, he converted his palace into the pious
foundation of a public bath, a church, and a hospital for old men.  Yet
some suspicious appearances are found to sully the theological fame of
Anthemius. From the conversation of Philotheus, a Macedonian sectary, he
had imbibed the spirit of religious toleration; and the Heretics of Rome
would have assembled with impunity, if the bold and vehement censure
which Pope Hilary pronounced in the church of St. Peter, had not obliged
him to abjure the unpopular indulgence.  Even the Pagans, a feeble and
obscure remnant, conceived some vain hopes, from the indifference, or
partiality, of Anthemius; and his singular friendship for the
philosopher Severus, whom he promoted to the consulship, was ascribed to
a secret project, of reviving the ancient worship of the gods.  These
idols were crumbled into dust: and the mythology which had once been the
creed of nations, was so universally disbelieved, that it might be
employed without scandal, or at least without suspicion, by Christian
poets.  Yet the vestiges of superstition were not absolutely
obliterated, and the festival of the Lupercalia, whose origin had
preceded the foundation of Rome, was still celebrated under the reign of
Anthemius. The savage and simple rites were expressive of an early state
of society before the invention of arts and agriculture. The rustic
deities who presided over the toils and pleasures of the pastoral life,
Pan, Faunus, and their train of satyrs, were such as the fancy of
shepherds might create, sportive, petulant, and lascivious; whose power
was limited, and whose malice was inoffensive. A goat was the offering
the best adapted to their character and attributes; the flesh of the
victim was roasted on willow spits; and the riotous youths, who crowded
to the feast, ran naked about the fields, with leather thongs in their
hands, communicating, as it was supposed, the blessing of fecundity to
the women whom they touched.  The altar of Pan was erected, perhaps by
Evander the Arcadian, in a dark recess in the side of the Palantine
hill, watered by a perpetual fountain, and shaded by a hanging grove. A
tradition, that, in the same place, Romulus and Remus were suckled by
the wolf, rendered it still more sacred and venerable in the eyes of the
Romans; and this sylvan spot was gradually surrounded by the stately
edifices of the Forum.  After the conversion of the Imperial city, the
Christians still continued, in the month of February, the annual
celebration of the Lupercalia; to which they ascribed a secret and
mysterious influence on the genial powers of the animal and vegetable
world. The bishops of Rome were solicitous to abolish a profane custom,
so repugnant to the spirit of Christianity; but their zeal was not
supported by the authority of the civil magistrate: the inveterate abuse
subsisted till the end of the fifth century, and Pope Gelasius, who
purified the capital from the last stain of idolatry, appeased by a
formal apology, the murmurs of the senate and people.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire. -- Part IV.

In all his public declarations, the emperor Leo assumes the authority,
and professes the affection, of a father, for his son Anthemius, with
whom he had divided the administration of the universe.  The situation,
and perhaps the character, of Leo, dissuaded him from exposing his
person to the toils and dangers of an African war. But the powers of the
Eastern empire were strenuously exerted to deliver Italy and the
Mediterranean from the Vandals; and Genseric, who had so long oppressed
both the land and sea, was threatened from every side with a formidable
invasion. The campaign was opened by a bold and successful enterprise of
the præfect Heraclius.  The troops of Egypt, Thebais, and Libya, were
embarked, under his command; and the Arabs, with a train of horses and
camels, opened the roads of the desert. Heraclius landed on the coast of
Tripoli, surprised and subdued the cities of that province, and
prepared, by a laborious march, which Cato had formerly executed,  to
join the Imperial army under the walls of Carthage. The intelligence of
this loss extorted from Genseric some insidious and ineffectual
propositions of peace; but he was still more seriously alarmed by the
reconciliation of Marcellinus with the two empires. The independent
patrician had been persuaded to acknowledge the legitimate title of
Anthemius, whom he accompanied in his journey to Rome; the Dalmatian
fleet was received into the harbors of Italy; the active valor of
Marcellinus expelled the Vandals from the Island of Sardinia; and the
languid efforts of the West added some weight to the immense
preparations of the Eastern Romans. The expense of the naval armament,
which Leo sent against the Vandals, has been distinctly ascertained; and
the curious and instructive account displays the wealth of the declining
empire. The Royal demesnes, or private patrimony of the prince, supplied
seventeen thousand pounds of gold; forty-seven thousand pounds of gold,
and seven hundred thousand of silver, were levied and paid into the
treasury by the Prætorian præfects. But the cities were reduced to
extreme poverty; and the diligent calculation of fines and forfeitures,
as a valuable object of the revenue, does not suggest the idea of a just
or merciful administration. The whole expense, by whatsoever means it
was defrayed, of the African campaign, amounted to the sum of one
hundred and thirty thousand pounds of gold, about five millions two
hundred thousand pounds sterling, at a time when the value of money
appears, from the comparative price of corn, to have been somewhat
higher than in the present age.  The fleet that sailed from
Constantinople to Carthage, consisted of eleven hundred and thirteen
ships, and the number of soldiers and mariners exceeded one hundred
thousand men. Basiliscus, the brother of the empress Vorina, was
intrusted with this important command. His sister, the wife of Leo, had
exaggerated the merit of his former exploits against the Scythians. But
the discovery of his guilt, or incapacity, was reserved for the African
war; and his friends could only save his military reputation by
asserting, that he had conspired with Aspar to spare Genseric, and to
betray the last hope of the Western empire.

Experience has shown, that the success of an invader most commonly
depends on the vigor and celerity of his operations. The strength and
sharpness of the first impression are blunted by delay; the health and
spirit of the troops insensibly languish in a distant climate; the naval
and military force, a mighty effort which perhaps can never be repeated,
is silently consumed; and every hour that is wasted in negotiation,
accustoms the enemy to contemplate and examine those hostile terrors,
which, on their first appearance, he deemed irresistible. The formidable
navy of Basiliscus pursued its prosperous navigation from the Thracian
Bosphorus to the coast of Africa. He landed his troops at Cape Bona, or
the promontory of Mercury, about forty miles from Carthage.  The army of
Heraclius, and the fleet of Marcellinus, either joined or seconded the
Imperial lieutenant; and the Vandals who opposed his progress by sea or
land, were successively vanquished.  If Basiliscus had seized the moment
of consternation, and boldly advanced to the capital, Carthage must have
surrendered, and the kingdom of the Vandals was extinguished. Genseric
beheld the danger with firmness, and eluded it with his veteran
dexterity. He protested, in the most respectful language, that he was
ready to submit his person, and his dominions, to the will of the
emperor; but he requested a truce of five days to regulate the terms of
his submission; and it was universally believed, that his secret
liberality contributed to the success of this public negotiation.
Instead of obstinately refusing whatever indulgence his enemy so
earnestly solicited, the guilty, or the credulous, Basiliscus consented
to the fatal truce; and his imprudent security seemed to proclaim, that
he already considered himself as the conqueror of Africa. During this
short interval, the wind became favorable to the designs of Genseric. He
manned his largest ships of war with the bravest of the Moors and
Vandals; and they towed after them many large barks, filled with
combustible materials. In the obscurity of the night, these destructive
vessels were impelled against the unguarded and unsuspecting fleet of
the Romans, who were awakened by the sense of their instant danger.
Their close and crowded order assisted the progress of the fire, which
was communicated with rapid and irresistible violence; and the noise of
the wind, the crackling of the flames, the dissonant cries of the
soldiers and mariners, who could neither command nor obey, increased the
horror of the nocturnal tumult. Whilst they labored to extricate
themselves from the fire-ships, and to save at least a part of the navy,
the galleys of Genseric assaulted them with temperate and disciplined
valor; and many of the Romans, who escaped the fury of the flames, were
destroyed or taken by the victorious Vandals. Among the events of that
disastrous night, the heroic, or rather desperate, courage of John, one
of the principal officers of Basiliscus, has rescued his name from
oblivion. When the ship, which he had bravely defended, was almost
consumed, he threw himself in his armor into the sea, disdainfully
rejected the esteem and pity of Genso, the son of Genseric, who pressed
him to accept honorable quarter, and sunk under the waves; exclaiming,
with his last breath, that he would never fall alive into the hands of
those impious dogs. Actuated by a far different spirit, Basiliscus,
whose station was the most remote from danger, disgracefully fled in the
beginning of the engagement, returned to Constantinople with the loss of
more than half of his fleet and army, and sheltered his guilty head in
the sanctuary of St. Sophia, till his sister, by her tears and
entreaties, could obtain his pardon from the indignant emperor.
Heraclius effected his retreat through the desert; Marcellinus retired
to Sicily, where he was assassinated, perhaps at the instigation of
Ricimer, by one of his own captains; and the king of the Vandals
expressed his surprise and satisfaction, that the Romans themselves
should remove from the world his most formidable antagonists.  After the
failure of this great expedition, * Genseric again became the tyrant of
the sea: the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Asia, were again exposed to
his revenge and avarice; Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his obedience;
he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and before he died, in
the fulness of years and of glory, he beheld the final extinction of the
empire of the West.

During his long and active reign, the African monarch had studiously
cultivated the friendship of the Barbarians of Europe, whose arms he
might employ in a seasonable and effectual diversion against the two
empires. After the death of Attila, he renewed his alliance with the
Visigoths of Gaul; and the sons of the elder Theodoric, who successively
reigned over that warlike nation, were easily persuaded, by the sense of
interest, to forget the cruel affront which Genseric had inflicted on
their sister.  The death of the emperor Majorian delivered Theodoric the
Second from the restraint of fear, and perhaps of honor; he violated his
recent treaty with the Romans; and the ample territory of Narbonne,
which he firmly united to his dominions, became the immediate reward of
his perfidy. The selfish policy of Ricimer encouraged him to invade the
provinces which were in the possession of Ægidius, his rival; but the
active count, by the defence of Arles, and the victory of Orleans, saved
Gaul, and checked, during his lifetime, the progress of the Visigoths.
Their ambition was soon rekindled; and the design of extinguishing the
Roman empire in Spain and Gaul was conceived, and almost completed, in
the reign of Euric, who assassinated his brother Theodoric, and
displayed, with a more savage temper, superior abilities, both in peace
and war. He passed the Pyrenees at the head of a numerous army, subdued
the cities of Saragossa and Pampeluna, vanquished in battle the martial
nobles of the Tarragonese province, carried his victorious arms into the
heart of Lusitania, and permitted the Suevi to hold the kingdom of
Gallicia under the Gothic monarchy of Spain.  The efforts of Euric were
not less vigorous, or less successful, in Gaul; and throughout the
country that extends from the Pyrenees to the Rhone and the Loire, Berry
and Auvergne were the only cities, or dioceses, which refused to
acknowledge him as their master.  In the defence of Clermont, their
principal town, the inhabitants of Auvergne sustained, with inflexible
resolution, the miseries of war, pestilence, and famine; and the
Visigoths, relinquishing the fruitless siege, suspended the hopes of
that important conquest. The youth of the province were animated by the
heroic, and almost incredible, valor of Ecdicius, the son of the emperor
Avitus,  who made a desperate sally with only eighteen horsemen, boldly
attacked the Gothic army, and, after maintaining a flying skirmish,
retired safe and victorious within the walls of Clermont. His charity
was equal to his courage: in a time of extreme scarcity, four thousand
poor were fed at his expense; and his private influence levied an army
of Burgundians for the deliverance of Auvergne. From hisvirtues alone
the faithful citizens of Gaul derived any hopes of safety or freedom;
and even such virtues were insufficient to avert the impending ruin of
their country, since they were anxious to learn, from his authority and
example, whether they should prefer the alternative of exile or
servitude.  The public confidence was lost; the resources of the state
were exhausted; and the Gauls had too much reason to believe, that
Anthemius, who reigned in Italy, was incapable of protecting his
distressed subjects beyond the Alps. The feeble emperor could only
procure for their defence the service of twelve thousand British
auxiliaries. Riothamus, one of the independent kings, or chieftains, of
the island, was persuaded to transport his troops to the continent of
Gaul: he sailed up the Loire, and established his quarters in Berry,
where the people complained of these oppressive allies, till they were
destroyed or dispersed by the arms of the Visigoths.

One of the last acts of jurisdiction, which the Roman senate exercised
over their subjects of Gaul, was the trial and condemnation of Arvandus,
the Prætorian præfect. Sidonius, who rejoices that he lived under a
reign in which he might pity and assist a state criminal, has expressed,
with tenderness and freedom, the faults of his indiscreet and
unfortunate friend.  From the perils which he had escaped, Arvandus
imbibed confidence rather than wisdom; and such was the various, though
uniform, imprudence of his behavior, that his prosperity must appear
much more surprising than his downfall. The second præfecture, which he
obtained within the term of five years, abolished the merit and
popularity of his preceding administration. His easy temper was
corrupted by flattery, and exasperated by opposition; he was forced to
satisfy his importunate creditors with the spoils of the province; his
capricious insolence offended the nobles of Gaul, and he sunk under the
weight of the public hatred. The mandate of his disgrace summoned him to
justify his conduct before the senate; and he passed the Sea of Tuscany
with a favorable wind, the presage, as he vainly imagined, of his future
fortunes. A decent respect was still observed for the Prfectorianrank;
and on his arrival at Rome, Arvandus was committed to the hospitality,
rather than to the custody, of Flavius Asellus, the count of the sacred
largesses, who resided in the Capitol.  He was eagerly pursued by his
accusers, the four deputies of Gaul, who were all distinguished by their
birth, their dignities, or their eloquence. In the name of a great
province, and according to the forms of Roman jurisprudence, they
instituted a civil and criminal action, requiring such restitution as
might compensate the losses of individuals, and such punishment as might
satisfy the justice of the state. Their charges of corrupt oppression
were numerous and weighty; but they placed their secret dependence on a
letter which they had intercepted, and which they could prove, by the
evidence of his secretary, to have been dictated by Arvandus himself.
The author of this letter seemed to dissuade the king of the Goths from
a peace with the Greekemperor: he suggested the attack of the Britons on
the Loire; and he recommended a division of Gaul, according to the law
of nations, between the Visigoths and the Burgundians.  These pernicious
schemes, which a friend could only palliate by the reproaches of vanity
and indiscretion, were susceptible of a treasonable interpretation; and
the deputies had artfully resolved not to produce their most formidable
weapons till the decisive moment of the contest. But their intentions
were discovered by the zeal of Sidonius. He immediately apprised the
unsuspecting criminal of his danger; and sincerely lamented, without any
mixture of anger, the haughty presumption of Arvandus, who rejected, and
even resented, the salutary advice of his friends. Ignorant of his real
situation, Arvandus showed himself in the Capitol in the white robe of a
candidate, accepted indiscriminate salutations and offers of service,
examined the shops of the merchants, the silks and gems, sometimes with
the indifference of a spectator, and sometimes with the attention of a
purchaser; and complained of the times, of the senate, of the prince,
and of the delays of justice. His complaints were soon removed. An early
day was fixed for his trial; and Arvandus appeared, with his accusers,
before a numerous assembly of the Roman senate. The mournful garb which
they affected, excited the compassion of the judges, who were
scandalized by the gay and splendid dress of their adversary: and when
the præfect Arvandus, with the first of the Gallic deputies, were
directed to take their places on the senatorial benches, the same
contrast of pride and modesty was observed in their behavior. In this
memorable judgment, which presented a lively image of the old republic,
the Gauls exposed, with force and freedom, the grievances of the
province; and as soon as the minds of the audience were sufficiently
inflamed, they recited the fatal epistle. The obstinacy of Arvandus was
founded on the strange supposition, that a subject could not be
convicted of treason, unless he had actually conspired to assume the
purple. As the paper was read, he repeatedly, and with a loud voice,
acknowledged it for his genuine composition; and his astonishment was
equal to his dismay, when the unanimous voice of the senate declared him
guilty of a capital offence. By their decree, he was degraded from the
rank of a præfect to the obscure condition of a plebeian, and
ignominiously dragged by servile hands to the public prison. After a
fortnight's adjournment, the senate was again convened to pronounce the
sentence of his death; but while he expected, in the Island of
Æsculapius, the expiration of the thirty days allowed by an ancient law
to the vilest malefactors,  his friends interposed, the emperor
Anthemius relented, and the præfect of Gaul obtained the milder
punishment of exile and confiscation. The faults of Arvandus might
deserve compassion; but the impunity of Seronatus accused the justice of
the republic, till he was condemned and executed, on the complaint of
the people of Auvergne. That flagitious minister, the Catiline of his
age and country, held a secret correspondence with the Visigoths, to
betray the province which he oppressed: his industry was continually
exercised in the discovery of new taxes and obsolete offences; and his
extravagant vices would have inspired contempt, if they had not excited
fear and abhorrence.

Such criminals were not beyond the reach of justice; but whatever might
be the guilt of Ricimer, that powerful Barbarian was able to contend or
to negotiate with the prince, whose alliance he had condescended to
accept. The peaceful and prosperous reign which Anthemius had promised
to the West, was soon clouded by misfortune and discord. Ricimer,
apprehensive, or impatient, of a superior, retired from Rome, and fixed
his residence at Milan; an advantageous situation either to invite or to
repel the warlike tribes that were seated between the Alps and the
Danube.  Italy was gradually divided into two independent and hostile
kingdoms; and the nobles of Liguria, who trembled at the near approach
of a civil war, fell prostrate at the feet of the patrician, and
conjured him to spare their unhappy country. "For my own part," replied
Ricimer, in a tone of insolent moderation, "I am still inclined to
embrace the friendship of the Galatian;  but who will undertake to
appease his anger, or to mitigate the pride, which always rises in
proportion to our submission?" They informed him, that Epiphanius,
bishop of Pavia,  united the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of
the dove; and appeared confident, that the eloquence of such an
ambassador must prevail against the strongest opposition, either of
interest or passion. Their recommendation was approved; and Epiphanius,
assuming the benevolent office of mediation, proceeded without delay to
Rome, where he was received with the honors due to his merit and
reputation. The oration of a bishop in favor of peace may be easily
supposed; he argued, that, in all possible circumstances, the
forgiveness of injuries must be an act of mercy, or magnanimity, or
prudence; and he seriously admonished the emperor to avoid a contest
with a fierce Barbarian, which might be fatal to himself, and must be
ruinous to his dominions. Anthemius acknowledged the truth of his
maxims; but he deeply felt, with grief and indignation, the behavior of
Ricimer, and his passion gave eloquence and energy to his discourse.
"What favors," he warmly exclaimed, "have we refused to this ungrateful
man? What provocations have we not endured! Regardless of the majesty of
the purple, I gave my daughter to a Goth; I sacrificed my own blood to
the safety of the republic. The liberality which ought to have secured
the eternal attachment of Ricimer has exasperated him against his
benefactor. What wars has he not excited against the empire! How often
has he instigated and assisted the fury of hostile nations! Shall I now
accept his perfidious friendship? Can I hope that he will respect the
engagements of a treaty, who has already violated the duties of a son?"
But the anger of Anthemius evaporated in these passionate exclamations:
he insensibly yielded to the proposals of Epiphanius; and the bishop
returned to his diocese with the satisfaction of restoring the peace of
Italy, by a reconciliation,  of which the sincerity and continuance
might be reasonably suspected. The clemency of the emperor was extorted
from his weakness; and Ricimer suspended his ambitious designs till he
had secretly prepared the engines with which he resolved to subvert the
throne of Anthemius. The mask of peace and moderation was then thrown
aside. The army of Ricimer was fortified by a numerous reenforcement of
Burgundians and Oriental Suevi: he disclaimed all allegiance to the
Greek emperor, marched from Milan to the Gates of Rome, and fixing his
camp on the banks of the Anio, impatiently expected the arrival of
Olybrius, his Imperial candidate.

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.  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.

The patrician, who had extended his posts from the Anio to the Melvian
bridge, already possessed two quarters of Rome, the Vatican and the
Janiculum, which are separated by the Tyber from the rest of the city;
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 valor 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.  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 license 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.  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 offspring of his marriage with
Placidia; and the family of the great Theodosius, transplanted from
Spain to Constantinople, was propagated in the female line as far as the
eighth generation.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire. -- Part V.

Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless Barbarians,
the election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the council of
Leo. The empress Verina, studious to promote the greatness of her own
family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who succeeded his
uncle Marcellinus in the 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 Gundobald; but the Burgundian prince was unable, or unwilling, to
support his nomination by a civil war: the pursuits of domestic ambition
recalled him beyond the Alps,  and his client was permitted to exchange
the Roman 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.  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 the hope of domestic
security;  but his repose was soon invaded by a furious sedition of the
Barbarian confederates, who, under the command of Orestes, their
general, were in full march from Rome to 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 Adriatic. 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.

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;  and in this promiscuous multitude, the names of the
Heruli, the Scyrri, the Alani, the Turcilingi, and the Rugians, appear
to have predominated. The example of these warriors was imitated by
Orestes,  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 honorably 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 favor of Nepos himself, to the dignities of patrician, and
master-general of the troops. These troops had been long accustomed to
reverence the character and authority of Orestes, who affected their
manners, conversed with them in their own language, and was intimately
connected with their national chieftains, by long habits of familiarity
and friendship. At his solicitation they rose in arms against the
obscure Greek, who presumed to claim their obedience; and when Orestes,
from some secret motive, declined the purple, they consented, with the
same 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 resorted to 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 thirdpart 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 favorable 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 labor, 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.  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 honor 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 favor of Attila; and the troops under his command, who guarded, in
their turn, the royal village, consisted of a tribe of Scyrri, 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 honorably mentioned, in their unequal contests with
the Ostrogoths; which was terminated, after two bloody battles, by the
defeat and dispersion of the Scyrri.  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."  The Barbarian, whose
daring spirit accepted and ratified the prediction, was admitted into
the service of the Western empire, and soon obtained an honorable rank
in the guards. His manners were gradually polished, his military skill
was improved, and the confederates of Italy would not have elected him
for their general, unless the exploits of Odoacer had established a high
opinion of his courage and capacity.  Their military acclamations
saluted him with the title of king; but he abstained, during his whole
reign, from the use of the purple and diadem,  lest he should offend
those princes, whose subjects, by their accidental mixture, had formed
the victorious army, which time and policy might insensibly unite into a
great nation.

Royalty was familiar to the Barbarians, and the submissive people of
Italy was prepared to obey, without a murmur, the authority which he
should condescend to exercise as the 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 dioceseof Italy."
The deputies of the senate were received at Constantinople with some
marks of displeasure and indignation: and when they were admitted to the
audience of Zeno, he sternly reproached them with their treatment of the
two emperors, Anthemius and Nepos, whom the East had successively
granted to the prayers of Italy. "The first" (continued he) "you have
murdered; the second you have expelled; but the second is still alive,
and whilst he lives he is your lawful sovereign." But the 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 honor in the several quarters of Rome; he entertained a friendly,
though ambiguous, correspondence with the patricianOdoacer; and he
gratefully accepted the Imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the
throne and palace, which the Barbarian was not unwilling to remove from
the sight of the people.

In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian, nine
emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth
recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the
notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of
the Roman empire in the West, did not leave a memorable era in the
history of mankind.  The patrician Orestes had married the daughter of
Count Romulus, 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.  The son of 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.  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.  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.
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
fourscore thousand, pounds sterling.  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.  When the Vandals became formidable to the sea-coast,
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.

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 sympathize with the imaginary grief and indignation of their
degenerate posterity. But the calamities of Italy had gradually subdued
the proud consciousness of freedom and glory. In the age of Roman virtue
the provinces were subject to the arms, and the citizens to the laws, of
the republic; till those laws were subverted by civil discord, and both
the city and the province 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 sovereign, whom they
detested or despised; and the succession of five centuries inflicted the
various evils of military license, capricious despotism, and elaborate
oppression. During the same period, the Barbarians had emerged from
obscurity and contempt, and the warriors of Germany and 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 splendor of the martial chiefs who were invested with the honors of
the empire; and the fate of Rome had long depended on the sword of those
formidable strangers. The stern 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
valor and fortune had exalted him: his savage manners were polished by
the habits of conversation; and he respected, though a conqueror and a
Barbarian, the institutions, and even the prejudices, of his subjects.
After an interval of seven years, Odoacer restored the consulship of the
West. For himself, he modestly, or proudly, declined an honor which was
still accepted by the emperors of the East; but the curule chair was
successively filled by eleven of the most illustrious senators;  and the
list is adorned by the respectable name of Basilius, whose virtues
claimed the friendship and grateful applause of Sidonius, his client.
The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil
administration of Italy was still exercised by the Prætorian præfect 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.
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 attest the toleration which they enjoyed. The
peace of the city required the interposition of his præfect 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 devotions would have been taxed to repair the
dilapidations of the church.  Italy was protected by the arms of its
conqueror; and its frontiers were respected by the Barbarians of Gaul
and Germany, who had so long insulted the feeble race of Theodosius.
Odoacer passed the Adriatic, 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.

