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Title: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
       Volume 3

Author: Edward Gibbon

Commentator: H. H. Milman

Posting Date: June 7, 2008 [EBook #733]
Release Date: November, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ***




Produced by David Reed









HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

By Edward Gibbon

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Volume 3




Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius.--Part I.

     Death Of Gratian.--Ruin Of Arianism.--St. Ambrose.--First
     Civil War, Against Maximus.--Character, Administration, And
     Penance Of Theodosius.--Death Of Valentinian II.--Second
     Civil War, Against Eugenius.--Death Of Theodosius.

The fame of Gratian, before he had accomplished the twentieth year of
his age, was equal to that of the most celebrated princes. His gentle
and amiable disposition endeared him to his private friends, the
graceful affability of his manners engaged the affection of the people:
the men of letters, who enjoyed the liberality, acknowledged the taste
and eloquence, of their sovereign; his valor and dexterity in arms were
equally applauded by the soldiers; and the clergy considered the humble
piety of Gratian as the first and most useful of his virtues. The
victory of Colmar had delivered the West from a formidable invasion; and
the grateful provinces of the East ascribed the merits of Theodosius to
the author of his greatness, and of the public safety. Gratian survived
those memorable events only four or five years; but he survived his
reputation; and, before he fell a victim to rebellion, he had lost, in a
great measure, the respect and confidence of the Roman world.

The remarkable alteration of his character or conduct may not be imputed
to the arts of flattery, which had besieged the son of Valentinian from
his infancy; nor to the headstrong passions which the that gentle youth
appears to have escaped. A more attentive view of the life of Gratian
may perhaps suggest the true cause of the disappointment of the public
hopes. His apparent virtues, instead of being the hardy productions of
experience and adversity, were the premature and artificial fruits of
a royal education. The anxious tenderness of his father was continually
employed to bestow on him those advantages, which he might perhaps
esteem the more highly, as he himself had been deprived of them; and the
most skilful masters of every science, and of every art, had labored to
form the mind and body of the young prince. [1] The knowledge which they
painfully communicated was displayed with ostentation, and celebrated
with lavish praise. His soft and tractable disposition received the fair
impression of their judicious precepts, and the absence of passion might
easily be mistaken for the strength of reason. His preceptors gradually
rose to the rank and consequence of ministers of state: [2] and, as
they wisely dissembled their secret authority, he seemed to act with
firmness, with propriety, and with judgment, on the most important
occasions of his life and reign. But the influence of this elaborate
instruction did not penetrate beyond the surface; and the skilful
preceptors, who so accurately guided the steps of their royal pupil,
could not infuse into his feeble and indolent character the vigorous and
independent principle of action which renders the laborious pursuit
of glory essentially necessary to the happiness, and almost to the
existence, of the hero. As soon as time and accident had removed those
faithful counsellors from the throne, the emperor of the West insensibly
descended to the level of his natural genius; abandoned the reins of
government to the ambitious hands which were stretched forwards to grasp
them; and amused his leisure with the most frivolous gratifications. A
public sale of favor and injustice was instituted, both in the court and
in the provinces, by the worthless delegates of his power, whose merit
it was made sacrilege to question. [3] The conscience of the credulous
prince was directed by saints and bishops; [4] who procured an Imperial
edict to punish, as a capital offence, the violation, the neglect, or
even the ignorance, of the divine law. [5] Among the various arts
which had exercised the youth of Gratian, he had applied himself, with
singular inclination and success, to manage the horse, to draw the bow,
and to dart the javelin; and these qualifications, which might be useful
to a soldier, were prostituted to the viler purposes of hunting. Large
parks were enclosed for the Imperial pleasures, and plentifully stocked
with every species of wild beasts; and Gratian neglected the duties, and
even the dignity, of his rank, to consume whole days in the vain display
of his dexterity and boldness in the chase. The pride and wish of the
Roman emperor to excel in an art, in which he might be surpassed by the
meanest of his slaves, reminded the numerous spectators of the examples
of Nero and Commodus, but the chaste and temperate Gratian was a
stranger to their monstrous vices; and his hands were stained only with
the blood of animals. [6] The behavior of Gratian, which degraded his
character in the eyes of mankind, could not have disturbed the security
of his reign, if the army had not been provoked to resent their peculiar
injuries. As long as the young emperor was guided by the instructions of
his masters, he professed himself the friend and pupil of the soldiers;
many of his hours were spent in the familiar conversation of the camp;
and the health, the comforts, the rewards, the honors, of his faithful
troops, appeared to be the objects of his attentive concern. But,
after Gratian more freely indulged his prevailing taste for hunting
and shooting, he naturally connected himself with the most dexterous
ministers of his favorite amusement. A body of the Alani was received
into the military and domestic service of the palace; and the admirable
skill, which they were accustomed to display in the unbounded plains
of Scythia, was exercised, on a more narrow theatre, in the parks and
enclosures of Gaul. Gratian admired the talents and customs of these
favorite guards, to whom alone he intrusted the defence of his person;
and, as if he meant to insult the public opinion, he frequently showed
himself to the soldiers and people, with the dress and arms, the long
bow, the sounding quiver, and the fur garments of a Scythian warrior.
The unworthy spectacle of a Roman prince, who had renounced the dress
and manners of his country, filled the minds of the legions with grief
and indignation. [7] Even the Germans, so strong and formidable in
the armies of the empire, affected to disdain the strange and horrid
appearance of the savages of the North, who, in the space of a few
years, had wandered from the banks of the Volga to those of the Seine. A
loud and licentious murmur was echoed through the camps and garrisons of
the West; and as the mild indolence of Gratian neglected to extinguish
the first symptoms of discontent, the want of love and respect was not
supplied by the influence of fear. But the subversion of an established
government is always a work of some real, and of much apparent,
difficulty; and the throne of Gratian was protected by the sanctions of
custom, law, religion, and the nice balance of the civil and military
powers, which had been established by the policy of Constantine. It is
not very important to inquire from what cause the revolt of Britain
was produced. Accident is commonly the parent of disorder; the seeds
of rebellion happened to fall on a soil which was supposed to be more
fruitful than any other in tyrants and usurpers; [8] the legions of that
sequestered island had been long famous for a spirit of presumption
and arrogance; [9] and the name of Maximus was proclaimed, by the
tumultuary, but unanimous voice, both of the soldiers and of the
provincials. The emperor, or the rebel,--for this title was not yet
ascertained by fortune,--was a native of Spain, the countryman, the
fellow-soldier, and the rival of Theodosius whose elevation he had not
seen without some emotions of envy and resentment: the events of his
life had long since fixed him in Britain; and I should not be unwilling
to find some evidence for the marriage, which he is said to have
contracted with the daughter of a wealthy lord of Caernarvonshire. [10]
But this provincial rank might justly be considered as a state of exile
and obscurity; and if Maximus had obtained any civil or military office,
he was not invested with the authority either of governor or general.
[11] His abilities, and even his integrity, are acknowledged by
the partial writers of the age; and the merit must indeed have been
conspicuous that could extort such a confession in favor of the
vanquished enemy of Theodosius. The discontent of Maximus might incline
him to censure the conduct of his sovereign, and to encourage, perhaps,
without any views of ambition, the murmurs of the troops. But in the
midst of the tumult, he artfully, or modestly, refused to ascend the
throne; and some credit appears to have been given to his own positive
declaration, that he was compelled to accept the dangerous present of
the Imperial purple. [12]

[Footnote 1: Valentinian was less attentive to the religion of his son;
since he intrusted the education of Gratian to Ausonius, a professed
Pagan. (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. p. 125-138). The
poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age.]

[Footnote 2: Ausonius was successively promoted to the Praetorian
praefecture of Italy, (A.D. 377,) and of Gaul, (A.D. 378;) and was
at length invested with the consulship, (A.D. 379.) He expressed his
gratitude in a servile and insipid piece of flattery, (Actio Gratiarum,
p. 699-736,) which has survived more worthy productions.]

[Footnote 3: Disputare de principali judicio non oportet. Sacrilegii
enim instar est dubitare, an is dignus sit, quem elegerit imperator.
Codex Justinian, l. ix. tit. xxix. leg. 3. This convenient law was
revived and promulgated, after the death of Gratian, by the feeble court
of Milan.]

[Footnote 4: Ambrose composed, for his instruction, a theological
treatise on the faith of the Trinity: and Tillemont, (Hist. des
Empereurs, tom. v. p. 158, 169,) ascribes to the archbishop the merit of
Gratian's intolerant laws.]

[Footnote 5: Qui divinae legis sanctitatem nesciendo omittunt, aut
negligende violant, et offendunt, sacrilegium committunt. Codex
Justinian. l. ix. tit. xxix. leg. 1. Theodosius indeed may claim his
share in the merit of this comprehensive law.]

[Footnote 6: Ammianus (xxxi. 10) and the younger Victor acknowledge the
virtues of Gratian; and accuse, or rather lament, his degenerate taste.
The odious parallel of Commodus is saved by "licet incruentus;" and
perhaps Philostorgius (l. x. c. 10, and Godefroy, p. 41) had guarded
with some similar reserve, the comparison of Nero.]

[Footnote 7: Zosimus (l. iv. p. 247) and the younger Victor ascribe the
revolution to the favor of the Alani, and the discontent of the Roman
troops Dum exercitum negligeret, et paucos ex Alanis, quos ingenti auro
ad sa transtulerat, anteferret veteri ac Romano militi.]

[Footnote 8: Britannia fertilis provincia tyrannorum, is a memorable
expression, used by Jerom in the Pelagian controversy, and variously
tortured in the disputes of our national antiquaries. The revolutions
of the last age appeared to justify the image of the sublime Bossuet,
"sette ile, plus orageuse que les mers qui l'environment."]

[Footnote 9: Zosimus says of the British soldiers.]

[Footnote 10: Helena, the daughter of Eudda. Her chapel may still be
seen at Caer-segont, now Caer-narvon. (Carte's Hist. of England, vol. i.
p. 168, from Rowland's Mona Antiqua.) The prudent reader may not perhaps
be satisfied with such Welsh evidence.]

[Footnote 11: Camden (vol. i. introduct. p. ci.) appoints him governor
at Britain; and the father of our antiquities is followed, as usual, by
his blind progeny. Pacatus and Zosimus had taken some pains to prevent
this error, or fable; and I shall protect myself by their decisive
testimonies. Regali habitu exulem suum, illi exules orbis induerunt, (in
Panegyr. Vet. xii. 23,) and the Greek historian still less equivocally,
(Maximus) (l. iv. p. 248.)]

[Footnote 12: Sulpicius Severus, Dialog. ii. 7. Orosius, l. vii. c.
34. p. 556. They both acknowledge (Sulpicius had been his subject) his
innocence and merit. It is singular enough, that Maximus should be less
favorably treated by Zosimus, the partial adversary of his rival.]

But there was danger likewise in refusing the empire; and from the
moment that Maximus had violated his allegiance to his lawful sovereign,
he could not hope to reign, or even to live, if he confined his moderate
ambition within the narrow limits of Britain. He boldly and wisely
resolved to prevent the designs of Gratian; the youth of the island
crowded to his standard, and he invaded Gaul with a fleet and
army, which were long afterwards remembered, as the emigration of
a considerable part of the British nation. [13] The emperor, in his
peaceful residence of Paris, was alarmed by their hostile approach;
and the darts which he idly wasted on lions and bears, might have been
employed more honorably against the rebels. But his feeble efforts
announced his degenerate spirit and desperate situation; and deprived
him of the resources, which he still might have found, in the support
of his subjects and allies. The armies of Gaul, instead of opposing the
march of Maximus, received him with joyful and loyal acclamations;
and the shame of the desertion was transferred from the people to the
prince. The troops, whose station more immediately attached them to the
service of the palace, abandoned the standard of Gratian the first time
that it was displayed in the neighborhood of Paris. The emperor of the
West fled towards Lyons, with a train of only three hundred horse; and,
in the cities along the road, where he hoped to find refuge, or at least
a passage, he was taught, by cruel experience, that every gate is shut
against the unfortunate. Yet he might still have reached, in safety,
the dominions of his brother; and soon have returned with the forces
of Italy and the East; if he had not suffered himself to be fatally
deceived by the perfidious governor of the Lyonnese province. Gratian
was amused by protestations of doubtful fidelity, and the hopes of a
support, which could not be effectual; till the arrival of Andragathius,
the general of the cavalry of Maximus, put an end to his suspense. That
resolute officer executed, without remorse, the orders or the intention
of the usurper. Gratian, as he rose from supper, was delivered into the
hands of the assassin: and his body was denied to the pious and pressing
entreaties of his brother Valentinian. [14] The death of the emperor was
followed by that of his powerful general Mellobaudes, the king of the
Franks; who maintained, to the last moment of his life, the ambiguous
reputation, which is the just recompense of obscure and subtle policy.
[15] These executions might be necessary to the public safety: but the
successful usurper, whose power was acknowledged by all the provinces of
the West, had the merit, and the satisfaction, of boasting, that, except
those who had perished by the chance of war, his triumph was not stained
by the blood of the Romans. [16]

[Footnote 13: Archbishop Usher (Antiquat. Britan. Eccles. p. 107, 108)
has diligently collected the legends of the island, and the continent.
The whole emigration consisted of 30,000 soldiers, and 100,000
plebeians, who settled in Bretagne. Their destined brides, St. Ursula
with 11,000 noble, and 60,000 plebeian, virgins, mistook their way;
landed at Cologne, and were all most cruelly murdered by the Huns. But
the plebeian sisters have been defrauded of their equal honors; and what
is still harder, John Trithemius presumes to mention the children of
these British virgins.]

[Footnote 14: Zosimus (l. iv. p. 248, 249) has transported the death
of Gratian from Lugdunum in Gaul (Lyons) to Singidunum in Moesia. Some
hints may be extracted from the Chronicles; some lies may be detected in
Sozomen (l. vii. c. 13) and Socrates, (l. v. c. 11.) Ambrose is our
most authentic evidence, (tom. i. Enarrat. in Psalm lxi. p. 961, tom ii.
epist. xxiv. p. 888 &c., and de Obitu Valentinian Consolat. Ner. 28, p.
1182.)]

[Footnote 15: Pacatus (xii. 28) celebrates his fidelity; while his
treachery is marked in Prosper's Chronicle, as the cause of the ruin of
Gratian. Ambrose, who has occasion to exculpate himself, only condemns
the death of Vallio, a faithful servant of Gratian, (tom. ii. epist.
xxiv. p. 891, edit. Benedict.) * Note: Le Beau contests the reading
in the chronicle of Prosper upon which this charge rests. Le Beau, iv.
232.--M. * Note: According to Pacatus, the Count Vallio, who commanded
the army, was carried to Chalons to be burnt alive; but Maximus,
dreading the imputation of cruelty, caused him to be secretly strangled
by his Bretons. Macedonius also, master of the offices, suffered the
death which he merited. Le Beau, iv. 244.--M.]

[Footnote 16: He protested, nullum ex adversariis nisi in acissie
occubu. Sulp. Jeverus in Vit. B. Martin, c. 23. The orator Theodosius
bestows reluctant, and therefore weighty, praise on his clemency. Si
cui ille, pro ceteris sceleribus suis, minus crudelis fuisse videtur,
(Panegyr. Vet. xii. 28.)]

The events of this revolution had passed in such rapid succession, that
it would have been impossible for Theodosius to march to the relief of
his benefactor, before he received the intelligence of his defeat and
death. During the season of sincere grief, or ostentatious mourning,
the Eastern emperor was interrupted by the arrival of the principal
chamberlain of Maximus; and the choice of a venerable old man, for an
office which was usually exercised by eunuchs, announced to the court of
Constantinople the gravity and temperance of the British usurper.

The ambassador condescended to justify, or excuse, the conduct of his
master; and to protest, in specious language, that the murder of
Gratian had been perpetrated, without his knowledge or consent, by the
precipitate zeal of the soldiers. But he proceeded, in a firm and equal
tone, to offer Theodosius the alternative of peace, or war. The speech
of the ambassador concluded with a spirited declaration, that although
Maximus, as a Roman, and as the father of his people, would choose
rather to employ his forces in the common defence of the republic,
he was armed and prepared, if his friendship should be rejected, to
dispute, in a field of battle, the empire of the world. An immediate
and peremptory answer was required; but it was extremely difficult for
Theodosius to satisfy, on this important occasion, either the feelings
of his own mind, or the expectations of the public. The imperious voice
of honor and gratitude called aloud for revenge. From the liberality
of Gratian, he had received the Imperial diadem; his patience would
encourage the odious suspicion, that he was more deeply sensible of
former injuries, than of recent obligations; and if he accepted the
friendship, he must seem to share the guilt, of the assassin. Even the
principles of justice, and the interest of society, would receive a
fatal blow from the impunity of Maximus; and the example of successful
usurpation would tend to dissolve the artificial fabric of government,
and once more to replunge the empire in the crimes and calamities of
the preceding age. But, as the sentiments of gratitude and honor
should invariably regulate the conduct of an individual, they may
be overbalanced in the mind of a sovereign, by the sense of superior
duties; and the maxims both of justice and humanity must permit the
escape of an atrocious criminal, if an innocent people would be involved
in the consequences of his punishment. The assassin of Gratian had
usurped, but he actually possessed, the most warlike provinces of the
empire: the East was exhausted by the misfortunes, and even by the
success, of the Gothic war; and it was seriously to be apprehended,
that, after the vital strength of the republic had been wasted in a
doubtful and destructive contest, the feeble conqueror would remain an
easy prey to the Barbarians of the North. These weighty considerations
engaged Theodosius to dissemble his resentment, and to accept the
alliance of the tyrant. But he stipulated, that Maximus should content
himself with the possession of the countries beyond the Alps. The
brother of Gratian was confirmed and secured in the sovereignty of
Italy, Africa, and the Western Illyricum; and some honorable conditions
were inserted in the treaty, to protect the memory, and the laws, of the
deceased emperor. [17] According to the custom of the age, the images
of the three Imperial colleagues were exhibited to the veneration of
the people; nor should it be lightly supposed, that, in the moment of
a solemn reconciliation, Theodosius secretly cherished the intention of
perfidy and revenge. [18]

[Footnote 17: Ambrose mentions the laws of Gratian, quas non abrogavit
hostia (tom. ii epist. xvii. p. 827.)]

[Footnote 18: Zosimus, l. iv. p. 251, 252. We may disclaim his odious
suspicions; but we cannot reject the treaty of peace which the friends
of Theodosius have absolutely forgotten, or slightly mentioned.]