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.  In the division and the decline
of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were
withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with
the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the
irretrievable losses of war, famine,  and pestilence. St. Ambrose has
deplored the ruin of a populous district, which had been once adorned
with the flourishing cities of Bologna, Modena, Regium, and Placentia.
Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer; and he affirms, with strong
exaggeration, that in Æmilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the
human species was almost extirpated.  The plebeians of Rome, who were
fed by the hand of their master, perished or disappeared, as soon as his
liberality was suppressed; the decline of the arts reduced the
industrious 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,  was extorted for the use of
the conquerors. Injuries were aggravated by insults; the sense of actual
sufferings was imbittered by the fear of more dreadful evils; and as new
lands were allotted to the new swarms of Barbarians, each senator was
apprehensive lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favorite
villa, or his most profitable farm. The least unfortunate were those who
submitted without a murmur to the power which it was impossible to
resist. Since they desired to live, they owed some gratitude to the
tyrant who had spared their lives; and since he was the absolute master
of their fortunes, the portion which he left must be accepted as his
pure and voluntary gift.  The distress of Italy  was mitigated by the
prudence and humanity of 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 nativesubjects, 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.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.

Part I.

Origin Progress, And Effects Of The Monastic Life. -- Conversion Of The
Barbarians To Christianity And Arianism. -- Persecution Of The Vandals
In Africa. -- Extinction Of Arianism Among The Barbarians.

The indissoluble connection of civil and ecclesiastical affairs has
compelled, and encouraged, me to relate the progress, the persecutions,
the establishment, the divisions, the final triumph, and the gradual
corruption, of Christianity. I have purposely delayed the consideration
of two religious events, interesting in the study of human nature, and
important in the decline and fall of the Roman empire. I. The
institution of the monastic life;  and, II. The conversion of the
northern Barbarians.

I. Prosperity and peace introduced the distinction of the vulgarand the
Ascetic Christians.  The loose and imperfect practice of religion
satisfied the conscience of the multitude. The prince or magistrate, the
soldier or merchant, reconciled their fervent zeal, and implicit faith,
with the exercise of their profession, the pursuit of their interest,
and the indulgence of their passions: but the Ascetics, who obeyed and
abused the rigid precepts of the gospel, were inspired by the savage
enthusiasm which represents man as a criminal, and God as a tyrant. They
seriously renounced the business, and the pleasures, of the age; abjured
the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage; chastised their body,
mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery, as the price
of eternal happiness. In the reign of Constantine, the Ascetics fled
from a profane and degenerate world, to perpetual solitude, or religious
society. Like the first Christians of Jerusalem,  * they resigned the
use, or the property of their temporal possessions; established regular
communities of the same sex, and a similar disposition; and assumed the
names of Hermits, Monks, and Anachorets, expressive of their lonely
retreat in a natural or artificial desert. They soon acquired the
respect of the world, which they despised; and the loudest applause was
bestowed on this Divine Philosophy,  which surpassed, without the aid of
science or reason, the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The
monks might indeed contend with the Stoics, in the contempt of fortune,
of pain, and of death: the Pythagorean silence and submission were
revived in their servile discipline; and they disdained, as firmly as
the Cynics themselves, all the forms and decencies of civil society. But
the votaries of this Divine Philosophy aspired to imitate a purer and
more perfect model. They trod in the footsteps of the prophets, who had
retired to the desert;  and they restored the devout and contemplative
life, which had been instituted by the Essenians, in Palestine and
Egypt. The philosophic eye of Pliny had surveyed with astonishment a
solitary people, who dwelt among the palm-trees near the Dead Sea; who
subsisted without money, who were propagated without women; and who
derived from the disgust and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of
voluntary associates.

Egypt, the fruitful parent of superstition, afforded the first example
of the monastic life. Antony,  an illiterate  youth of the lower parts
of Thebais, distributed his patrimony,  deserted his family and native
home, and executed his monasticpenance with original and intrepid
fanaticism. After a long and painful novitiate, among the tombs, and in
a ruined tower, he boldly advanced into the desert three days' journey
to the eastward of the Nile; discovered a lonely spot, which possessed
the advantages of shade and water, and fixed his last residence on Mount
Colzim, near the Red Sea; where an ancient monastery still preserves the
name and memory of the saint.  The curious devotion of the Christians
pursued him to the desert; and when he was obliged to appear at
Alexandria, in the face of mankind, he supported his fame with
discretion and dignity. He enjoyed the friendship of Athanasius, whose
doctrine he approved; and the Egyptian peasant respectfully declined a
respectful invitation from the emperor Constantine. The venerable
patriarch (for Antony attained the age of one hundred and five years)
beheld the numerous progeny which had been formed by his example and his
lessons. The prolific colonies of monks multiplied with rapid increase
on the sands of Libya, upon the rocks of Thebais, and in the cities of
the Nile. To the south of Alexandria, the mountain, and adjacent desert,
of Nitria, were peopled by five thousand anachorets; and the traveller
may still investigate the ruins of fifty monasteries, which were planted
in that barren soil by the disciples of Antony.  In the Upper Thebais,
the vacant island of Tabenne,  was occupied by Pachomius and fourteen
hundred of his brethren. That holy abbot successively founded nine
monasteries of men, and one of women; and the festival of Easter
sometimes collected fifty thousand religious persons, who followed his
angelicrule of discipline.  The stately and populous city of Oxyrinchus,
the seat of Christian orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public
edifices, and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses; and the
bishop, who might preach in twelve churches, computed ten thousand
females and twenty thousand males, of the monastic profession.  The
Egyptians, who gloried in this marvellous revolution, were disposed to
hope, and to believe, that the number of the monks was equal to the
remainder of the people;  and posterity might repeat the saying, which
had formerly been applied to the sacred animals of the same country,
That in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man.

Athanasius introduced into Rome the knowledge and practice of the
monastic life; and a school of this new philosophy was opened by the
disciples of Antony, who accompanied their primate to the holy threshold
of the Vatican. The strange and savage appearance of these Egyptians
excited, at first, horror and contempt, and, at length, applause and
zealous imitation. The senators, and more especially the matrons,
transformed their palaces and villas into religious houses; and the
narrow institution of sixVestals was eclipsed by the frequent
monasteries, which were seated on the ruins of ancient temples, and in
the midst of the Roman forum.  Inflamed by the example of Antony, a
Syrian youth, whose name was Hilarion,  fixed his dreary abode on a
sandy beach, between the sea and a morass, about seven miles from Gaza.
The austere penance, in which he persisted forty-eight years, diffused a
similar enthusiasm; and the holy man was followed by a train of two or
three thousand anachorets, whenever he visited the innumerable
monasteries of Palestine. The fame of Basil  is immortal in the monastic
history of the East. With a mind that had tasted the learning and
eloquence of Athens; with an ambition scarcely to be satisfied with the
archbishopric of Cæsarea, Basil retired to a savage solitude in Pontus;
and deigned, for a while, to give laws to the spiritual colonies which
he profusely scattered along the coast of the Black Sea. In the West,
Martin of Tours,  a soldier, a hermit, a bishop, and a saint,
established the monasteries of Gaul; two thousand of his disciples
followed him to the grave; and his eloquent historian challenges the
deserts of Thebais to produce, in a more favorable climate, a champion
of equal virtue. The progress of the monks was not less rapid, or
universal, than that of Christianity itself. Every province, and, at
last, every city, of the empire, was filled with their increasing
multitudes; and the bleak and barren isles, from Lerins to Lipari, that
arose out of the Tuscan Sea, were chosen by the anachorets for the place
of their voluntary exile. An easy and perpetual intercourse by sea and
land connected the provinces of the Roman world; and the life of
Hilarion displays the facility with which an indigent hermit of
Palestine might traverse Egypt, embark for Sicily, escape to Epirus, and
finally settle in the Island of Cyprus.  The Latin Christians embraced
the religious institutions of Rome. The pilgrims, who visited Jerusalem,
eagerly copied, in the most distant climates of the earth, the faithful
model of the monastic life. The disciples of Antony spread themselves
beyond the tropic, over the Christian empire of Æthiopia.  The monastery
of Banchor,  in Flintshire, which contained above two thousand brethren,
dispersed a numerous colony among the Barbarians of Ireland;  and Iona,
one of the Hebrides, which was planted by the Irish monks, diffused over
the northern regions a doubtful ray of science and superstition.

These unhappy exiles from social life were impelled by the dark and
implacable genius of superstition. Their mutual resolution was supported
by the example of millions, of either sex, of every age, and of every
rank; and each proselyte who entered the gates of a monastery, was
persuaded that he trod the steep and thorny path of eternal happiness.
But the operation of these religious motives was variously determined by
the temper and situation of mankind. Reason might subdue, or passion
might suspend, their influence: but they acted most forcibly on the
infirm minds of children and females; they were strengthened by secret
remorse, or accidental misfortune; and they might derive some aid from
the temporal considerations of vanity or interest. It was naturally
supposed, that the pious and humble monks, who had renounced the world
to accomplish the work of their salvation, were the best qualified for
the spiritual government of the Christians. The reluctant hermit was
torn from his cell, and seated, amidst the acclamations of the people,
on the episcopal throne: the monasteries of Egypt, of Gaul, and of the
East, supplied a regular succession of saints and bishops; and ambition
soon discovered the secret road which led to the possession of wealth
and honors.  The popular monks, whose reputation was connected with the
fame and success of the order, assiduously labored to multiply the
number of their fellow-captives. They insinuated themselves into noble
and opulent families; and the specious arts of flattery and seduction
were employed to secure those proselytes who might bestow wealth or
dignity on the monastic profession. The indignant father bewailed the
loss, perhaps, of an only son;  the credulous maid was betrayed by
vanity to violate the laws of nature; and the matron aspired to
imaginary perfection, by renouncing the virtues of domestic life. Paula
yielded to the persuasive eloquence of Jerom;  and the profane title of
mother-in-law of God  tempted that illustrious widow to consecrate the
virginity of her daughter Eustochium. By the advice, and in the company,
of her spiritual guide, Paula abandoned Rome and her infant son; retired
to the holy village of Bethlem; founded a hospital and four monasteries;
and acquired, by her alms and penance, an eminent and conspicuous
station in the Catholic church. Such rare and illustrious penitents were
celebrated as the glory and example of their age; but the monasteries
were filled by a crowd of obscure and abject plebeians,  who gained in
the cloister much more than they had sacrificed in the world. Peasants,
slaves, and mechanics, might escape from poverty and contempt to a safe
and honorable profession; whose apparent hardships are mitigated by
custom, by popular applause, and by the secret relaxation of discipline.
The subjects of Rome, whose persons and fortunes were made responsible
for unequal and exorbitant tributes, retired from the oppression of the
Imperial government; and the pusillanimous youth preferred the penance
of a monastic, to the dangers of a military, life. The affrighted
provincials of every rank, who fled before the Barbarians, found shelter
and subsistence: whole legions were buried in these religious
sanctuaries; and the same cause, which relieved the distress of
individuals, impaired the strength and fortitude of the empire.

The monastic profession of the ancients  was an act of voluntary
devotion. The inconstant fanatic was threatened with the eternal
vengeance of the God whom he deserted; but the doors of the monastery
were still open for repentance. Those monks, whose conscience was
fortified by reason or passion, were at liberty to resume the character
of men and citizens; and even the spouses of Christ might accept the
legal embraces of an earthly lover.  The examples of scandal, and the
progress of superstition, suggested the propriety of more forcible
restraints. After a sufficient trial, the fidelity of the novice was
secured by a solemn and perpetual vow; and his irrevocable engagement
was ratified by the laws of the church and state. A guilty fugitive was
pursued, arrested, and restored to his perpetual prison; and the
interposition of the magistrate oppressed the freedom and the merit,
which had alleviated, in some degree, the abject slavery of the monastic
discipline.  The actions of a monk, his words, and even his thoughts,
were determined by an inflexible rule,  or a capricious superior: the
slightest offences were corrected by disgrace or confinement,
extraordinary fasts, or bloody flagellation; and disobedience, murmur,
or delay, were ranked in the catalogue of the most heinous sins.  A
blind submission to the commands of the abbot, however absurd, or even
criminal, they might seem, was the ruling principle, the first virtue of
the Egyptian monks; and their patience was frequently exercised by the
most extravagant trials. They were directed to remove an enormous rock;
assiduously to water a barren staff, that was planted in the ground,
till, at the end of three years, it should vegetate and blossom like a
tree; to walk into a fiery furnace; or to cast their infant into a deep
pond: and several saints, or madmen, have been immortalized in monastic
story, by their thoughtless and fearless obedience.  The freedom of the
mind, the source of every generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed
by the habits of credulity and submission; and the monk, contracting the
vices of a slave, devoutly followed the faith and passions of his
ecclesiastical tyrant. The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a
swarm of fanatics, incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity; and the
Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less
apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.

Superstition has often framed and consecrated the fantastic garments of
the monks:  but their apparent singularity sometimes proceeds from their
uniform attachment to a simple and primitive model, which the
revolutions of fashion have made ridiculous in the eyes of mankind. The
father of the Benedictines expressly disclaims all idea of choice of
merit; and soberly exhorts his disciples to adopt the coarse and
convenient dress of the countries which they may inhabit.  The monastic
habits of the ancients varied with the climate, and their mode of life;
and they assumed, with the same indifference, the sheep-skin of the
Egyptian peasants, or the cloak of the Grecian philosophers. They
allowed themselves the use of linen in Egypt, where it was a cheap and
domestic manufacture; but in the West they rejected such an expensive
article of foreign luxury.  It was the practice of the monks either to
cut or shave their hair; they wrapped their heads in a cowl to escape
the sight of profane objects; their legs and feet were naked, except in
the extreme cold of winter; and their slow and feeble steps were
supported by a long staff. The aspect of a genuine anachoret was horrid
and disgusting: every sensation that is offensive to man was thought
acceptable to God; and the angelic rule of Tabenne condemned the
salutary custom of bathing the limbs in water, and of anointing them
with oil.  * The austere monks slept on the ground, on a hard mat, or a
rough blanket; and the same bundle of palm-leaves served them as a seat
in the lay, and a pillow in the night. Their original cells were low,
narrow huts, built of the slightest materials; which formed, by the
regular distribution of the streets, a large and populous village,
enclosing, within the common wall, a church, a hospital, perhaps a
library, some necessary offices, a garden, and a fountain or reservoir
of fresh water. Thirty or forty brethren composed a family of separate
discipline and diet; and the great monasteries of Egypt consisted of
thirty or forty families.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity. -- Part
II.

Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks,
and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious
diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires of
the flesh.  The rules of abstinence which they imposed, or practised,
were not uniform or perpetual: the cheerful festival of the Pentecost
was balanced by the extraordinary mortification of Lent; the fervor of
new monasteries was insensibly relaxed; and the voracious appetite of
the Gauls could not imitate the patient and temperate virtue of the
Egyptians.  The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were satisfied with
their daily pittance,  of twelve ounces of bread, or rather biscuit,
which they divided into two frugal repasts, of the afternoon and of the
evening. It was esteemed a merit, and almost a duty, to abstain from the
boiled vegetables which were provided for the refectory; but the
extraordinary bounty of the abbot sometimes indulged them with the
luxury of cheese, fruit, salad, and the small dried fish of the Nile.  A
more ample latitude of sea and river fish was gradually allowed or
assumed; but the use of flesh was long confined to the sick or
travellers; and when it gradually prevailed in the less rigid
monasteries of Europe, a singular distinction was introduced; as if
birds, whether wild or domestic, had been less profane than the grosser
animals of the field. Water was the pure and innocent beverage of the
primitive monks; and the founder of the Benedictines regrets the daily
portion of half a pint of wine, which had been extorted from him by the
intemperance of the age.  Such an allowance might be easily supplied by
the vineyards of Italy; and his victorious disciples, who passed the
Alps, the Rhine, and the Baltic, required, in the place of wine, an
adequate compensation of strong beer or cider.

The candidate who aspired to the virtue of evangelical poverty, abjured,
at his first entrance into a regular community, the idea, and even the
name, of all separate or exclusive possessions.  The brethren were
supported by their manual labor; and the duty of labor was strenuously
recommended as a penance, as an exercise, and as the most laudable means
of securing their daily subsistence.  The garden and fields, which the
industry of the monks had often rescued from the forest or the morass,
were diligently cultivated by their hands. They performed, without
reluctance, the menial offices of slaves and domestics; and the several
trades that were necessary to provide their habits, their utensils, and
their lodging, were exercised within the precincts of the great
monasteries. The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to
darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition. Yet the
curiosity or zeal of some learned solitaries has cultivated the
ecclesiastical, and even the profane, sciences; and posterity must
gratefully acknowledge, that the monuments of Greek and Roman literature
have been preserved and multiplied by their indefatigable pens.  But the
more humble industry of the monks, especially in Egypt, was contented
with the silent, sedentary occupation of making wooden sandals, or of
twisting the leaves of the palm-tree into mats and baskets. The
superfluous stock, which was not consumed in domestic use, supplied, by
trade, the wants of the community: the boats of Tabenne, and the other
monasteries of Thebais, descended the Nile as far as Alexandria; and, in
a Christian market, the sanctity of the workmen might enhance the
intrinsic value of the work.

But the necessity of manual labor was insensibly superseded. The novice
was tempted to bestow his fortune on the saints, in whose society he was
resolved to spend the remainder of his life; and the pernicious
indulgence of the laws permitted him to receive, for their use, any
future accessions of legacy or inheritance.  Melania contributed her
plate, three hundred pounds weight of silver; and Paula contracted an
immense debt, for the relief of their favorite monks; who kindly
imparted the merits of their prayers and penance to a rich and liberal
sinner.  Time continually increased, and accidents could seldom
diminish, the estates of the popular monasteries, which spread over the
adjacent country and cities: and, in the first century of their
institution, the infidel Zosimus has maliciously observed, that, for the
benefit of the poor, the Christian monks had reduced a great part of
mankind to a state of beggary.  As long as they maintained their
original fervor, they approved themselves, however, the faithful and
benevolent stewards of the charity, which was entrusted to their care.
But their discipline was corrupted by prosperity: they gradually assumed
the pride of wealth, and at last indulged the luxury of expense. Their
public luxury might be excused by the magnificence of religious worship,
and the decent motive of erecting durable habitations for an immortal
society. But every age of the church has accused the licentiousness of
the degenerate monks; who no longer remembered the object of their
institution, embraced the vain and sensual pleasures of the world, which
they had renounced,  and scandalously abused the riches which had been
acquired by the austere virtues of their founders.  Their natural
descent, from such painful and dangerous virtue, to the common vices of
humanity, will not, perhaps, excite much grief or indignation in the
mind of a philosopher.

The lives of the primitive monks were consumed in penance and solitude;
undisturbed by the various occupations which fill the time, and exercise
the faculties, of reasonable, active, and social beings. Whenever they
were permitted to step beyond the precincts of the monastery, two
jealous companions were the mutual guards and spies of each other's
actions; and, after their return, they were condemned to forget, or, at
least, to suppress, whatever they had seen or heard in the world.
Strangers, who professed the orthodox faith, were hospitably entertained
in a separate apartment; but their dangerous conversation was restricted
to some chosen elders of approved discretion and fidelity. Except in
their presence, the monastic slave might not receive the visits of his
friends or kindred; and it was deemed highly meritorious, if he
afflicted a tender sister, or an aged parent, by the obstinate refusal
of a word or look.  The monks themselves passed their lives, without
personal attachments, among a crowd which had been formed by accident,
and was detained, in the same prison, by force or prejudice. Recluse
fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate: a special license
of the abbot regulated the time and duration of their familiar visits;
and, at their silent meals, they were enveloped in their cowls,
inaccessible, and almost invisible, to each other.  Study is the
resource of solitude: but education had not prepared and qualified for
any liberal studies the mechanics and peasants who filled the monastic
communities. They might work: but the vanity of spiritual perfection was
tempted to disdain the exercise of manual labor; and the industry must
be faint and languid, which is not excited by the sense of personal
interest.

According to their faith and zeal, they might employ the day, which they
passed in their cells, either in vocal or mental prayer: they assembled
in the evening, and they were awakened in the night, for the public
worship of the monastery. The precise moment was determined by the
stars, which are seldom clouded in the serene sky of Egypt; and a rustic
horn, or trumpet, the signal of devotion, twice interrupted the vast
silence of the desert.  Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was
rigorously measured: the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled along,
without business or pleasure; and, before the close of each day, he had
repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the sun.  In this comfortless
state, superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched votaries.
The repose which they had sought in the cloister was disturbed by a
tardy repentance, profane doubts, and guilty desires; and, while they
considered each natural impulse as an unpardonable sin, they perpetually
trembled on the edge of a flaming and bottomless abyss. From the painful
struggles of disease and despair, these unhappy victims were sometimes
relieved by madness or death; and, in the sixth century, a hospital was
founded at Jerusalem for a small portion of the austere penitents, who
were deprived of their senses.  Their visions, before they attained this
extreme and acknowledged term of frenzy, have afforded ample materials
of supernatural history. It was their firm persuasion, that the air,
which they breathed, was peopled with invisible enemies; with
innumerable demons, who watched every occasion, and assumed every form,
to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The
imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of
distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was
oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms of
horror or delight, which had occupied his sleeping and his waking
dreams.

The monks were divided into two classes: the Cnobites, who lived under a
common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged their
unsocial, independent fanaticism.  The most devout, or the most
ambitious, of the spiritual brethren, renounced the convent, as they had
renounced the world. The fervent monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, and
Syria, were surrounded by a Laura,  a distant circle of solitary cells;
and the extravagant penance of Hermits was stimulated by applause and
emulation.  They sunk under the painful weight of crosses and chains;
and their emaciated limbs were confined by collars, bracelets,
gauntlets, and greaves of massy and rigid iron. All superfluous
encumbrance of dress they contemptuously cast away; and some savage
saints of both sexes have been admired, whose naked bodies were only
covered by their long hair. They aspired to reduce themselves to the
rude and miserable state in which the human brute is scarcely
distinguishable above his kindred animals; and the numerous sect of
Anachorets derived their name from their humble practice of grazing in
the fields of Mesopotamia with the common herd.  They often usurped the
den of some wild beast whom they affected to resemble; they buried
themselves in some gloomy cavern, which art or nature had scooped out of
the rock; and the marble quarries of Thebais are still inscribed with
the monuments of their penance.  The most perfect Hermits are supposed
to have passed many days without food, many nights without sleep, and
many years without speaking; and glorious was the man( I abuse that
name) who contrived any cell, or seat, of a peculiar construction, which
might expose him, in the most inconvenient posture, to the inclemency of
the seasons.

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon
Stylites  have been immortalized by the singular invention of an aërial
penance. At the age of thirteen, the young Syrian deserted the
profession of a shepherd, and threw himself into an austere monastery.
After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved
from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain, about
thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a
mandra, or circle of stones, to which he had attached himself by a
ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised
from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground.  In
this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of
thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise
instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or
giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of
devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his
outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar
practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to
the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and
forty- four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account.
The progress of an ulcer in his thigh  might shorten, but it could not
disturb, this celestiallife; and the patient Hermit expired, without
descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously inflict
such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would surpass the power
of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable existence on the reluctant
victims of his cruelty. This voluntary martyrdom must have gradually
destroyed the sensibility both of the mind and body; nor can it be
presumed that the fanatics, who torment themselves, are susceptible of
any lively affection for the rest of mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper
has distinguished the monks of every age and country: their stern
indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is
inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously
administered the holy office of the Inquisition.

The monastic saints, who excite only the contempt and pity of a
philosopher, were respected, and almost adored, by the prince and
people. Successive crowds of pilgrims from Gaul and India saluted the
divine pillar of Simeon: the tribes of Saracens disputed in arms the
honor of his benediction; the queens of Arabia and Persia gratefully
confessed his supernatural virtue; and the angelic Hermit was consulted
by the younger Theodosius, in the most important concerns of the church
and state. His remains were transported from the mountain of Telenissa,
by a solemn procession of the patriarch, the master-general of the East,
six bishops, twenty-one counts or tribunes, and six thousand soldiers;
and Antioch revered his bones, as her glorious ornament and impregnable
defence. The fame of the apostles and martyrs was gradually eclipsed by
these recent and popular Anachorets; the Christian world fell prostrate
before their shrines; and the miracles ascribed to their relics
exceeded, at least in number and duration, the spiritual exploits of
their lives. But the golden legend of their lives  was embellished by
the artful credulity of their interested brethren; and a believing age
was easily persuaded, that the slightest caprice of an Egyptian or a
Syrian monk had been sufficient to interrupt the eternal laws of the
universe. The favorites of Heaven were accustomed to cure inveterate
diseases with a touch, a word, or a distant message; and to expel the
most obstinate demons from the souls or bodies which they possessed.
They familiarly accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions and
serpents of the desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk;
suspended iron on the surface of the water; passed the Nile on the back
of a crocodile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These
extravagant tales, which display the fiction without the genius, of
poetry, have seriously affected the reason, the faith, and the morals,
of the Christians. Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of
the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition
gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.
Every mode of religious worship which had been practised by the saints,
every mysterious doctrine which they believed, was fortified by the
sanction of divine revelation, and all the manly virtues were oppressed
by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks. If it be possible
to measure the interval between the philosophic writings of Cicero and
the sacred legend of Theodoret, between the character of Cato and that
of Simeon, we may appreciate the memorable revolution which was
accomplished in the Roman empire within a period of five hundred years.

II. The progress of Christianity has been marked by two glorious and
decisive victories: over the learned and luxurious citizens of the Roman
empire; and over the warlike Barbarians of Scythia and Germany, who
subverted the empire, and embraced the religion, of the Romans. The
Goths were the foremost of these savage proselytes; and the nation was
indebted for its conversion to a countryman, or, at least, to a subject,
worthy to be ranked among the inventors of useful arts, who have
deserved the remembrance and gratitude of posterity. A great number of
Roman provincials had been led away into captivity by the Gothic bands,
who ravaged Asia in the time of Gallienus; and of these captives, many
were Christians, and several belonged to the ecclesiastical order. Those
involuntary missionaries, dispersed as slaves in the villages of Dacia,
successively labored for the salvation of their masters. The seeds which
they planted, of the evangelic doctrine, were gradually propagated; and
before the end of a century, the pious work was achieved by the labors
of Ulphilas, whose ancestors had been transported beyond the Danube from
a small town of Cappadocia.

Ulphilas, the bishop and apostle of the Goths,  acquired their love and
reverence by his blameless life and indefatigable zeal; and they
received, with implicit confidence, the doctrines of truth and virtue
which he preached and practised. He executed the arduous task of
translating the Scriptures into their native tongue, a dialect of the
German or Teutonic language; but he prudently suppressed the four books
of Kings, as they might tend to irritate the fierce and sanguinary
spirit of the Barbarians. The rude, imperfect idiom of soldiers and
shepherds, so ill qualified to communicate any spiritual ideas, was
improved and modulated by his genius: and Ulphilas, before he could
frame his version, was obliged to compose a new alphabet of twenty-four
letters; * four of which he invented, to express the peculiar sounds
that were unknown to the Greek and Latin pronunciation.  But the
prosperous state of the Gothic church was soon afflicted by war and
intestine discord, and the chieftains were divided by religion as well
as by interest. Fritigern, the friend of the Romans, became the
proselyte of Ulphilas; while the haughty soul of Athanaric disdained the
yoke of the empire and of the gospel The faith of the new converts was
tried by the persecution which he excited. A wagon, bearing aloft the
shapeless image of Thor, perhaps, or of Woden, was conducted in solemn
procession through the streets of the camp; and the rebels, who refused
to worship the god of their fathers, were immediately burnt, with their
tents and families. The character of Ulphilas recommended him to the
esteem of the Eastern court, where he twice appeared as the minister of
peace; he pleaded the cause of the distressed Goths, who implored the
protection of Valens; and the name of Moseswas applied to this spiritual
guide, who conducted his people through the deep waters of the Danube to
the Land of Promise.  The devout shepherds, who were attached to his
person, and tractable to his voice, acquiesced in their settlement, at
the foot of the Mæsian mountains, in a country of woodlands and
pastures, which supported their flocks and herds, and enabled them to
purchase the corn and wine of the more plentiful provinces. These
harmless Barbarians multiplied in obscure peace and the profession of
Christianity.

Their fiercer brethren, the formidable Visigoths, universally adopted
the religion of the Romans, with whom they maintained a perpetual
intercourse, of war, of friendship, or of conquest. In their long and
victorious march from the Danube to the Atlantic Ocean, they converted
their allies; they educated the rising generation; and the devotion
which reigned in the camp of Alaric, or the court of Thoulouse, might
edify or disgrace the palaces of Rome and Constantinople.  During the
same period, Christianity was embraced by almost all the Barbarians, who
established their kingdoms on the ruins of the Western empire; the
Burgundians in Gaul, the Suevi in Spain, the Vandals in Africa, the
Ostrogoths in Pannonia, and the various bands of mercenaries, that
raised Odoacer to the throne of Italy. The Franks and the Saxons still
persevered in the errors of Paganism; but the Franks obtained the
monarchy of Gaul by their submission to the example of Clovis; and the
Saxon conquerors of Britain were reclaimed from their savage
superstition by the missionaries of Rome. These Barbarian proselytes
displayed an ardent and successful zeal in the propagation of the faith.
The Merovingian kings, and their successors, Charlemagne and the Othos,
extended, by their laws and victories, the dominion of the cross.
England produced the apostle of Germany; and the evangelic light was
gradually diffused from the neighborhood of the Rhine, to the nations of
the Elbe, the Vistula, and the Baltic.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity. -- Part
III.

The different motives which influenced the reason, or the passions, of
the Barbarian converts, cannot easily be ascertained. They were often
capricious and accidental; a dream, an omen, the report of a miracle,
the example of some priest, or hero, the charms of a believing wife,
and, above all, the fortunate event of a prayer, or vow, which, in a
moment of danger, they had addressed to the God of the Christians.  The
early prejudices of education were insensibly erased by the habits of
frequent and familiar society, the moral precepts of the gospel were
protected by the extravagant virtues of the monks; and a spiritual
theology was supported by the visible power of relics, and the pomp of
religious worship. But the rational and ingenious mode of persuasion,
which a Saxon bishop  suggested to a popular saint, might sometimes be
employed by the missionaries, who labored for the conversion of
infidels. "Admit," says the sagacious disputant, "whatever they are
pleased to assert of the fabulous, and carnal, genealogy of their gods
and goddesses, who are propagated from each other. From this principle
deduce their imperfect nature, and human infirmities, the assurance they
were born, and the probability that they will die. At what time, by what
means, from what cause, were the eldest of the gods or goddesses
produced? Do they still continue, or have they ceased, to propagate? If
they have ceased, summon your antagonists to declare the reason of this
strange alteration. If they still continue, the number of the gods must
become infinite; and shall we not risk, by the indiscreet worship of
some impotent deity, to excite the resentment of his jealous superior?
The visible heavens and earth, the whole system of the universe, which
may be conceived by the mind, is it created or eternal? If created, how,
or where, could the gods themselves exist before creation? If eternal,
how could they assume the empire of an independent and preexisting
world? Urge these arguments with temper and moderation; insinuate, at
seasonable intervals, the truth and beauty of the Christian revelation;
and endeavor to make the unbelievers ashamed, without making them
angry." This metaphysical reasoning, too refined, perhaps, for the
Barbarians of Germany, was fortified by the grosser weight of authority
and popular consent. The advantage of temporal prosperity had deserted
the Pagan cause, and passed over to the service of Christianity. The
Romans themselves, the most powerful and enlightened nation of the
globe, had renounced their ancient superstition; and, if the ruin of
their empire seemed to accuse the efficacy of the new faith, the
disgrace was already retrieved by the conversion of the victorious
Goths. The valiant and fortunate Barbarians, who subdued the provinces
of the West, successively received, and reflected, the same edifying
example. Before the age of Charlemagne, the Christian nations of Europe
might exult in the exclusive possession of the temperate climates, of
the fertile lands, which produced corn, wine, and oil; while the savage
idolaters, and their helpless idols, were confined to the extremities of
the earth, the dark and frozen regions of the North.

Christianity, which opened the gates of Heaven to the Barbarians,
introduced an important change in their moral and political condition.
They received, at the same time, the use of letters, so essential to a
religion whose doctrines are contained in a sacred book; and while they
studied the divine truth, their minds were insensibly enlarged by the
distant view of history, of nature, of the arts, and of society. The
version of the Scriptures into their native tongue, which had
facilitated their conversion, must excite among their clergy some
curiosity to read the original text, to understand the sacred liturgy of
the church, and to examine, in the writings of the fathers, the chain of
ecclesiastical tradition. These spiritual gifts were preserved in the
Greek and Latin languages, which concealed the inestimable monuments of
ancient learning. The immortal productions of Virgil, Cicero, and Livy,
which were accessible to the Christian Barbarians, maintained a silent
intercourse between the reign of Augustus and the times of Clovis and
Charlemagne. The emulation of mankind was encouraged by the remembrance
of a more perfect state; and the flame of science was secretly kept
alive, to warm and enlighten the mature age of the Western world. In the
most corrupt state of Christianity, the Barbarians might learn justice
from the law, and mercy from the gospel; and if the knowledge of their
duty was insufficient to guide their actions, or to regulate their
passions, they were sometimes restrained by conscience, and frequently
punished by remorse. But the direct authority of religion was less
effectual than the holy communion, which united them with their
Christian brethren in spiritual friendship. The influence of these
sentiments contributed to secure their fidelity in the service, or the
alliance, of the Romans, to alleviate the horrors of war, to moderate
the insolence of conquest, and to preserve, in the downfall of the
empire, a permanent respect for the name and institutions of Rome. In
the days of Paganism, the priests of Gaul and Germany reigned over the
people, and controlled the jurisdiction of the magistrates; and the
zealous proselytes transferred an equal, or more ample, measure of
devout obedience, to the pontiffs of the Christian faith. The sacred
character of the bishops was supported by their temporal possessions;
they obtained an honorable seat in the legislative assemblies of
soldiers and freemen; and it was their interest, as well as their duty,
to mollify, by peaceful counsels, the fierce spirit of the Barbarians.
The perpetual correspondence of the Latin clergy, the frequent
pilgrimages to Rome and Jerusalem, and the growing authority of the
popes, cemented the union of the Christian republic, and gradually
produced the similar manners, and common jurisprudence, which have
distinguished, from the rest of mankind, the independent, and even
hostile, nations of modern Europe.

But the operation of these causes was checked and retarded by the
unfortunate accident, which infused a deadly poison into the cup of
Salvation. Whatever might be the early sentiments of Ulphilas, his
connections with the empire and the church were formed during the reign
of Arianism. The apostle of the Goths subscribed the creed of Rimini;
professed with freedom, and perhaps with sincerity, that the Sonwas not
equal, or consubstantial to the Father;  communicated these errors to
the clergy and people; and infected the Barbaric world with a heresy,
which the great Theodosius proscribed and extinguished among the Romans.
The temper and understanding of the new proselytes were not adapted to
metaphysical subtilties; but they strenuously maintained, what they had
piously received, as the pure and genuine doctrines of Christianity. The
advantage of preaching and expounding the Scriptures in the Teutonic
language promoted the apostolic labors of Ulphilas and his successors;
and they ordained a competent number of bishops and presbyters for the
instruction of the kindred tribes. The Ostrogoths, the Burgundians, the
Suevi, and the Vandals, who had listened to the eloquence of the Latin
clergy,  preferred the more intelligible lessons of their domestic
teachers; and Arianism was adopted as the national faith of the warlike
converts, who were seated on the ruins of the Western empire. This
irreconcilable difference of religion was a perpetual source of jealousy
and hatred; and the reproach of Barbarianwas imbittered by the more
odious epithet of Heretic. The heroes of the North, who had submitted,
with some reluctance, to believe that all their ancestors were in hell,
were astonished and exasperated to learn, that they themselves had only
changed the mode of their eternal condemnation. Instead of the smooth
applause, which Christian kings are accustomed to expect from their
royal prelates, the orthodox bishops and their clergy were in a state of
opposition to the Arian courts; and their indiscreet opposition
frequently became criminal, and might sometimes be dangerous.  The
pulpit, that safe and sacred organ of sedition, resounded with the names
of Pharaoh and Holofernes;  the public discontent was inflamed by the
hope or promise of a glorious deliverance; and the seditious saints were
tempted to promote the accomplishment of their own predictions.
Notwithstanding these provocations, the Catholics of Gaul, Spain, and
Italy, enjoyed, under the reign of the Arians, the free and peaceful
exercise of their religion. Their haughty masters respected the zeal of
a numerous people, resolved to die at the foot of their altars; and the
example of their devout constancy was admired and imitated by the
Barbarians themselves. The conquerors evaded, however, the disgraceful
reproach, or confession, of fear, by attributing their toleration to the
liberal motives of reason and humanity; and while they affected the
language, they imperceptiby imbibed the spirit, of genuine Christianity.

The peace of the church was sometimes interrupted. The Catholics were
indiscreet, the Barbarians were impatient; and the partial acts of
severity or injustice, which had been recommended by the Arian clergy,
were exaggerated by the orthodox writers. The guilt of persecution may
be imputed to Euric, king of the Visigoths; who suspended the exercise
of ecclesiastical, or, at least, of episcopal functions; and punished
the popular bishops of Aquitain with imprisonment, exile, and
confiscation.  But the cruel and absurd enterprise of subduing the minds
of a whole people was undertaken by the Vandals alone. Genseric himself,
in his early youth, had renounced the orthodox communion; and the
apostate could neither grant, nor expect, a sincere forgiveness. He was
exasperated to find that the Africans, who had fled before him in the
field, still presumed to dispute his will in synods and churches; and
his ferocious mind was incapable of fear or of compassion. His Catholic
subjects were oppressed by intolerant laws and arbitrary punishments.
The language of Genseric was furious and formidable; the knowledge of
his intentions might justify the most unfavorable interpretation of his
actions; and the Arians were reproached with the frequent executions
which stained the palace and the dominions of the tyrant. Arms and
ambition were, however, the ruling passions of the monarch of the sea.
But Hunneric, his inglorious son, who seemed to inherit only his vices,
tormented the Catholics with the same unrelenting fury which had been
fatal to his brother, his nephews, and the friends and favorites of his
father; and even to the Arian patriarch, who was inhumanly burnt alive
in the midst of Carthage. The religious war was preceded and prepared by
an insidious truce; persecution was made the serious and important
business of the Vandal court; and the loathsome disease which hastened
the death of Hunneric, revenged the injuries, without contributing to
the deliverance, of the church. The throne of Africa was successively
filled by the two nephews of Hunneric; by Gundamund, who reigned about
twelve, and by Thrasimund, who governed the nation about twenty-seven,
years. Their administration was hostile and oppressive to the orthodox
party. Gundamund appeared to emulate, or even to surpass, the cruelty of
his uncle; and, if at length he relented, if he recalled the bishops,
and restored the freedom of Athanasian worship, a premature death
intercepted the benefits of his tardy clemency. His brother, Thrasimund,
was the greatest and most accomplished of the Vandal kings, whom he
excelled in beauty, prudence, and magnanimity of soul. But this
magnanimous character was degraded by his intolerant zeal and deceitful
clemency. Instead of threats and tortures, he employed the gentle, but
efficacious, powers of seduction. Wealth, dignity, and the royal favor,
were the liberal rewards of apostasy; the Catholics, who had violated
the laws, might purchase their pardon by the renunciation of their
faith; and whenever Thrasimund meditated any rigorous measure, he
patiently waited till the indiscretion of his adversaries furnished him
with a specious opportunity. Bigotry was his last sentiment in the hour
of death; and he exacted from his successor a solemn oath, that he would
never tolerate the sectaries of Athanasius. But his successor, Hilderic,
the gentle son of the savage Hunneric, preferred the duties of humanity
and justice to the vain obligation of an impious oath; and his accession
was gloriously marked by the restoration of peace and universal freedom.
The throne of that virtuous, though feeble monarch, was usurped by his
cousin Gelimer, a zealous Arian: but the Vandal kingdom, before he could
enjoy or abuse his power, was subverted by the arms of Belisarius; and
the orthodox party retaliated the injuries which they had endured.

The passionate declamations of the Catholics, the sole historians of
this persecution, cannot afford any distinct series of causes and
events; any impartial view of the characters, or counsels; but the most
remarkable circumstances that deserve either credit or notice, may be
referred to the following heads; I. In the original law, which is still
extant,  Hunneric expressly declares, (and the declaration appears to be
correct,) that he had faithfully transcribed the regulations and
penalties of the Imperial edicts, against the heretical congregations,
the clergy, and the people, who dissented from the established religion.
If the rights of conscience had been understood, the Catholics must have
condemned their past conduct or acquiesced in their actual suffering.
But they still persisted to refuse the indulgence which they claimed.
While they trembled under the lash of persecution, they praised the
laudableseverity of Hunneric himself, who burnt or banished great
numbers of Manichæans;  and they rejected, with horror, the ignominious
compromise, that the disciples of Arius and of Athanasius should enjoy a
reciprocal and similar toleration in the territories of the Romans, and
in those of the Vandals.  II. The practice of a conference, which the
Catholics had so frequently used to insult and punish their obstinate
antagonists, was retorted against themselves.  At the command of
Hunneric, four hundred and sixty-six orthodox bishops assembled at
Carthage; but when they were admitted into the hall of audience, they
had the mortification of beholding the Arian Cyrila exalted on the
patriarchal throne. The disputants were separated, after the mutual and
ordinary reproaches of noise and silence, of delay and precipitation, of
military force and of popular clamor. One martyr and one confessor were
selected among the Catholic bishops; twenty- eight escaped by flight,
and eighty-eight by conformity; forty-six were sent into Corsica to cut
timber for the royal navy; and three hundred and two were banished to
the different parts of Africa, exposed to the insults of their enemies,
and carefully deprived of all the temporal and spiritual comforts of
life.  The hardships of ten years' exile must have reduced their
numbers; and if they had complied with the law of Thrasimund, which
prohibited any episcopal consecrations, the orthodox church of Africa
must have expired with the lives of its actual members. They disobeyed,
and their disobedience was punished by a second exile of two hundred and
twenty bishops into Sardinia; where they languished fifteen years, till
the accession of the gracious Hilderic.  The two islands were
judiciously chosen by the malice of their Arian tyrants. Seneca, from
his own experience, has deplored and exaggerated the miserable state of
Corsica,  and the plenty of Sardinia was overbalanced by the unwholesome
quality of the air.  III. The zeal of Generic and his successors, for
the conversion of the Catholics, must have rendered them still more
jealous to guard the purity of the Vandal faith. Before the churches
were finally shut, it was a crime to appear in a Barbarian dress; and
those who presumed to neglect the royal mandate were rudely dragged
backwards by their long hair.  The palatine officers, who refused to
profess the religion of their prince, were ignominiously stripped of
their honors and employments; banished to Sardinia and Sicily; or
condemned to the servile labors of slaves and peasants in the fields of
Utica. In the districts which had been peculiarly allotted to the
Vandals, the exercise of the Catholic worship was more strictly
prohibited; and severe penalties were denounced against the guilt both
of the missionary and the proselyte. By these arts, the faith of the
Barbarians was preserved, and their zeal was inflamed: they discharged,
with devout fury, the office of spies, informers, or executioners; and
whenever their cavalry took the field, it was the favorite amusement of
the march to defile the churches, and to insult the clergy of the
adverse faction.  IV. The citizens who had been educated in the luxury
of the Roman province, were delivered, with exquisite cruelty, to the
Moors of the desert. A venerable train of bishops, presbyters, and
deacons, with a faithful crowd of four thousand and ninety- six persons,
whose guilt is not precisely ascertained, were torn from their native
homes, by the command of Hunneric. During the night they were confined,
like a herd of cattle, amidst their own ordure: during the day they
pursued their march over the burning sands; and if they fainted under
the heat and fatigue, they were goaded, or dragged along, till they
expired in the hands of their tormentors.  These unhappy exiles, when
they reached the Moorish huts, might excite the compassion of a people,
whose native humanity was neither improved by reason, nor corrupted by
fanaticism: but if they escaped the dangers, they were condemned to
share the distress of a savage life. V. It is incumbent on the authors
of persecution previously to reflect, whether they are determined to
support it in the last extreme. They excite the flame which they strive
to extinguish; and it soon becomes necessary to chastise the contumacy,
as well as the crime, of the offender. The fine, which he is unable or
unwilling to discharge, exposes his person to the severity of the law;
and his contempt of lighter penalties suggests the use and propriety of
capital punishment. Through the veil of fiction and declamation we may
clearly perceive, that the Catholics more especially under the reign of
Hunneric, endured the most cruel and ignominious treatment.  Respectable
citizens, noble matrons, and consecrated virgins, were stripped naked,
and raised in the air by pulleys, with a weight suspended at their feet.
In this painful attitude their naked bodies were torn with scourges, or
burnt in the most tender parts with red-hot plates of iron. The
amputation of the ears the nose, the tongue, and the right hand, was
inflicted by the Arians; and although the precise number cannot be
defined, it is evident that many persons, among whom a bishop  and a
proconsul  may be named, were entitled to the crown of martyrdom. The
same honor has been ascribed to the memory of Count Sebastian, who
professed the Nicene creed with unshaken constancy; and Genseric might
detest, as a heretic, the brave and ambitious fugitive whom he dreaded
as a rival.  VI. A new mode of conversion, which might subdue the
feeble, and alarm the timorous, was employed by the Arian ministers.
They imposed, by fraud or violence, the rites of baptism; and punished
the apostasy of the Catholics, if they disclaimed this odious and
profane ceremony, which scandalously violated the freedom of the will,
and the unity of the sacrament.  The hostile sects had formerly allowed
the validity of each other's baptism; and the innovation, so fiercely
maintained by the Vandals, can be imputed only to the example and advice
of the Donatists. VII. The Arian clergy surpassed in religious cruelty
the king and his Vandals; but they were incapable of cultivating the
spiritual vineyard, which they were so desirous to possess. A patriarch
might seat himself on the throne of Carthage; some bishops, in the
principal cities, might usurp the place of their rivals; but the
smallness of their numbers, and their ignorance of the Latin language,
disqualified the Barbarians for the ecclesiastical ministry of a great
church; and the Africans, after the loss of their orthodox pastors, were
deprived of the public exercise of Christianity. VIII. The emperors were
the natural protectors of the Homoousian doctrine; and the faithful
people of Africa, both as Romans and as Catholics, preferred their
lawful sovereignty to the usurpation of the Barbarous heretics. During
an interval of peace and friendship, Hunneric restored the cathedral of
Carthage; at the intercession of Zeno, who reigned in the East, and of
Placidia, the daughter and relict of emperors, and the sister of the
queen of the Vandals.  But this decent regard was of short duration; and
the haughty tyrant displayed his contempt for the religion of the
empire, by studiously arranging the bloody images of persecution, in all
the principal streets through which the Roman ambassador must pass in
his way to the palace.  An oath was required from the bishops, who were
assembled at Carthage, that they would support the succession of his son
Hilderic, and that they would renounce all foreign or
transmarinecorrespondence. This engagement, consistent, as it should
seem, with their moral and religious duties, was refused by the more
sagacious members  of the assembly. Their refusal, faintly colored by
the pretence that it is unlawful for a Christian to swear, must provoke
the suspicions of a jealous tyrant.

Chapter XXXVII: Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity. -- Part
IV.