The contempt of Gratian for the Roman soldiers had exposed him to the
fatal effects of their resentment. His profound veneration for the
Christian clergy was rewarded by the applause and gratitude of a
powerful order, which has claimed, in every age, the privilege of
dispensing honors, both on earth and in heaven. [19] The orthodox
bishops bewailed his death, and their own irreparable loss; but they
were soon comforted by the discovery, that Gratian had committed the
sceptre of the East to the hands of a prince, whose humble faith and
fervent zeal, were supported by the spirit and abilities of a more
vigorous character. Among the benefactors of the church, the fame of
Constantine has been rivalled by the glory of Theodosius. If Constantine
had the advantage of erecting the standard of the cross, the emulation
of his successor assumed the merit of subduing the Arian heresy, and of
abolishing the worship of idols in the Roman world. Theodosius was
the first of the emperors baptized in the true faith of the Trinity.
Although he was born of a Christian family, the maxims, or at least
the practice, of the age, encouraged him to delay the ceremony of
his initiation; till he was admonished of the danger of delay, by the
serious illness which threatened his life, towards the end of the first
year of his reign. Before he again took the field against the Goths,
he received the sacrament of baptism [20] from Acholius, the orthodox
bishop of Thessalonica: [21] and, as the emperor ascended from the holy
font, still glowing with the warm feelings of regeneration, he dictated
a solemn edict, which proclaimed his own faith, and prescribed the
religion of his subjects. "It is our pleasure (such is the Imperial
style) that all the nations, which are governed by our clemency and
moderation, should steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught
by St. Peter to the Romans; which faithful tradition has preserved; and
which is now professed by the pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, bishop of
Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the discipline of
the apostles, and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe the
sole deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; under an equal
majesty, and a pious Trinity. We authorize the followers of this
doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians; and as we judge,
that all others are extravagant madmen, we brand them with the infamous
name of Heretics; and declare that their conventicles shall no longer
usurp the respectable appellation of churches. Besides the condemnation
of divine justice, they must expect to suffer the severe penalties,
which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to
inflict upon them." [22] The faith of a soldier is commonly the fruit of
instruction, rather than of inquiry; but as the emperor always fixed his
eyes on the visible landmarks of orthodoxy, which he had so prudently
constituted, his religious opinions were never affected by the specious
texts, the subtle arguments, and the ambiguous creeds of the Arian
doctors. Once indeed he expressed a faint inclination to converse with
the eloquent and learned Eunomius, who lived in retirement at a small
distance from Constantinople. But the dangerous interview was prevented
by the prayers of the empress Flaccilla, who trembled for the
salvation of her husband; and the mind of Theodosius was confirmed by
a theological argument, adapted to the rudest capacity. He had lately
bestowed on his eldest son, Arcadius, the name and honors of Augustus,
and the two princes were seated on a stately throne to receive the
homage of their subjects. A bishop, Amphilochius of Iconium, approached
the throne, and after saluting, with due reverence, the person of his
sovereign, he accosted the royal youth with the same familiar tenderness
which he might have used towards a plebeian child. Provoked by this
insolent behavior, the monarch gave orders, that the rustic priest
should be instantly driven from his presence. But while the guards were
forcing him to the door, the dexterous polemic had time to execute his
design, by exclaiming, with a loud voice, "Such is the treatment, O
emperor! which the King of heaven has prepared for those impious men,
who affect to worship the Father, but refuse to acknowledge the equal
majesty of his divine Son." Theodosius immediately embraced the bishop
of Iconium, and never forgot the important lesson, which he had received
from this dramatic parable. [23]

[Footnote 19: Their oracle, the archbishop of Milan, assigns to his
pupil Gratian, a high and respectable place in heaven, (tom. ii. de
Obit. Val. Consol p. 1193.)]

[Footnote 20: For the baptism of Theodosius, see Sozomen, (l. vii. c.
4,) Socrates, (l. v. c. 6,) and Tillemont, (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v.
p. 728.)]

[Footnote 21: Ascolius, or Acholius, was honored by the friendship, and
the praises, of Ambrose; who styles him murus fidei atque sanctitatis,
(tom. ii. epist. xv. p. 820;) and afterwards celebrates his speed and
diligence in running to Constantinople, Italy, &c., (epist. xvi. p.
822.) a virtue which does not appertain either to a wall, or a bishop.]

[Footnote 22: Codex Theodos. l. xvi. tit. i. leg. 2, with Godefroy's
Commentary, tom. vi. p. 5-9. Such an edict deserved the warmest praises
of Baronius, auream sanctionem, edictum pium et salutare.--Sic itua ad
astra.]

[Footnote 23: Sozomen, l. vii. c. 6. Theodoret, l. v. c. 16. Tillemont
is displeased (Mem. Eccles. tom. vi. p. 627, 628) with the terms of
"rustic bishop," "obscure city." Yet I must take leave to think, that
both Amphilochius and Iconium were objects of inconsiderable magnitude
in the Roman empire.]




Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius.--Part II.

Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and,
in a long interval of forty years, [24] the faith of the princes and
prelates, who reigned in the capital of the East, was rejected in the
purer schools of Rome and Alexandria. The archiepiscopal throne of
Macedonius, which had been polluted with so much Christian blood, was
successively filled by Eudoxus and Damophilus. Their diocese enjoyed a
free importation of vice and error from every province of the empire;
the eager pursuit of religious controversy afforded a new occupation to
the busy idleness of the metropolis; and we may credit the assertion
of an intelligent observer, who describes, with some pleasantry, the
effects of their loquacious zeal. "This city," says he, "is full of
mechanics and slaves, who are all of them profound theologians; and
preach in the shops, and in the streets. If you desire a man to change
a piece of silver, he informs you, wherein the Son differs from the
Father; if you ask the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply,
that the Son is inferior to the Father; and if you inquire, whether the
bath is ready, the answer is, that the Son was made out of nothing."
[25] The heretics, of various denominations, subsisted in peace under
the protection of the Arians of Constantinople; who endeavored to secure
the attachment of those obscure sectaries, while they abused, with
unrelenting severity, the victory which they had obtained over
the followers of the council of Nice. During the partial reigns of
Constantius and Valens, the feeble remnant of the Homoousians was
deprived of the public and private exercise of their religion; and it
has been observed, in pathetic language, that the scattered flock was
left without a shepherd to wander on the mountains, or to be devoured
by rapacious wolves. [26] But, as their zeal, instead of being subdued,
derived strength and vigor from oppression, they seized the first
moments of imperfect freedom, which they had acquired by the death
of Valens, to form themselves into a regular congregation, under the
conduct of an episcopal pastor. Two natives of Cappadocia, Basil,
and Gregory Nazianzen, [27] were distinguished above all their
contemporaries, [28] by the rare union of profane eloquence and of
orthodox piety.

These orators, who might sometimes be compared, by themselves, and by
the public, to the most celebrated of the ancient Greeks, were united
by the ties of the strictest friendship. They had cultivated, with
equal ardor, the same liberal studies in the schools of Athens; they
had retired, with equal devotion, to the same solitude in the deserts
of Pontus; and every spark of emulation, or envy, appeared to be totally
extinguished in the holy and ingenuous breasts of Gregory and Basil.
But the exaltation of Basil, from a private life to the archiepiscopal
throne of Caesarea, discovered to the world, and perhaps to himself,
the pride of his character; and the first favor which he condescended to
bestow on his friend, was received, and perhaps was intended, as a cruel
insult. [29] Instead of employing the superior talents of Gregory in
some useful and conspicuous station, the haughty prelate selected, among
the fifty bishoprics of his extensive province, the wretched village of
Sasima, [30] without water, without verdure, without society, situate
at the junction of three highways, and frequented only by the incessant
passage of rude and clamorous wagoners. Gregory submitted with
reluctance to this humiliating exile; he was ordained bishop of Sasima;
but he solemnly protests, that he never consummated his spiritual
marriage with this disgusting bride. He afterwards consented to
undertake the government of his native church of Nazianzus, [31] of
which his father had been bishop above five-and-forty years. But as
he was still conscious that he deserved another audience, and another
theatre, he accepted, with no unworthy ambition, the honorable
invitation, which was addressed to him from the orthodox party of
Constantinople. On his arrival in the capital, Gregory was entertained
in the house of a pious and charitable kinsman; the most spacious
room was consecrated to the uses of religious worship; and the name of
Anastasia was chosen to express the resurrection of the Nicene faith.
This private conventicle was afterwards converted into a magnificent
church; and the credulity of the succeeding age was prepared to believe
the miracles and visions, which attested the presence, or at least the
protection, of the Mother of God. [32] The pulpit of the Anastasia was
the scene of the labors and triumphs of Gregory Nazianzen; and, in the
space of two years, he experienced all the spiritual adventures which
constitute the prosperous or adverse fortunes of a missionary. [33] The
Arians, who were provoked by the boldness of his enterprise, represented
his doctrine, as if he had preached three distinct and equal Deities;
and the devout populace was excited to suppress, by violence and tumult,
the irregular assemblies of the Athanasian heretics. From the cathedral
of St. Sophia there issued a motley crowd "of common beggars, who had
forfeited their claim to pity; of monks, who had the appearance of goats
or satyrs; and of women, more terrible than so many Jezebels." The doors
of the Anastasia were broke open; much mischief was perpetrated, or
attempted, with sticks, stones, and firebrands; and as a man lost his
life in the affray, Gregory, who was summoned the next morning before
the magistrate, had the satisfaction of supposing, that he publicly
confessed the name of Christ. After he was delivered from the fear
and danger of a foreign enemy, his infant church was disgraced and
distracted by intestine faction. A stranger who assumed the name of
Maximus, [34] and the cloak of a Cynic philosopher, insinuated himself
into the confidence of Gregory; deceived and abused his favorable
opinion; and forming a secret connection with some bishops of Egypt,
attempted, by a clandestine ordination, to supplant his patron in the
episcopal seat of Constantinople. These mortifications might sometimes
tempt the Cappadocian missionary to regret his obscure solitude. But
his fatigues were rewarded by the daily increase of his fame and his
congregation; and he enjoyed the pleasure of observing, that the greater
part of his numerous audience retired from his sermons satisfied with
the eloquence of the preacher, [35] or dissatisfied with the manifold
imperfections of their faith and practice. [36]

[Footnote 24: Sozomen, l. vii. c. v. Socrates, l. v. c. 7. Marcellin.
in Chron. The account of forty years must be dated from the election or
intrusion of Eusebius, who wisely exchanged the bishopric of Nicomedia
for the throne of Constantinople.]

[Footnote 25: See Jortin's Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv.
p. 71. The thirty-third Oration of Gregory Nazianzen affords indeed some
similar ideas, even some still more ridiculous; but I have not yet found
the words of this remarkable passage, which I allege on the faith of a
correct and liberal scholar.]

[Footnote 26: See the thirty-second Oration of Gregory Nazianzen, and
the account of his own life, which he has composed in 1800 iambics.
Yet every physician is prone to exaggerate the inveterate nature of the
disease which he has cured.]

[Footnote 27: I confess myself deeply indebted to the two lives of
Gregory Nazianzen, composed, with very different views, by Tillemont
(Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 305-560, 692-731) and Le Clerc, (Bibliotheque
Universelle, tom. xviii. p. 1-128.)]

[Footnote 28: Unless Gregory Nazianzen mistook thirty years in his own
age, he was born, as well as his friend Basil, about the year 329. The
preposterous chronology of Suidas has been graciously received, because
it removes the scandal of Gregory's father, a saint likewise, begetting
children after he became a bishop, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p.
693-697.)]

[Footnote 29: Gregory's Poem on his own Life contains some beautiful
lines, (tom. ii. p. 8,) which burst from the heart, and speak the pangs
of injured and lost friendship. ----In the Midsummer Night's Dream,
Helena addresses the same pathetic complaint to her friend Hermia:--Is
all the counsel that we two have shared. The sister's vows, &c.
Shakspeare had never read the poems of Gregory Nazianzen; he was
ignorant of the Greek language; but his mother tongue, the language of
Nature, is the same in Cappadocia and in Britain.]

[Footnote 30: This unfavorable portrait of Sasimae is drawn by Gregory
Nazianzen, (tom. ii. de Vita sua, p. 7, 8.) Its precise situation,
forty-nine miles from Archelais, and thirty-two from Tyana, is fixed in
the Itinerary of Antoninus, (p. 144, edit. Wesseling.)]

[Footnote 31: The name of Nazianzus has been immortalized by
Gregory; but his native town, under the Greek or Roman title of
Diocaesarea, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 692,) is mentioned by
Pliny, (vi. 3,) Ptolemy, and Hierocles, (Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 709).
It appears to have been situate on the edge of Isauria.]

[Footnote 32: See Ducange, Constant. Christiana, l. iv. p. 141, 142. The
Sozomen (l. vii. c. 5) is interpreted to mean the Virgin Mary.]

[Footnote 33: Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. ix. p. 432, &c.) diligently
collects, enlarges, and explains, the oratorical and poetical hints of
Gregory himself.]

[Footnote 34: He pronounced an oration (tom. i. Orat. xxiii. p. 409)
in his praise; but after their quarrel, the name of Maximus was changed
into that of Heron, (see Jerom, tom. i. in Catalog. Script. Eccles. p.
301). I touch slightly on these obscure and personal squabbles.]

[Footnote 35: Under the modest emblem of a dream, Gregory (tom. ii.
Carmen ix. p. 78) describes his own success with some human complacency.
Yet it should seem, from his familiar conversation with his auditor St.
Jerom, (tom. i. Epist. ad Nepotian. p. 14,) that the preacher understood
the true value of popular applause.]

[Footnote 36: Lachrymae auditorum laudes tuae sint, is the lively and
judicious advice of St. Jerom.]

The Catholics of Constantinople were animated with joyful confidence
by the baptism and edict of Theodosius; and they impatiently waited the
effects of his gracious promise. Their hopes were speedily accomplished;
and the emperor, as soon as he had finished the operations of the
campaign, made his public entry into the capital at the head of a
victorious army. The next day after his arrival, he summoned Damophilus
to his presence, and offered that Arian prelate the hard alternative of
subscribing the Nicene creed, or of instantly resigning, to the orthodox
believers, the use and possession of the episcopal palace, the cathedral
of St. Sophia, and all the churches of Constantinople. The zeal of
Damophilus, which in a Catholic saint would have been justly applauded,
embraced, without hesitation, a life of poverty and exile, [37] and his
removal was immediately followed by the purification of the Imperial
city. The Arians might complain, with some appearance of justice, that
an inconsiderable congregation of sectaries should usurp the hundred
churches, which they were insufficient to fill; whilst the far greater
part of the people was cruelly excluded from every place of religious
worship. Theodosius was still inexorable; but as the angels who
protected the Catholic cause were only visible to the eyes of faith, he
prudently reenforced those heavenly legions with the more effectual
aid of temporal and carnal weapons; and the church of St. Sophia was
occupied by a large body of the Imperial guards. If the mind of Gregory
was susceptible of pride, he must have felt a very lively satisfaction,
when the emperor conducted him through the streets in solemn triumph;
and, with his own hand, respectfully placed him on the archiepiscopal
throne of Constantinople. But the saint (who had not subdued the
imperfections of human virtue) was deeply affected by the mortifying
consideration, that his entrance into the fold was that of a wolf,
rather than of a shepherd; that the glittering arms which surrounded his
person, were necessary for his safety; and that he alone was the object
of the imprecations of a great party, whom, as men and citizens, it was
impossible for him to despise. He beheld the innumerable multitude of
either sex, and of every age, who crowded the streets, the windows, and
the roofs of the houses; he heard the tumultuous voice of rage, grief,
astonishment, and despair; and Gregory fairly confesses, that on the
memorable day of his installation, the capital of the East wore the
appearance of a city taken by storm, and in the hands of a Barbarian
conqueror. [38] About six weeks afterwards, Theodosius declared his
resolution of expelling from all the churches of his dominions the
bishops and their clergy who should obstinately refuse to believe, or at
least to profess, the doctrine of the council of Nice. His lieutenant,
Sapor, was armed with the ample powers of a general law, a special
commission, and a military force; [39] and this ecclesiastical
revolution was conducted with so much discretion and vigor, that the
religion of the emperor was established, without tumult or bloodshed, in
all the provinces of the East. The writings of the Arians, if they had
been permitted to exist, [40] would perhaps contain the lamentable story
of the persecution, which afflicted the church under the reign of the
impious Theodosius; and the sufferings of their holy confessors might
claim the pity of the disinterested reader. Yet there is reason to
imagine, that the violence of zeal and revenge was, in some measure,
eluded by the want of resistance; and that, in their adversity, the
Arians displayed much less firmness than had been exerted by the
orthodox party under the reigns of Constantius and Valens. The moral
character and conduct of the hostile sects appear to have been governed
by the same common principles of nature and religion: but a very
material circumstance may be discovered, which tended to distinguish
the degrees of their theological faith. Both parties, in the schools, as
well as in the temples, acknowledged and worshipped the divine majesty
of Christ; and, as we are always prone to impute our own sentiments and
passions to the Deity, it would be deemed more prudent and respectful to
exaggerate, than to circumscribe, the adorable perfections of the Son of
God. The disciple of Athanasius exulted in the proud confidence, that
he had entitled himself to the divine favor; while the follower of Arius
must have been tormented by the secret apprehension, that he was
guilty, perhaps, of an unpardonable offence, by the scanty praise, and
parsimonious honors, which he bestowed on the Judge of the World. The
opinions of Arianism might satisfy a cold and speculative mind: but the
doctrine of the Nicene creed, most powerfully recommended by the merits
of faith and devotion, was much better adapted to become popular and
successful in a believing age.

[Footnote 37: Socrates (l. v. c. 7) and Sozomen (l. vii. c. 5) relate
the evangelical words and actions of Damophilus without a word of
approbation. He considered, says Socrates, that it is difficult to
resist the powerful, but it was easy, and would have been profitable, to
submit.]

[Footnote 38: See Gregory Nazianzen, tom. ii. de Vita sua, p. 21,
22. For the sake of posterity, the bishop of Constantinople records a
stupendous prodigy. In the month of November, it was a cloudy morning,
but the sun broke forth when the procession entered the church.]

[Footnote 39: Of the three ecclesiastical historians, Theodoret alone
(l. v. c. 2) has mentioned this important commission of Sapor, which
Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 728) judiciously removes from
the reign of Gratian to that of Theodosius.]

[Footnote 40: I do not reckon Philostorgius, though he mentions (l.
ix. c. 19) the explosion of Damophilus. The Eunomian historian has been
carefully strained through an orthodox sieve.]

The hope, that truth and wisdom would be found in the assemblies of the
orthodox clergy, induced the emperor to convene, at Constantinople,
a synod of one hundred and fifty bishops, who proceeded, without much
difficulty or delay, to complete the theological system which had been
established in the council of Nice. The vehement disputes of the fourth
century had been chiefly employed on the nature of the Son of God; and
the various opinions which were embraced, concerning the Second, were
extended and transferred, by a natural analogy, to the Third person of
the Trinity. [41] Yet it was found, or it was thought, necessary, by the
victorious adversaries of Arianism, to explain the ambiguous language of
some respectable doctors; to confirm the faith of the Catholics; and to
condemn an unpopular and inconsistent sect of Macedonians; who freely
admitted that the Son was consubstantial to the Father, while they were
fearful of seeming to acknowledge the existence of Three Gods. A final
and unanimous sentence was pronounced to ratify the equal Deity of
the Holy Ghost: the mysterious doctrine has been received by all the
nations, and all the churches of the Christian world; and their grateful
reverence has assigned to the bishops of Theodosius the second rank
among the general councils. [42] Their knowledge of religious truth may
have been preserved by tradition, or it may have been communicated
by inspiration; but the sober evidence of history will not allow much
weight to the personal authority of the Fathers of Constantinople. In an
age when the ecclesiastics had scandalously degenerated from the model
of apostolic purity, the most worthless and corrupt were always the most
eager to frequent, and disturb, the episcopal assemblies. The conflict
and fermentation of so many opposite interests and tempers inflamed the
passions of the bishops: and their ruling passions were, the love
of gold, and the love of dispute. Many of the same prelates who now
applauded the orthodox piety of Theodosius, had repeatedly changed,
with prudent flexibility, their creeds and opinions; and in the various
revolutions of the church and state, the religion of their sovereign
was the rule of their obsequious faith. When the emperor suspended his
prevailing influence, the turbulent synod was blindly impelled by the
absurd or selfish motives of pride, hatred, or resentment. The death of
Meletius, which happened at the council of Constantinople, presented
the most favorable opportunity of terminating the schism of Antioch,
by suffering his aged rival, Paulinus, peaceably to end his days in the
episcopal chair. The faith and virtues of Paulinus were unblemished. But
his cause was supported by the Western churches; and the bishops of
the synod resolved to perpetuate the mischiefs of discord, by the hasty
ordination of a perjured candidate, [43] rather than to betray the
imagined dignity of the East, which had been illustrated by the birth
and death of the Son of God. Such unjust and disorderly proceedings
forced the gravest members of the assembly to dissent and to secede; and
the clamorous majority which remained masters of the field of battle,
could be compared only to wasps or magpies, to a flight of cranes, or to
a flock of geese. [44]

[Footnote 41: Le Clerc has given a curious extract (Bibliotheque
Universelle, tom. xviii. p. 91-105) of the theological sermons which
Gregory Nazianzen pronounced at Constantinople against the Arians,
Eunomians, Macedonians, &c. He tells the Macedonians, who deified the
Father and the Son without the Holy Ghost, that they might as well be
styled Tritheists as Ditheists. Gregory himself was almost a Tritheist;
and his monarchy of heaven resembles a well-regulated aristocracy.]

[Footnote 42: The first general council of Constantinople now triumphs
in the Vatican; but the popes had long hesitated, and their hesitation
perplexes, and almost staggers, the humble Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom.
ix. p. 499, 500.)]

[Footnote 43: Before the death of Meletius, six or eight of his most
popular ecclesiastics, among whom was Flavian, had abjured, for the
sake of peace, the bishopric of Antioch, (Sozomen, l. vii. c. 3, 11.
Socrates, l. v. c. v.) Tillemont thinks it his duty to disbelieve the
story; but he owns that there are many circumstances in the life of
Flavian which seem inconsistent with the praises of Chrysostom, and the
character of a saint, (Mem. Eccles. tom. x. p. 541.)]

[Footnote 44: Consult Gregory Nazianzen, de Vita sua, tom. ii. p. 25-28.
His general and particular opinion of the clergy and their assemblies
may be seen in verse and prose, (tom. i. Orat. i. p. 33. Epist. lv.
p. 814, tom. ii. Carmen x. p. 81.) Such passages are faintly marked by
Tillemont, and fairly produced by Le Clerc.]

A suspicion may possibly arise, that so unfavorable a picture of
ecclesiastical synods has been drawn by the partial hand of some
obstinate heretic, or some malicious infidel. But the name of the
sincere historian who has conveyed this instructive lesson to
the knowledge of posterity, must silence the impotent murmurs of
superstition and bigotry. He was one of the most pious and eloquent
bishops of the age; a saint, and a doctor of the church; the scourge of
Arianism, and the pillar of the orthodox faith; a distinguished member
of the council of Constantinople, in which, after the death of Meletius,
he exercised the functions of president; in a word--Gregory Nazianzen
himself. The harsh and ungenerous treatment which he experienced,
[45] instead of derogating from the truth of his evidence, affords an
additional proof of the spirit which actuated the deliberations of the
synod. Their unanimous suffrage had confirmed the pretensions which the
bishop of Constantinople derived from the choice of the people, and the
approbation of the emperor. But Gregory soon became the victim of malice
and envy. The bishops of the East, his strenuous adherents, provoked
by his moderation in the affairs of Antioch, abandoned him, without
support, to the adverse faction of the Egyptians; who disputed the
validity of his election, and rigorously asserted the obsolete canon,
that prohibited the licentious practice of episcopal translations. The
pride, or the humility, of Gregory prompted him to decline a contest
which might have been imputed to ambition and avarice; and he publicly
offered, not without some mixture of indignation, to renounce the
government of a church which had been restored, and almost created,
by his labors. His resignation was accepted by the synod, and by the
emperor, with more readiness than he seems to have expected. At the
time when he might have hoped to enjoy the fruits of his victory,
his episcopal throne was filled by the senator Nectarius; and the new
archbishop, accidentally recommended by his easy temper and venerable
aspect, was obliged to delay the ceremony of his consecration, till
he had previously despatched the rites of his baptism. [46] After
this remarkable experience of the ingratitude of princes and prelates,
Gregory retired once more to his obscure solitude of Cappadocia;
where he employed the remainder of his life, about eight years, in the
exercises of poetry and devotion. The title of Saint has been added to
his name: but the tenderness of his heart, [47] and the elegance of
his genius, reflect a more pleasing lustre on the memory of Gregory
Nazianzen.

[Footnote 45: See Gregory, tom. ii. de Vita sua, p. 28-31. The
fourteenth, twenty-seventh, and thirty-second Orations were pronounced
in the several stages of this business. The peroration of the last,
(tom. i. p. 528,) in which he takes a solemn leave of men and angels,
the city and the emperor, the East and the West, &c., is pathetic, and
almost sublime.]

[Footnote 46: The whimsical ordination of Nectarius is attested by
Sozomen, (l. vii. c. 8;) but Tillemont observes, (Mem. Eccles. tom. ix.
p. 719,) Apres tout, ce narre de Sozomene est si honteux, pour tous ceux
qu'il y mele, et surtout pour Theodose, qu'il vaut mieux travailler a le
detruire, qu'a le soutenir; an admirable canon of criticism!]

[Footnote 47: I can only be understood to mean, that such was his
natural temper when it was not hardened, or inflamed, by religious zeal.
From his retirement, he exhorts Nectarius to prosecute the heretics of
Constantinople.]

It was not enough that Theodosius had suppressed the insolent reign
of Arianism, or that he had abundantly revenged the injuries which
the Catholics sustained from the zeal of Constantius and Valens. The
orthodox emperor considered every heretic as a rebel against the supreme
powers of heaven and of earth; and each of those powers might exercise
their peculiar jurisdiction over the soul and body of the guilty.
The decrees of the council of Constantinople had ascertained the
true standard of the faith; and the ecclesiastics, who governed the
conscience of Theodosius, suggested the most effectual methods of
persecution. In the space of fifteen years, he promulgated at least
fifteen severe edicts against the heretics; [48] more especially against
those who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity; and to deprive them of
every hope of escape, he sternly enacted, that if any laws or rescripts
should be alleged in their favor, the judges should consider them as the
illegal productions either of fraud or forgery. The penal statutes were
directed against the ministers, the assemblies, and the persons of
the heretics; and the passions of the legislator were expressed in the
language of declamation and invective. I. The heretical teachers, who
usurped the sacred titles of Bishops, or Presbyters, were not only
excluded from the privileges and emoluments so liberally granted to the
orthodox clergy, but they were exposed to the heavy penalties of
exile and confiscation, if they presumed to preach the doctrine, or to
practise the rites, of their accursed sects. A fine of ten pounds of
gold (above four hundred pounds sterling) was imposed on every person
who should dare to confer, or receive, or promote, an heretical
ordination: and it was reasonably expected, that if the race of pastors
could be extinguished, their helpless flocks would be compelled, by
ignorance and hunger, to return within the pale of the Catholic church.
II. The rigorous prohibition of conventicles was carefully extended to
every possible circumstance, in which the heretics could assemble with
the intention of worshipping God and Christ according to the dictates of
their conscience. Their religious meetings, whether public or secret, by
day or by night, in cities or in the country, were equally proscribed
by the edicts of Theodosius; and the building, or ground, which had been
used for that illegal purpose, was forfeited to the Imperial domain.
III. It was supposed, that the error of the heretics could proceed only
from the obstinate temper of their minds; and that such a temper was a
fit object of censure and punishment. The anathemas of the church were
fortified by a sort of civil excommunication; which separated them
from their fellow-citizens, by a peculiar brand of infamy; and this
declaration of the supreme magistrate tended to justify, or at least to
excuse, the insults of a fanatic populace. The sectaries were gradually
disqualified from the possession of honorable or lucrative employments;
and Theodosius was satisfied with his own justice, when he decreed,
that, as the Eunomians distinguished the nature of the Son from that
of the Father, they should be incapable of making their wills or of
receiving any advantage from testamentary donations. The guilt of the
Manichaean heresy was esteemed of such magnitude, that it could be
expiated only by the death of the offender; and the same capital
punishment was inflicted on the Audians, or Quartodecimans, [49] who
should dare to perpetrate the atrocious crime of celebrating on an
improper day the festival of Easter. Every Roman might exercise the
right of public accusation; but the office of Inquisitors of the Faith,
a name so deservedly abhorred, was first instituted under the reign of
Theodosius. Yet we are assured, that the execution of his penal edicts
was seldom enforced; and that the pious emperor appeared less desirous
to punish, than to reclaim, or terrify, his refractory subjects. [50]

[Footnote 48: See the Theodosian Code, l. xvi. tit. v. leg. 6--23,
with Godefroy's commentary on each law, and his general summary, or
Paratitlon, tom vi. p. 104-110.]

[Footnote 49: They always kept their Easter, like the Jewish Passover,
on the fourteenth day of the first moon after the vernal equinox; and
thus pertinaciously opposed the Roman Church and Nicene synod, which had
fixed Easter to a Sunday. Bingham's Antiquities, l. xx. c. 5, vol. ii.
p. 309, fol. edit.]

[Footnote 50: Sozomen, l. vii. c. 12.]

The theory of persecution was established by Theodosius, whose justice
and piety have been applauded by the saints: but the practice of it, in
the fullest extent, was reserved for his rival and colleague, Maximus,
the first, among the Christian princes, who shed the blood of his
Christian subjects on account of their religious opinions. The cause of
the Priscillianists, [51] a recent sect of heretics, who disturbed
the provinces of Spain, was transferred, by appeal, from the synod of
Bordeaux to the Imperial consistory of Treves; and by the sentence of
the Praetorian praefect, seven persons were tortured, condemned, and
executed. The first of these was Priscillian [52] himself, bishop of
Avila, in Spain; who adorned the advantages of birth and fortune, by
the accomplishments of eloquence and learning. Two presbyters, and
two deacons, accompanied their beloved master in his death, which they
esteemed as a glorious martyrdom; and the number of religious victims
was completed by the execution of Latronian, a poet, who rivalled the
fame of the ancients; and of Euchrocia, a noble matron of Bordeaux, the
widow of the orator Delphidius. [54] Two bishops who had embraced the
sentiments of Priscillian, were condemned to a distant and dreary exile;
[55] and some indulgence was shown to the meaner criminals, who assumed
the merit of an early repentance. If any credit could be allowed
to confessions extorted by fear or pain, and to vague reports, the
offspring of malice and credulity, the heresy of the Priscillianists
would be found to include the various abominations of magic, of impiety,
and of lewdness. [56] Priscillian, who wandered about the world in the
company of his spiritual sisters, was accused of praying stark naked in
the midst of the congregation; and it was confidently asserted, that the
effects of his criminal intercourse with the daughter of Euchrocia
had been suppressed, by means still more odious and criminal. But
an accurate, or rather a candid, inquiry will discover, that if
the Priscillianists violated the laws of nature, it was not by the
licentiousness, but by the austerity, of their lives. They absolutely
condemned the use of the marriage-bed; and the peace of families was
often disturbed by indiscreet separations. They enjoyed, or recommended,
a total abstinence from all anima food; and their continual prayers,
fasts, and vigils, inculcated a rule of strict and perfect devotion. The
speculative tenets of the sect, concerning the person of Christ, and the
nature of the human soul, were derived from the Gnostic and Manichaean
system; and this vain philosophy, which had been transported from
Egypt to Spain, was ill adapted to the grosser spirits of the West.
The obscure disciples of Priscillian suffered languished, and gradually
disappeared: his tenets were rejected by the clergy and people, but his
death was the subject of a long and vehement controversy; while some
arraigned, and others applauded, the justice of his sentence. It is
with pleasure that we can observe the humane inconsistency of the most
illustrious saints and bishops, Ambrose of Milan, [57] and Martin of
Tours, [58] who, on this occasion, asserted the cause of toleration.
They pitied the unhappy men, who had been executed at Treves; they
refused to hold communion with their episcopal murderers; and if Martin
deviated from that generous resolution, his motives were laudable, and
his repentance was exemplary. The bishops of Tours and Milan pronounced,
without hesitation, the eternal damnation of heretics; but they were
surprised, and shocked, by the bloody image of their temporal death,
and the honest feelings of nature resisted the artificial prejudices
of theology. The humanity of Ambrose and Martin was confirmed by the
scandalous irregularity of the proceedings against Priscillian and his
adherents. The civil and ecclesiastical ministers had transgressed the
limits of their respective provinces. The secular judge had presumed to
receive an appeal, and to pronounce a definitive sentence, in a
matter of faith, and episcopal jurisdiction. The bishops had disgraced
themselves, by exercising the functions of accusers in a criminal
prosecution. The cruelty of Ithacius, [59] who beheld the tortures, and
solicited the death, of the heretics, provoked the just indignation
of mankind; and the vices of that profligate bishop were admitted as a
proof, that his zeal was instigated by the sordid motives of interest.
Since the death of Priscillian, the rude attempts of persecution have
been refined and methodized in the holy office, which assigns their
distinct parts to the ecclesiastical and secular powers. The devoted
victim is regularly delivered by the priest to the magistrate, and by
the magistrate to the executioner; and the inexorable sentence of the
church, which declares the spiritual guilt of the offender, is expressed
in the mild language of pity and intercession.

[Footnote 51: See the Sacred History of Sulpicius Severus, (l. ii. p.
437-452, edit. Ludg. Bat. 1647,) a correct and original writer. Dr.
Lardner (Credibility, &c., part ii. vol. ix. p. 256-350) has labored
this article with pure learning, good sense, and moderation. Tillemont
(Mem. Eccles. tom. viii. p. 491-527) has raked together all the dirt of
the fathers; a useful scavenger!]

[Footnote 52: Severus Sulpicius mentions the arch-heretic with esteem
and pity Faelix profecto, si non pravo studio corrupisset optimum
ingenium prorsus multa in eo animi et corporis bona cerneres. (Hist.
Sacra, l ii. p. 439.) Even Jerom (tom. i. in Script. Eccles. p. 302)
speaks with temper of Priscillian and Latronian.]

[Footnote 53: The bishopric (in Old Castile) is now worth 20,000 ducats
a year, (Busching's Geography, vol. ii. p. 308,) and is therefore much
less likely to produce the author of a new heresy.]

[Footnote 54: Exprobrabatur mulieri viduae nimia religio, et diligentius
culta divinitas, (Pacat. in Panegyr. Vet. xii. 29.) Such was the idea of
a humane, though ignorant, polytheist.]

[Footnote 55: One of them was sent in Sillinam insulam quae ultra
Britannianest. What must have been the ancient condition of the rocks of
Scilly? (Camden's Britannia, vol. ii. p. 1519.)]

[Footnote 56: The scandalous calumnies of Augustin, Pope Leo, &c., which
Tillemont swallows like a child, and Lardner refutes like a man, may
suggest some candid suspicions in favor of the older Gnostics.]

[Footnote 57: Ambros. tom. ii. Epist. xxiv. p. 891.]

[Footnote 58: In the Sacred History, and the Life of St. Martin,
Sulpicius Severus uses some caution; but he declares himself more freely
in the Dialogues, (iii. 15.) Martin was reproved, however, by his own
conscience, and by an angel; nor could he afterwards perform miracles
with so much ease.]

[Footnote 59: The Catholic Presbyter (Sulp. Sever. l. ii. p. 448) and
the Pagan Orator (Pacat. in Panegyr. Vet. xii. 29) reprobate, with equal
indignation, the character and conduct of Ithacius.]




Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius.--Part III.

Among the ecclesiastics, who illustrated the reign of Theodosius,
Gregory Nazianzen was distinguished by the talents of an eloquent
preacher; the reputation of miraculous gifts added weight and dignity to
the monastic virtues of Martin of Tours; [60] but the palm of episcopal
vigor and ability was justly claimed by the intrepid Ambrose. [61] He
was descended from a noble family of Romans; his father had exercised
the important office of Praetorian praefect of Gaul; and the son, after
passing through the studies of a liberal education, attained, in the
regular gradation of civil honors, the station of consular of Liguria,
a province which included the Imperial residence of Milan. At the age
of thirty-four, and before he had received the sacrament of baptism,
Ambrose, to his own surprise, and to that of the world, was suddenly
transformed from a governor to an archbishop. Without the least
mixture, as it is said, of art or intrigue, the whole body of the
people unanimously saluted him with the episcopal title; the concord
and perseverance of their acclamations were ascribed to a praeternatural
impulse; and the reluctant magistrate was compelled to undertake a
spiritual office, for which he was not prepared by the habits and
occupations of his former life. But the active force of his genius soon
qualified him to exercise, with zeal and prudence, the duties of his
ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and while he cheerfully renounced the vain
and splendid trappings of temporal greatness, he condescended, for the
good of the church, to direct the conscience of the emperors, and to
control the administration of the empire. Gratian loved and revered him
as a father; and the elaborate treatise on the faith of the Trinity
was designed for the instruction of the young prince. After his tragic
death, at a time when the empress Justina trembled for her own safety,
and for that of her son Valentinian, the archbishop of Milan was
despatched, on two different embassies, to the court of Treves.
He exercised, with equal firmness and dexterity, the powers of his
spiritual and political characters; and perhaps contributed, by his
authority and eloquence, to check the ambition of Maximus, and to
protect the peace of Italy. [62] Ambrose had devoted his life, and his
abilities, to the service of the church. Wealth was the object of his
contempt; he had renounced his private patrimony; and he sold, without
hesitation, the consecrated plate, for the redemption of captives. The
clergy and people of Milan were attached to their archbishop; and he
deserved the esteem, without soliciting the favor, or apprehending the
displeasure, of his feeble sovereigns.