The Catholics, oppressed by royal and military force, were far superior
to their adversaries in numbers and learning. With the same weapons
which the Greek  and Latin fathers had already provided for the Arian
controversy, they repeatedly silenced, or vanquished, the fierce and
illiterate successors of Ulphilas. The consciousness of their own
superiority might have raised them above the arts and passions of
religious warfare. Yet, instead of assuming such honorable pride, the
orthodox theologians were tempted, by the assurance of impunity, to
compose fictions, which must be stigmatized with the epithets of fraud
and forgery. They ascribed their own polemical works to the most
venerable names of Christian antiquity; the characters of Athanasius and
Augustin were awkwardly personated by Vigilius and his disciples;  and
the famous creed, which so clearly expounds the mysteries of the Trinity
and the Incarnation, is deduced, with strong probability, from this
African school.  Even the Scriptures themselves were profaned by their
rash and sacrilegious hands. The memorable text, which asserts the unity
of the threewho bear witness in heaven,  is condemned by the universal
silence of the orthodox fathers, ancient versions, and authentic
manuscripts.  It was first alleged by the Catholic bishops whom Hunneric
summoned to the conference of Carthage.  An allegorical interpretation,
in the form, perhaps, of a marginal note, invaded the text of the Latin
Bibles, which were renewed and corrected in a dark period of ten
centuries.  After the invention of printing,  the editors of the Greek
Testament yielded to their own prejudices, or those of the times;  and
the pious fraud, which was embraced with equal zeal at Rome and at
Geneva, has been infinitely multiplied in every country and every
language of modern Europe.

The example of fraud must excite suspicion: and the specious miracles by
which the African Catholics have defended the truth and justice of their
cause, may be ascribed, with more reason, to their own industry, than to
the visible protection of Heaven. Yet the historian, who views this
religious conflict with an impartial eye, may condescend to mention
onepreternatural event, which will edify the devout, and surprise the
incredulous. Tipasa,  a maritime colony of Mauritania, sixteen miles to
the east of Cæsarea, had been distinguished, in every age, by the
orthodox zeal of its inhabitants. They had braved the fury of the
Donatists;  they resisted, or eluded, the tyranny of the Arians. The
town was deserted on the approach of an heretical bishop: most of the
inhabitants who could procure ships passed over to the coast of Spain;
and the unhappy remnant, refusing all communion with the usurper, still
presumed to hold their pious, but illegal, assemblies. Their
disobedience exasperated the cruelty of Hunneric. A military count was
despatched from Carthage to Tipasa: he collected the Catholics in the
Forum, and, in the presence of the whole province, deprived the guilty
of their right hands and their tongues. But the holy confessors
continued to speak without tongues; and this miracle is attested by
Victor, an African bishop, who published a history of the persecution
within two years after the event.  "If any one," says Victor, "should
doubt of the truth, let him repair to Constantinople, and listen to the
clear and perfect language of Restitutus, the sub-deacon, one of these
glorious sufferers, who is now lodged in the palace of the emperor Zeno,
and is respected by the devout empress." At Constantinople we are
astonished to find a cool, a learned, and unexceptionable witness,
without interest, and without passion. Æneas of Gaza, a Platonic
philosopher, has accurately described his own observations on these
African sufferers. "I saw them myself: I heard them speak: I diligently
inquired by what means such an articulate voice could be formed without
any organ of speech: I used my eyes to examine the report of my ears; I
opened their mouth, and saw that the whole tongue had been completely
torn away by the roots; an operation which the physicians generally
suppose to be mortal."  The testimony of Æneas of Gaza might be
confirmed by the superfluous evidence of the emperor Justinian, in a
perpetual edict; of Count Marcellinus, in his Chronicle of the times;
and of Pope Gregory the First, who had resided at Constantinople, as the
minister of the Roman pontiff.  They all lived within the compass of a
century; and they all appeal to their personal knowledge, or the public
notoriety, for the truth of a miracle, which was repeated in several
instances, displayed on the greatest theatre of the world, and
submitted, during a series of years, to the calm examination of the
senses. This supernatural gift of the African confessors, who spoke
without tongues, will command the assent of those, and of those only,
who already believe, that their language was pure and orthodox. But the
stubborn mind of an infidel, is guarded by secret, incurable suspicion;
and the Arian, or Socinian, who has seriously rejected the doctrine of a
Trinity, will not be shaken by the most plausible evidence of an
Athanasian miracle.

The Vandals and the Ostrogoths persevered in the profession of Arianism
till the final ruin of the kingdoms which they had founded in Africa and
Italy. The Barbarians of Gaul submitted to the orthodox dominion of the
Franks; and Spain was restored to the Catholic church by the voluntary
conversion of the Visigoths.

This salutary revolution  was hastened by the example of a royal martyr,
whom our calmer reason may style an ungrateful rebel. Leovigild, the
Gothic monarch of Spain, deserved the respect of his enemies, and the
love of his subjects; the Catholics enjoyed a free toleration, and his
Arian synods attempted, without much success, to reconcile their
scruples by abolishing the unpopular rite of a secondbaptism. His eldest
son Hermenegild, who was invested by his father with the royal diadem,
and the fair principality of Btica, contracted an honorable and orthodox
alliance with a Merovingian princess, the daughter of Sigebert, king of
Austrasia, and of the famous Brunechild. The beauteous Ingundis, who was
no more than thirteen years of age, was received, beloved, and
persecuted, in the Arian court of Toledo; and her religious constancy
was alternately assaulted with blandishments and violence by Goisvintha,
the Gothic queen, who abused the double claim of maternal authority.
Incensed by her resistance, Goisvintha seized the Catholic princess by
her long hair, inhumanly dashed her against the ground, kicked her till
she was covered with blood, and at last gave orders that she should be
stripped, and thrown into a basin, or fish-pond.  Love and honor might
excite Hermenegild to resent this injurious treatment of his bride; and
he was gradually persuaded that Ingundis suffered for the cause of
divine truth. Her tender complaints, and the weighty arguments of
Leander, archbishop of Seville, accomplished his conversion and the heir
of the Gothic monarchy was initiated in the Nicene faith by the solemn
rites of confirmation.  The rash youth, inflamed by zeal, and perhaps by
ambition, was tempted to violate the duties of a son and a subject; and
the Catholics of Spain, although they could not complain of persecution,
applauded his pious rebellion against an heretical father. The civil war
was protracted by the long and obstinate sieges of Merida, Cordova, and
Seville, which had strenuously espoused the party of Hermenegild He
invited the orthodox Barbarians, the Seuvi, and the Franks, to the
destruction of his native land; he solicited the dangerous aid of the
Romans, who possessed Africa, and a part of the Spanish coast; and his
holy ambassador, the archbishop Leander, effectually negotiated in
person with the Byzantine court. But the hopes of the Catholics were
crushed by the active diligence of the monarch who commanded the troops
and treasures of Spain; and the guilty Hermenegild, after his vain
attempts to resist or to escape, was compelled to surrender himself into
the hands of an incensed father. Leovigild was still mindful of that
sacred character; and the rebel, despoiled of the regal ornaments, was
still permitted, in a decent exile, to profess the Catholic religion.
His repeated and unsuccessful treasons at length provoked the
indignation of the Gothic king; and the sentence of death, which he
pronounced with apparent reluctance, was privately executed in the tower
of Seville. The inflexible constancy with which he refused to accept the
Arian communion, as the price of his safety, may excuse the honors that
have been paid to the memory of St. Hermenegild. His wife and infant son
were detained by the Romans in ignominious captivity; and this domestic
misfortune tarnished the glories of Leovigild, and imbittered the last
moments of his life.

His son and successor, Recared, the first Catholic king of Spain, had
imbibed the faith of his unfortunate brother, which he supported with
more prudence and success. Instead of revolting against his father,
Recared patiently expected the hour of his death. Instead of condemning
his memory, he piously supposed, that the dying monarch had abjured the
errors of Arianism, and recommended to his son the conversion of the
Gothic nation. To accomplish that salutary end, Recared convened an
assembly of the Arian clergy and nobles, declared himself a Catholic,
and exhorted them to imitate the example of their prince. The laborious
interpretation of doubtful texts, or the curious pursuit of metaphysical
arguments, would have excited an endless controversy; and the monarch
discreetly proposed to his illiterate audience two substantial and
visible arguments, -- the testimony of Earth, and of Heaven. The
Earthhad submitted to the Nicene synod: the Romans, the Barbarians, and
the inhabitants of Spain, unanimously professed the same orthodox creed;
and the Visigoths resisted, almost alone, the consent of the Christian
world. A superstitious age was prepared to reverence, as the testimony
of Heaven, the preternatural cures, which were performed by the skill or
virtue of the Catholic clergy; the baptismal fonts of Osset in Btica,
which were spontaneously replenished every year, on the vigil of Easter;
and the miraculous shrine of St. Martin of Tours, which had already
converted the Suevic prince and people of Gallicia.  The Catholic king
encountered some difficulties on this important change of the national
religion. A conspiracy, secretly fomented by the queen-dowager, was
formed against his life; and two counts excited a dangerous revolt in
the Narbonnese Gaul. But Recared disarmed the conspirators, defeated the
rebels, and executed severe justice; which the Arians, in their turn,
might brand with the reproach of persecution. Eight bishops, whose names
betray their Barbaric origin, abjured their errors; and all the books of
Arian theology were reduced to ashes, with the house in which they had
been purposely collected. The whole body of the Visigoths and Suevi were
allured or driven into the pale of the Catholic communion; the faith, at
least of the rising generation, was fervent and sincere: and the devout
liberality of the Barbarians enriched the churches and monasteries of
Spain. Seventy bishops, assembled in the council of Toledo, received the
submission of their conquerors; and the zeal of the Spaniards improved
the Nicene creed, by declaring the procession of the Holy Ghost from the
Son, as well as from the Father; a weighty point of doctrine, which
produced, long afterwards, the schism of the Greek and Latin churches.
The royal proselyte immediately saluted and consulted Pope Gregory,
surnamed the Great, a learned and holy prelate, whose reign was
distinguished by the conversion of heretics and infidels. The
ambassadors of Recared respectfully offered on the threshold of the
Vatican his rich presents of gold and gems; they accepted, as a
lucrative exchange, the hairs of St. John the Baptist; a cross, which
enclosed a small piece of the true wood; and a key, that contained some
particles of iron which had been scraped from the chains of St. Peter.

The same Gregory, the spiritual conqueror of Britain, encouraged the
pious Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards, to propagate the Nicene faith
among the victorious savages, whose recent Christianity was polluted by
the Arian heresy. Her devout labors still left room for the industry and
success of future missionaries; and many cities of Italy were still
disputed by hostile bishops. But the cause of Arianism was gradually
suppressed by the weight of truth, of interest, and of example; and the
controversy, which Egypt had derived from the Platonic school, was
terminated, after a war of three hundred years, by the final conversion
of the Lombards of Italy.

The first missionaries who preached the gospel to the Barbarians,
appealed to the evidence of reason, and claimed the benefit of
toleration.  But no sooner had they established their spiritual
dominion, than they exhorted the Christian kings to extirpate, without
mercy, the remains of Roman or Barbaric superstition. The successors of
Clovis inflicted one hundred lashes on the peasants who refused to
destroy their idols; the crime of sacrificing to the demons was punished
by the Anglo-Saxon laws with the heavier penalties of imprisonment and
confiscation; and even the wise Alfred adopted, as an indispensable
duty, the extreme rigor of the Mosaic institutions.  But the punishment
and the crime were gradually abolished among a Christian people; the
theological disputes of the schools were suspended by propitious
ignorance; and the intolerant spirit which could find neither idolaters
nor heretics, was reduced to the persecution of the Jews. That exiled
nation had founded some synagogues in the cities of Gaul; but Spain,
since the time of Hadrian, was filled with their numerous colonies.  The
wealth which they accumulated by trade, and the management of the
finances, invited the pious avarice of their masters; and they might be
oppressed without danger, as they had lost the use, and even the
remembrance, of arms. Sisebut, a Gothic king, who reigned in the
beginning of the seventh century, proceeded at once to the last extremes
of persecution.  Ninety thousand Jews were compelled to receive the
sacrament of baptism; the fortunes of the obstinate infidels were
confiscated, their bodies were tortured; and it seems doubtful whether
they were permitted to abandon their native country. The excessive zeal
of the Catholic king was moderated, even by the clergy of Spain, who
solemnly pronounced an inconsistent sentence: thatthe sacraments should
not be forcibly imposed; but thatthe Jews who had been baptized should
be constrained, for the honor of the church, to persevere in the
external practice of a religion which they disbelieved and detested.
Their frequent relapses provoked one of the successors of Sisebut to
banish the whole nation from his dominions; and a council of Toledo
published a decree, that every Gothic king should swear to maintain this
salutary edict. But the tyrants were unwilling to dismiss the victims,
whom they delighted to torture, or to deprive themselves of the
industrious slaves, over whom they might exercise a lucrative
oppression. The Jews still continued in Spain, under the weight of the
civil and ecclesiastical laws, which in the same country have been
faithfully transcribed in the Code of the Inquisition. The Gothic kings
and bishops at length discovered, that injuries will produce hatred, and
that hatred will find the opportunity of revenge. A nation, the secret
or professed enemies of Christianity, still multiplied in servitude and
distress; and the intrigues of the Jews promoted the rapid success of
the Arabian conquerors.

As soon as the Barbarians withdrew their powerful support, the unpopular
heresy of Arius sunk into contempt and oblivion. But the Greeks still
retained their subtle and loquacious disposition: the establishment of
an obscure doctrine suggested new questions, and new disputes; and it
was always in the power of an ambitious prelate, or a fanatic monk, to
violate the peace of the church, and, perhaps, of the empire. The
historian of the empire may overlook those disputes which were confined
to the obscurity of schools and synods. The Manichæans, who labored to
reconcile the religions of Christ and of Zoroaster, had secretly
introduced themselves into the provinces: but these foreign sectaries
were involved in the common disgrace of the Gnostics, and the Imperial
laws were executed by the public hatred. The rational opinions of the
Pelagians were propagated from Britain to Rome, Africa, and Palestine,
and silently expired in a superstitious age. But the East was distracted
by the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies; which attempted to explain
the mystery of the incarnation, and hastened the ruin of Christianity in
her native land. These controversies were first agitated under the reign
of the younger Theodosius: but their important consequences extend far
beyond the limits of the present volume. The metaphysical chain of
argument, the contests of ecclesiastical ambition, and their political
influence on the decline of the Byzantine empire, may afford an
interesting and instructive series of history, from the general councils
of Ephesus and Chalcedon, to the conquest of the East by the successors
of Mahomet.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis.

Part I.

Reign And Conversion Of Clovis. -- His Victories Over The Alemanni,
Burgundians, And Visigoths. -- Establishment Of The French Monarchy In
Gaul. -- Laws Of The Barbarians. -- State Of The Romans. -- The
Visigoths Of Spain. -- Conquest Of Britain By The Saxons.

The Gauls,  who impatiently supported the Roman yoke, received a
memorable lesson from one of the lieutenants of Vespasian, whose weighty
sense has been refined and expressed by the genius of Tacitus.  "The
protection of the republic has delivered Gaul from internal discord and
foreign invasions. By the loss of national independence, you have
acquired the name and privileges of Roman citizens. You enjoy, in common
with yourselves, the permanent benefits of civil government; and your
remote situation is less exposed to the accidental mischiefs of tyranny.
Instead of exercising the rights of conquest, we have been contented to
impose such tributes as are requisite for your own preservation. Peace
cannot be secured without armies; and armies must be supported at the
expense of the people. It is for your sake, not for our own, that we
guard the barrier of the Rhine against the ferocious Germans, who have
so often attempted, and who will always desire, to exchange the solitude
of their woods and morasses for the wealth and fertility of Gaul. The
fall of Rome would be fatal to the provinces; and you would be buried in
the ruins of that mighty fabric, which has been raised by the valor and
wisdom of eight hundred years. Your imaginary freedom would be insulted
and oppressed by a savage master; and the expulsion of the Romans would
be succeeded by the eternal hostilities of the Barbarian conquerors."
This salutary advice was accepted, and this strange prediction was
accomplished. In the space of four hundred years, the hardy Gauls, who
had encountered the arms of Cæsar, were imperceptibly melted into the
general mass of citizens and subjects: the Western empire was dissolved;
and the Germans, who had passed the Rhine, fiercely contended for the
possession of Gaul, and excited the contempt, or abhorrence, of its
peaceful and polished inhabitants. With that conscious pride which the
preeminence of knowledge and luxury seldom fails to inspire, they
derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North; their rustic
manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance,
equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell. The liberal studies
were still cultivated in the schools of Autun and Bordeaux; and the
language of Cicero and Virgil was familiar to the Gallic youth. Their
ears were astonished by the harsh and unknown sounds of the Germanic
dialect, and they ingeniously lamented that the trembling muses fled
from the harmony of a Burgundian lyre. The Gauls were endowed with all
the advantages of art and nature; but as they wanted courage to defend
them, they were justly condemned to obey, and even to flatter, the
victorious Barbarians, by whose clemency they held their precarious
fortunes and their lives.

As soon as Odoacer had extinguished the Western empire, he sought the
friendship of the most powerful of the Barbarians. The new sovereign of
Italy resigned to Euric, king of the Visigoths, all the Roman conquests
beyond the Alps, as far as the Rhine and the Ocean:  and the senate
might confirm this liberal gift with some ostentation of power, and
without any real loss of revenue and dominion. The lawful pretensions of
Euric were justified by ambition and success; and the Gothic nation
might aspire, under his command, to the monarchy of Spain and Gaul.
Arles and Marseilles surrendered to his arms: he oppressed the freedom
of Auvergne; and the bishop condescended to purchase his recall from
exile by a tribute of just, but reluctant praise. Sidonius waited before
the gates of the palace among a crowd of ambassadors and suppliants; and
their various business at the court of Bordeaux attested the power, and
the renown, of the king of the Visigoths. The Heruli of the distant
ocean, who painted their naked bodies with its crulean color, implored
his protection; and the Saxons respected the maritime provinces of a
prince, who was destitute of any naval force. The tall Burgundians
submitted to his authority; nor did he restore the captive Franks, till
he had imposed on that fierce nation the terms of an unequal peace. The
Vandals of Africa cultivated his useful friendship; and the Ostrogoths
of Pannonia were supported by his powerful aid against the oppression of
the neighboring Huns. The North (such are the lofty strains of the poet)
was agitated or appeased by the nod of Euric; the great king of Persia
consulted the oracle of the West; and the aged god of the Tyber was
protected by the swelling genius of the Garonne.  The fortune of nations
has often depended on accidents; and France may ascribe her greatness to
the premature death of the Gothic king, at a time when his son Alaric
was a helpless infant, and his adversary Clovis  an ambitious and
valiant youth.

While Childeric, the father of Clovis, lived an exile in Germany, he was
hospitably entertained by the queen, as well as by the king, of the
Thuringians. After his restoration, Basina escaped from her husband's
bed to the arms of her lover; freely declaring, that if she had known a
man wiser, stronger, or more beautiful, than Childeric, that man should
have been the object of her preference.  Clovis was the offspring of
this voluntary union; and, when he was no more than fifteen years of
age, he succeeded, by his father's death, to the command of the Salian
tribe. The narrow limits of his kingdom  were confined to the island of
the Batavians, with the ancient dioceses of Tournay and Arras;  and at
the baptism of Clovis the number of his warriors could not exceed five
thousand. The kindred tribes of the Franks, who had seated themselves
along the Belgic rivers, the Scheld, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the
Rhine, were governed by their independent kings, of the Merovingian
race; the equals, the allies, and sometimes the enemies of the Salic
prince. But the Germans, who obeyed, in peace, the hereditary
jurisdiction of their chiefs, were free to follow the standard of a
popular and victorious general; and the superior merit of Clovis
attracted the respect and allegiance of the national confederacy. When
he first took the field, he had neither gold and silver in his coffers,
nor wine and corn in his magazine;  but he imitated the example of
Cæsar, who, in the same country, had acquired wealth by the sword, and
purchased soldiers with the fruits of conquest. After each successful
battle or expedition, the spoils were accumulated in one common mass;
every warrior received his proportionable share; and the royal
prerogative submitted to the equal regulations of military law. The
untamed spirit of the Barbarians was taught to acknowledge the
advantages of regular discipline.  At the annual review of the month of
March, their arms were diligently inspected; and when they traversed a
peaceful territory, they were prohibited from touching a blade of grass.
The justice of Clovis was inexorable; and his careless or disobedient
soldiers were punished with instant death. It would be superfluous to
praise the valor of a Frank; but the valor of Clovis was directed by
cool and consummate prudence.  In all his transactions with mankind, he
calculated the weight of interest, of passion, and of opinion; and his
measures were sometimes adapted to the sanguinary manners of the
Germans, and sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome, and
Christianity. He was intercepted in the career of victory, since he died
in the forty-fifth year of his age: but he had already accomplished, in
a reign of thirty years, the establishment of the French monarchy in
Gaul.

The first exploit of Clovis was the defeat of Syagrius, the son of
Ægidius; and the public quarrel might, on this occasion, be inflamed by
private resentment. The glory of the father still insulted the
Merovingian race; the power of the son might excite the jealous ambition
of the king of the Franks. Syagrius inherited, as a patrimonial estate,
the city and diocese of Soissons: the desolate remnant of the second
Belgic, Rheims and Troyes, Beauvais and Amiens, would naturally submit
to the count or patrician:  and after the dissolution of the Western
empire, he might reign with the title, or at least with the authority,
of king of the Romans.  As a Roman, he had been educated in the liberal
studies of rhetoric and jurisprudence; but he was engaged by accident
and policy in the familiar use of the Germanic idiom. The independent
Barbarians resorted to the tribunal of a stranger, who possessed the
singular talent of explaining, in their native tongue, the dictates of
reason and equity. The diligence and affability of their judge rendered
him popular, the impartial wisdom of his decrees obtained their
voluntary obedience, and the reign of Syagrius over the Franks and
Burgundians seemed to revive the original institution of civil society.
In the midst of these peaceful occupations, Syagrius received, and
boldly accepted, the hostile defiance of Clovis; who challenged his
rival in the spirit, and almost in the language, of chivalry, to appoint
the day and the field  of battle. In the time of Cæsar Soissons would
have poured forth a body of fifty thousand horse and such an army might
have been plentifully supplied with shields, cuirasses, and military
engines, from the three arsenals or manufactures of the city.  But the
courage and numbers of the Gallic youth were long since exhausted; and
the loose bands of volunteers, or mercenaries, who marched under the
standard of Syagrius, were incapable of contending with the national
valor of the Franks. It would be ungenerous without some more accurate
knowledge of his strength and resources, to condemn the rapid flight of
Syagrius, who escaped, after the loss of a battle, to the distant court
of Thoulouse. The feeble minority of Alaric could not assist or protect
an unfortunate fugitive; the pusillanimous  Goths were intimidated by
the menaces of Clovis; and the Roman king, after a short confinement,
was delivered into the hands of the executioner. The Belgic cities
surrendered to the king of the Franks; and his dominions were enlarged
towards the East by the ample diocese of Tongres  which Clovis subdued
in the tenth year of his reign.