[Footnote 60: The Life of St. Martin, and the Dialogues concerning his
miracles contain facts adapted to the grossest barbarism, in a style not
unworthy of the Augustan age. So natural is the alliance between good
taste and good sense, that I am always astonished by this contrast.]

[Footnote 61: The short and superficial Life of St. Ambrose, by his
deacon Paulinus, (Appendix ad edit. Benedict. p. i.--xv.,) has the merit
of original evidence. Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. x. p. 78-306) and
the Benedictine editors (p. xxxi.--lxiii.) have labored with their usual
diligence.]

[Footnote 62: Ambrose himself (tom. ii. Epist. xxiv. p. 888--891) gives
the emperor a very spirited account of his own embassy.]

The government of Italy, and of the young emperor, naturally devolved to
his mother Justina, a woman of beauty and spirit, but who, in the
midst of an orthodox people, had the misfortune of professing the Arian
heresy, which she endeavored to instil into the mind of her son. Justina
was persuaded, that a Roman emperor might claim, in his own dominions,
the public exercise of his religion; and she proposed to the archbishop,
as a moderate and reasonable concession, that he should resign the use
of a single church, either in the city or the suburbs of Milan. But the
conduct of Ambrose was governed by very different principles. [63] The
palaces of the earth might indeed belong to Caesar; but the churches
were the houses of God; and, within the limits of his diocese, he
himself, as the lawful successor of the apostles, was the only minister
of God. The privileges of Christianity, temporal as well as spiritual,
were confined to the true believers; and the mind of Ambrose was
satisfied, that his own theological opinions were the standard of truth
and orthodoxy. The archbishop, who refused to hold any conference,
or negotiation, with the instruments of Satan, declared, with modest
firmness, his resolution to die a martyr, rather than to yield to the
impious sacrilege; and Justina, who resented the refusal as an act
of insolence and rebellion, hastily determined to exert the Imperial
prerogative of her son. As she desired to perform her public devotions
on the approaching festival of Easter, Ambrose was ordered to appear
before the council. He obeyed the summons with the respect of a faithful
subject, but he was followed, without his consent, by an innumerable
people they pressed, with impetuous zeal, against the gates of the
palace; and the affrighted ministers of Valentinian, instead of
pronouncing a sentence of exile on the archbishop of Milan, humbly
requested that he would interpose his authority, to protect the person
of the emperor, and to restore the tranquility of the capital. But the
promises which Ambrose received and communicated were soon violated by
a perfidious court; and, during six of the most solemn days, which
Christian piety had set apart for the exercise of religion, the city
was agitated by the irregular convulsions of tumult and fanaticism. The
officers of the household were directed to prepare, first, the Portian,
and afterwards, the new, Basilica, for the immediate reception of the
emperor and his mother. The splendid canopy and hangings of the royal
seat were arranged in the customary manner; but it was found necessary
to defend them. by a strong guard, from the insults of the populace.
The Arian ecclesiastics, who ventured to show themselves in the streets,
were exposed to the most imminent danger of their lives; and Ambrose
enjoyed the merit and reputation of rescuing his personal enemies from
the hands of the enraged multitude.

[Footnote 63: His own representation of his principles and conduct (tom.
ii. Epist. xx xxi. xxii. p. 852-880) is one of the curious monuments
of ecclesiastical antiquity. It contains two letters to his sister
Marcellina, with a petition to Valentinian and the sermon de Basilicis
non madendis.]

But while he labored to restrain the effects of their zeal, the pathetic
vehemence of his sermons continually inflamed the angry and seditious
temper of the people of Milan. The characters of Eve, of the wife of
Job, of Jezebel, of Herodias, were indecently applied to the mother
of the emperor; and her desire to obtain a church for the Arians was
compared to the most cruel persecutions which Christianity had endured
under the reign of Paganism. The measures of the court served only to
expose the magnitude of the evil. A fine of two hundred pounds of gold
was imposed on the corporate body of merchants and manufacturers: an
order was signified, in the name of the emperor, to all the officers,
and inferior servants, of the courts of justice, that, during the
continuance of the public disorders, they should strictly confine
themselves to their houses; and the ministers of Valentinian imprudently
confessed, that the most respectable part of the citizens of Milan was
attached to the cause of their archbishop. He was again solicited to
restore peace to his country, by timely compliance with the will of
his sovereign. The reply of Ambrose was couched in the most humble and
respectful terms, which might, however, be interpreted as a serious
declaration of civil war. "His life and fortune were in the hands of the
emperor; but he would never betray the church of Christ, or degrade the
dignity of the episcopal character. In such a cause he was prepared
to suffer whatever the malice of the daemon could inflict; and he only
wished to die in the presence of his faithful flock, and at the foot of
the altar; he had not contributed to excite, but it was in the power of
God alone to appease, the rage of the people: he deprecated the scenes
of blood and confusion which were likely to ensue; and it was his
fervent prayer, that he might not survive to behold the ruin of a
flourishing city, and perhaps the desolation of all Italy." [64] The
obstinate bigotry of Justina would have endangered the empire of her
son, if, in this contest with the church and people of Milan, she could
have depended on the active obedience of the troops of the palace. A
large body of Goths had marched to occupy the Basilica, which was
the object of the dispute: and it might be expected from the Arian
principles, and barbarous manners, of these foreign mercenaries, that
they would not entertain any scruples in the execution of the most
sanguinary orders. They were encountered, on the sacred threshold,
by the archbishop, who, thundering against them a sentence of
excommunication, asked them, in the tone of a father and a master,
whether it was to invade the house of God, that they had implored the
hospitable protection of the republic. The suspense of the Barbarians
allowed some hours for a more effectual negotiation; and the empress
was persuaded, by the advice of her wisest counsellors, to leave the
Catholics in possession of all the churches of Milan; and to dissemble,
till a more convenient season, her intentions of revenge. The mother of
Valentinian could never forgive the triumph of Ambrose; and the royal
youth uttered a passionate exclamation, that his own servants were ready
to betray him into the hands of an insolent priest.

[Footnote 64: Retz had a similar message from the queen, to request that
he would appease the tumult of Paris. It was no longer in his power,
&c. A quoi j'ajoutai tout ce que vous pouvez vous imaginer de respect
de douleur, de regret, et de soumission, &c. (Memoires, tom. i. p.
140.) Certainly I do not compare either the causes or the men yet the
coadjutor himself had some idea (p. 84) of imitating St. Ambrose]

The laws of the empire, some of which were inscribed with the name of
Valentinian, still condemned the Arian heresy, and seemed to excuse the
resistance of the Catholics. By the influence of Justina, an edict of
toleration was promulgated in all the provinces which were subject to
the court of Milan; the free exercise of their religion was granted to
those who professed the faith of Rimini; and the emperor declared, that
all persons who should infringe this sacred and salutary constitution,
should be capitally punished, as the enemies of the public peace. [65]
The character and language of the archbishop of Milan may justify the
suspicion, that his conduct soon afforded a reasonable ground, or at
least a specious pretence, to the Arian ministers; who watched the
opportunity of surprising him in some act of disobedience to a law which
he strangely represents as a law of blood and tyranny. A sentence of
easy and honorable banishment was pronounced, which enjoined Ambrose to
depart from Milan without delay; whilst it permitted him to choose the
place of his exile, and the number of his companions. But the authority
of the saints, who have preached and practised the maxims of passive
loyalty, appeared to Ambrose of less moment than the extreme and
pressing danger of the church. He boldly refused to obey; and his
refusal was supported by the unanimous consent of his faithful people.
[66] They guarded by turns the person of their archbishop; the gates of
the cathedral and the episcopal palace were strongly secured; and the
Imperial troops, who had formed the blockade, were unwilling to risk the
attack, of that impregnable fortress. The numerous poor, who had been
relieved by the liberality of Ambrose, embraced the fair occasion
of signalizing their zeal and gratitude; and as the patience of the
multitude might have been exhausted by the length and uniformity of
nocturnal vigils, he prudently introduced into the church of Milan the
useful institution of a loud and regular psalmody. While he maintained
this arduous contest, he was instructed, by a dream, to open the earth
in a place where the remains of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius,
[67] had been deposited above three hundred years. Immediately under the
pavement of the church two perfect skeletons were found, [68] with the
heads separated from their bodies, and a plentiful effusion of blood.
The holy relics were presented, in solemn pomp, to the veneration of the
people; and every circumstance of this fortunate discovery was admirably
adapted to promote the designs of Ambrose. The bones of the martyrs,
their blood, their garments, were supposed to contain a healing power;
and the praeternatural influence was communicated to the most
distant objects, without losing any part of its original virtue. The
extraordinary cure of a blind man, [69] and the reluctant confessions
of several daemoniacs, appeared to justify the faith and sanctity of
Ambrose; and the truth of those miracles is attested by Ambrose
himself, by his secretary Paulinus, and by his proselyte, the celebrated
Augustin, who, at that time, professed the art of rhetoric in Milan.
The reason of the present age may possibly approve the incredulity of
Justina and her Arian court; who derided the theatrical representations
which were exhibited by the contrivance, and at the expense, of the
archbishop. [70] Their effect, however, on the minds of the people, was
rapid and irresistible; and the feeble sovereign of Italy found himself
unable to contend with the favorite of Heaven. The powers likewise of
the earth interposed in the defence of Ambrose: the disinterested advice
of Theodosius was the genuine result of piety and friendship; and the
mask of religious zeal concealed the hostile and ambitious designs of
the tyrant of Gaul. [71]

[Footnote 65: Sozomen alone (l. vii. c. 13) throws this luminous fact
into a dark and perplexed narrative.]

[Footnote 66: Excubabat pia plebs in ecclesia, mori parata cum episcopo
suo.... Nos, adhuc frigidi, excitabamur tamen civitate attonita atque
curbata. Augustin. Confession. l. ix. c. 7]

[Footnote 67: Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. ii. p. 78, 498. Many churches
in Italy, Gaul, &c., were dedicated to these unknown martyrs, of whom
St. Gervaise seems to have been more fortunate than his companion.]

[Footnote 68: Invenimus mirae magnitudinis viros duos, ut prisca aetas
ferebat, tom. ii. Epist. xxii. p. 875. The size of these skeletons
was fortunately, or skillfully, suited to the popular prejudice of the
gradual decrease of the human stature, which has prevailed in every age
since the time of Homer.--Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris.]

[Footnote 69: Ambros. tom. ii. Epist. xxii. p. 875. Augustin. Confes, l.
ix. c. 7, de Civitat. Dei, l. xxii. c. 8. Paulin. in Vita St. Ambros.
c. 14, in Append. Benedict. p. 4. The blind man's name was Severus; he
touched the holy garment, recovered his sight, and devoted the rest of
his life (at least twenty-five years) to the service of the church. I
should recommend this miracle to our divines, if it did not prove the
worship of relics, as well as the Nicene creed.]

[Footnote 70: Paulin, in Tit. St. Ambros. c. 5, in Append. Benedict. p.
5.]

[Footnote 71: Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. x. p. 190, 750. He partially
allow the mediation of Theodosius, and capriciously rejects that of
Maximus, though it is attested by Prosper, Sozomen, and Theodoret.]

The reign of Maximus might have ended in peace and prosperity, could
he have contented himself with the possession of three ample countries,
which now constitute the three most flourishing kingdoms of modern
Europe. But the aspiring usurper, whose sordid ambition was not
dignified by the love of glory and of arms, considered his actual forces
as the instruments only of his future greatness, and his success was the
immediate cause of his destruction. The wealth which he extorted [72]
from the oppressed provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was employed
in levying and maintaining a formidable army of Barbarians, collected,
for the most part, from the fiercest nations of Germany. The conquest
of Italy was the object of his hopes and preparations: and he secretly
meditated the ruin of an innocent youth, whose government was abhorred
and despised by his Catholic subjects. But as Maximus wished to occupy,
without resistance, the passes of the Alps, he received, with perfidious
smiles, Domninus of Syria, the ambassador of Valentinian, and pressed
him to accept the aid of a considerable body of troops, for the service
of a Pannonian war. The penetration of Ambrose had discovered the snares
of an enemy under the professions of friendship; [73] but the Syrian
Domninus was corrupted, or deceived, by the liberal favor of the court
of Treves; and the council of Milan obstinately rejected the suspicion
of danger, with a blind confidence, which was the effect, not of
courage, but of fear. The march of the auxiliaries was guided by
the ambassador; and they were admitted, without distrust, into the
fortresses of the Alps. But the crafty tyrant followed, with hasty and
silent footsteps, in the rear; and, as he diligently intercepted all
intelligence of his motions, the gleam of armor, and the dust excited
by the troops of cavalry, first announced the hostile approach of a
stranger to the gates of Milan. In this extremity, Justina and her son
might accuse their own imprudence, and the perfidious arts of Maximus;
but they wanted time, and force, and resolution, to stand against the
Gauls and Germans, either in the field, or within the walls of a large
and disaffected city. Flight was their only hope, Aquileia their only
refuge; and as Maximus now displayed his genuine character, the brother
of Gratian might expect the same fate from the hands of the same
assassin. Maximus entered Milan in triumph; and if the wise archbishop
refused a dangerous and criminal connection with the usurper, he might
indirectly contribute to the success of his arms, by inculcating, from
the pulpit, the duty of resignation, rather than that of resistance.
[74] The unfortunate Justina reached Aquileia in safety; but she
distrusted the strength of the fortifications: she dreaded the event
of a siege; and she resolved to implore the protection of the great
Theodosius, whose power and virtue were celebrated in all the countries
of the West. A vessel was secretly provided to transport the Imperial
family; they embarked with precipitation in one of the obscure harbors
of Venetia, or Istria; traversed the whole extent of the Adriatic and
Ionian Seas; turned the extreme promontory of Peloponnesus; and, after
a long, but successful navigation, reposed themselves in the port of
Thessalonica. All the subjects of Valentinian deserted the cause of
a prince, who, by his abdication, had absolved them from the duty of
allegiance; and if the little city of Aemona, on the verge of Italy, had
not presumed to stop the career of his inglorious victory, Maximus would
have obtained, without a struggle, the sole possession of the Western
empire.

[Footnote 72: The modest censure of Sulpicius (Dialog. iii. 15) inflicts
a much deeper wound than the declamation of Pacatus, (xii. 25, 26.)]

[Footnote 73: Esto tutior adversus hominem, pacis involurco tegentem,
was the wise caution of Ambrose (tom. ii. p. 891) after his return from
his second embassy.]

[Footnote 74: Baronius (A.D. 387, No. 63) applies to this season of
public distress some of the penitential sermons of the archbishop.]

Instead of inviting his royal guests to take the palace of
Constantinople, Theodosius had some unknown reasons to fix their
residence at Thessalonica; but these reasons did not proceed from
contempt or indifference, as he speedily made a visit to that city,
accompanied by the greatest part of his court and senate. After the
first tender expressions of friendship and sympathy, the pious emperor
of the East gently admonished Justina, that the guilt of heresy was
sometimes punished in this world, as well as in the next; and that the
public profession of the Nicene faith would be the most efficacious step
to promote the restoration of her son, by the satisfaction which it must
occasion both on earth and in heaven. The momentous question of peace or
war was referred, by Theodosius, to the deliberation of his council; and
the arguments which might be alleged on the side of honor and justice,
had acquired, since the death of Gratian, a considerable degree of
additional weight. The persecution of the Imperial family, to which
Theodosius himself had been indebted for his fortune, was now aggravated
by recent and repeated injuries. Neither oaths nor treaties could
restrain the boundless ambition of Maximus; and the delay of vigorous
and decisive measures, instead of prolonging the blessings of peace,
would expose the Eastern empire to the danger of a hostile invasion. The
Barbarians, who had passed the Danube, had lately assumed the character
of soldiers and subjects, but their native fierceness was yet untamed:
and the operations of a war, which would exercise their valor, and
diminish their numbers, might tend to relieve the provinces from
an intolerable oppression. Notwithstanding these specious and solid
reasons, which were approved by a majority of the council, Theodosius
still hesitated whether he should draw the sword in a contest which
could no longer admit any terms of reconciliation; and his magnanimous
character was not disgraced by the apprehensions which he felt for the
safety of his infant sons, and the welfare of his exhausted people. In
this moment of anxious doubt, while the fate of the Roman world depended
on the resolution of a single man, the charms of the princess Galla most
powerfully pleaded the cause of her brother Valentinian. [75] The heart
of Theodosius wa softened by the tears of beauty; his affections were
insensibly engaged by the graces of youth and innocence: the art of
Justina managed and directed the impulse of passion; and the celebration
of the royal nuptials was the assurance and signal of the civil war. The
unfeeling critics, who consider every amorous weakness as an indelible
stain on the memory of a great and orthodox emperor, are inclined,
on this occasion, to dispute the suspicious evidence of the historian
Zosimus. For my own part, I shall frankly confess, that I am willing to
find, or even to seek, in the revolutions of the world, some traces of
the mild and tender sentiments of domestic life; and amidst the crowd
of fierce and ambitious conquerors, I can distinguish, with peculiar
complacency, a gentle hero, who may be supposed to receive his armor
from the hands of love. The alliance of the Persian king was secured by
the faith of treaties; the martial Barbarians were persuaded to follow
the standard, or to respect the frontiers, of an active and liberal
monarch; and the dominions of Theodosius, from the Euphrates to the
Adriatic, resounded with the preparations of war both by land and sea.
The skilful disposition of the forces of the East seemed to multiply
their numbers, and distracted the attention of Maximus. He had reason
to fear, that a chosen body of troops, under the command of the intrepid
Arbogastes, would direct their march along the banks of the Danube, and
boldly penetrate through the Rhaetian provinces into the centre of Gaul.
A powerful fleet was equipped in the harbors of Greece and Epirus, with
an apparent design, that, as soon as the passage had been opened by a
naval victory, Valentinian and his mother should land in Italy, proceed,
without delay, to Rome, and occupy the majestic seat of religion and
empire. In the mean while, Theodosius himself advanced at the head of a
brave and disciplined army, to encounter his unworthy rival, who, after
the siege of Aemona, [7511] had fixed his camp in the neighborhood of
Siscia, a city of Pannonia, strongly fortified by the broad and rapid
stream of the Save.