The name of the Alemanni has been absurdly derived from their imaginary
settlement on the banks of the LemanLake.  That fortunate district, from
the lake to the Avenche, and Mount Jura, was occupied by the
Burgundians.  The northern parts of Helvetia had indeed been subdued by
the ferocious Alemanni, who destroyed with their own hands the fruits of
their conquest. A province, improved and adorned by the arts of Rome,
was again reduced to a savage wilderness; and some vestige of the
stately Vindonissa may still be discovered in the fertile and populous
valley of the Aar.  From the source of the Rhine to its conflux with the
Mein and the Moselle, the formidable swarms of the Alemanni commanded
either side of the river, by the right of ancient possession, or recent
victory. They had spread themselves into Gaul, over the modern provinces
of Alsace and Lorraine; and their bold invasion of the kingdom of
Cologne summoned the Salic prince to the defence of his Ripuarian
allies. Clovis encountered the invaders of Gaul in the plain of Tolbiac,
about twenty-four miles from Cologne; and the two fiercest nations of
Germany were mutually animated by the memory of past exploits, and the
prospect of future greatness. The Franks, after an obstinate struggle,
gave way; and the Alemanni, raising a shout of victory, impetuously
pressed their retreat. But the battle was restored by the valor, and the
conduct, and perhaps by the piety, of Clovis; and the event of the
bloody day decided forever the alternative of empire or servitude. The
last king of the Alemanni was slain in the field, and his people were
slaughtered or pursued, till they threw down their arms, and yielded to
the mercy of the conqueror. Without discipline it was impossible for
them to rally: they had contemptuously demolished the walls and
fortifications which might have protected their distress; and they were
followed into the heart of their forests by an enemy not less active, or
intrepid, than themselves. The great Theodoric congratulated the victory
of Clovis, whose sister Albofleda the king of Italy had lately married;
but he mildly interceded with his brother in favor of the suppliants and
fugitives, who had implored his protection. The Gallic territories,
which were possessed by the Alemanni, became the prize of their
conqueror; and the haughty nation, invincible, or rebellious, to the
arms of Rome, acknowledged the sovereignty of the Merovingian kings, who
graciously permitted them to enjoy their peculiar manners and
institutions, under the government of official, and, at length, of
hereditary, dukes. After the conquest of the Western provinces, the
Franks alone maintained their ancient habitations beyond the Rhine. They
gradually subdued, and civilized, the exhausted countries, as far as the
Elbe, and the mountains of Bohemia; and the peace of Europe was secured
by the obedience of Germany.

Till the thirtieth year of his age, Clovis continued to worship the gods
of his ancestors.  His disbelief, or rather disregard, of Christianity,
might encourage him to pillage with less remorse the churches of a
hostile territory: but his subjects of Gaul enjoyed the free exercise of
religious worship; and the bishops entertained a more favorable hope of
the idolater, than of the heretics. The Merovingian prince had
contracted a fortunate alliance with the fair Clotilda, the niece of the
king of Burgundy, who, in the midst of an Arian court, was educated in
the profession of the Catholic faith. It was her interest, as well as
her duty, to achieve the conversion  of a Pagan husband; and Clovis
insensibly listened to the voice of love and religion. He consented
(perhaps such terms had been previously stipulated) to the baptism of
his eldest son; and though the sudden death of the infant excited some
superstitious fears, he was persuaded, a second time, to repeat the
dangerous experiment. In the distress of the battle of Tolbiac, Clovis
loudly invoked the God of Clotilda and the Christians; and victory
disposed him to hear, with respectful gratitude, the eloquent  Remigius,
bishop of Rheims, who forcibly displayed the temporal and spiritual
advantages of his conversion. The king declared himself satisfied of the
truth of the Catholic faith; and the political reasons which might have
suspended his public profession, were removed by the devout or loyal
acclamations of the Franks, who showed themselves alike prepared to
follow their heroic leader to the field of battle, or to the baptismal
font. The important ceremony was performed in the cathedral of Rheims,
with every circumstance of magnificence and solemnity that could impress
an awful sense of religion on the minds of its rude proselytes.  The new
Constantine was immediately baptized, with three thousand of his warlike
subjects; and their example was imitated by the remainder of the gentle
Barbarians, who, in obedience to the victorious prelate, adored the
cross which they had burnt, and burnt the idols which they had formerly
adored.  The mind of Clovis was susceptible of transient fervor: he was
exasperated by the pathetic tale of the passion and death of Christ;
and, instead of weighing the salutary consequences of that mysterious
sacrifice, he exclaimed, with indiscreet fury, "Had I been present at
the head of my valiant Franks, I would have revenged his injuries."  But
the savage conqueror of Gaul was incapable of examining the proofs of a
religion, which depends on the laborious investigation of historic
evidence and speculative theology. He was still more incapable of
feeling the mild influence of the gospel, which persuades and purifies
the heart of a genuine convert. His ambitious reign was a perpetual
violation of moral and Christian duties: his hands were stained with
blood in peace as well as in war; and, as soon as Clovis had dismissed a
synod of the Gallican church, he calmly assassinated allthe princes of
the Merovingian race.  Yet the king of the Franks might sincerely
worship the Christian God, as a Being more excellent and powerful than
his national deities; and the signal deliverance and victory of Tolbiac
encouraged Clovis to confide in the future protection of the Lord of
Hosts. Martin, the most popular of the saints, had filled the Western
world with the fame of those miracles which were incessantly performed
at his holy sepulchre of Tours. His visible or invisible aid promoted
the cause of a liberal and orthodox prince; and the profane remark of
Clovis himself, that St. Martin was an expensive friend,  need not be
interpreted as the symptom of any permanent or rational scepticism. But
earth, as well as heaven, rejoiced in the conversion of the Franks. On
the memorable day when Clovis ascended from the baptismal font, he
alone, in the Christian world, deserved the name and prerogatives of a
Catholic king. The emperor Anastasius entertained some dangerous errors
concerning the nature of the divine incarnation; and the Barbarians of
Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul, were involved in the Arian heresy. The
eldest, or rather the only, son of the church, was acknowledged by the
clergy as their lawful sovereign, or glorious deliverer; and the armies
of Clovis were strenuously supported by the zeal and fervor of the
Catholic faction.

Under the Roman empire, the wealth and jurisdiction of the bishops,
their sacred character, and perpetual office, their numerous dependants,
popular eloquence, and provincial assemblies, had rendered them always
respectable, and sometimes dangerous. Their influence was augmented with
the progress of superstition; and the establishment of the French
monarchy may, in some degree, be ascribed to the firm alliance of a
hundred prelates, who reigned in the discontented, or independent,
cities of Gaul. The slight foundations of the Armoricanrepublic had been
repeatedly shaken, or overthrown; but the same people still guarded
their domestic freedom; asserted the dignity of the Roman name; and
bravely resisted the predatory inroads, and regular attacks, of Clovis,
who labored to extend his conquests from the Seine to the Loire. Their
successful opposition introduced an equal and honorable union. The
Franks esteemed the valor of the Armoricans  and the Armoricans were
reconciled by the religion of the Franks. The military force which had
been stationed for the defence of Gaul, consisted of one hundred
different bands of cavalry or infantry; and these troops, while they
assumed the title and privileges of Roman soldiers, were renewed by an
incessant supply of the Barbarian youth. The extreme fortifications, and
scattered fragments of the empire, were still defended by their hopeless
courage. But their retreat was intercepted, and their communication was
impracticable: they were abandoned by the Greek princes of
Constantinople, and they piously disclaimed all connection with the
Arian usurpers of Gaul. They accepted, without shame or reluctance, the
generous capitulation, which was proposed by a Catholic hero; and this
spurious, or legitimate, progeny of the Roman legions, was distinguished
in the succeeding age by their arms, their ensigns, and their peculiar
dress and institutions. But the national strength was increased by these
powerful and voluntary accessions; and the neighboring kingdoms dreaded
the numbers, as well as the spirit, of the Franks. The reduction of the
Northern provinces of Gaul, instead of being decided by the chance of a
single battle, appears to have been slowly effected by the gradual
operation of war and treaty and Clovis acquired each object of his
ambition, by such efforts, or such concessions, as were adequate to its
real value. Hissavage character, and the virtues of Henry IV., suggest
the most opposite ideas of human nature; yet some resemblance may be
found in the situation of two princes, who conquered France by their
valor, their policy, and the merits of a seasonable conversion.

The kingdom of the Burgundians, which was defined by the course of two
Gallic rivers, the Saone and the Rhône, extended from the forest of
Vosges to the Alps and the sea of Marseilles.  The sceptre was in the
hands of Gundobald. That valiant and ambitious prince had reduced the
number of royal candidates by the death of two brothers, one of whom was
the father of Clotilda;  but his imperfect prudence still permitted
Godegesil, the youngest of his brothers, to possess the dependent
principality of Geneva. The Arian monarch was justly alarmed by the
satisfaction, and the hopes, which seemed to animate his clergy and
people after the conversion of Clovis; and Gundobald convened at Lyons
an assembly of his bishops, to reconcile, if it were possible, their
religious and political discontents. A vain conference was agitated
between the two factions. The Arians upbraided the Catholics with the
worship of three Gods: the Catholics defended their cause by theological
distinctions; and the usual arguments, objections, and replies were
reverberated with obstinate clamor; till the king revealed his secret
apprehensions, by an abrupt but decisive question, which he addressed to
the orthodox bishops. "If you truly profess the Christian religion, why
do you not restrain the king of the Franks? He has declared war against
me, and forms alliances with my enemies for my destruction. A sanguinary
and covetous mind is not the symptom of a sincere conversion: let him
show his faith by his works." The answer of Avitus, bishop of Vienna,
who spoke in the name of his brethren, was delivered with the voice and
countenance of an angel. "We are ignorant of the motives and intentions
of the king of the Franks: but we are taught by Scripture, that the
kingdoms which abandon the divine law are frequently subverted; and that
enemies will arise on every side against those who have made God their
enemy. Return, with thy people, to the law of God, and he will give
peace and security to thy dominions." The king of Burgundy, who was not
prepared to accept the condition which the Catholics considered as
essential to the treaty, delayed and dismissed the ecclesiastical
conference; after reproaching his bishops, that Clovis, their friend and
proselyte, had privately tempted the allegiance of his brother.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis. -- Part II.

The allegiance of his brother was already seduced; and the obedience of
Godegesil, who joined the royal standard with the troops of Geneva, more
effectually promoted the success of the conspiracy. While the Franks and
Burgundians contended with equal valor, his seasonable desertion decided
the event of the battle; and as Gundobald was faintly supported by the
disaffected Gauls, he yielded to the arms of Clovis, and hastily
retreated from the field, which appears to have been situate between
Langres and Dijon. He distrusted the strength of Dijon, a quadrangular
fortress, encompassed by two rivers, and by a wall thirty feet high, and
fifteen thick, with four gates, and thirty-three towers:  he abandoned
to the pursuit of Clovis the important cities of Lyons and Vienna; and
Gundobald still fled with precipitation, till he had reached Avignon, at
the distance of two hundred and fifty miles from the field of battle. A
long siege and an artful negotiation, admonished the king of the Franks
of the danger and difficulty of his enterprise. He imposed a tribute on
the Burgundian prince, compelled him to pardon and reward his brother's
treachery, and proudly returned to his own dominions, with the spoils
and captives of the southern provinces. This splendid triumph was soon
clouded by the intelligence, that Gundobald had violated his recent
obligations, and that the unfortunate Godegesil, who was left at Vienna
with a garrison of five thousand Franks,  had been besieged, surprised,
and massacred by his inhuman brother. Such an outrage might have
exasperated the patience of the most peaceful sovereign; yet the
conqueror of Gaul dissembled the injury, released the tribute, and
accepted the alliance, and military service, of the king of Burgundy.
Clovis no longer possessed those advantages which had assured the
success of the preceding war; and his rival, instructed by adversity,
had found new resources in the affections of his people. The Gauls or
Romans applauded the mild and impartial laws of Gundobald, which almost
raised them to the same level with their conquerors. The bishops were
reconciled, and flattered, by the hopes, which he artfully suggested, of
his approaching conversion; and though he eluded their accomplishment to
the last moment of his life, his moderation secured the peace, and
suspended the ruin, of the kingdom of Burgundy.

I am impatient to pursue the final ruin of that kingdom, which was
accomplished under the reign of Sigismond, the son of Gundobald. The
Catholic Sigismond has acquired the honors of a saint and martyr;  but
the hands of the royal saint were stained with the blood of his innocent
son, whom he inhumanly sacrificed to the pride and resentment of a step-
mother. He soon discovered his error, and bewailed the irreparable loss.
While Sigismond embraced the corpse of the unfortunate youth, he
received a severe admonition from one of his attendants: "It is not his
situation, O king! it is thine which deserves pity and lamentation." The
reproaches of a guilty conscience were alleviated, however, by his
liberal donations to the monastery of Agaunum, or St. Maurice, in
Vallais; which he himself had founded in honor of the imaginary martyrs
of the Thebæan legion.  A full chorus of perpetual psalmody was
instituted by the pious king; he assiduously practised the austere
devotion of the monks; and it was his humble prayer, that Heaven would
inflict in this world the punishment of his sins. His prayer was heard:
the avengers were at hand: and the provinces of Burgundy were
overwhelmed by an army of victorious Franks. After the event of an
unsuccessful battle, Sigismond, who wished to protract his life that he
might prolong his penance, concealed himself in the desert in a
religious habit, till he was discovered and betrayed by his subjects,
who solicited the favor of their new masters. The captive monarch, with
his wife and two children, was transported to Orleans, and buried alive
in a deep well, by the stern command of the sons of Clovis; whose
cruelty might derive some excuse from the maxims and examples of their
barbarous age. Their ambition, which urged them to achieve the conquest
of Burgundy, was inflamed, or disguised, by filial piety: and Clotilda,
whose sanctity did not consist in the forgiveness of injuries, pressed
them to revenge her father's death on the family of his assassin. The
rebellious Burgundians (for they attempted to break their chains) were
still permitted to enjoy their national laws under the obligation of
tribute and military service; and the Merovingian princes peaceably
reigned over a kingdom, whose glory and greatness had been first
overthrown by the arms of Clovis.

The first victory of Clovis had insulted the honor of the Goths. They
viewed his rapid progress with jealousy and terror; and the youthful
fame of Alaric was oppressed by the more potent genius of his rival.
Some disputes inevitably arose on the edge of their contiguous
dominions; and after the delays of fruitless negotiation, a personal
interview of the two kings was proposed and accepted. The conference of
Clovis and Alaric was held in a small island of the Loire, near Amboise.
They embraced, familiarly conversed, and feasted together; and separated
with the warmest professions of peace and brotherly love. But their
apparent confidence concealed a dark suspicion of hostile and
treacherous designs; and their mutual complaints solicited, eluded, and
disclaimed, a final arbitration. At Paris, which he already considered
as his royal seat, Clovis declared to an assembly of the princes and
warriors, the pretence, and the motive, of a Gothic war. "It grieves me
to see that the Arians still possess the fairest portion of Gaul. Let us
march against them with the aid of God; and, having vanquished the
heretics, we will possess and divide their fertile provinces."  The
Franks, who were inspired by hereditary valor and recent zeal, applauded
the generous design of their monarch; expressed their resolution to
conquer or die, since death and conquest would be equally profitable;
and solemnly protested that they would never shave their beards till
victory should absolve them from that inconvenient vow. The enterprise
was promoted by the public or private exhortations of Clotilda. She
reminded her husband how effectually some pious foundation would
propitiate the Deity, and his servants: and the Christian hero, darting
his battle-axe with a skilful and nervous band, "There, (said he,) on
that spot where my Francisca,  shall fall, will I erect a church in
honor of the holy apostles." This ostentatious piety confirmed and
justified the attachment of the Catholics, with whom he secretly
corresponded; and their devout wishes were gradually ripened into a
formidable conspiracy. The people of Aquitain were alarmed by the
indiscreet reproaches of their Gothic tyrants, who justly accused them
of preferring the dominion of the Franks: and their zealous adherent
Quintianus, bishop of Rodez,  preached more forcibly in his exile than
in his diocese. To resist these foreign and domestic enemies, who were
fortified by the alliance of the Burgundians, Alaric collected his
troops, far more numerous than the military powers of Clovis. The
Visigoths resumed the exercise of arms, which they had neglected in a
long and luxurious peace;  a select band of valiant and robust slaves
attended their masters to the field;  and the cities of Gaul were
compelled to furnish their doubtful and reluctant aid. Theodoric, king
of the Ostrogoths, who reigned in Italy, had labored to maintain the
tranquillity of Gaul; and he assumed, or affected, for that purpose, the
impartial character of a mediator. But the sagacious monarch dreaded the
rising empire of Clovis, and he was firmly engaged to support the
national and religious cause of the Goths.

The accidental, or artificial, prodigies which adorned the expedition of
Clovis, were accepted by a superstitious age, as the manifest
declaration of the divine favor. He marched from Paris; and as he
proceeded with decent reverence through the holy diocese of Tours, his
anxiety tempted him to consult the shrine of St. Martin, the sanctuary
and the oracle of Gaul. His messengers were instructed to remark the
words of the Psalm which should happen to be chanted at the precise
moment when they entered the church. Those words most fortunately
expressed the valor and victory of the champions of Heaven, and the
application was easily transferred to the new Joshua, the new Gideon,
who went forth to battle against the enemies of the Lord.  Orleans
secured to the Franks a bridge on the Loire; but, at the distance of
forty miles from Poitiers, their progress was intercepted by an
extraordinary swell of the River Vigenna or Vienne; and the opposite
banks were covered by the encampment of the Visigoths. Delay must be
always dangerous to Barbarians, who consume the country through which
they march; and had Clovis possessed leisure and materials, it might
have been impracticable to construct a bridge, or to force a passage, in
the face of a superior enemy. But the affectionate peasants who were
impatient to welcome their deliverer, could easily betray some unknown
or unguarded ford: the merit of the discovery was enhanced by the useful
interposition of fraud or fiction; and a white hart, of singular size
and beauty, appeared to guide and animate the march of the Catholic
army. The counsels of the Visigoths were irresolute and distracted. A
crowd of impatient warriors, presumptuous in their strength, and
disdaining to fly before the robbers of Germany, excited Alaric to
assert in arms the name and blood of the conquerors of Rome. The advice
of the graver chieftains pressed him to elude the first ardor of the
Franks; and to expect, in the southern provinces of Gaul, the veteran
and victorious Ostrogoths, whom the king of Italy had already sent to
his assistance. The decisive moments were wasted in idle deliberation
the Goths too hastily abandoned, perhaps, an advantageous post; and the
opportunity of a secure retreat was lost by their slow and disorderly
motions. After Clovis had passed the ford, as it is still named, of the
Hart, he advanced with bold and hasty steps to prevent the escape of the
enemy. His nocturnal march was directed by a flaming meteor, suspended
in the air above the cathedral of Poitiers; and this signal, which might
be previously concerted with the orthodox successor of St. Hilary, was
compared to the column of fire that guided the Israelites in the desert.
At the third hour of the day, about ten miles beyond Poitiers, Clovis
overtook, and instantly attacked, the Gothic army; whose defeat was
already prepared by terror and confusion. Yet they rallied in their
extreme distress, and the martial youths, who had clamorously demanded
the battle, refused to survive the ignominy of flight. The two kings
encountered each other in single combat. Alaric fell by the hand of his
rival; and the victorious Frank was saved by the goodness of his
cuirass, and the vigor of his horse, from the spears of two desperate
Goths, who furiously rode against him to revenge the death of their
sovereign. The vague expression of a mountain of the slain, serves to
indicate a cruel though indefinite slaughter; but Gregory has carefully
observed, that his valiant countryman Apollinaris, the son of Sidonius,
lost his life at the head of the nobles of Auvergne. Perhaps these
suspected Catholics had been maliciously exposed to the blind assault of
the enemy; and perhaps the influence of religion was superseded by
personal attachment or military honor.

Such is the empire of Fortune, (if we may still disguise our ignorance
under that popular name,) that it is almost equally difficult to foresee
the events of war, or to explain their various consequences. A bloody
and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession
of the field and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been
sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages. The decisive
battle of Poitiers was followed by the conquest of Aquitain. Alaric had
left behind him an infant son, a bastard competitor, factious nobles,
and a disloyal people; and the remaining forces of the Goths were
oppressed by the general consternation, or opposed to each other in
civil discord. The victorious king of the Franks proceeded without delay
to the siege of Angoulême. At the sound of his trumpets the walls of the
city imitated the example of Jericho, and instantly fell to the ground;
a splendid miracle, which may be reduced to the supposition, that some
clerical engineers had secretly undermined the foundations of the
rampart.  At Bordeaux, which had submitted without resistance, Clovis
established his winter quarters; and his prudent economy transported
from Thoulouse the royal treasures, which were deposited in the capital
of the monarchy. The conqueror penetrated as far as the confines of
Spain;  restored the honors of the Catholic church; fixed in Aquitain a
colony of Franks;  and delegated to his lieutenants the easy task of
subduing, or extirpating, the nation of the Visigoths. But the Visigoths
were protected by the wise and powerful monarch of Italy. While the
balance was still equal, Theodoric had perhaps delayed the march of the
Ostrogoths; but their strenuous efforts successfully resisted the
ambition of Clovis; and the army of the Franks, and their Burgundian
allies, was compelled to raise the siege of Arles, with the loss, as it
is said, of thirty thousand men. These vicissitudes inclined the fierce
spirit of Clovis to acquiesce in an advantageous treaty of peace. The
Visigoths were suffered to retain the possession of Septimania, a narrow
tract of sea-coast, from the Rhône to the Pyrenees; but the ample
province of Aquitain, from those mountains to the Loire, was
indissolubly united to the kingdom of France.

After the success of the Gothic war, Clovis accepted the honors of the
Roman consulship. The emperor Anastasius ambitiously bestowed on the
most powerful rival of Theodoric the title and ensigns of that eminent
dignity; yet, from some unknown cause, the name of Clovis has not been
inscribed in the Fasti either of the East or West.  On the solemn day,
the monarch of Gaul, placing a diadem on his head, was invested, in the
church of St. Martin, with a purple tunic and mantle. From thence he
proceeded on horseback to the cathedral of Tours; and, as he passed
through the streets, profusely scattered, with his own hand, a donative
of gold and silver to the joyful multitude, who incessantly repeated
their acclamations of Consuland Augustus. The actual or legal authority
of Clovis could not receive any new accessions from the consular
dignity. It was a name, a shadow, an empty pageant; and if the conqueror
had been instructed to claim the ancient prerogatives of that high
office, they must have expired with the period of its annual duration.
But the Romans were disposed to revere, in the person of their master,
that antique title which the emperors condescended to assume: the
Barbarian himself seemed to contract a sacred obligation to respect the
majesty of the republic; and the successors of Theodosius, by soliciting
his friendship, tacitly forgave, and almost ratified, the usurpation of
Gaul.

Twenty-five years after the death of Clovis this important concession
was more formally declared, in a treaty between his sons and the emperor
Justinian. The Ostrogoths of Italy, unable to defend their distant
acquisitions, had resigned to the Franks the cities of Arles and
Marseilles; of Arles, still adorned with the seat of a Prætorian
præfect, and of Marseilles, enriched by the advantages of trade and
navigation.  This transaction was confirmed by the Imperial authority;
and Justinian, generously yielding to the Franks the sovereignty of the
countries beyond the Alps, which they already possessed, absolved the
provincials from their allegiance; and established on a more lawful,
though not more solid, foundation, the throne of the Merovingians.  From
that era they enjoyed the right of celebrating at Arles the games of the
circus; and by a singular privilege, which was denied even to the
Persian monarch, the goldcoin, impressed with their name and image,
obtained a legal currency in the empire.  A Greek historian of that age
has praised the private and public virtues of the Franks, with a partial
enthusiasm, which cannot be sufficiently justified by their domestic
annals.  He celebrates their politeness and urbanity, their regular
government, and orthodox religion; and boldly asserts, that these
Barbarians could be distinguished only by their dress and language from
the subjects of Rome. Perhaps the Franks already displayed the social
disposition, and lively graces, which, in every age, have disguised
their vices, and sometimes concealed their intrinsic merit. Perhaps
Agathias, and the Greeks, were dazzled by the rapid progress of their
arms, and the splendor of their empire. Since the conquest of Burgundy,
Gaul, except the Gothic province of Septimania, was subject, in its
whole extent, to the sons of Clovis. They had extinguished the German
kingdom of Thuringia, and their vague dominion penetrated beyond the
Rhine, into the heart of their native forests. The Alemanni, and
Bavarians, who had occupied the Roman provinces of Rhætia and Noricum,
to the south of the Danube, confessed themselves the humble vassals of
the Franks; and the feeble barrier of the Alps was incapable of
resisting their ambition. When the last survivor of the sons of Clovis
united the inheritance and conquests of the Merovingians, his kingdom
extended far beyond the limits of modern France. Yet modern France, such
has been the progress of arts and policy, far surpasses, in wealth,
populousness, and power, the spacious but savage realms of Clotaire or
Dagobert.