[Footnote 75: The flight of Valentinian, and the love of Theodosius
for his sister, are related by Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 263, 264.) Tillemont
produces some weak and ambiguous evidence to antedate the second
marriage of Theodosius, (Hist. des Empereurs, to. v. p. 740,) and
consequently to refute ces contes de Zosime, qui seroient trop
contraires a la piete de Theodose.]

[Footnote 7511: Aemonah, Laybach. Siscia Sciszek.--M.]




Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius.--Part IV.

The veterans, who still remembered the long resistance, and successive
resources, of the tyrant Magnentius, might prepare themselves for the
labors of three bloody campaigns. But the contest with his successor,
who, like him, had usurped the throne of the West, was easily decided in
the term of two months, [76] and within the space of two hundred miles.
The superior genius of the emperor of the East might prevail over the
feeble Maximus, who, in this important crisis, showed himself destitute
of military skill, or personal courage; but the abilities of Theodosius
were seconded by the advantage which he possessed of a numerous and
active cavalry. The Huns, the Alani, and, after their example, the
Goths themselves, were formed into squadrons of archers; who fought on
horseback, and confounded the steady valor of the Gauls and Germans, by
the rapid motions of a Tartar war. After the fatigue of a long march, in
the heat of summer, they spurred their foaming horses into the waters
of the Save, swam the river in the presence of the enemy, and instantly
charged and routed the troops who guarded the high ground on the
opposite side. Marcellinus, the tyrant's brother, advanced to support
them with the select cohorts, which were considered as the hope and
strength of the army. The action, which had been interrupted by the
approach of night, was renewed in the morning; and, after a sharp
conflict, the surviving remnant of the bravest soldiers of Maximus threw
down their arms at the feet of the conqueror. Without suspending his
march, to receive the loyal acclamations of the citizens of Aemona,
Theodosius pressed forwards to terminate the war by the death or
captivity of his rival, who fled before him with the diligence of fear.
From the summit of the Julian Alps, he descended with such incredible
speed into the plain of Italy, that he reached Aquileia on the evening
of the first day; and Maximus, who found himself encompassed on all
sides, had scarcely time to shut the gates of the city. But the gates
could not long resist the effort of a victorious enemy; and the despair,
the disaffection, the indifference of the soldiers and people, hastened
the downfall of the wretched Maximus. He was dragged from his throne,
rudely stripped of the Imperial ornaments, the robe, the diadem, and
the purple slippers; and conducted, like a malefactor, to the camp and
presence of Theodosius, at a place about three miles from Aquileia.
The behavior of the emperor was not intended to insult, and he showed
disposition to pity and forgive, the tyrant of the West, who had never
been his personal enemy, and was now become the object of his contempt.
Our sympathy is the most forcibly excited by the misfortunes to which we
are exposed; and the spectacle of a proud competitor, now prostrate at
his feet, could not fail of producing very serious and solemn thoughts
in the mind of the victorious emperor. But the feeble emotion of
involuntary pity was checked by his regard for public justice, and the
memory of Gratian; and he abandoned the victim to the pious zeal of
the soldiers, who drew him out of the Imperial presence, and instantly
separated his head from his body. The intelligence of his defeat and
death was received with sincere or well-dissembled joy: his son Victor,
on whom he had conferred the title of Augustus, died by the order,
perhaps by the hand, of the bold Arbogastes; and all the military plans
of Theodosius were successfully executed. When he had thus terminated
the civil war, with less difficulty and bloodshed than he might
naturally expect, he employed the winter months of his residence at
Milan, to restore the state of the afflicted provinces; and early in the
spring he made, after the example of Constantine and Constantius, his
triumphal entry into the ancient capital of the Roman empire. [77]

[Footnote 76: See Godefroy's Chronology of the Laws, Cod. Theodos, tom
l. p. cxix.]

[Footnote 77: Besides the hints which may be gathered from chronicles
and ecclesiastical history, Zosimus (l. iv. p. 259--267,) Orosius, (l.
vii. c. 35,) and Pacatus, (in Panegyr. Vet. xii. 30-47,) supply the
loose and scanty materials of this civil war. Ambrose (tom. ii. Epist.
xl. p. 952, 953) darkly alludes to the well-known events of a magazine
surprised, an action at Petovio, a Sicilian, perhaps a naval, victory,
&c., Ausonius (p. 256, edit. Toll.) applauds the peculiar merit and good
fortune of Aquileia.] The orator, who may be silent without danger, may
praise without difficulty, and without reluctance; [78] and posterity
will confess, that the character of Theodosius [79] might furnish the
subject of a sincere and ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws, and
the success of his arms, rendered his administration respectable in the
eyes both of his subjects and of his enemies. He loved and practised
the virtues of domestic life, which seldom hold their residence in
the palaces of kings. Theodosius was chaste and temperate; he enjoyed,
without excess, the sensual and social pleasures of the table; and the
warmth of his amorous passions was never diverted from their lawful
objects. The proud titles of Imperial greatness were adorned by the
tender names of a faithful husband, an indulgent father; his uncle was
raised, by his affectionate esteem, to the rank of a second parent:
Theodosius embraced, as his own, the children of his brother and sister;
and the expressions of his regard were extended to the most distant
and obscure branches of his numerous kindred. His familiar friends
were judiciously selected from among those persons, who, in the equal
intercourse of private life, had appeared before his eyes without a
mask; the consciousness of personal and superior merit enabled him to
despise the accidental distinction of the purple; and he proved by
his conduct, that he had forgotten all the injuries, while he most
gratefully remembered all the favors and services, which he had received
before he ascended the throne of the Roman empire. The serious or
lively tone of his conversation was adapted to the age, the rank, or the
character of his subjects, whom he admitted into his society; and the
affability of his manners displayed the image of his mind. Theodosius
respected the simplicity of the good and virtuous: every art, every
talent, of a useful, or even of an innocent nature, was rewarded by his
judicious liberality; and, except the heretics, whom he persecuted
with implacable hatred, the diffusive circle of his benevolence was
circumscribed only by the limits of the human race. The government of
a mighty empire may assuredly suffice to occupy the time, and the
abilities, of a mortal: yet the diligent prince, without aspiring to the
unsuitable reputation of profound learning, always reserved some moments
of his leisure for the instructive amusement of reading. History, which
enlarged his experience, was his favorite study. The annals of Rome, in
the long period of eleven hundred years, presented him with a various
and splendid picture of human life: and it has been particularly
observed, that whenever he perused the cruel acts of Cinna, of Marius,
or of Sylla, he warmly expressed his generous detestation of those
enemies of humanity and freedom. His disinterested opinion of past
events was usefully applied as the rule of his own actions; and
Theodosius has deserved the singular commendation, that his virtues
always seemed to expand with his fortune: the season of his prosperity
was that of his moderation; and his clemency appeared the most
conspicuous after the danger and success of a civil war. The Moorish
guards of the tyrant had been massacred in the first heat of the
victory, and a small number of the most obnoxious criminals suffered
the punishment of the law. But the emperor showed himself much more
attentive to relieve the innocent than to chastise the guilty. The
oppressed subjects of the West, who would have deemed themselves happy
in the restoration of their lands, were astonished to receive a sum of
money equivalent to their losses; and the liberality of the conqueror
supported the aged mother, and educated the orphan daughters, of
Maximus. [80] A character thus accomplished might almost excuse the
extravagant supposition of the orator Pacatus; that, if the elder Brutus
could be permitted to revisit the earth, the stern republican would
abjure, at the feet of Theodosius, his hatred of kings; and ingenuously
confess, that such a monarch was the most faithful guardian of the
happiness and dignity of the Roman people. [81]

[Footnote 78: Quam promptum laudare principem, tam tutum siluisse de
principe, (Pacat. in Panegyr. Vet. xii. 2.) Latinus Pacatus Drepanius,
a native of Gaul, pronounced this oration at Rome, (A.D. 388.) He was
afterwards proconsul of Africa; and his friend Ausonius praises him as a
poet second only to Virgil. See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v.
p. 303.]

[Footnote 79: See the fair portrait of Theodosius, by the younger
Victor; the strokes are distinct, and the colors are mixed. The praise
of Pacatus is too vague; and Claudian always seems afraid of exalting
the father above the son.]

[Footnote 80: Ambros. tom. ii. Epist. xl. p. 55. Pacatus, from the want
of skill or of courage, omits this glorious circumstance.]

[Footnote 81: Pacat. in Panegyr. Vet. xii. 20.]

Yet the piercing eye of the founder of the republic must have discerned
two essential imperfections, which might, perhaps, have abated his
recent love of despostism. The virtuous mind of Theodosius was often
relaxed by indolence, [82] and it was sometimes inflamed by passion.
[83] In the pursuit of an important object, his active courage was
capable of the most vigorous exertions; but, as soon as the design
was accomplished, or the danger was surmounted, the hero sunk into
inglorious repose; and, forgetful that the time of a prince is the
property of his people, resigned himself to the enjoyment of the
innocent, but trifling, pleasures of a luxurious court. The natural
disposition of Theodosius was hasty and choleric; and, in a station
where none could resist, and few would dissuade, the fatal consequence
of his resentment, the humane monarch was justly alarmed by the
consciousness of his infirmity and of his power. It was the constant
study of his life to suppress, or regulate, the intemperate sallies
of passion and the success of his efforts enhanced the merit of his
clemency. But the painful virtue which claims the merit of victory, is
exposed to the danger of defeat; and the reign of a wise and merciful
prince was polluted by an act of cruelty which would stain the annals
of Nero or Domitian. Within the space of three years, the inconsistent
historian of Theodosius must relate the generous pardon of the citizens
of Antioch, and the inhuman massacre of the people of Thessalonica.

[Footnote 82: Zosimus, l. iv. p. 271, 272. His partial evidence is
marked by an air of candor and truth. He observes these vicissitudes of
sloth and activity, not as a vice, but as a singularity in the character
of Theodosius.]

[Footnote 83: This choleric temper is acknowledged and excused by Victor
Sed habes (says Ambrose, in decent and many language, to his sovereign)
nature impetum, quem si quis lenire velit, cito vertes ad misericordiam:
si quis stimulet, in magis exsuscitas, ut eum revocare vix possis, (tom.
ii. Epist. li. p. 998.) Theodosius (Claud. in iv. Hon. 266, &c.) exhorts
his son to moderate his anger.]

The lively impatience of the inhabitants of Antioch was never satisfied
with their own situation, or with the character and conduct of their
successive sovereigns. The Arian subjects of Theodosius deplored the
loss of their churches; and as three rival bishops disputed the throne
of Antioch, the sentence which decided their pretensions excited the
murmurs of the two unsuccessful congregations. The exigencies of the
Gothic war, and the inevitable expense that accompanied the conclusion
of the peace, had constrained the emperor to aggravate the weight of
the public impositions; and the provinces of Asia, as they had not been
involved in the distress were the less inclined to contribute to the
relief, of Europe. The auspicious period now approached of the tenth
year of his reign; a festival more grateful to the soldiers, who
received a liberal donative, than to the subjects, whose voluntary
offerings had been long since converted into an extraordinary and
oppressive burden. The edicts of taxation interrupted the repose, and
pleasures, of Antioch; and the tribunal of the magistrate was besieged
by a suppliant crowd; who, in pathetic, but, at first, in respectful
language, solicited the redress of their grievances. They were gradually
incensed by the pride of their haughty rulers, who treated their
complaints as a criminal resistance; their satirical wit degenerated
into sharp and angry invectives; and, from the subordinate powers of
government, the invectives of the people insensibly rose to attack
the sacred character of the emperor himself. Their fury, provoked by
a feeble opposition, discharged itself on the images of the Imperial
family, which were erected, as objects of public veneration, in the
most conspicuous places of the city. The statues of Theodosius, of his
father, of his wife Flaccilla, of his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius,
were insolently thrown down from their pedestals, broken in pieces, or
dragged with contempt through the streets; and the indignities which
were offered to the representations of Imperial majesty, sufficiently
declared the impious and treasonable wishes of the populace. The tumult
was almost immediately suppressed by the arrival of a body of archers:
and Antioch had leisure to reflect on the nature and consequences of
her crime. [84] According to the duty of his office, the governor of the
province despatched a faithful narrative of the whole transaction: while
the trembling citizens intrusted the confession of their crime, and the
assurances of their repentance, to the zeal of Flavian, their bishop,
and to the eloquence of the senator Hilarius, the friend, and most
probably the disciple, of Libanius; whose genius, on this melancholy
occasion, was not useless to his country. [85] But the two capitals,
Antioch and Constantinople, were separated by the distance of eight
hundred miles; and, notwithstanding the diligence of the Imperial posts,
the guilty city was severely punished by a long and dreadful interval of
suspense. Every rumor agitated the hopes and fears of the Antiochians,
and they heard with terror, that their sovereign, exasperated by the
insult which had been offered to his own statues, and more especially,
to those of his beloved wife, had resolved to level with the ground the
offending city; and to massacre, without distinction of age or sex, the
criminal inhabitants; [86] many of whom were actually driven, by their
apprehensions, to seek a refuge in the mountains of Syria, and the
adjacent desert. At length, twenty-four days after the sedition, the
general Hellebicus and Caesarius, master of the offices, declared the
will of the emperor, and the sentence of Antioch. That proud capital
was degraded from the rank of a city; and the metropolis of the East,
stripped of its lands, its privileges, and its revenues, was subjected,
under the humiliating denomination of a village, to the jurisdiction of
Laodicea. [87] The baths, the Circus, and the theatres were shut: and,
that every source of plenty and pleasure might at the same time be
intercepted, the distribution of corn was abolished, by the severe
instructions of Theodosius. His commissioners then proceeded to inquire
into the guilt of individuals; of those who had perpetrated, and of
those who had not prevented, the destruction of the sacred statues. The
tribunal of Hellebicus and Caesarius, encompassed with armed soldiers,
was erected in the midst of the Forum. The noblest, and most wealthy, of
the citizens of Antioch appeared before them in chains; the examination
was assisted by the use of torture, and their sentence was pronounced or
suspended, according to the judgment of these extraordinary magistrates.
The houses of the criminals were exposed to sale, their wives and
children were suddenly reduced, from affluence and luxury, to the most
abject distress; and a bloody execution was expected to conclude the
horrors of the day, [88] which the preacher of Antioch, the eloquent
Chrysostom, has represented as a lively image of the last and universal
judgment of the world. But the ministers of Theodosius performed, with
reluctance, the cruel task which had been assigned them; they dropped
a gentle tear over the calamities of the people; and they listened with
reverence to the pressing solicitations of the monks and hermits, who
descended in swarms from the mountains. [89] Hellebicus and Caesarius
were persuaded to suspend the execution of their sentence; and it
was agreed that the former should remain at Antioch, while the latter
returned, with all possible speed, to Constantinople; and presumed once
more to consult the will of his sovereign. The resentment of Theodosius
had already subsided; the deputies of the people, both the bishop and
the orator, had obtained a favorable audience; and the reproaches of the
emperor were the complaints of injured friendship, rather than the stern
menaces of pride and power. A free and general pardon was granted to
the city and citizens of Antioch; the prison doors were thrown open;
the senators, who despaired of their lives, recovered the possession of
their houses and estates; and the capital of the East was restored
to the enjoyment of her ancient dignity and splendor. Theodosius
condescended to praise the senate of Constantinople, who had generously
interceded for their distressed brethren: he rewarded the eloquence of
Hilarius with the government of Palestine; and dismissed the bishop of
Antioch with the warmest expressions of his respect and gratitude. A
thousand new statues arose to the clemency of Theodosius; the applause
of his subjects was ratified by the approbation of his own heart; and
the emperor confessed, that, if the exercise of justice is the most
important duty, the indulgence of mercy is the most exquisite pleasure,
of a sovereign. [90]

[Footnote 84: The Christians and Pagans agreed in believing that the
sedition of Antioch was excited by the daemons. A gigantic woman (says
Sozomen, l. vii. c. 23) paraded the streets with a scourge in her hand.
An old man, says Libanius, (Orat. xii. p. 396,) transformed himself into
a youth, then a boy, &c.]

[Footnote 85: Zosimus, in his short and disingenuous account, (l. iv.
p. 258, 259,) is certainly mistaken in sending Libanius himself to
Constantinople. His own orations fix him at Antioch.]

[Footnote 86: Libanius (Orat. i. p. 6, edit. Venet.) declares, that
under such a reign the fear of a massacre was groundless and absurd,
especially in the emperor's absence, for his presence, according to the
eloquent slave, might have given a sanction to the most bloody acts.]

[Footnote 87: Laodicea, on the sea-coast, sixty-five miles from Antioch,
(see Noris Epoch. Syro-Maced. Dissert. iii. p. 230.) The Antiochians
were offended, that the dependent city of Seleucia should presume to
intercede for them.]

[Footnote 88: As the days of the tumult depend on the movable festival
of Easter, they can only be determined by the previous determination of
the year. The year 387 has been preferred, after a laborious inquiry,
by Tillemont (Hist. des. Emp. tom. v. p. 741-744) and Montfaucon,
(Chrysostom, tom. xiii. p. 105-110.)]

[Footnote 89: Chrysostom opposes their courage, which was not attended
with much risk, to the cowardly flight of the Cynics.]

[Footnote 90: The sedition of Antioch is represented in a lively, and
almost dramatic, manner by two orators, who had their respective shares
of interest and merit. See Libanius (Orat. xiv. xv. p. 389-420, edit.
Morel. Orat. i. p. 1-14, Venet. 1754) and the twenty orations of St.
John Chrysostom, de Statuis, (tom. ii. p. 1-225, edit. Montfaucon.) I do
not pretend to much personal acquaintance with Chrysostom but Tillemont
(Hist. des. Empereurs, tom. v. p. 263-283) and Hermant (Vie de St.
Chrysostome, tom. i. p. 137-224) had read him with pious curiosity and
diligence.]

The sedition of Thessalonica is ascribed to a more shameful cause, and
was productive of much more dreadful consequences. That great city, the
metropolis of all the Illyrian provinces, had been protected from
the dangers of the Gothic war by strong fortifications and a numerous
garrison. Botheric, the general of those troops, and, as it should seem
from his name, a Barbarian, had among his slaves a beautiful boy, who
excited the impure desires of one of the charioteers of the Circus.
The insolent and brutal lover was thrown into prison by the order
of Botheric; and he sternly rejected the importunate clamors of the
multitude, who, on the day of the public games, lamented the absence of
their favorite; and considered the skill of a charioteer as an object
of more importance than his virtue. The resentment of the people was
imbittered by some previous disputes; and, as the strength of the
garrison had been drawn away for the service of the Italian war, the
feeble remnant, whose numbers were reduced by desertion, could not save
the unhappy general from their licentious fury. Botheric, and several
of his principal officers, were inhumanly murdered; their mangled bodies
were dragged about the streets; and the emperor, who then resided at
Milan, was surprised by the intelligence of the audacious and wanton
cruelty of the people of Thessalonica. The sentence of a dispassionate
judge would have inflicted a severe punishment on the authors of the
crime; and the merit of Botheric might contribute to exasperate the
grief and indignation of his master.

The fiery and choleric temper of Theodosius was impatient of the
dilatory forms of a judicial inquiry; and he hastily resolved, that the
blood of his lieutenant should be expiated by the blood of the guilty
people. Yet his mind still fluctuated between the counsels of clemency
and of revenge; the zeal of the bishops had almost extorted from the
reluctant emperor the promise of a general pardon; his passion was again
inflamed by the flattering suggestions of his minister Rufinus; and,
after Theodosius had despatched the messengers of death, he attempted,
when it was too late, to prevent the execution of his orders. The
punishment of a Roman city was blindly committed to the undistinguishing
sword of the Barbarians; and the hostile preparations were concerted
with the dark and perfidious artifice of an illegal conspiracy. The
people of Thessalonica were treacherously invited, in the name of their
sovereign, to the games of the Circus; and such was their insatiate
avidity for those amusements, that every consideration of fear, or
suspicion, was disregarded by the numerous spectators. As soon as the
assembly was complete, the soldiers, who had secretly been posted round
the Circus, received the signal, not of the races, but of a general
massacre. The promiscuous carnage continued three hours, without
discrimination of strangers or natives, of age or sex, of innocence or
guilt; the most moderate accounts state the number of the slain at seven
thousand; and it is affirmed by some writers that more than fifteen
thousand victims were sacrificed to the names of Botheric. A foreign
merchant, who had probably no concern in his murder, offered his own
life, and all his wealth, to supply the place of one of his two sons;
but, while the father hesitated with equal tenderness, while he was
doubtful to choose, and unwilling to condemn, the soldiers determined
his suspense, by plunging their daggers at the same moment into the
breasts of the defenceless youths. The apology of the assassins, that
they were obliged to produce the prescribed number of heads, serves only
to increase, by an appearance of order and design, the horrors of the
massacre, which was executed by the commands of Theodosius. The guilt
of the emperor is aggravated by his long and frequent residence at
Thessalonica. The situation of the unfortunate city, the aspect of the
streets and buildings, the dress and faces of the inhabitants, were
familiar, and even present, to his imagination; and Theodosius possessed
a quick and lively sense of the existence of the people whom he
destroyed. [91]

[Footnote 91: The original evidence of Ambrose, (tom. ii. Epist. li. p.
998.) Augustin, (de Civitat. Dei, v. 26,) and Paulinus, (in Vit. Ambros.
c. 24,) is delivered in vague expressions of horror and pity. It is
illustrated by the subsequent and unequal testimonies of Sozomen, (l.
vii. c. 25,) Theodoret, (l. v. c. 17,) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p.
62,) Cedrenus, (p. 317,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xiii. p. 34.) Zosimus
alone, the partial enemy of Theodosius, most unaccountably passes over
in silence the worst of his actions.]

The respectful attachment of the emperor for the orthodox clergy, had
disposed him to love and admire the character of Ambrose; who united
all the episcopal virtues in the most eminent degree. The friends and
ministers of Theodosius imitated the example of their sovereign; and
he observed, with more surprise than displeasure, that all his secret
counsels were immediately communicated to the archbishop; who acted from
the laudable persuasion, that every measure of civil government may
have some connection with the glory of God, and the interest of the true
religion. The monks and populace of Callinicum, [9111] an obscure town
on the frontier of Persia, excited by their own fanaticism, and by
that of their bishop, had tumultuously burnt a conventicle of the
Valentinians, and a synagogue of the Jews. The seditious prelate was
condemned, by the magistrate of the province, either to rebuild the
synagogue, or to repay the damage; and this moderate sentence was
confirmed by the emperor. But it was not confirmed by the archbishop
of Milan. [92] He dictated an epistle of censure and reproach, more
suitable, perhaps, if the emperor had received the mark of circumcision,
and renounced the faith of his baptism. Ambrose considers the toleration
of the Jewish, as the persecution of the Christian, religion; boldly
declares that he himself, and every true believer, would eagerly dispute
with the bishop of Callinicum the merit of the deed, and the crown of
martyrdom; and laments, in the most pathetic terms, that the execution
of the sentence would be fatal to the fame and salvation of Theodosius.
As this private admonition did not produce an immediate effect, the
archbishop, from his pulpit, [93] publicly addressed the emperor on his
throne; [94] nor would he consent to offer the oblation of the altar,
till he had obtained from Theodosius a solemn and positive declaration,
which secured the impunity of the bishop and monks of Callinicum. The
recantation of Theodosius was sincere; [95] and, during the term of his
residence at Milan, his affection for Ambrose was continually increased
by the habits of pious and familiar conversation.

[Footnote 9111: Raeca, on the Euphrates--M.]

[Footnote 92: See the whole transaction in Ambrose, (tom. ii. Epist.
xl. xli. p. 950-956,) and his biographer Paulinus, (c. 23.) Bayle
and Barbeyrac (Morales des Peres, c. xvii. p. 325, &c.) have justly
condemned the archbishop.]

[Footnote 93: His sermon is a strange allegory of Jeremiah's rod, of an
almond tree, of the woman who washed and anointed the feet of Christ.
But the peroration is direct and personal.]

[Footnote 94: Hodie, Episcope, de me proposuisti. Ambrose modestly
confessed it; but he sternly reprimanded Timasius, general of the horse
and foot, who had presumed to say that the monks of Callinicum deserved
punishment.]

[Footnote 95: Yet, five years afterwards, when Theodosius was absent
from his spiritual guide, he tolerated the Jews, and condemned the
destruction of their synagogues. Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. viii. leg.
9, with Godefroy's Commentary, tom. vi. p. 225.]

When Ambrose was informed of the massacre of Thessalonica, his mind was
filled with horror and anguish. He retired into the country to
indulge his grief, and to avoid the presence of Theodosius. But as
the archbishop was satisfied that a timid silence would render him
the accomplice of his guilt, he represented, in a private letter, the
enormity of the crime; which could only be effaced by the tears of
penitence. The episcopal vigor of Ambrose was tempered by prudence;
and he contented himself with signifying [96] an indirect sort of
excommunication, by the assurance, that he had been warned in a
vision not to offer the oblation in the name, or in the presence, of
Theodosius; and by the advice, that he would confine himself to the
use of prayer, without presuming to approach the altar of Christ, or
to receive the holy eucharist with those hands that were still polluted
with the blood of an innocent people. The emperor was deeply affected by
his own reproaches, and by those of his spiritual father; and after he
had bewailed the mischievous and irreparable consequences of his rash
fury, he proceeded, in the accustomed manner, to perform his devotions
in the great church of Milan. He was stopped in the porch by the
archbishop; who, in the tone and language of an ambassador of Heaven,
declared to his sovereign, that private contrition was not sufficient
to atone for a public fault, or to appease the justice of the offended
Deity. Theodosius humbly represented, that if he had contracted the
guilt of homicide, David, the man after God's own heart, had been
guilty, not only of murder, but of adultery. "You have imitated David in
his crime, imitate then his repentance," was the reply of the undaunted
Ambrose. The rigorous conditions of peace and pardon were accepted; and
the public penance of the emperor Theodosius has been recorded as one of
the most honorable events in the annals of the church. According to the
mildest rules of ecclesiastical discipline, which were established in
the fourth century, the crime of homicide was expiated by the penitence
of twenty years: [97] and as it was impossible, in the period of human
life, to purge the accumulated guilt of the massacre of Thessalonica,
the murderer should have been excluded from the holy communion till
the hour of his death. But the archbishop, consulting the maxims of
religious policy, granted some indulgence to the rank of his illustrious
penitent, who humbled in the dust the pride of the diadem; and the
public edification might be admitted as a weighty reason to abridge the
duration of his punishment. It was sufficient, that the emperor of the
Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty, should appear in a mournful
and suppliant posture; and that, in the midst of the church of Milan,
he should humbly solicit, with sighs and tears, the pardon of his sins.
[98] In this spiritual cure, Ambrose employed the various methods of
mildness and severity. After a delay of about eight months, Theodosius
was restored to the communion of the faithful; and the edict which
interposes a salutary interval of thirty days between the sentence and
the execution, may be accepted as the worthy fruits of his repentance.
[99] Posterity has applauded the virtuous firmness of the archbishop;
and the example of Theodosius may prove the beneficial influence
of those principles, which could force a monarch, exalted above the
apprehension of human punishment, to respect the laws, and ministers, of
an invisible Judge. "The prince," says Montesquieu, "who is actuated by
the hopes and fears of religion, may be compared to a lion, docile
only to the voice, and tractable to the hand, of his keeper." [100] The
motions of the royal animal will therefore depend on the inclination,
and interest, of the man who has acquired such dangerous authority over
him; and the priest, who holds in his hands the conscience of a
king, may inflame, or moderate, his sanguinary passions. The cause
of humanity, and that of persecution, have been asserted, by the same
Ambrose, with equal energy, and with equal success.

[Footnote 96: Ambros. tom. ii. Epist. li. p. 997-1001. His epistle is a
miserable rhapsody on a noble subject. Ambrose could act better than he
could write. His compositions are destitute of taste, or genius; without
the spirit of Tertullian, the copious elegance of Lactantius the lively
wit of Jerom, or the grave energy of Augustin.]

[Footnote 97: According to the discipline of St. Basil, (Canon lvi.,)
the voluntary homicide was four years a mourner; five a hearer; seven in
a prostrate state; and four in a standing posture. I have the original
(Beveridge, Pandect. tom. ii. p. 47-151) and a translation (Chardon,
Hist. des Sacremens, tom. iv. p. 219-277) of the Canonical Epistles of
St. Basil.]

[Footnote 98: The penance of Theodosius is authenticated by Ambrose,
(tom. vi. de Obit. Theodos. c. 34, p. 1207,) Augustin, (de Civitat. Dei,
v. 26,) and Paulinus, (in Vit. Ambros. c. 24.) Socrates is ignorant;
Sozomen (l. vii. c. 25) concise; and the copious narrative of Theodoret
(l. v. c. 18) must be used with precaution.]

[Footnote 99: Codex Theodos. l. ix. tit. xl. leg. 13. The date and
circumstances of this law are perplexed with difficulties; but I feel
myself inclined to favor the honest efforts of Tillemont (Hist. des Emp.
tom. v. p. 721) and Pagi, (Critica, tom. i. p. 578.)]

[Footnote 100: Un prince qui aime la religion, et qui la craint, est
un lion qui cede a la main qui le flatte, ou a la voix qui l'appaise.
Esprit des Loix, l. xxiv. c. 2.]




Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius.--Part V.

After the defeat and death of the tyrant of Gaul, the Roman world was in
the possession of Theodosius. He derived from the choice of Gratian his
honorable title to the provinces of the East: he had acquired the West
by the right of conquest; and the three years which he spent in Italy
were usefully employed to restore the authority of the laws, and
to correct the abuses which had prevailed with impunity under the
usurpation of Maximus, and the minority of Valentinian. The name of
Valentinian was regularly inserted in the public acts: but the tender
age, and doubtful faith, of the son of Justina, appeared to require the
prudent care of an orthodox guardian; and his specious ambition might
have excluded the unfortunate youth, without a struggle, and
almost without a murmur, from the administration, and even from the
inheritance, of the empire. If Theodosius had consulted the rigid maxims
of interest and policy, his conduct would have been justified by his
friends; but the generosity of his behavior on this memorable occasion
has extorted the applause of his most inveterate enemies. He seated
Valentinian on the throne of Milan; and, without stipulating any present
or future advantages, restored him to the absolute dominion of all the
provinces, from which he had been driven by the arms of Maximus. To
the restitution of his ample patrimony, Theodosius added the free and
generous gift of the countries beyond the Alps, which his successful
valor had recovered from the assassin of Gratian. [101] Satisfied
with the glory which he had acquired, by revenging the death of his
benefactor, and delivering the West from the yoke of tyranny, the
emperor returned from Milan to Constantinople; and, in the peaceful
possession of the East, insensibly relapsed into his former habits
of luxury and indolence. Theodosius discharged his obligation to
the brother, he indulged his conjugal tenderness to the sister, of
Valentinian; and posterity, which admires the pure and singular glory
of his elevation, must applaud his unrivalled generosity in the use of
victory.

[Footnote 101: It is the niggard praise of Zosimus himself, (l. iv.
p. 267.) Augustin says, with some happiness of expression,
Valentinianum.... misericordissima veneratione restituit.] The empress
Justina did not long survive her return to Italy; and, though she
beheld the triumph of Theodosius, she was not allowed to influence the
government of her son. [102] The pernicious attachment to the Arian
sect, which Valentinian had imbibed from her example and instructions,
was soon erased by the lessons of a more orthodox education. His growing
zeal for the faith of Nice, and his filial reverence for the character
and authority of Ambrose, disposed the Catholics to entertain the most
favorable opinion of the virtues of the young emperor of the West. [103]
They applauded his chastity and temperance, his contempt of pleasure,
his application to business, and his tender affection for his two
sisters; which could not, however, seduce his impartial equity to
pronounce an unjust sentence against the meanest of his subjects. But
this amiable youth, before he had accomplished the twentieth year of
his age, was oppressed by domestic treason; and the empire was again
involved in the horrors of a civil war. Arbogastes, [104] a gallant
soldier of the nation of the Franks, held the second rank in the
service of Gratian. On the death of his master he joined the standard
of Theodosius; contributed, by his valor and military conduct, to
the destruction of the tyrant; and was appointed, after the victory,
master-general of the armies of Gaul. His real merit, and apparent
fidelity, had gained the confidence both of the prince and people; his
boundless liberality corrupted the allegiance of the troops; and, whilst
he was universally esteemed as the pillar of the state, the bold and
crafty Barbarian was secretly determined either to rule, or to ruin, the
empire of the West. The important commands of the army were distributed
among the Franks; the creatures of Arbogastes were promoted to all
the honors and offices of the civil government; the progress of
the conspiracy removed every faithful servant from the presence of
Valentinian; and the emperor, without power and without intelligence,
insensibly sunk into the precarious and dependent condition of a
captive. [105] The indignation which he expressed, though it might
arise only from the rash and impatient temper of youth, may be candidly
ascribed to the generous spirit of a prince, who felt that he was
not unworthy to reign. He secretly invited the archbishop of Milan to
undertake the office of a mediator; as the pledge of his sincerity, and
the guardian of his safety. He contrived to apprise the emperor of the
East of his helpless situation, and he declared, that, unless Theodosius
could speedily march to his assistance, he must attempt to escape
from the palace, or rather prison, of Vienna in Gaul, where he had
imprudently fixed his residence in the midst of the hostile faction.
But the hopes of relief were distant, and doubtful: and, as every
day furnished some new provocation, the emperor, without strength or
counsel, too hastily resolved to risk an immediate contest with his
powerful general. He received Arbogastes on the throne; and, as the
count approached with some appearance of respect, delivered to him a
paper, which dismissed him from all his employments. "My authority,"
replied Arbogastes, with insulting coolness, "does not depend on the
smile or the frown of a monarch;" and he contemptuously threw the paper
on the ground. The indignant monarch snatched at the sword of one of
the guards, which he struggled to draw from its scabbard; and it was
not without some degree of violence that he was prevented from using the
deadly weapon against his enemy, or against himself. A few days after
this extraordinary quarrel, in which he had exposed his resentment and
his weakness, the unfortunate Valentinian was found strangled in his
apartment; and some pains were employed to disguise the manifest guilt
of Arbogastes, and to persuade the world, that the death of the young
emperor had been the voluntary effect of his own despair. [106] His
body was conducted with decent pomp to the sepulchre of Milan; and the
archbishop pronounced a funeral oration to commemorate his virtues and
his misfortunes. [107] On this occasion the humanity of Ambrose tempted
him to make a singular breach in his theological system; and to comfort
the weeping sisters of Valentinian, by the firm assurance, that their
pious brother, though he had not received the sacrament of baptism,
was introduced, without difficulty, into the mansions of eternal bliss.
[108]

[Footnote 102: Sozomen, l. vii. c. 14. His chronology is very
irregular.]

[Footnote 103: See Ambrose, (tom. ii. de Obit. Valentinian. c. 15,
&c. p. 1178. c. 36, &c. p. 1184.) When the young emperor gave an
entertainment, he fasted himself; he refused to see a handsome actress,
&c. Since he ordered his wild beasts to to be killed, it is ungenerous
in Philostor (l. xi. c. 1) to reproach him with the love of that
amusement.]

[Footnote 104: Zosimus (l. iv. p. 275) praises the enemy of Theodosius.
But he is detested by Socrates (l. v. c. 25) and Orosius, (l. vii. c.
35.)]

[Footnote 105: Gregory of Tours (l. ii. c. 9, p. 165, in the second
volume of the Historians of France) has preserved a curious fragment of
Sulpicius Alexander, an historian far more valuable than himself.]

[Footnote 106: Godefroy (Dissertat. ad. Philostorg. p. 429-434) has
diligently collected all the circumstances of the death of Valentinian
II. The variations, and the ignorance, of contemporary writers, prove
that it was secret.]

[Footnote 107: De Obitu Valentinian. tom. ii. p. 1173-1196. He is forced
to speak a discreet and obscure language: yet he is much bolder than any
layman, or perhaps any other ecclesiastic, would have dared to be.]

[Footnote 108: See c. 51, p. 1188, c. 75, p. 1193. Dom Chardon,
(Hist. des Sacramens, tom. i. p. 86,) who owns that St. Ambrose most
strenuously maintains the indispensable necessity of baptism, labors to
reconcile the contradiction.]