The Franks, or French, are the only people of Europe who can deduce a
perpetual succession from the conquerors of the Western empire. But
their conquest of Gaul was followed by ten centuries of anarchy and
ignorance. On the revival of learning, the students, who had been formed
in the schools of Athens and Rome, disdained their Barbarian ancestors;
and a long period elapsed before patient labor could provide the
requisite materials to satisfy, or rather to excite, the curiosity of
more enlightened times.  At length the eye of criticism and philosophy
was directed to the antiquities of France; but even philosophers have
been tainted by the contagion of prejudice and passion. The most extreme
and exclusive systems, of the personal servitude of the Gauls, or of
their voluntary and equal alliance with the Franks, have been rashly
conceived, and obstinately defended; and the intemperate disputants have
accused each other of conspiring against the prerogative of the crown,
the dignity of the nobles, or the freedom of the people. Yet the sharp
conflict has usefully exercised the adverse powers of learning and
genius; and each antagonist, alternately vanquished and victorious has
extirpated some ancient errors, and established some interesting truths.
An impartial stranger, instructed by their discoveries, their disputes,
and even their faults, may describe, from the same original materials,
the state of the Roman provincials, after Gaul had submitted to the arms
and laws of the Merovingian kings.

The rudest, or the most servile, condition of human society, is
regulated, however, by some fixed and general rules. When Tacitus
surveyed the primitive simplicity of the Germans, he discovered some
permanent maxims, or customs, of public and private life, which were
preserved by faithful tradition till the introduction of the art of
writing, and of the Latin tongue.  Before the election of the
Merovingian kings, the most powerful tribe, or nation, of the Franks,
appointed four venerable chieftains to compose the Saliclaws;  and their
labors were examined and approved in three successive assemblies of the
people. After the baptism of Clovis, he reformed several articles that
appeared incompatible with Christianity: the Salic law was again amended
by his sons; and at length, under the reign of Dagobert, the code was
revised and promulgated in its actual form, one hundred years after the
establishment of the French monarchy. Within the same period, the
customs of the Ripuarianswere transcribed and published; and Charlemagne
himself, the legislator of his age and country, had accurately studied
the twonational laws, which still prevailed among the Franks.  The same
care was extended to their vassals; and the rude institutions of the
Alemanniand Bavarianswere diligently compiled and ratified by the
supreme authority of the Merovingian kings. The Visigothsand
Burgundians, whose conquests in Gaul preceded those of the Franks,
showed less impatience to attain one of the principal benefits of
civilized society. Euric was the first of the Gothic princes who
expressed, in writing, the manners and customs of his people; and the
composition of the Burgundian laws was a measure of policy rather than
of justice; to alleviate the yoke, and regain the affections, of their
Gallic subjects.  Thus, by a singular coincidence, the Germans framed
their artless institutions, at a time when the elaborate system of Roman
jurisprudence was finally consummated. In the Salic laws, and the
Pandects of Justinian, we may compare the first rudiments, and the full
maturity, of civil wisdom; and whatever prejudices may be suggested in
favor of Barbarism, our calmer reflections will ascribe to the Romans
the superior advantages, not only of science and reason, but of humanity
and justice. Yet the laws * of the Barbarians were adapted to their
wants and desires, their occupations and their capacity; and they all
contributed to preserve the peace, and promote the improvement, of the
society for whose use they were originally established. The
Merovingians, instead of imposing a uniform rule of conduct on their
various subjects, permitted each people, and each family, of their
empire, freely to enjoy their domestic institutions;  nor were the
Romans excluded from the common benefits of this legal toleration.  The
children embraced the lawof their parents, the wife that of her husband,
the freedman that of his patron; and in all causes where the parties
were of different nations, the plaintiff or accuser was obliged to
follow the tribunal of the defendant, who may always plead a judicial
presumption of right, or innocence. A more ample latitude was allowed,
if every citizen, in the presence of the judge, might declare the law
under which he desired to live, and the national society to which he
chose to belong. Such an indulgence would abolish the partial
distinctions of victory: and the Roman provincials might patiently
acquiesce in the hardships of their condition; since it depended on
themselves to assume the privilege, if they dared to assert the
character, of free and warlike Barbarians.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis. -- Part III.

When justice inexorably requires the death of a murderer, each private
citizen is fortified by the assurance, that the laws, the magistrate,
and the whole community, are the guardians of his personal safety. But
in the loose society of the Germans, revenge was always honorable, and
often meritorious: the independent warrior chastised, or vindicated,
with his own hand, the injuries which he had offered or received; and he
had only to dread the resentment of the sons and kinsmen of the enemy,
whom he had sacrificed to his selfish or angry passions. The magistrate,
conscious of his weakness, interposed, not to punish, but to reconcile;
and he was satisfied if he could persuade or compel the contending
parties to pay and to accept the moderate fine which had been
ascertained as the price of blood.  The fierce spirit of the Franks
would have opposed a more rigorous sentence; the same fierceness
despised these ineffectual restraints; and, when their simple manners
had been corrupted by the wealth of Gaul, the public peace was
continually violated by acts of hasty or deliberate guilt. In every just
government the same penalty is inflicted, or at least is imposed, for
the murder of a peasant or a prince. But the national inequality
established by the Franks, in their criminal proceedings, was the last
insult and abuse of conquest.  In the calm moments of legislation, they
solemnly pronounced, that the life of a Roman was of smaller value than
that of a Barbarian. The Antrustion,  a name expressive of the most
illustrious birth or dignity among the Franks, was appreciated at the
sum of six hundred pieces of gold; while the noble provincial, who was
admitted to the king's table, might be legally murdered at the expense
of three hundred pieces. Two hundred were deemed sufficient for a Frank
of ordinary condition; but the meaner Romans were exposed to disgrace
and danger by a trifling compensation of one hundred, or even fifty,
pieces of gold. Had these laws been regulated by any principle of equity
or reason, the public protection should have supplied, in just
proportion, the want of personal strength. But the legislator had
weighed in the scale, not of justice, but of policy, the loss of a
soldier against that of a slave: the head of an insolent and rapacious
Barbarian was guarded by a heavy fine; and the slightest aid was
afforded to the most defenceless subjects. Time insensibly abated the
pride of the conquerors and the patience of the vanquished; and the
boldest citizen was taught, by experience, that he might suffer more
injuries than he could inflict. As the manners of the Franks became less
ferocious, their laws were rendered more severe; and the Merovingian
kings attempted to imitate the impartial rigor of the Visigoths and
Burgundians.  Under the empire of Charlemagne, murder was universally
punished with death; and the use of capital punishments has been
liberally multiplied in the jurisprudence of modern Europe.

The civil and military professions, which had been separated by
Constantine, were again united by the Barbarians. The harsh sound of the
Teutonic appellations was mollified into the Latin titles of Duke, of
Count, or of Præfect; and the same officer assumed, within his district,
the command of the troops, and the administration of justice.  But the
fierce and illiterate chieftain was seldom qualified to discharge the
duties of a judge, which required all the faculties of a philosophic
mind, laboriously cultivated by experience and study; and his rude
ignorance was compelled to embrace some simple, and visible, methods of
ascertaining the cause of justice. In every religion, the Deity has been
invoked to confirm the truth, or to punish the falsehood of human
testimony; but this powerful instrument was misapplied and abused by the
simplicity of the German legislators. The party accused might justify
his innocence, by producing before their tribunal a number of friendly
witnesses, who solemnly declared their belief, or assurance, that he was
not guilty. According to the weight of the charge, this legal number of
compurgatorswas multiplied; seventy-two voices were required to absolve
an incendiary or assassin: and when the chastity of a queen of France
was suspected, three hundred gallant nobles swore, without hesitation,
that the infant prince had been actually begotten by her deceased
husband.  The sin and scandal of manifest and frequent perjuries engaged
the magistrates to remove these dangerous temptations; and to supply the
defects of human testimony by the famous experiments of fire and water.
These extraordinary trials were so capriciously contrived, that, in some
cases, guilt, and innocence in others, could not be proved without the
interposition of a miracle. Such miracles were really provided by fraud
and credulity; the most intricate causes were determined by this easy
and infallible method, and the turbulent Barbarians, who might have
disdained the sentence of the magistrate, submissively acquiesced in the
judgment of God.

But the trials by single combat gradually obtained superior credit and
authority, among a warlike people, who could not believe that a brave
man deserved to suffer, or that a coward deserved to live.  Both in
civil and criminal proceedings, the plaintiff, or accuser, the
defendant, or even the witness, were exposed to mortal challenge from
the antagonist who was destitute of legal proofs; and it was incumbent
on them either to desert their cause, or publicly to maintain their
honor, in the lists of battle. They fought either on foot, or on
horseback, according to the custom of their nation;  and the decision of
the sword, or lance, was ratified by the sanction of Heaven, of the
judge, and of the people. This sanguinary law was introduced into Gaul
by the Burgundians; and their legislator Gundobald  condescended to
answer the complaints and objections of his subject Avitus. "Is it not
true," said the king of Burgundy to the bishop, "that the event of
national wars, and private combats, is directed by the judgment of God;
and that his providence awards the victory to the juster cause?" By such
prevailing arguments, the absurd and cruel practice of judicial duels,
which had been peculiar to some tribes of Germany, was propagated and
established in all the monarchies of Europe, from Sicily to the Baltic.
At the end of ten centuries, the reign of legal violence was not totally
extinguished; and the ineffectual censures of saints, of popes, and of
synods, may seem to prove, that the influence of superstition is
weakened by its unnatural alliance with reason and humanity. The
tribunals were stained with the blood, perhaps, of innocent and
respectable citizens; the law, which now favors the rich, then yielded
to the strong; and the old, the feeble, and the infirm, were condemned,
either to renounce their fairest claims and possessions, to sustain the
dangers of an unequal conflict,  or to trust the doubtful aid of a
mercenary champion. This oppressive jurisprudence was imposed on the
provincials of Gaul, who complained of any injuries in their persons and
property. Whatever might be the strength, or courage, of individuals,
the victorious Barbarians excelled in the love and exercise of arms; and
the vanquished Roman was unjustly summoned to repeat, in his own person,
the bloody contest which had been already decided against his country.

A devouring host of one hundred and twenty thousand Germans had formerly
passed the Rhine under the command of Ariovistus. One third part of the
fertile lands of the Sequani was appropriated to their use; and the
conqueror soon repeated his oppressive demand of another third, for the
accommodation of a new colony of twenty-four thousand Barbarians, whom
he had invited to share the rich harvest of Gaul.  At the distance of
five hundred years, the Visigoths and Burgundians, who revenged the
defeat of Ariovistus, usurped the same unequal proportion of two
thirdsof the subject lands. But this distribution, instead of spreading
over the province, may be reasonably confined to the peculiar districts
where the victorious people had been planted by their own choice, or by
the policy of their leader. In these districts, each Barbarian was
connected by the ties of hospitality with some Roman provincial. To this
unwelcome guest, the proprietor was compelled to abandon two thirds of
his patrimony, but the German, a shepherd and a hunter, might sometimes
content himself with a spacious range of wood and pasture, and resign
the smallest, though most valuable, portion, to the toil of the
industrious husbandman.  The silence of ancient and authentic testimony
has encouraged an opinion, that the rapine of the Frankswas not
moderated, or disguised, by the forms of a legal division; that they
dispersed themselves over the provinces of Gaul, without order or
control; and that each victorious robber, according to his wants, his
avarice, and his strength, measured with his sword the extent of his new
inheritance. At a distance from their sovereign, the Barbarians might
indeed be tempted to exercise such arbitrary depredation; but the firm
and artful policy of Clovis must curb a licentious spirit, which would
aggravate the misery of the vanquished, whilst it corrupted the union
and discipline of the conquerors. * The memorable vase of Soissons is a
monument and a pledge of the regular distribution of the Gallic spoils.
It was the duty and the interest of Clovis to provide rewards for a
successful army, settlements for a numerous people; without inflicting
any wanton or superfluous injuries on the loyal Catholics of Gaul. The
ample fund, which he might lawfully acquire, of the Imperial patrimony,
vacant lands, and Gothic usurpations, would diminish the cruel necessity
of seizure and confiscation, and the humble provincials would more
patiently acquiesce in the equal and regular distribution of their loss.

The wealth of the Merovingian princes consisted in their extensive
domain. After the conquest of Gaul, they still delighted in the rustic
simplicity of their ancestors; the cities were abandoned to solitude and
decay; and their coins, their charters, and their synods, are still
inscribed with the names of the villas, or rural palaces, in which they
successively resided. One hundred and sixty of these palaces, a title
which need not excite any unseasonable ideas of art or luxury, were
scattered through the provinces of their kingdom; and if some might
claim the honors of a fortress, the far greater part could be esteemed
only in the light of profitable farms. The mansion of the long-haired
kings was surrounded with convenient yards and stables, for the cattle
and the poultry; the garden was planted with useful vegetables; the
various trades, the labors of agriculture, and even the arts of hunting
and fishing, were exercised by servile hands for the emolument of the
sovereign; his magazines were filled with corn and wine, either for sale
or consumption; and the whole administration was conducted by the
strictest maxims of private economy.  This ample patrimony was
appropriated to supply the hospitable plenty of Clovis and his
successors; and to reward the fidelity of their brave companions who,
both in peace and war, were devoted to their persona service. Instead of
a horse, or a suit of armor, each companion, according to his rank, or
merit, or favor, was invested with a benefice, the primitive name, and
most simple form, of the feudal possessions. These gifts might be
resumed at the pleasure of the sovereign; and his feeble prerogative
derived some support from the influence of his liberality. * But this
dependent tenure was gradually abolished  by the independent and
rapacious nobles of France, who established the perpetual property, and
hereditary succession, of their benefices; a revolution salutary to the
earth, which had been injured, or neglected, by its precarious masters.
Besides these royal and beneficiary estates, a large proportion had been
assigned, in the division of Gaul, of allodialand Saliclands: they were
exempt from tribute, and the Salic lands were equally shared among the
male descendants of the Franks.

In the bloody discord and silent decay of the Merovingian line, a new
order of tyrants arose in the provinces, who, under the appellation of
Seniors, or Lords, usurped a right to govern, and a license to oppress,
the subjects of their peculiar territory. Their ambition might be
checked by the hostile resistance of an equal: but the laws were
extinguished; and the sacrilegious Barbarians, who dared to provoke the
vengeance of a saint or bishop,  would seldom respect the landmarks of a
profane and defenceless neighbor. The common or public rights of nature,
such as they had always been deemed by the Roman jurisprudence,  were
severely restrained by the German conquerors, whose amusement, or rather
passion, was the exercise of hunting. The vague dominion which Manhas
assumed over the wild inhabitants of the earth, the air, and the waters,
was confined to some fortunate individuals of the human species. Gaul
was again overspread with woods; and the animals, who were reserved for
the use or pleasure of the lord, might ravage with impunity the fields
of his industrious vassals. The chase was the sacred privilege of the
nobles and their domestic servants. Plebeian transgressors were legally
chastised with stripes and imprisonment;  but in an age which admitted a
slight composition for the life of a citizen, it was a capital crime to
destroy a stag or a wild bull within the precincts of the royal forests.

According to the maxims of ancient war, the conqueror became the lawful
master of the enemy whom he had subdued and spared:  and the fruitful
cause of personal slavery, which had been almost suppressed by the
peaceful sovereignty of Rome, was again revived and multiplied by the
perpetual hostilities of the independent Barbarians. The Goth, the
Burgundian, or the Frank, who returned from a successful expedition,
dragged after him a long train of sheep, of oxen, and of human captives,
whom he treated with the same brutal contempt. The youths of an elegant
form and an ingenuous aspect were set apart for the domestic service; a
doubtful situation, which alternately exposed them to the favorable or
cruel impulse of passion. The useful mechanics and servants (smiths,
carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, cooks, gardeners, dyers, and workmen in
gold and silver, &c.) employed their skill for the use, or profit, of
their master. But the Roman captives, who were destitute of art, but
capable of labor, were condemned, without regard to their former rank,
to tend the cattle and cultivate the lands of the Barbarians. The number
of the hereditary bondsmen, who were attached to the Gallic estates, was
continually increased by new supplies; and the servile people, according
to the situation and temper of their lords, was sometimes raised by
precarious indulgence, and more frequently depressed by capricious
despotism.  An absolute power of life and death was exercised by these
lords; and when they married their daughters, a train of useful
servants, chained on the wagons to prevent their escape, was sent as a
nuptial present into a distant country.  The majesty of the Roman laws
protected the liberty of each citizen, against the rash effects of his
own distress or despair. But the subjects of the Merovingian kings might
alienate their personal freedom; and this act of legal suicide, which
was familiarly practised, is expressed in terms most disgraceful and
afflicting to the dignity of human nature.  The example of the poor, who
purchased life by the sacrifice of all that can render life desirable,
was gradually imitated by the feeble and the devout, who, in times of
public disorder, pusillanimously crowded to shelter themselves under the
battlements of a powerful chief, and around the shrine of a popular
saint. Their submission was accepted by these temporal or spiritual
patrons; and the hasty transaction irrecoverably fixed their own
condition, and that of their latest posterity. From the reign of Clovis,
during five successive centuries, the laws and manners of Gaul uniformly
tended to promote the increase, and to confirm the duration, of personal
servitude. Time and violence almost obliterated the intermediate ranks
of society; and left an obscure and narrow interval between the noble
and the slave. This arbitrary and recent division has been transformed
by pride and prejudice into a nationaldistinction, universally
established by the arms and the laws of the Merovingians. The nobles,
who claimed their genuine or fabulous descent from the independent and
victorious Franks, have asserted and abused the indefeasible right of
conquest over a prostrate crowd of slaves and plebeians, to whom they
imputed the imaginary disgrace of Gallic or Roman extraction.

The general state and revolutions of France, a name which was imposed by
the conquerors, may be illustrated by the particular example of a
province, a diocese, or a senatorial family. Auvergne had formerly
maintained a just preeminence among the independent states and cities of
Gaul. The brave and numerous inhabitants displayed a singular trophy;
the sword of Cæsar himself, which he had lost when he was repulsed
before the walls of Gergovia.  As the common offspring of Troy, they
claimed a fraternal alliance with the Romans;  and if each province had
imitated the courage and loyalty of Auvergne, the fall of the Western
empire might have been prevented or delayed. They firmly maintained the
fidelity which they had reluctantly sworn to the Visigoths, out when
their bravest nobles had fallen in the battle of Poitiers, they
accepted, without resistance, a victorious and Catholic sovereign. This
easy and valuable conquest was achieved and possessed by Theodoric, the
eldest son of Clovis: but the remote province was separated from his
Austrasian dominions, by the intermediate kingdoms of Soissons, Paris,
and Orleans, which formed, after their father's death, the inheritance
of his three brothers. The king of Paris, Childebert, was tempted by the
neighborhood and beauty of Auvergne.  The Upper country, which rises
towards the south into the mountains of the Cevennes, presented a rich
and various prospect of woods and pastures; the sides of the hills were
clothed with vines; and each eminence was crowned with a villa or
castle. In the Lower Auvergne, the River Allier flows through the fair
and spacious plain of Limagne; and the inexhaustible fertility of the
soil supplied, and still supplies, without any interval of repose, the
constant repetition of the same harvests.  On the false report, that
their lawful sovereign had been slain in Germany, the city and diocese
of Auvergne were betrayed by the grandson of Sidonius Apollinaris.
Childebert enjoyed this clandestine victory; and the free subjects of
Theodoric threatened to desert his standard, if he indulged his private
resentment, while the nation was engaged in the Burgundian war. But the
Franks of Austrasia soon yielded to the persuasive eloquence of their
king. "Follow me," said Theodoric, "into Auvergne; I will lead you into
a province, where you may acquire gold, silver, slaves, cattle, and
precious apparel, to the full extent of your wishes. I repeat my
promise; I give you the people and their wealth as your prey; and you
may transport them at pleasure into your own country." By the execution
of this promise, Theodoric justly forfeited the allegiance of a people
whom he devoted to destruction. His troops, reënforced by the fiercest
Barbarians of Germany,  spread desolation over the fruitful face of
Auvergne; and two places only, a strong castle and a holy shrine, were
saved or redeemed from their licentious fury. The castle of Meroliac
was seated on a lofty rock, which rose a hundred feet above the surface
of the plain; and a large reservoir of fresh water was enclosed, with
some arable lands, within the circle of its fortifications. The Franks
beheld with envy and despair this impregnable fortress; but they
surprised a party of fifty stragglers; and, as they were oppressed by
the number of their captives, they fixed, at a trifling ransom, the
alternative of life or death for these wretched victims, whom the cruel
Barbarians were prepared to massacre on the refusal of the garrison.
Another detachment penetrated as far as Brivas, or Brioude, where the
inhabitants, with their valuable effects, had taken refuge in the
sanctuary of St. Julian. The doors of the church resisted the assault;
but a daring soldier entered through a window of the choir, and opened a
passage to his companions. The clergy and people, the sacred and the
profane spoils, were rudely torn from the altar; and the sacrilegious
division was made at a small distance from the town of Brioude. But this
act of impiety was severely chastised by the devout son of Clovis. He
punished with death the most atrocious offenders; left their secret
accomplices to the vengeance of St. Julian; released the captives;
restored the plunder; and extended the rights of sanctuary five miles
round the sepulchre of the holy martyr.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis. -- Part IV.

Before the Austrasian army retreated from Auvergne, Theodoric exacted
some pledges of the future loyalty of a people, whose just hatred could
be restrained only by their fear. A select band of noble youths, the
sons of the principal senators, was delivered to the conqueror, as the
hostages of the faith of Childebert, and of their countrymen. On the
first rumor of war, or conspiracy, these guiltless youths were reduced
to a state of servitude; and one of them, Attalus,  whose adventures are
more particularly related, kept his master's horses in the diocese of
Treves. After a painful search, he was discovered, in this unworthy
occupation, by the emissaries of his grandfather, Gregory bishop of
Langres; but his offers of ransom were sternly rejected by the avarice
of the Barbarian, who required an exorbitant sum of ten pounds of gold
for the freedom of his noble captive. His deliverance was effected by
the hardy stratagem of Leo, an item belonging to the kitchens of the
bishop of Langres.  An unknown agent easily introduced him into the same
family. The Barbarian purchased Leo for the price of twelve pieces of
gold; and was pleased to learn that he was deeply skilled in the luxury
of an episcopal table: "Next Sunday," said the Frank, "I shall invite my
neighbors and kinsmen. Exert thy art, and force them to confess, that
they have never seen, or tasted, such an entertainment, even in the
king's house." Leo assured him, that if he would provide a sufficient
quantity of poultry, his wishes should be satisfied. The master who
already aspired to the merit of elegant hospitality, assumed, as his
own, the praise which the voracious guests unanimously bestowed on his
cook; and the dexterous Leo insensibly acquired the trust and management
of his household. After the patient expectation of a whole year, he
cautiously whispered his design to Attalus, and exhorted him to prepare
for flight in the ensuing night. At the hour of midnight, the
intemperate guests retired from the table; and the Frank's son-in-law,
whom Leo attended to his apartment with a nocturnal potation,
condescended to jest on the facility with which he might betray his
trust. The intrepid slave, after sustaining this dangerous raillery,
entered his master's bedchamber; removed his spear and shield; silently
drew the fleetest horses from the stable; unbarred the ponderous gates;
and excited Attalus to save his life and liberty by incessant diligence.
Their apprehensions urged them to leave their horses on the banks of the
Meuse;  they swam the river, wandered three days in the adjacent forest,
and subsisted only by the accidental discovery of a wild plum-tree. As
they lay concealed in a dark thicket, they heard the noise of horses;
they were terrified by the angry countenance of their master, and they
anxiously listened to his declaration, that, if he could seize the
guilty fugitives, one of them he would cut in pieces with his sword, and
would expose the other on a gibbet. A length, Attalus and his faithful
Leo reached the friendly habitation of a presbyter of Rheims, who
recruited their fainting strength with bread and wine, concealed them
from the search of their enemy, and safely conducted them beyond the
limits of the Austrasian kingdom, to the episcopal palace of Langres.
Gregory embraced his grandson with tears of joy, gratefully delivered
Leo, with his whole family, from the yoke of servitude, and bestowed on
him the property of a farm, where he might end his days in happiness and
freedom. Perhaps this singular adventure, which is marked with so many
circumstances of truth and nature, was related by Attalus himself, to
his cousin or nephew, the first historian of the Franks. Gregory of
Tours  was born about sixty years after the death of Sidonius
Apollinaris; and their situation was almost similar, since each of them
was a native of Auvergne, a senator, and a bishop. The difference of
their style and sentiments may, therefore, express the decay of Gaul;
and clearly ascertain how much, in so short a space, the human mind had
lost of its energy and refinement.

We are now qualified to despise the opposite, and, perhaps, artful,
misrepresentations, which have softened, or exaggerated, the oppression
of the Romans of Gaul under the reign of the Merovingians. The
conquerors never promulgated any universaledict of servitude, or
confiscation; but a degenerate people, who excused their weakness by the
specious names of politeness and peace, was exposed to the arms and laws
of the ferocious Barbarians, who contemptuously insulted their
possessions, their freedom, and their safety. Their personal injuries
were partial and irregular; but the great body of the Romans survived
the revolution, and still preserved the property, and privileges, of
citizens. A large portion of their lands was exacted for the use of the
Franks: but they enjoyed the remainder, exempt from tribute;  and the
same irresistible violence which swept away the arts and manufactures of
Gaul, destroyed the elaborate and expensive system of Imperial
despotism. The Provincials must frequently deplore the savage
jurisprudence of the Salic or Ripuarian laws; but their private life, in
the important concerns of marriage, testaments, or inheritance, was
still regulated by the Theodosian Code; and a discontented Roman might
freely aspire, or descend, to the title and character of a Barbarian.
The honors of the state were accessible to his ambition: the education
and temper of the Romans more peculiarly qualified them for the offices
of civil government; and, as soon as emulation had rekindled their
military ardor, they were permitted to march in the ranks, or even at
the head, of the victorious Germans. I shall not attempt to enumerate
the generals and magistrates, whose names  attest the liberal policy of
the Merovingians. The supreme command of Burgundy, with the title of
Patrician, was successively intrusted to three Romans; and the last, and
most powerful, Mummolus,  who alternately saved and disturbed the
monarchy, had supplanted his father in the station of count of Autun,
and left a treasury of thirty talents of gold, and two hundred and fifty
talents of silver. The fierce and illiterate Barbarians were excluded,
during several generations, from the dignities, and even from the
orders, of the church.  The clergy of Gaul consisted almost entirely of
native provincials; the haughty Franks fell at the feet of their
subjects, who were dignified with the episcopal character: and the power
and riches which had been lost in war, were insensibly recovered by
superstition.  In all temporal affairs, the Theodosian Code was the
universal law of the clergy; but the Barbaric jurisprudence had
liberally provided for their personal safety; a sub-deacon was
equivalent to two Franks; the antrustion, and priest, were held in
similar estimation: and the life of a bishop was appreciated far above
the common standard, at the price of nine hundred pieces of gold.  The
Romans communicated to their conquerors the use of the Christian
religion and Latin language;  but their language and their religion had
alike degenerated from the simple purity of the Augustan, and Apostolic
age. The progress of superstition and Barbarism was rapid and universal:
the worship of the saints concealed from vulgar eyes the God of the
Christians; and the rustic dialect of peasants and soldiers was
corrupted by a Teutonic idiom and pronunciation. Yet such intercourse of
sacred and social communion eradicated the distinctions of birth and
victory; and the nations of Gaul were gradually confounded under the
name and government of the Franks.

The Franks, after they mingled with their Gallic subjects, might have
imparted the most valuable of human gifts, a spirit and system of
constitutional liberty. Under a king, hereditary, but limited, the
chiefs and counsellors might have debated at Paris, in the palace of the
Cæsars: the adjacent field, where the emperors reviewed their mercenary
legions. would have admitted the legislative assembly of freemen and
warriors; and the rude model, which had been sketched in the woods of
Germany,  might have been polished and improved by the civil wisdom of
the Romans. But the careless Barbarians, secure of their personal
independence, disdained the labor of government: the annual assemblies
of the month of March were silently abolished; and the nation was
separated, and almost dissolved, by the conquest of Gaul.  The monarchy
was left without any regular establishment of justice, of arms, or of
revenue. The successors of Clovis wanted resolution to assume, or
strength to exercise, the legislative and executive powers, which the
people had abdicated: the royal prerogative was distinguished only by a
more ample privilege of rapine and murder; and the love of freedom, so
often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among
the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of
impunity. Seventy-five years after the death of Clovis, his grandson,
Gontran, king of Burgundy, sent an army to invade the Gothic possessions
of Septimania, or Languedoc. The troops of Burgundy, Berry, Auvergne,
and the adjacent territories, were excited by the hopes of spoil. They
marched, without discipline, under the banners of German, or Gallic,
counts: their attack was feeble and unsuccessful; but the friendly and
hostile provinces were desolated with indiscriminate rage. The
cornfields, the villages, the churches themselves, were consumed by
fire: the inhabitants were massacred, or dragged into captivity; and, in
the disorderly retreat, five thousand of these inhuman savages were
destroyed by hunger or intestine discord. When the pious Gontran
reproached the guilt or neglect of their leaders, and threatened to
inflict, not a legal sentence, but instant and arbitrary execution, they
accused the universal and incurable corruption of the people. "No one,"
they said, "any longer fears or respects his king, his duke, or his
count. Each man loves to do evil, and freely indulges his criminal
inclinations. The most gentle correction provokes an immediate tumult,
and the rash magistrate, who presumes to censure or restrain his
seditious subjects, seldom escapes alive from their revenge."  It has
been reserved for the same nation to expose, by their intemperate vices,
the most odious abuse of freedom; and to supply its loss by the spirit
of honor and humanity, which now alleviates and dignifies their
obedience to an absolute sovereign. *

The Visigoths had resigned to Clovis the greatest part of their Gallic
possessions; but their loss was amply compensated by the easy conquest,
and secure enjoyment, of the provinces of Spain. From the monarchy of
the Goths, which soon involved the Suevic kingdom of Gallicia, the
modern Spaniards still derive some national vanity; but the historian of
the Roman empire is neither invited, nor compelled, to pursue the
obscure and barren series of their annals.  The Goths of Spain were
separated from the rest of mankind by the lofty ridge of the Pyrenæan
mountains: their manners and institutions, as far as they were common to
the Germanic tribes, have been already explained. I have anticipated, in
the preceding chapter, the most important of their ecclesiastical
events, the fall of Arianism, and the persecution of the Jews; and it
only remains to observe some interesting circumstances which relate to
the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the Spanish kingdom.

After their conversion from idolatry or heresy, the Frank and the
Visigoths were disposed to embrace, with equal submission, the inherent
evils and the accidental benefits, of superstition. But the prelates of
France, long before the extinction of the Merovingian race, had
degenerated into fighting and hunting Barbarians. They disdained the use
of synods; forgot the laws of temperance and chastity; and preferred the
indulgence of private ambition and luxury to the general interest of the
sacerdotal profession.  The bishops of Spain respected themselves, and
were respected by the public: their indissoluble union disguised their
vices, and confirmed their authority; and the regular discipline of the
church introduced peace, order, and stability, into the government of
the state. From the reign of Recared, the first Catholic king, to that
of Witiza, the immediate predecessor of the unfortunate Roderic, sixteen
national councils were successively convened. The six metropolitans,
Toledo, Seville, Merida, Braga, Tarragona, and Narbonne, presided
according to their respective seniority; the assembly was composed of
their suffragan bishops, who appeared in person, or by their proxies;
and a place was assigned to the most holy, or opulent, of the Spanish
abbots. During the first three days of the convocation, as long as they
agitated the ecclesiastical question of doctrine and discipline, the
profane laity was excluded from their debates; which were conducted,
however, with decent solemnity. But, on the morning of the fourth day,
the doors were thrown open for the entrance of the great officers of the
palace, the dukes and counts of the provinces, the judges of the cities,
and the Gothic nobles, and the decrees of Heaven were ratified by the
consent of the people. The same rules were observed in the provincial
assemblies, the annual synods, which were empowered to hear complaints,
and to redress grievances; and a legal government was supported by the
prevailing influence of the Spanish clergy. The bishops, who, in each
revolution, were prepared to flatter the victorious, and to insult the
prostrate labored, with diligence and success, to kindle the flames of
persecution, and to exalt the mitre above the crown. Yet the national
councils of Toledo, in which the free spirit of the Barbarians was
tempered and guided by episcopal policy, have established some prudent
laws for the common benefit of the king and people. The vacancy of the
throne was supplied by the choice of the bishops and palatines; and
after the failure of the line of Alaric, the regal dignity was still
limited to the pure and noble blood of the Goths. The clergy, who
anointed their lawful prince, always recommended, and sometimes
practised, the duty of allegiance; and the spiritual censures were
denounced on the heads of the impious subjects, who should resist his
authority, conspire against his life, or violate, by an indecent union,
the chastity even of his widow. But the monarch himself, when he
ascended the throne, was bound by a reciprocal oath to God and his
people, that he would faithfully execute this important trust. The real
or imaginary faults of his administration were subject to the control of
a powerful aristocracy; and the bishops and palatines were guarded by a
fundamental privilege, that they should not be degraded, imprisoned,
tortured, nor punished with death, exile, or confiscation, unless by the
free and public judgment of their peers.

One of these legislative councils of Toledo examined and ratified the
code of laws which had been compiled by a succession of Gothic kings,
from the fierce Euric, to the devout Egica. As long as the Visigoths
themselves were satisfied with the rude customs of their ancestors, they
indulged their subjects of Aquitain and Spain in the enjoyment of the
Roman law. Their gradual improvement in arts, in policy, and at length
in religion, encouraged them to imitate, and to supersede, these foreign
institutions; and to compose a code of civil and criminal jurisprudence,
for the use of a great and united people. The same obligations, and the
same privileges, were communicated to the nations of the Spanish
monarchy; and the conquerors, insensibly renouncing the Teutonic idiom,
submitted to the restraints of equity, and exalted the Romans to the
participation of freedom. The merit of this impartial policy was
enhanced by the situation of Spain under the reign of the Visigoths. The
provincials were long separated from their Arian masters by the
irreconcilable difference of religion. After the conversion of Recared
had removed the prejudices of the Catholics, the coasts, both of the
Ocean and Mediterranean, were still possessed by the Eastern emperors;
who secretly excited a discontented people to reject the yoke of the
Barbarians, and to assert the name and dignity of Roman citizens. The
allegiance of doubtful subjects is indeed most effectually secured by
their own persuasion, that they hazard more in a revolt, than they can
hope to obtain by a revolution; but it has appeared so natural to
oppress those whom we hate and fear, that the contrary system well
deserves the praise of wisdom and moderation.

While the kingdom of the Franks and Visigoths were established in Gaul
and Spain, the Saxons achieved the conquest of Britain, the third great
diocese of the Præfecture of the West. Since Britain was already
separated from the Roman empire, I might, without reproach, decline a
story familiar to the most illiterate, and obscure to the most learned,
of my readers. The Saxons, who excelled in the use of the oar, or the
battle- axe, were ignorant of the art which could alone perpetuate the
fame of their exploits; the Provincials, relapsing into barbarism,
neglected to describe the ruin of their country; and the doubtful
tradition was almost extinguished, before the missionaries of Rome
restored the light of science and Christianity. The declamations of
Gildas, the fragments, or fables, of Nennius, the obscure hints of the
Saxon laws and chronicles, and the ecclesiastical tales of the venerable
Bede,  have been illustrated by the diligence, and sometimes embellished
by the fancy, of succeeding writers, whose works I am not ambitious
either to censure or to transcribe.  Yet the historian of the empire may
be tempted to pursue the revolutions of a Roman province, till it
vanishes from his sight; and an Englishman may curiously trace the
establishment of the Barbarians, from whom he derives his name, his
laws, and perhaps his origin.

About forty years after the dissolution of the Roman government,
Vortigern appears to have obtained the supreme, though precarious
command of the princes and cities of Britain. That unfortunate monarch
has been almost unanimously condemned for the weak and mischievous
policy of inviting  a formidable stranger, to repel the vexatious
inroads of a domestic foe. His ambassadors are despatched, by the
gravest historians, to the coast of Germany: they address a pathetic
oration to the general assembly of the Saxons, and those warlike
Barbarians resolve to assist with a fleet and army the suppliants of a
distant and unknown island. If Britain had indeed been unknown to the
Saxons, the measure of its calamities would have been less complete. But
the strength of the Roman government could not always guard the maritime
province against the pirates of Germany; the independent and divided
states were exposed to their attacks; and the Saxons might sometimes
join the Scots and the Picts, in a tacit, or express, confederacy of
rapine and destruction. Vortigern could only balance the various perils,
which assaulted on every side his throne and his people; and his policy
may deserve either praise or excuse, if he preferred the alliance of
thoseBarbarians, whose naval power rendered them the most dangerous
enemies and the most serviceable allies. Hengist and Horsa, as they
ranged along the Eastern coast with three ships, were engaged, by the
promise of an ample stipend, to embrace the defence of Britain; and
their intrepid valor soon delivered the country from the Caledonian
invaders. The Isle of Thanet, a secure and fertile district, was
allotted for the residence of these German auxiliaries, and they were
supplied, according to the treaty, with a plentiful allowance of
clothing and provisions. This favorable reception encouraged five
thousand warriors to embark with their families in seventeen vessels,
and the infant power of Hengist was fortified by this strong and
seasonable reenforcement. The crafty Barbarian suggested to Vortigern
the obvious advantage of fixing, in the neighborhood of the Picts, a
colony of faithful allies: a third fleet of forty ships, under the
command of his son and nephew, sailed from Germany, ravaged the Orkneys,
and disembarked a new army on the coast of Northumberland, or Lothian,
at the opposite extremity of the devoted land. It was easy to foresee,
but it was impossible to prevent, the impending evils. The two nations
were soon divided and exasperated by mutual jealousies. The Saxons
magnified all that they had done and suffered in the cause of an
ungrateful people; while the Britons regretted the liberal rewards which
could not satisfy the avarice of those haughty mercenaries. The causes
of fear and hatred were inflamed into an irreconcilable quarrel. The
Saxons flew to arms; and if they perpetrated a treacherous massacre
during the security of a feast, they destroyed the reciprocal confidence
which sustains the intercourse of peace and war.

Hengist, who boldly aspired to the conquest of Britain, exhorted his
countrymen to embrace the glorious opportunity: he painted in lively
colors the fertility of the soil, the wealth of the cities, the
pusillanimous temper of the natives, and the convenient situation of a
spacious solitary island, accessible on all sides to the Saxon fleets.
The successive colonies which issued, in the period of a century, from
the mouths of the Elbe, the Weser, and the Rhine, were principally
composed of three valiant tribes or nations of Germany; the Jutes, the
old Saxons, and the Angles. The Jutes, who fought under the peculiar
banner of Hengist, assumed the merit of leading their countrymen in the
paths of glory, and of erecting, in Kent, the first independent kingdom.
The fame of the enterprise was attributed to the primitive Saxons; and
the common laws and language of the conquerors are described by the
national appellation of a people, which, at the end of four hundred
years, produced the first monarchs of South Britain. The Angles were
distinguished by their numbers and their success; and they claimed the
honor of fixing a perpetual name on the country, of which they occupied
the most ample portion. The Barbarians, who followed the hopes of rapine
either on the land or sea, were insensibly blended with this triple
confederacy; the Frisians, who had been tempted by their vicinity to the
British shores, might balance, during a short space, the strength and
reputation of the native Saxons; the Danes, the Prussians, the Rugians,
are faintly described; and some adventurous Huns, who had wandered as
far as the Baltic, might embark on board the German vessels, for the
conquest of a new world.  But this arduous achievement was not prepared
or executed by the union of national powers. Each intrepid chieftain,
according to the measure of his fame and fortunes, assembled his
followers; equipped a fleet of three, or perhaps of sixty, vessels;
chose the place of the attack; and conducted his subsequent operations
according to the events of the war, and the dictates of his private
interest. In the invasion of Britain many heroes vanquished and fell;
but only seven victorious leaders assumed, or at least maintained, the
title of kings. Seven independent thrones, the Saxon Heptarchy, * were
founded by the conquerors, and seven families, one of which has been
continued, by female succession, to our present sovereign, derived their
equal and sacred lineage from Woden, the god of war. It has been
pretended, that this republic of kings was moderated by a general
council and a supreme magistrate. But such an artificial scheme of
policy is repugnant to the rude and turbulent spirit of the Saxons:
their laws are silent; and their imperfect annals afford only a dark and
bloody prospect of intestine discord.

A monk, who, in the profound ignorance of human life, has presumed to
exercise the office of historian, strangely disfigures the state of
Britain at the time of its separation from the Western empire. Gildas
describes in florid language the improvements of agriculture, the
foreign trade which flowed with every tide into the Thames and the
Severn the solid and lofty construction of public and private edifices;
he accuses the sinful luxury of the British people; of a people,
according to the same writer, ignorant of the most simple arts, and
incapable, without the aid of the Romans, of providing walls of stone,
or weapons of iron, for the defence of their native land.  Under the
long dominion of the emperors, Britain had been insensibly moulded into
the elegant and servile form of a Roman province, whose safety was
intrusted to a foreign power. The subjects of Honorius contemplated
their new freedom with surprise and terror; they were left destitute of
any civil or military constitution; and their uncertain rulers wanted
either skill, or courage, or authority, to direct the public force
against the common enemy. The introduction of the Saxons betrayed their
internal weakness, and degraded the character both of the prince and
people. Their consternation magnified the danger; the want of union
diminished their resources; and the madness of civil factions was more
solicitous to accuse, than to remedy, the evils, which they imputed to
the misconduct of their adversaries. Yet the Britons were not ignorant,
they could not be ignorant, of the manufacture or the use of arms; the
successive and disorderly attacks of the Saxons allowed them to recover
from their amazement, and the prosperous or adverse events of the war
added discipline and experience to their native valor.

While the continent of Europe and Africa yielded, without resistance, to
the Barbarians, the British island, alone and unaided, maintained a
long, a vigorous, though an unsuccessful, struggle, against the
formidable pirates, who, almost at the same instant, assaulted the
Northern, the Eastern, and the Southern coasts. The cities which had
been fortified with skill, were defended with resolution; the advantages
of ground, hills, forests, and morasses, were diligently improved by the
inhabitants; the conquest of each district was purchased with blood; and
the defeats of the Saxons are strongly attested by the discreet silence
of their annalist. Hengist might hope to achieve the conquest of
Britain; but his ambition, in an active reign of thirty-five years, was
confined to the possession of Kent; and the numerous colony which he had
planted in the North, was extirpated by the sword of the Britons. The
monarchy of the West Saxons was laboriously founded by the persevering
efforts of three martial generations. The life of Cerdic, one of the
bravest of the children of Woden, was consumed in the conquest of
Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight; and the loss which he sustained in the
battle of Mount Badon, reduced him to a state of inglorious repose.
Kenric, his valiant son, advanced into Wiltshire; besieged Salisbury, at
that time seated on a commanding eminence; and vanquished an army which
advanced to the relief of the city. In the subsequent battle of
Marlborough,  his British enemies displayed their military science.
Their troops were formed in three lines; each line consisted of three
distinct bodies, and the cavalry, the archers, and the pikemen, were
distributed according to the principles of Roman tactics. The Saxons
charged in one weighty column, boldly encountered with their short
swords the long lances of the Britons, and maintained an equal conflict
till the approach of night. Two decisive victories, the death of three
British kings, and the reduction of Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester,
established the fame and power of Ceaulin, the grandson of Cerdic, who
carried his victorious arms to the banks of the Severn.

After a war of a hundred years, the independent Britons still occupied
the whole extent of the Western coast, from the wall of Antoninus to the
extreme promontory of Cornwall; and the principal cities of the inland
country still opposed the arms of the Barbarians. Resistance became more
languid, as the number and boldness of the assailants continually
increased. Winning their way by slow and painful efforts, the Saxons,
the Angles, and their various confederates, advanced from the North,
from the East, and from the South, till their victorious banners were
united in the centre of the island. Beyond the Severn the Britons still
asserted their national freedom, which survived the heptarchy, and even
the monarchy, of the Saxons. The bravest warriors, who preferred exile
to slavery, found a secure refuge in the mountains of Wales: the
reluctant submission of Cornwall was delayed for some ages;  and a band
of fugitives acquired a settlement in Gaul, by their own valor, or the
liberality of the Merovingian kings.  The Western angle of Armorica
acquired the new appellations of Cornwall, and the Lesser Britain; and
the vacant lands of the Osismii were filled by a strange people, who,
under the authority of their counts and bishops, preserved the laws and
language of their ancestors. To the feeble descendants of Clovis and
Charlemagne, the Britons of Armorica refused the customary tribute,
subdued the neighboring dioceses of Vannes, Rennes, and Nantes, and
formed a powerful, though vassal, state, which has been united to the
crown of France.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis. -- Part V.

In a century of perpetual, or at least implacable, war, much courage,
and some skill, must have been exerted for the defence of Britain. Yet
if the memory of its champions is almost buried in oblivion, we need not
repine; since every age, however destitute of science or virtue,
sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown. The tomb of
Vortimer, the son of Vortigern, was erected on the margin of the
sea-shore, as a landmark formidable to the Saxons, whom he had thrice
vanquished in the fields of Kent. Ambrosius Aurelian was descended from
a noble family of Romans;  his modesty was equal to his valor, and his
valor, till the last fatal action,  was crowned with splendid success.
But every British name is effaced by the illustrious name of Arthur,
the hereditary prince of the Silures, in South Wales, and the elective
king or general of the nation. According to the most rational account,
he defeated, in twelve successive battles, the Angles of the North, and
the Saxons of the West; but the declining age of the hero was imbittered
by popular ingratitude and domestic misfortunes. The events of his life
are less interesting than the singular revolutions of his fame. During a
period of five hundred years the tradition of his exploits was
preserved, and rudely embellished, by the obscure bards of Wales and
Armorica, who were odious to the Saxons, and unknown to the rest of
mankind. The pride and curiosity of the Norman conquerors prompted them
to inquire into the ancient history of Britain: they listened with fond
credulity to the tale of Arthur, and eagerly applauded the merit of a
prince who had triumphed over the Saxons, their common enemies. His
romance, transcribed in the Latin of Jeffrey of Monmouth, and afterwards
translated into the fashionable idiom of the times, was enriched with
the various, though incoherent, ornaments which were familiar to the
experience, the learning, or the fancy, of the twelfth century. The
progress of a Phrygian colony, from the Tyber to the Thames, was easily
ingrafted on the fable of the Æneid; and the royal ancestors of Arthur
derived their origin from Troy, and claimed their alliance with the
Cæsars. His trophies were decorated with captive provinces and Imperial
titles; and his Danish victories avenged the recent injuries of his
country. The gallantry and superstition of the British hero, his feasts
and tournaments, and the memorable institution of his Knights of the
Round Table, were faithfully copied from the reigning manners of
chivalry; and the fabulous exploits of Uther's son appear less
incredible than the adventures which were achieved by the enterprising
valor of the Normans. Pilgrimage, and the holy wars, introduced into
Europe the specious miracles of Arabian magic. Fairies and giants,
flying dragons, and enchanted palaces, were blended with the more simple
fictions of the West; and the fate of Britain depended on the art, or
the predictions, of Merlin. Every nation embraced and adorned the
popular romance of Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table: their
names were celebrated in Greece and Italy; and the voluminous tales of
Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristram were devoutly studied by the princes and
nobles, who disregarded the genuine heroes and historians of antiquity.
At length the light of science and reason was rekindled; the talisman
was broken; the visionary fabric melted into air; and by a natural,
though unjust, reverse of the public opinion, the severity of the
present age is inclined to question the existenceof Arthur.