The prudence of Arbogastes had prepared the success of his ambitious
designs: and the provincials, in whose breast every sentiment of
patriotism or loyalty was extinguished, expected, with tame resignation,
the unknown master, whom the choice of a Frank might place on the
Imperial throne. But some remains of pride and prejudice still opposed
the elevation of Arbogastes himself; and the judicious Barbarian thought
it more advisable to reign under the name of some dependent Roman.
He bestowed the purple on the rhetorician Eugenius; [109] whom he had
already raised from the place of his domestic secretary to the rank of
master of the offices. In the course, both of his private and public
service, the count had always approved the attachment and abilities of
Eugenius; his learning and eloquence, supported by the gravity of his
manners, recommended him to the esteem of the people; and the reluctance
with which he seemed to ascend the throne, may inspire a favorable
prejudice of his virtue and moderation. The ambassadors of the new
emperor were immediately despatched to the court of Theodosius, to
communicate, with affected grief, the unfortunate accident of the death
of Valentinian; and, without mentioning the name of Arbogastes, to
request, that the monarch of the East would embrace, as his lawful
colleague, the respectable citizen, who had obtained the unanimous
suffrage of the armies and provinces of the West. [110] Theodosius was
justly provoked, that the perfidy of a Barbarian, should have destroyed,
in a moment, the labors, and the fruit, of his former victory; and he
was excited by the tears of his beloved wife, [111] to revenge the fate
of her unhappy brother, and once more to assert by arms the violated
majesty of the throne. But as the second conquest of the West was a task
of difficulty and danger, he dismissed, with splendid presents, and an
ambiguous answer, the ambassadors of Eugenius; and almost two years
were consumed in the preparations of the civil war. Before he formed any
decisive resolution, the pious emperor was anxious to discover the will
of Heaven; and as the progress of Christianity had silenced the oracles
of Delphi and Dodona, he consulted an Egyptian monk, who possessed,
in the opinion of the age, the gift of miracles, and the knowledge
of futurity. Eutropius, one of the favorite eunuchs of the palace of
Constantinople, embarked for Alexandria, from whence he sailed up the
Nile, as far as the city of Lycopolis, or of Wolves, in the remote
province of Thebais. [112] In the neighborhood of that city, and on the
summit of a lofty mountain, the holy John [113] had constructed, with
his own hands, an humble cell, in which he had dwelt above fifty years,
without opening his door, without seeing the face of a woman, and
without tasting any food that had been prepared by fire, or any human
art. Five days of the week he spent in prayer and meditation; but on
Saturdays and Sundays he regularly opened a small window, and gave
audience to the crowd of suppliants who successively flowed from every
part of the Christian world. The eunuch of Theodosius approached the
window with respectful steps, proposed his questions concerning the
event of the civil war, and soon returned with a favorable oracle, which
animated the courage of the emperor by the assurance of a bloody, but
infallible victory. [114] The accomplishment of the prediction was
forwarded by all the means that human prudence could supply. The
industry of the two master-generals, Stilicho and Timasius, was directed
to recruit the numbers, and to revive the discipline of the Roman
legions. The formidable troops of Barbarians marched under the ensigns
of their national chieftains. The Iberian, the Arab, and the Goth,
who gazed on each other with mutual astonishment, were enlisted in the
service of the same prince; [1141] and the renowned Alaric acquired,
in the school of Theodosius, the knowledge of the art of war, which he
afterwards so fatally exerted for the destruction of Rome. [115]

[Footnote 109: Quem sibi Germanus famulam delegerat exul, is the
contemptuous expression of Claudian, (iv. Cons. Hon. 74.) Eugenius
professed Christianity; but his secret attachment to Paganism (Sozomen,
l. vii. c. 22, Philostorg. l. xi. c. 2) is probable in a grammarian, and
would secure the friendship of Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 276, 277.)]

[Footnote 110: Zosimus (l. iv. p. 278) mentions this embassy; but he is
diverted by another story from relating the event.]

[Footnote 111: Zosim. l. iv. p. 277. He afterwards says (p. 280) that
Galla died in childbed; and intimates, that the affliction of her
husband was extreme but short.]

[Footnote 112: Lycopolis is the modern Siut, or Osiot, a town of Said,
about the size of St. Denys, which drives a profitable trade with the
kingdom of Senaar, and has a very convenient fountain, "cujus potu signa
virgini tatis eripiuntur." See D'Anville, Description de l'Egypte, p.
181 Abulfeda, Descript. Egypt. p. 14, and the curious Annotations, p.
25, 92, of his editor Michaelis.]

[Footnote 113: The Life of John of Lycopolis is described by his two
friends, Rufinus (l. ii. c. i. p. 449) and Palladius, (Hist. Lausiac.
c. 43, p. 738,) in Rosweyde's great Collection of the Vitae Patrum.
Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. x. p. 718, 720) has settled the
chronology.]

[Footnote 114: Sozomen, l. vii. c. 22. Claudian (in Eutrop. l. i. 312)
mentions the eunuch's journey; but he most contemptuously derides the
Egyptian dreams, and the oracles of the Nile.]

[Footnote 1141]: Gibbon has embodied the picturesque verses of
Claudian:--

     .... Nec tantis dissona linguis
     Turba, nec armorum cultu diversion unquam]

[Footnote 115: Zosimus, l. iv. p. 280. Socrates, l. vii. 10. Alaric
himself (de Bell. Getico, 524) dwells with more complacency on his early
exploits against the Romans.

.... Tot Augustos Hebro qui teste fugavi.

Yet his vanity could scarcely have proved this plurality of flying
emperors.]

The emperor of the West, or, to speak more properly, his general
Arbogastes, was instructed by the misconduct and misfortune of Maximus,
how dangerous it might prove to extend the line of defence against a
skilful antagonist, who was free to press, or to suspend, to contract,
or to multiply, his various methods of attack. [116] Arbogastes fixed
his station on the confines of Italy; the troops of Theodosius were
permitted to occupy, without resistance, the provinces of Pannonia, as
far as the foot of the Julian Alps; and even the passes of the mountains
were negligently, or perhaps artfully, abandoned to the bold invader.
He descended from the hills, and beheld, with some astonishment, the
formidable camp of the Gauls and Germans, that covered with arms and
tents the open country which extends to the walls of Aquileia, and the
banks of the Frigidus, [117] or Cold River. [118] This narrow theatre of
the war, circumscribed by the Alps and the Adriatic, did not allow much
room for the operations of military skill; the spirit of Arbogastes
would have disdained a pardon; his guilt extinguished the hope of a
negotiation; and Theodosius was impatient to satisfy his glory and
revenge, by the chastisement of the assassins of Valentinian. Without
weighing the natural and artificial obstacles that opposed his efforts,
the emperor of the East immediately attacked the fortifications of
his rivals, assigned the post of honorable danger to the Goths, and
cherished a secret wish, that the bloody conflict might diminish the
pride and numbers of the conquerors. Ten thousand of those auxiliaries,
and Bacurius, general of the Iberians, died bravely on the field of
battle. But the victory was not purchased by their blood; the Gauls
maintained their advantage; and the approach of night protected the
disorderly flight, or retreat, of the troops of Theodosius. The emperor
retired to the adjacent hills; where he passed a disconsolate night,
without sleep, without provisions, and without hopes; [119] except that
strong assurance, which, under the most desperate circumstances, the
independent mind may derive from the contempt of fortune and of life.
The triumph of Eugenius was celebrated by the insolent and dissolute joy
of his camp; whilst the active and vigilant Arbogastes secretly detached
a considerable body of troops to occupy the passes of the mountains, and
to encompass the rear of the Eastern army. The dawn of day discovered to
the eyes of Theodosius the extent and the extremity of his danger; but
his apprehensions were soon dispelled, by a friendly message from the
leaders of those troops who expressed their inclination to desert the
standard of the tyrant. The honorable and lucrative rewards, which
they stipulated as the price of their perfidy, were granted without
hesitation; and as ink and paper could not easily be procured, the
emperor subscribed, on his own tablets, the ratification of the treaty.
The spirit of his soldiers was revived by this seasonable reenforcement;
and they again marched, with confidence, to surprise the camp of a
tyrant, whose principal officers appeared to distrust, either the
justice or the success of his arms. In the heat of the battle, a violent
tempest, [120] such as is often felt among the Alps, suddenly arose from
the East. The army of Theodosius was sheltered by their position from
the impetuosity of the wind, which blew a cloud of dust in the faces
of the enemy, disordered their ranks, wrested their weapons from their
hands, and diverted, or repelled, their ineffectual javelins. This
accidental advantage was skilfully improved, the violence of the storm
was magnified by the superstitious terrors of the Gauls; and they
yielded without shame to the invisible powers of heaven, who seemed to
militate on the side of the pious emperor. His victory was decisive; and
the deaths of his two rivals were distinguished only by the difference
of their characters. The rhetorician Eugenius, who had almost acquired
the dominion of the world, was reduced to implore the mercy of the
conqueror; and the unrelenting soldiers separated his head from his body
as he lay prostrate at the feet of Theodosius. Arbogastes, after the
loss of a battle, in which he had discharged the duties of a soldier and
a general, wandered several days among the mountains. But when he was
convinced that his cause was desperate, and his escape impracticable,
the intrepid Barbarian imitated the example of the ancient Romans, and
turned his sword against his own breast. The fate of the empire was
determined in a narrow corner of Italy; and the legitimate successor
of the house of Valentinian embraced the archbishop of Milan, and
graciously received the submission of the provinces of the West. Those
provinces were involved in the guilt of rebellion; while the inflexible
courage of Ambrose alone had resisted the claims of successful
usurpation. With a manly freedom, which might have been fatal to any
other subject, the archbishop rejected the gifts of Eugenius, [1201]
declined his correspondence, and withdrew himself from Milan, to avoid
the odious presence of a tyrant, whose downfall he predicted in discreet
and ambiguous language. The merit of Ambrose was applauded by the
conqueror, who secured the attachment of the people by his alliance with
the church; and the clemency of Theodosius is ascribed to the humane
intercession of the archbishop of Milan. [121]

[Footnote 116: Claudian (in iv. Cons. Honor. 77, &c.) contrasts the
military plans of the two usurpers:--

     .... Novitas audere priorem
     Suadebat; cautumque dabant exempla sequentem.
     Hic nova moliri praeceps: hic quaerere tuta
     Providus.  Hic fusis; colectis viribus ille.
     Hic vagus excurrens; hic claustra reductus
     Dissimiles, sed morte pares......]

[Footnote 117: The Frigidus, a small, though memorable, stream in the
country of Goretz, now called the Vipao, falls into the Sontius, or
Lisonzo, above Aquileia, some miles from the Adriatic. See D'Anville's
ancient and modern maps, and the Italia Antiqua of Cluverius, (tom. i.
c. 188.)]

[Footnote 118: Claudian's wit is intolerable: the snow was dyed red; the
cold ver smoked; and the channel must have been choked with carcasses
the current had not been swelled with blood. Confluxit populus: totam
pater undique secum Moverat Aurorem; mixtis hic Colchus Iberis, Hic
mitra velatus Arabs, hic crine decoro Armenius, hic picta Saces,
fucataque Medus, Hic gemmata tiger tentoria fixerat Indus.--De Laud.
Stil. l. 145.--M.]

[Footnote 119: Theodoret affirms, that St. John, and St. Philip,
appeared to the waking, or sleeping, emperor, on horseback, &c. This
is the first instance of apostolic chivalry, which afterwards became so
popular in Spain, and in the Crusades.]

[Footnote 120: Te propter, gelidis Aquilo de monte procellis

    Obruit adversas acies; revolutaque tela
    Vertit in auctores, et turbine reppulit hastas

    O nimium dilecte Deo, cui fundit ab antris
    Aeolus armatas hyemes; cui militat Aether,
    Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti.

These famous lines of Claudian (in iii. Cons. Honor. 93, &c. A.D. 396)
are alleged by his contemporaries, Augustin and Orosius; who suppress
the Pagan deity of Aeolus, and add some circumstances from the
information of eye-witnesses. Within four months after the victory,
it was compared by Ambrose to the miraculous victories of Moses and
Joshua.]

[Footnote 1201: Arbogastes and his emperor had openly espoused the
Pagan party, according to Ambrose and Augustin. See Le Beau, v. 40.
Beugnot (Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme) is more full, and
perhaps somewhat fanciful, on this remarkable reaction in favor of
Paganism, but compare p 116.--M.]

[Footnote 121: The events of this civil war are gathered from Ambrose,
(tom. ii. Epist. lxii. p. 1022,) Paulinus, (in Vit. Ambros. c. 26-34,)
Augustin, (de Civitat. Dei, v. 26,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 35,) Sozomen,
(l. vii. c. 24,) Theodoret, (l. v. c. 24,) Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 281,
282,) Claudian, (in iii. Cons. Hon. 63-105, in iv. Cons. Hon. 70-117,)
and the Chronicles published by Scaliger.]

After the defeat of Eugenius, the merit, as well as the authority, of
Theodosius was cheerfully acknowledged by all the inhabitants of the
Roman world. The experience of his past conduct encouraged the most
pleasing expectations of his future reign; and the age of the emperor,
which did not exceed fifty years, seemed to extend the prospect of the
public felicity. His death, only four months after his victory, was
considered by the people as an unforeseen and fatal event, which
destroyed, in a moment, the hopes of the rising generation. But the
indulgence of ease and luxury had secretly nourished the principles
of disease. [122] The strength of Theodosius was unable to support
the sudden and violent transition from the palace to the camp; and the
increasing symptoms of a dropsy announced the speedy dissolution of
the emperor. The opinion, and perhaps the interest, of the public had
confirmed the division of the Eastern and Western empires; and the two
royal youths, Arcadius and Honorius, who had already obtained, from the
tenderness of their father, the title of Augustus, were destined to
fill the thrones of Constantinople and of Rome. Those princes were not
permitted to share the danger and glory of the civil war; [123] but as
soon as Theodosius had triumphed over his unworthy rivals, he called
his younger son, Honorius, to enjoy the fruits of the victory, and to
receive the sceptre of the West from the hands of his dying father. The
arrival of Honorius at Milan was welcomed by a splendid exhibition of
the games of the Circus; and the emperor, though he was oppressed by the
weight of his disorder, contributed by his presence to the public joy.
But the remains of his strength were exhausted by the painful effort
which he made to assist at the spectacles of the morning. Honorius
supplied, during the rest of the day, the place of his father; and
the great Theodosius expired in the ensuing night. Notwithstanding the
recent animosities of a civil war, his death was universally lamented.
The Barbarians, whom he had vanquished and the churchmen, by whom he had
been subdued, celebrated, with loud and sincere applause, the qualities
of the deceased emperor, which appeared the most valuable in their
eyes. The Romans were terrified by the impending dangers of a feeble and
divided administration, and every disgraceful moment of the unfortunate
reigns of Arcadius and Honorius revived the memory of their irreparable
loss.

[Footnote 122: This disease, ascribed by Socrates (l. v. c. 26) to the
fatigues of war, is represented by Philostorgius (l. xi. c. 2) as
the effect of sloth and intemperance; for which Photius calls him an
impudent liar, (Godefroy, Dissert. p. 438.)]

[Footnote 123: Zosimus supposes, that the boy Honorius accompanied his
father, (l. iv. p. 280.) Yet the quanto flagrabrant pectora voto is all
that flattery would allow to a contemporary poet; who clearly describes
the emperor's refusal, and the journey of Honorius, after the victory
(Claudian in iii. Cons. 78-125.)]

In the faithful picture of the virtues of Theodosius, his imperfections
have not been dissembled; the act of cruelty, and the habits of
indolence, which tarnished the glory of one of the greatest of the Roman
princes. An historian, perpetually adverse to the fame of Theodosius,
has exaggerated his vices, and their pernicious effects; he boldly
asserts, that every rank of subjects imitated the effeminate manners
of their sovereign; and that every species of corruption polluted the
course of public and private life; and that the feeble restraints of
order and decency were insufficient to resist the progress of that
degenerate spirit, which sacrifices, without a blush, the consideration
of duty and interest to the base indulgence of sloth and appetite. [124]
The complaints of contemporary writers, who deplore the increase of
luxury, and depravation of manners, are commonly expressive of their
peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers, who possess a
clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society; and who
are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action, which
impel, in the same uniform direction, the blind and capricious passions
of a multitude of individuals. If it can be affirmed, with any degree of
truth, that the luxury of the Romans was more shameless and dissolute in
the reign of Theodosius than in the age of Constantine, perhaps, or
of Augustus, the alteration cannot be ascribed to any beneficial
improvements, which had gradually increased the stock of national
riches. A long period of calamity or decay must have checked the
industry, and diminished the wealth, of the people; and their profuse
luxury must have been the result of that indolent despair, which enjoys
the present hour, and declines the thoughts of futurity. The uncertain
condition of their property discouraged the subjects of Theodosius from
engaging in those useful and laborious undertakings which require
an immediate expense, and promise a slow and distant advantage. The
frequent examples of ruin and desolation tempted them not to spare the
remains of a patrimony, which might, every hour, become the prey of the
rapacious Goth. And the mad prodigality which prevails in the confusion
of a shipwreck, or a siege, may serve to explain the progress of luxury
amidst the misfortunes and terrors of a sinking nation.

[Footnote 124: Zosimus, l. iv. p. 244.]

The effeminate luxury, which infected the manners of courts and cities,
had instilled a secret and destructive poison into the camps of the
legions; and their degeneracy has been marked by the pen of a military
writer, who had accurately studied the genuine and ancient principles of
Roman discipline. It is the just and important observation of Vegetius,
that the infantry was invariably covered with defensive armor, from
the foundation of the city, to the reign of the emperor Gratian. The
relaxation of discipline, and the disuse of exercise, rendered the
soldiers less able, and less willing, to support the fatigues of the
service; they complained of the weight of the armor, which they seldom
wore; and they successively obtained the permission of laying aside both
their cuirasses and their helmets. The heavy weapons of their ancestors,
the short sword, and the formidable pilum, which had subdued the world,
insensibly dropped from their feeble hands. As the use of the shield
is incompatible with that of the bow, they reluctantly marched into the
field; condemned to suffer either the pain of wounds, or the ignominy of
flight, and always disposed to prefer the more shameful alternative. The
cavalry of the Goths, the Huns, and the Alani, had felt the benefits,
and adopted the use, of defensive armor; and, as they excelled in the
management of missile weapons, they easily overwhelmed the naked
and trembling legions, whose heads and breasts were exposed, without
defence, to the arrows of the Barbarians. The loss of armies, the
destruction of cities, and the dishonor of the Roman name, ineffectually
solicited the successors of Gratian to restore the helmets and the
cuirasses of the infantry. The enervated soldiers abandoned their
own and the public defence; and their pusillanimous indolence may be
considered as the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire. [125]

[Footnote 125: Vegetius, de Re Militari, l. i. c. 10. The series of
calamities which he marks, compel us to believe, that the Hero, to
whom he dedicates his book, is the last and most inglorious of the
Valentinians.]




Chapter XXVIII: Destruction Of Paganism.--Part I.

     Final Destruction Of Paganism.--Introduction Of The Worship
     Of Saints, And Relics, Among The Christians.