Resistance, if it cannot avert, must increase the miseries of conquest;
and conquest has never appeared more dreadful and destructive than in
the hands of the Saxons; who hated the valor of their enemies, disdained
the faith of treaties, and violated, without remorse, the most sacred
objects of the Christian worship. The fields of battle might be traced,
almost in every district, by monuments of bones; the fragments of
falling towers were stained with blood; the last of the Britons, without
distinction of age or sex, was massacred,  in the ruins of Anderida;
and the repetition of such calamities was frequent and familiar under
the Saxon heptarchy. The arts and religion, the laws and language, which
the Romans had so carefully planted in Britain, were extirpated by their
barbarous successors. After the destruction of the principal churches,
the bishops, who had declined the crown of martyrdom, retired with the
holy relics into Wales and Armorica; the remains of their flocks were
left destitute of any spiritual food; the practice, and even the
remembrance, of Christianity were abolished; and the British clergy
might obtain some comfort from the damnation of the idolatrous
strangers. The kings of France maintained the privileges of their Roman
subjects; but the ferocious Saxons trampled on the laws of Rome, and of
the emperors. The proceedings of civil and criminal jurisdiction, the
titles of honor, the forms of office, the ranks of society, and even the
domestic rights of marriage, testament, and inheritance, were finally
suppressed; and the indiscriminate crowd of noble and plebeian slaves
was governed by the traditionary customs, which had been coarsely framed
for the shepherds and pirates of Germany. The language of science, of
business, and of conversation, which had been introduced by the Romans,
was lost in the general desolation. A sufficient number of Latin or
Celtic words might be assumed by the Germans, to express their new wants
and ideas;  but those illiteratePagans preserved and established the use
of their national dialect.  Almost every name, conspicuous either in the
church or state, reveals its Teutonic origin;  and the geography of
Englandwas universally inscribed with foreign characters and
appellations. The example of a revolution, so rapid and so complete, may
not easily be found; but it will excite a probable suspicion, that the
arts of Rome were less deeply rooted in Britain than in Gaul or Spain;
and that the native rudeness of the country and its inhabitants was
covered by a thin varnish of Italian manners.

This strange alteration has persuaded historians, and even philosophers,
that the provincials of Britain were totally exterminated; and that the
vacant land was again peopled by the perpetual influx, and rapid
increase, of the German colonies. Three hundred thousand Saxons are
saidto have obeyed the summons of Hengist;  the entire emigration of the
Angles was attested, in the age of Bede, by the solitude of their native
country;  and our experience has shown the free propagation of the human
race, if they are cast on a fruitful wilderness, where their steps are
unconfined, and their subsistence is plentiful. The Saxon kingdoms
displayed the face of recent discovery and cultivation; the towns were
small, the villages were distant; the husbandry was languid and
unskilful; four sheep were equivalent to an acre of the best land;  an
ample space of wood and morass was resigned to the vague dominion of
nature; and the modern bishopric of Durham, the whole territory from the
Tyne to the Tees, had returned to its primitive state of a savage and
solitary forest.  Such imperfect population might have been supplied, in
some generations, by the English colonies; but neither reason nor facts
can justify the unnatural supposition, that the Saxons of Britain
remained alone in the desert which they had subdued. After the
sanguinary Barbarians had secured their dominion, and gratified their
revenge, it was their interest to preserve the peasants as well as the
cattle, of the unresisting country. In each successive revolution, the
patient herd becomes the property of its new masters; and the salutary
compact of food and labor is silently ratified by their mutual
necessities. Wilfrid, the apostle of Sussex,  accepted from his royal
convert the gift of the peninsula of Selsey, near Chichester, with the
persons and property of its inhabitants, who then amounted to
eighty-seven families. He released them at once from spiritual and
temporal bondage; and two hundred and fifty slaves of both sexes were
baptized by their indulgent master. The kingdom of Sussex, which spread
from the sea to the Thames, contained seven thousand families; twelve
hundred were ascribed to the Isle of Wight; and, if we multiply this
vague computation, it may seem probable, that England was cultivated by
a million of servants, or villains, who were attached to the estates of
their arbitrary landlords. The indigent Barbarians were often tempted to
sell their children, or themselves into perpetual, and even foreign,
bondage;  yet the special exemptions which were granted to
nationalslaves,  sufficiently declare that they were much less numerous
than the strangers and captives, who had lost their liberty, or changed
their masters, by the accidents of war. When time and religion had
mitigated the fierce spirit of the Anglo-Saxons, the laws encouraged the
frequent practice of manumission; and their subjects, of Welsh or
Cambrian extraction, assumed the respectable station of inferior
freemen, possessed of lands, and entitled to the rights of civil
society.  Such gentle treatment might secure the allegiance of a fierce
people, who had been recently subdued on the confines of Wales and
Cornwall. The sage Ina, the legislator of Wessex, united the two nations
in the bands of domestic alliance; and four British lords of
Somersetshire may be honorably distinguished in the court of a Saxon
monarch.

The independent Britons appear to have relapsed into the state of
original barbarism, from whence they had been imperfectly reclaimed.
Separated by their enemies from the rest of mankind, they soon became an
object of scandal and abhorrence to the Catholic world.  Christianity
was still professed in the mountains of Wales; but the rude schismatics,
in the formof the clerical tonsure, and in the dayof the celebration of
Easter, obstinately resisted the imperious mandates of the Roman
pontiffs. The use of the Latin language was insensibly abolished, and
the Britons were deprived of the art and learning which Italy
communicated to her Saxon proselytes. In Wales and Armorica, the Celtic
tongue, the native idiom of the West, was preserved and propagated; and
the Bards, who had been the companions of the Druids, were still
protected, in the sixteenth century, by the laws of Elizabeth. Their
chief, a respectable officer of the courts of Pengwern, or Aberfraw, or
Caermarthen, accompanied the king's servants to war: the monarchy of the
Britons, which he sung in the front of battle, excited their courage,
and justified their depredations; and the songster claimed for his
legitimate prize the fairest heifer of the spoil. His subordinate
ministers, the masters and disciples of vocal and instrumental music,
visited, in their respective circuits, the royal, the noble, and the
plebeian houses; and the public poverty, almost exhausted by the clergy,
was oppressed by the importunate demands of the bards. Their rank and
merit were ascertained by solemn trials, and the strong belief of
supernatural inspiration exalted the fancy of the poet, and of his
audience.  The last retreats of Celtic freedom, the extreme territories
of Gaul and Britain, were less adapted to agriculture than to pasturage:
the wealth of the Britons consisted in their flocks and herds; milk and
flesh were their ordinary food; and bread was sometimes esteemed, or
rejected, as a foreign luxury. Liberty had peopled the mountains of
Wales and the morasses of Armorica; but their populousness has been
maliciously ascribed to the loose practice of polygamy; and the houses
of these licentious barbarians have been supposed to contain ten wives,
and perhaps fifty children.  Their disposition was rash and choleric;
they were bold in action and in speech;  and as they were ignorant of
the arts of peace, they alternately indulged their passions in foreign
and domestic war. The cavalry of Armorica, the spearmen of Gwent, and
the archers of Merioneth, were equally formidable; but their poverty
could seldom procure either shields or helmets; and the inconvenient
weight would have retarded the speed and agility of their desultory
operations. One of the greatest of the English monarchs was requested to
satisfy the curiosity of a Greek emperor concerning the state of
Britain; and Henry II. could assert, from his personal experience, that
Wales was inhabited by a race of naked warriors, who encountered,
without fear, the defensive armor of their enemies.

By the revolution of Britain, the limits of science, as well as of
empire, were contracted. The dark cloud, which had been cleared by the
Phnician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Cæsar, again
settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province was again
lost among the fabulous Islands of the Ocean. One hundred and fifty
years after the reign of Honorius, the gravest historian of the times
describes the wonders of a remote isle, whose eastern and western parts
are divided by an antique wall, the boundary of life and death, or, more
properly, of truth and fiction. The east is a fair country, inhabited by
a civilized people: the air is healthy, the waters are pure and
plentiful, and the earth yields her regular and fruitful increase. In
the west, beyond the wall, the air is infectious and mortal; the ground
is covered with serpents; and this dreary solitude is the region of
departed spirits, who are transported from the opposite shores in
substantial boats, and by living rowers. Some families of fishermen, the
subjects of the Franks, are excused from tribute, in consideration of
the mysterious office which is performed by these Charons of the ocean.
Each in his turn is summoned, at the hour of midnight, to hear the
voices, and even the names, of the ghosts: he is sensible of their
weight, and he feels himself impelled by an unknown, but irresistible
power. After this dream of fancy, we read with astonishment, that the
name of this island is Brittia; that it lies in the ocean, against the
mouth of the Rhine, and less than thirty miles from the continent; that
it is possessed by three nations, the Frisians, the Angles, and the
Britons; and that some Angles had appeared at Constantinople, in the
train of the French ambassadors. From these ambassadors Procopius might
be informed of a singular, though not improbable, adventure, which
announces the spirit, rather than the delicacy, of an English heroine.
She had been betrothed to Radiger, king of the Varni, a tribe of Germans
who touched the ocean and the Rhine; but the perfidious lover was
tempted, by motives of policy, to prefer his father's widow, the sister
of Theodebert, king of the Franks.  The forsaken princess of the Angles,
instead of bewailing, revenged her disgrace. Her warlike subjects are
said to have been ignorant of the use, and even of the form, of a horse;
but she boldly sailed from Britain to the mouth of the Rhine, with a
fleet of four hundred ships, and an army of one hundred thousand men.
After the loss of a battle, the captive Radiger implored the mercy of
his victorious bride, who generously pardoned his offence, dismissed her
rival, and compelled the king of the Varni to discharge with honor and
fidelity the duties of a husband.  This gallant exploit appears to be
the last naval enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons. The arts of navigation,
by which they acquired the empire of Britain and of the sea, were soon
neglected by the indolent Barbarians, who supinely renounced all the
commercial advantages of their insular situation. Seven independent
kingdoms were agitated by perpetual discord; and the British worldwas
seldom connected, either in peace or war, with the nations of the
Continent.

I have now accomplished the laborious narrative of the decline and fall
of the Roman empire, from the fortunate age of Trajan and the Antonines,
to its total extinction in the West, about five centuries after the
Christian era. At that unhappy period, the Saxons fiercely struggled
with the natives for the possession of Britain: Gaul and Spain were
divided between the powerful monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths, and
the dependent kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians: Africa was exposed
to the cruel persecution of the Vandals, and the savage insults of the
Moors: Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were afflicted
by an army of Barbarian mercenaries, whose lawless tyranny was succeeded
by the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. All the subjects of the empire,
who, by the use of the Latin language, more particularly deserved the
name and privileges of Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and
calamities of foreign conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany
established a new system of manners and government in the western
countries of Europe. The majesty of Rome was faintly represented by the
princes of Constantinople, the feeble and imaginary successors of
Augustus. Yet they continued to reign over the East, from the Danube to
the Nile and Tigris; the Gothic and Vandal kingdoms of Italy and Africa
were subverted by the arms of Justinian; and the history of the
Greekemperors may still afford a long series of instructive lessons, and
interesting revolutions.

Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis. -- Part VI.

General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West.

The Greeks, after their country had been reduced into a province,
imputed the triumphs of Rome, not to the merit, but to the fortune, of
the republic. The inconstant goddess, who so blindly distributes and
resumes her favors, had now consented (such was the language of envious
flattery) to resign her wings, to descend from her globe, and to fix her
firm and immutable throne on the banks of the Tyber.  A wiser Greek, who
has composed, with a philosophic spirit, the memorable history of his
own times, deprived his countrymen of this vain and delusive comfort, by
opening to their view the deep foundations of the greatness of Rome.
The fidelity of the citizens to each other, and to the state, was
confirmed by the habits of education, and the prejudices of religion.
Honor, as well as virtue, was the principle of the republic; the
ambitious citizens labored to deserve the solemn glories of a triumph;
and the ardor of the Roman youth was kindled into active emulation, as
often as they beheld the domestic images of their ancestors.  The
temperate struggles of the patricians and plebeians had finally
established the firm and equal balance of the constitution; which united
the freedom of popular assemblies, with the authority and wisdom of a
senate, and the executive powers of a regal magistrate. When the consul
displayed the standard of the republic, each citizen bound himself, by
the obligation of an oath, to draw his sword in the cause of his
country, till he had discharged the sacred duty by a military service of
ten years. This wise institution continually poured into the field the
rising generations of freemen and soldiers; and their numbers were
reënforced by the warlike and populous states of Italy, who, after a
brave resistance, had yielded to the valor and embraced the alliance, of
the Romans. The sage historian, who excited the virtue of the younger
Scipio, and beheld the ruin of Carthage,  has accurately described their
military system; their levies, arms, exercises, subordination, marches,
encampments; and the invincible legion, superior in active strength to
the Macedonian phalanx of Philip and Alexander. From these institutions
of peace and war Polybius has deduced the spirit and success of a
people, incapable of fear, and impatient of repose. The ambitious design
of conquest, which might have been defeated by the seasonable conspiracy
of mankind, was attempted and achieved; and the perpetual violation of
justice was maintained by the political virtues of prudence and courage.
The arms of the republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always
victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the
Danube, the Rhine, and the Ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or
brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were
successively broken by the ironmonarchy of Rome.

The rise of a city, which swelled into an empire, may deserve, as a
singular prodigy, the reflection of a philosophic mind. But the decline
of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.
Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction
multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident
had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to
the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and
obvious; and instead of inquiring whythe Roman empire was destroyed, we
should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious
legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and
mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards
violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their
personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient
of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to
their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government
was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of
Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of
Barbarians.

The decay of Rome has been frequently ascribed to the translation of the
seat of empire; but this History has already shown, that the powers of
government were divided, rather than removed. The throne of
Constantinople was erected in the East; while the West was still
possessed by a series of emperors who held their residence in Italy, and
claimed their equal inheritance of the legions and provinces. This
dangerous novelty impaired the strength, and fomented the vices, of a
double reign: the instruments of an oppressive and arbitrary system were
multiplied; and a vain emulation of luxury, not of merit, was introduced
and supported between the degenerate successors of Theodosius. Extreme
distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the
factions of a declining monarchy. The hostile favorites of Arcadius and
Honorius betrayed the republic to its common enemies; and the Byzantine
court beheld with indifference, perhaps with pleasure, the disgrace of
Rome, the misfortunes of Italy, and the loss of the West. Under the
succeeding reigns, the alliance of the two empires was restored; but the
aid of the Oriental Romans was tardy, doubtful, and ineffectual; and the
national schism of the Greeks and Latins was enlarged by the perpetual
difference of language and manners, of interests, and even of religion.
Yet the salutary event approved in some measure the judgment of
Constantine. During a long period of decay, his impregnable city
repelled the victorious armies of Barbarians, protected the wealth of
Asia, and commanded, both in peace and war, the important straits which
connect the Euxine and Mediterranean Seas. The foundation of
Constantinople more essentially contributed to the preservation of the
East, than to the ruin of the West.

As the happiness of a futurelife is the great object of religion, we may
hear without surprise or scandal, that the introduction or at least the
abuse, of Christianity had some influence on the decline and fall of the
Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience
and pusillanimity: the active virtues of society were discouraged; and
the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large
portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious
demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on
the useless multitudes of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of
abstinence and chastity. * Faith, zeal, curiosity, and the more earthly
passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological
discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious
factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody, and always implacable;
the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the
Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the
persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country. Yet party
spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as
of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated
the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their
frequent assemblies, and perpetual correspondence, maintained the
communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the gospel
was strengthened, though confined, by the spiritual alliance of the
Catholics. The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a
servile and effeminate age; but if superstition had not afforded a
decent retreat, the same vices would have tempted the unworthy Romans to
desert, from baser motives, the standard of the republic. Religious
precepts are easily obeyed, which indulge and sanctify the natural
inclinations of their votaries; but the pure and genuine influence of
Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect, effects
on the Barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman
empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious
religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious
temper of the conquerors.

This awful revolution may be usefully applied to the instruction of the
present age. It is the duty of a patriot to prefer and promote the
exclusive interest and glory of his native country: but a philosopher
may be permitted to enlarge his views, and to consider Europe as one
great republic whose various inhabitants have obtained almost the same
level of politeness and cultivation. The balance of power will continue
to fluctuate, and the prosperity of our own, or the neighboring
kingdoms, may be alternately exalted or depressed; but these partial
events cannot essentially injure our general state of happiness, the
system of arts, and laws, and manners, which so advantageously
distinguish, above the rest of mankind, the Europeans and their
colonies. The savage nations of the globe are the common enemies of
civilized society; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity, whether
Europe is still threatened with a repetition of those calamities, which
formerly oppressed the arms and institutions of Rome. Perhaps the same
reflections will illustrate the fall of that mighty empire, and explain
the probable causes of our actual security.

I. The Romans were ignorant of the extent of their danger, and the
number of their enemies. Beyond the Rhine and Danube, the Northern
countries of Europe and Asia were filled with innumerable tribes of
hunters and shepherds, poor, voracious, and turbulent; bold in arms, and
impatient to ravish the fruits of industry. The Barbarian world was
agitated by the rapid impulse of war; and the peace of Gaul or Italy was
shaken by the distant revolutions of China. The Huns, who fled before a
victorious enemy, directed their march towards the West; and the torrent
was swelled by the gradual accession of captives and allies. The flying
tribes who yielded to the Huns assumed in theirturn the spirit of
conquest; the endless column of Barbarians pressed on the Roman empire
with accumulated weight; and, if the foremost were destroyed, the vacant
space was instantly replenished by new assailants. Such formidable
emigrations can no longer issue from the North; and the long repose,
which has been imputed to the decrease of population, is the happy
consequence of the progress of arts and agriculture. Instead of some
rude villages, thinly scattered among its woods and morasses, Germany
now produces a list of two thousand three hundred walled towns: the
Christian kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden, and Poland, have been
successively established; and the Hanse merchants, with the Teutonic
knights, have extended their colonies along the coast of the Baltic, as
far as the Gulf of Finland. From the Gulf of Finland to the Eastern
Ocean, Russia now assumes the form of a powerful and civilized empire.
The plough, the loom, and the forge, are introduced on the banks of the
Volga, the Oby, and the Lena; and the fiercest of the Tartar hordes have
been taught to tremble and obey. The reign of independent Barbarism is
now contracted to a narrow span; and the remnant of Calmucks or Uzbecks,
whose forces may be almost numbered, cannot seriously excite the
apprehensions of the great republic of Europe.  Yet this apparent
security should not tempt us to forget, that new enemies, and unknown
dangers, may possiblyarise from some obscure people, scarcely visible in
the map of the world, The Arabs or Saracens, who spread their conquests
from India to Spain, had languished in poverty and contempt, till
Mahomet breathed into those savage bodies the soul of enthusiasm.

II. The empire of Rome was firmly established by the singular and
perfect coalition of its members. The subject nations, resigning the
hope, and even the wish, of independence, embraced the character of
Roman citizens; and the provinces of the West were reluctantly torn by
the Barbarians from the bosom of their mother country.  But this union
was purchased by the loss of national freedom and military spirit; and
the servile provinces, destitute of life and motion, expected their
safety from the mercenary troops and governors, who were directed by the
orders of a distant court. The happiness of a hundred millions depended
on the personal merit of one or two men, perhaps children, whose minds
were corrupted by education, luxury, and despotic power. The deepest
wounds were inflicted on the empire during the minorities of the sons
and grandsons of Theodosius; and, after those incapable princes seemed
to attain the age of manhood, they abandoned the church to the bishops,
the state to the eunuchs, and the provinces to the Barbarians. Europe is
now divided into twelve powerful, though unequal kingdoms, three
respectable commonwealths, and a variety of smaller, though independent,
states: the chances of royal and ministerial talents are multiplied, at
least, with the number of its rulers; and a Julian, or Semiramis, may
reign in the North, while Arcadius and Honorius again slumber on the
thrones of the South. The abuses of tyranny are restrained by the mutual
influence of fear and shame; republics have acquired order and
stability; monarchies have imbibed the principles of freedom, or, at
least, of moderation; and some sense of honor and justice is introduced
into the most defective constitutions by the general manners of the
times. In peace, the progress of knowledge and industry is accelerated
by the emulation of so many active rivals: in war, the European forces
are exercised by temperate and undecisive contests. If a savage
conqueror should issue from the deserts of Tartary, he must repeatedly
vanquish the robust peasants of Russia, the numerous armies of Germany,
the gallant nobles of France, and the intrepid freemen of Britain; who,
perhaps, might confederate for their common defence. Should the
victorious Barbarians carry slavery and desolation as far as the
Atlantic Ocean, ten thousand vessels would transport beyond their
pursuit the remains of civilized society; and Europe would revive and
flourish in the American world, which is already filled with her
colonies and institutions.

III. Cold, poverty, and a life of danger and fatigue, fortify the
strength and courage of Barbarians. In every age they have oppressed the
polite and peaceful nations of China, India, and Persia, who neglected,
and still neglect, to counterbalance these natural powers by the
resources of military art. The warlike states of antiquity, Greece,
Macedonia, and Rome, educated a race of soldiers; exercised their
bodies, disciplined their courage, multiplied their forces by regular
evolutions, and converted the iron, which they possessed, into strong
and serviceable weapons. But this superiority insensibly declined with
their laws and manners; and the feeble policy of Constantine and his
successors armed and instructed, for the ruin of the empire, the rude
valor of the Barbarian mercenaries. The military art has been changed by
the invention of gunpowder; which enables man to command the two most
powerful agents of nature, air and fire. Mathematics, chemistry,
mechanics, architecture, have been applied to the service of war; and
the adverse parties oppose to each other the most elaborate modes of
attack and of defence. Historians may indignantly observe, that the
preparations of a siege would found and maintain a flourishing colony;
yet we cannot be displeased, that the subversion of a city should be a
work of cost and difficulty; or that an industrious people should be
protected by those arts, which survive and supply the decay of military
virtue. Cannon and fortifications now form an impregnable barrier
against the Tartar horse; and Europe is secure from any future irruption
of Barbarians; since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be
barbarous. Their gradual advances in the science of war would always be
accompanied, as we may learn from the example of Russia, with a
proportionable improvement in the arts of peace and civil policy; and
they themselves must deserve a place among the polished nations whom
they subdue.

Should these speculations be found doubtful or fallacious, there still
remains a more humble source of comfort and hope. The discoveries of
ancient and modern navigators, and the domestic history, or tradition,
of the most enlightened nations, represent the human savage, naked both
in body and mind and destitute of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost of
language.  From this abject condition, perhaps the primitive and
universal state of man, he has gradually arisen to command the animals,
to fertilize the earth, to traverse the ocean and to measure the
heavens. His progress in the improvement and exercise of his mental and
corporeal faculties  has been irregular and various; infinitely slow in
the beginning, and increasing by degrees with redoubled velocity: ages
of laborious ascent have been followed by a moment of rapid downfall;
and the several climates of the globe have felt the vicissitudes of
light and darkness. Yet the experience of four thousand years should
enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine
to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards
perfection; but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the
face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.
The improvements of society may be viewed under a threefold aspect. 1.
The poet or philosopher illustrates his age and country by the efforts
of a singlemind; but those superior powers of reason or fancy are rare
and spontaneous productions; and the genius of Homer, or Cicero, or
Newton, would excite less admiration, if they could be created by the
will of a prince, or the lessons of a preceptor. 2. The benefits of law
and policy, of trade and manufactures, of arts and sciences, are more
solid and permanent: and manyindividuals may be qualified, by education
and discipline, to promote, in their respective stations, the interest
of the community. But this general order is the effect of skill and
labor; and the complex machinery may be decayed by time, or injured by
violence. 3. Fortunately for mankind, the more useful, or, at least,
more necessary arts, can be performed without superior talents, or
national subordination: without the powers of one, or the union of many.
Each village, each family, each individual, must always possess both
ability and inclination to perpetuate the use of fire  and of metals;
the propagation and service of domestic animals; the methods of hunting
and fishing; the rudiments of navigation; the imperfect cultivation of
corn, or other nutritive grain; and the simple practice of the mechanic
trades. Private genius and public industry may be extirpated; but these
hardy plants survive the tempest, and strike an everlasting root into
the most unfavorable soil. The splendid days of Augustus and Trajan were
eclipsed by a cloud of ignorance; and the Barbarians subverted the laws
and palaces of Rome. But the scythe, the invention or emblem of Saturn,
still continued annually to mow the harvests of Italy; and the human
feasts of the Læstrigons  have never been renewed on the coast of
Campania.

Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and religious zeal
have diffused, among the savages of the Old and New World, these
inestimable gifts: they have been successively propagated; they can
never be lost. We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion,
that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real
wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the
human race.

Vol. 3