The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the
only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular
superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered as a singular
event in the history of the human mind. The Christians, more especially
the clergy, had impatiently supported the prudent delays of Constantine,
and the equal toleration of the elder Valentinian; nor could they deem
their conquest perfect or secure, as long as their adversaries were
permitted to exist. The influence which Ambrose and his brethren had
acquired over the youth of Gratian, and the piety of Theodosius, was
employed to infuse the maxims of persecution into the breasts of their
Imperial proselytes. Two specious principles of religious jurisprudence
were established, from whence they deduced a direct and rigorous
conclusion, against the subjects of the empire who still adhered to the
ceremonies of their ancestors: that the magistrate is, in some measure,
guilty of the crimes which he neglects to prohibit, or to punish; and,
that the idolatrous worship of fabulous deities, and real daemons, is
the most abominable crime against the supreme majesty of the Creator.
The laws of Moses, and the examples of Jewish history, [1] were hastily,
perhaps erroneously, applied, by the clergy, to the mild and universal
reign of Christianity. [2] The zeal of the emperors was excited to
vindicate their own honor, and that of the Deity: and the temples of the
Roman world were subverted, about sixty years after the conversion of
Constantine.

[Footnote 1: St. Ambrose (tom. ii. de Obit. Theodos. p. 1208) expressly
praises and recommends the zeal of Josiah in the destruction of idolatry
The language of Julius Firmicus Maternus on the same subject (de Errore
Profan. Relig. p. 467, edit. Gronov.) is piously inhuman. Nec filio
jubet (the Mosaic Law) parci, nec fratri, et per amatam conjugera
gladium vindicem ducit, &c.]

[Footnote 2: Bayle (tom. ii. p. 406, in his Commentaire Philosophique)
justifies, and limits, these intolerant laws by the temporal reign of
Jehovah over the Jews. The attempt is laudable.]

From the age of Numa to the reign of Gratian, the Romans preserved the
regular succession of the several colleges of the sacerdotal order. [3]
Fifteen Pontiffs exercised their supreme jurisdiction over all things,
and persons, that were consecrated to the service of the gods; and the
various questions which perpetually arose in a loose and traditionary
system, were submitted to the judgment of their holy tribunal Fifteen
grave and learned Augurs observed the face of the heavens, and
prescribed the actions of heroes, according to the flight of birds.
Fifteen keepers of the Sibylline books (their name of Quindecemvirs was
derived from their number) occasionally consulted the history of future,
and, as it should seem, of contingent, events. Six Vestals devoted their
virginity to the guard of the sacred fire, and of the unknown pledges of
the duration of Rome; which no mortal had been suffered to behold with
impunity. [4] Seven Epulos prepared the table of the gods, conducted the
solemn procession, and regulated the ceremonies of the annual festival.
The three Flamens of Jupiter, of Mars, and of Quirinus, were considered
as the peculiar ministers of the three most powerful deities, who
watched over the fate of Rome and of the universe. The King of the
Sacrifices represented the person of Numa, and of his successors, in the
religious functions, which could be performed only by royal hands. The
confraternities of the Salians, the Lupercals, &c., practised such rites
as might extort a smile of contempt from every reasonable man, with
a lively confidence of recommending themselves to the favor of the
immortal gods. The authority, which the Roman priests had formerly
obtained in the counsels of the republic, was gradually abolished by the
establishment of monarchy, and the removal of the seat of empire. But
the dignity of their sacred character was still protected by the laws,
and manners of their country; and they still continued, more especially
the college of pontiffs, to exercise in the capital, and sometimes
in the provinces, the rights of their ecclesiastical and civil
jurisdiction. Their robes of purple, chariotz of state, and sumptuous
entertainments, attracted the admiration of the people; and they
received, from the consecrated lands, and the public revenue, an ample
stipend, which liberally supported the splendor of the priesthood, and
all the expenses of the religious worship of the state. As the service
of the altar was not incompatible with the command of armies, the
Romans, after their consulships and triumphs, aspired to the place of
pontiff, or of augur; the seats of Cicero [5] and Pompey were filled, in
the fourth century, by the most illustrious members of the senate;
and the dignity of their birth reflected additional splendor on their
sacerdotal character. The fifteen priests, who composed the college of
pontiffs, enjoyed a more distinguished rank as the companions of their
sovereign; and the Christian emperors condescended to accept the robe
and ensigns, which were appropriated to the office of supreme
pontiff. But when Gratian ascended the throne, more scrupulous or more
enlightened, he sternly rejected those profane symbols; [6] applied to
the service of the state, or of the church, the revenues of the priests
and vestals; abolished their honors and immunities; and dissolved
the ancient fabric of Roman superstition, which was supported by the
opinions and habits of eleven hundred years. Paganism was still the
constitutional religion of the senate. The hall, or temple, in which
they assembled, was adorned by the statue and altar of Victory; [7] a
majestic female standing on a globe, with flowing garments, expanded
wings, and a crown of laurel in her outstretched hand. [8] The senators
were sworn on the altar of the goddess to observe the laws of the
emperor and of the empire: and a solemn offering of wine and incense was
the ordinary prelude of their public deliberations. The removal of this
ancient monument was the only injury which Constantius had offered to
the superstition of the Romans. The altar of Victory was again restored
by Julian, tolerated by Valentinian, and once more banished from the
senate by the zeal of Gratian. [10] But the emperor yet spared the
statues of the gods which were exposed to the public veneration: four
hundred and twenty-four temples, or chapels, still remained to satisfy
the devotion of the people; and in every quarter of Rome the delicacy of
the Christians was offended by the fumes of idolatrous sacrifice. [11]

[Footnote 3: See the outlines of the Roman hierarchy in Cicero, (de
Legibus, ii. 7, 8,) Livy, (i. 20,) Dionysius Halicarnassensis, (l. ii.
p. 119-129, edit. Hudson,) Beaufort, (Republique Romaine, tom. i. p.
1-90,) and Moyle, (vol. i. p. 10-55.) The last is the work of an English
whig, as well as of a Roman antiquary.]

[Footnote 4: These mystic, and perhaps imaginary, symbols have given
birth to various fables and conjectures. It seems probable, that the
Palladium was a small statue (three cubits and a half high) of Minerva,
with a lance and distaff; that it was usually enclosed in a seria, or
barrel; and that a similar barrel was placed by its side to disconcert
curiosity, or sacrilege. See Mezeriac (Comment. sur les Epitres d'Ovide,
tom i. p. 60--66) and Lipsius, (tom. iii. p. 610 de Vesta, &c. c 10.)]

[Footnote 5: Cicero frankly (ad Atticum, l. ii. Epist. 5) or indirectly
(ad Familiar. l. xv. Epist. 4) confesses that the Augurate is the
supreme object of his wishes. Pliny is proud to tread in the footsteps
of Cicero, (l. iv. Epist. 8,) and the chain of tradition might be
continued from history and marbles.]

[Footnote 6: Zosimus, l. iv. p. 249, 250. I have suppressed the foolish
pun about Pontifex and Maximus.]

[Footnote 7: This statue was transported from Tarentum to Rome, placed
in the Curia Julia by Caesar, and decorated by Augustus with the spoils
of Egypt.]

[Footnote 8: Prudentius (l. ii. in initio) has drawn a very awkward
portrait of Victory; but the curious reader will obtain more
satisfaction from Montfaucon's Antiquities, (tom. i. p. 341.)]

[Footnote 9: See Suetonius (in August. c. 35) and the Exordium of
Pliny's Panegyric.]

[Footnote 10: These facts are mutually allowed by the two advocates,
Symmachus and Ambrose.]

[Footnote 11: The Notitia Urbis, more recent than Constantine, does not
find one Christian church worthy to be named among the edifices of
the city. Ambrose (tom. ii. Epist. xvii. p. 825) deplores the public
scandals of Rome, which continually offended the eyes, the ears, and the
nostrils of the faithful.]

But the Christians formed the least numerous party in the senate of
Rome: [12] and it was only by their absence, that they could express
their dissent from the legal, though profane, acts of a Pagan majority.
In that assembly, the dying embers of freedom were, for a moment,
revived and inflamed by the breath of fanaticism. Four respectable
deputations were successively voted to the Imperial court, [13] to
represent the grievances of the priesthood and the senate, and to
solicit the restoration of the altar of Victory. The conduct of this
important business was intrusted to the eloquent Symmachus, [14] a
wealthy and noble senator, who united the sacred characters of pontiff
and augur with the civil dignities of proconsul of Africa and praefect
of the city. The breast of Symmachus was animated by the warmest zeal
for the cause of expiring Paganism; and his religious antagonists
lamented the abuse of his genius, and the inefficacy of his moral
virtues. [15] The orator, whose petition is extant to the emperor
Valentinian, was conscious of the difficulty and danger of the office
which he had assumed. He cautiously avoids every topic which might
appear to reflect on the religion of his sovereign; humbly declares,
that prayers and entreaties are his only arms; and artfully draws
his arguments from the schools of rhetoric, rather than from those of
philosophy. Symmachus endeavors to seduce the imagination of a young
prince, by displaying the attributes of the goddess of victory;
he insinuates, that the confiscation of the revenues, which were
consecrated to the service of the gods, was a measure unworthy of his
liberal and disinterested character; and he maintains, that the Roman
sacrifices would be deprived of their force and energy, if they were
no longer celebrated at the expense, as well as in the name, of the
republic. Even scepticism is made to supply an apology for superstition.
The great and incomprehensible secret of the universe eludes the inquiry
of man. Where reason cannot instruct, custom may be permitted to
guide; and every nation seems to consult the dictates of prudence, by a
faithful attachment to those rites and opinions, which have received
the sanction of ages. If those ages have been crowned with glory and
prosperity, if the devout people have frequently obtained the blessings
which they have solicited at the altars of the gods, it must appear
still more advisable to persist in the same salutary practice; and not
to risk the unknown perils that may attend any rash innovations. The
test of antiquity and success was applied with singular advantage to the
religion of Numa; and Rome herself, the celestial genius that presided
over the fates of the city, is introduced by the orator to plead her
own cause before the tribunal of the emperors. "Most excellent princes,"
says the venerable matron, "fathers of your country! pity and respect
my age, which has hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety.
Since I do not repent, permit me to continue in the practice of my
ancient rites. Since I am born free, allow me to enjoy my domestic
institutions. This religion has reduced the world under my laws. These
rites have repelled Hannibal from the city, and the Gauls from the
Capitol. Were my gray hairs reserved for such intolerable disgrace? I
am ignorant of the new system that I am required to adopt; but I am
well assured, that the correction of old age is always an ungrateful
and ignominious office." [16] The fears of the people supplied what
the discretion of the orator had suppressed; and the calamities,
which afflicted, or threatened, the declining empire, were unanimously
imputed, by the Pagans, to the new religion of Christ and of
Constantine.

[Footnote 12: Ambrose repeatedly affirms, in contradiction to common
sense (Moyle's Works, vol. ii. p. 147,) that the Christians had a
majority in the senate.]

[Footnote 13: The first (A.D. 382) to Gratian, who refused them
audience; the second (A.D. 384) to Valentinian, when the field was
disputed by Symmachus and Ambrose; the third (A.D. 388) to Theodosius;
and the fourth (A.D. 392) to Valentinian. Lardner (Heathen Testimonies,
vol. iv. p. 372-399) fairly represents the whole transaction.]

[Footnote 14: Symmachus, who was invested with all the civil and
sacerdotal honors, represented the emperor under the two characters of
Pontifex Maximus, and Princeps Senatus. See the proud inscription at the
head of his works. * Note: Mr. Beugnot has made it doubtful whether
Symmachus was more than Pontifex Major. Destruction du Paganisme, vol.
i. p. 459.--M.]

[Footnote 15: As if any one, says Prudentius (in Symmach. i. 639) should
dig in the mud with an instrument of gold and ivory. Even saints, and
polemic saints, treat this adversary with respect and civility.]

[Footnote 16: See the fifty-fourth Epistle of the tenth book of
Symmachus. In the form and disposition of his ten books of Epistles, he
imitated the younger Pliny; whose rich and florid style he was supposed,
by his friends, to equal or excel, (Macrob. Saturnal. l. v. c. i.) But
the luxcriancy of Symmachus consists of barren leaves, without fruits,
and even without flowers. Few facts, and few sentiments, can be
extracted from his verbose correspondence.]

But the hopes of Symmachus were repeatedly baffled by the firm and
dexterous opposition of the archbishop of Milan, who fortified the
emperors against the fallacious eloquence of the advocate of Rome.
In this controversy, Ambrose condescends to speak the language of a
philosopher, and to ask, with some contempt, why it should be thought
necessary to introduce an imaginary and invisible power, as the cause
of those victories, which were sufficiently explained by the valor and
discipline of the legions. He justly derides the absurd reverence for
antiquity, which could only tend to discourage the improvements of
art, and to replunge the human race into their original barbarism.
From thence, gradually rising to a more lofty and theological tone,
he pronounces, that Christianity alone is the doctrine of truth and
salvation; and that every mode of Polytheism conducts its deluded
votaries, through the paths of error, to the abyss of eternal perdition.
[17] Arguments like these, when they were suggested by a favorite
bishop, had power to prevent the restoration of the altar of Victory;
but the same arguments fell, with much more energy and effect, from the
mouth of a conqueror; and the gods of antiquity were dragged in triumph
at the chariot-wheels of Theodosius. [18] In a full meeting of the
senate, the emperor proposed, according to the forms of the republic,
the important question, Whether the worship of Jupiter, or that of
Christ, should be the religion of the Romans. [1811] The liberty of
suffrages, which he affected to allow, was destroyed by the hopes and
fears that his presence inspired; and the arbitrary exile of Symmachus
was a recent admonition, that it might be dangerous to oppose the
wishes of the monarch. On a regular division of the senate, Jupiter was
condemned and degraded by the sense of a very large majority; and it
is rather surprising, that any members should be found bold enough to
declare, by their speeches and votes, that they were still attached to
the interest of an abdicated deity. [19] The hasty conversion of the
senate must be attributed either to supernatural or to sordid motives;
and many of these reluctant proselytes betrayed, on every favorable
occasion, their secret disposition to throw aside the mask of odious
dissimulation. But they were gradually fixed in the new religion, as the
cause of the ancient became more hopeless; they yielded to the authority
of the emperor, to the fashion of the times, and to the entreaties of
their wives and children, [20] who were instigated and governed by the
clergy of Rome and the monks of the East. The edifying example of the
Anician family was soon imitated by the rest of the nobility: the Bassi,
the Paullini, the Gracchi, embraced the Christian religion; and "the
luminaries of the world, the venerable assembly of Catos (such are the
high-flown expressions of Prudentius) were impatient to strip themselves
of their pontifical garment; to cast the skin of the old serpent; to
assume the snowy robes of baptismal innocence, and to humble the pride
of the consular fasces before tombs of the martyrs." [21] The citizens,
who subsisted by their own industry, and the populace, who were
supported by the public liberality, filled the churches of the Lateran,
and Vatican, with an incessant throng of devout proselytes. The decrees
of the senate, which proscribed the worship of idols, were ratified by
the general consent of the Romans; [22] the splendor of the Capitol was
defaced, and the solitary temples were abandoned to ruin and contempt.
[23] Rome submitted to the yoke of the Gospel; and the vanquished
provinces had not yet lost their reverence for the name and authority of
Rome. [2311]

[Footnote 17: See Ambrose, (tom. ii. Epist. xvii. xviii. p. 825-833.)
The former of these epistles is a short caution; the latter is a formal
reply of the petition or libel of Symmachus. The same ideas are more
copiously expressed in the poetry, if it may deserve that name, of
Prudentius; who composed his two books against Symmachus (A.D. 404)
while that senator was still alive. It is whimsical enough that
Montesquieu (Considerations, &c. c. xix. tom. iii. p. 487) should
overlook the two professed antagonists of Symmachus, and amuse himself
with descanting on the more remote and indirect confutations of Orosius,
St. Augustin, and Salvian.]

[Footnote 18: See Prudentius (in Symmach. l. i. 545, &c.) The Christian
agrees with the Pagan Zosimus (l. iv. p. 283) in placing this visit of
Theodosius after the second civil war, gemini bis victor caede Tyranni,
(l. i. 410.) But the time and circumstances are better suited to his
first triumph.]

[Footnote 1811: M. Beugnot (in his Histoire de la Destruction du
Paganisme en Occident, i. p. 483-488) questions, altogether, the truth
of this statement. It is very remarkable that Zosimus and Prudentius
concur in asserting the fact of the question being solemnly deliberated
by the senate, though with directly opposite results. Zosimus declares
that the majority of the assembly adhered to the ancient religion of
Rome; Gibbon has adopted the authority of Prudentius, who, as a Latin
writer, though a poet, deserves more credit than the Greek historian.
Both concur in placing this scene after the second triumph of
Theodosius; but it has been almost demonstrated (and Gibbon--see the
preceding note--seems to have acknowledged this) by Pagi and Tillemont,
that Theodosius did not visit Rome after the defeat of Eugenius. M.
Beugnot urges, with much force, the improbability that the Christian
emperor would submit such a question to the senate, whose authority was
nearly obsolete, except on one occasion, which was almost hailed as
an epoch in the restoration of her ancient privileges. The silence of
Ambrose and of Jerom on an event so striking, and redounding so much to
the honor of Christianity, is of considerable weight. M. Beugnot would
ascribe the whole scene to the poetic imagination of Prudentius; but
I must observe, that, however Prudentius is sometimes elevated by the
grandeur of his subject to vivid and eloquent language, this flight of
invention would be so much bolder and more vigorous than usual with this
poet, that I cannot but suppose there must have been some foundation
for the story, though it may have been exaggerated by the poet, or
misrepresented by the historian.--M]

[Footnote 19: Prudentius, after proving that the sense of the senate is
declared by a legal majority, proceeds to say, (609, &c.)--

     Adspice quam pleno subsellia nostra Senatu
     Decernant infame Jovis pulvinar, et omne
     Idolum longe purgata ex urbe fugandum,
     Qua vocat egregii sententia Principis, illuc
     Libera, cum pedibus, tum corde, frequentia transit.

Zosimus ascribes to the conscript feathers a heathenish courage, which
few of them are found to possess.]

[Footnote 20: Jerom specifies the pontiff Albinus, who was surrounded
with such a believing family of children and grandchildren, as would
have been sufficient to convert even Jupiter himself; an extraordinary
proselyted (tom. i. ad Laetam, p. 54.)]

[Footnote 21:

     Exultare Patres videas, pulcherrima mundi
     Lumina; Conciliumque senum gestire Catonum
     Candidiore toga niveum pietatis amictum
     Sumere; et exuvias deponere pontificales.

The fancy of Prudentius is warmed and elevated by victory]

[Footnote 22: Prudentius, after he has described the conversion of the
senate and people, asks, with some truth and confidence,

    Et dubitamus adhuc Romam, tibi, Christe, dicatam
    In leges transisse tuas?]

[Footnote 23: Jerom exults in the desolation of the Capitol, and the
other temples of Rome, (tom. i. p. 54, tom. ii. p. 95.)]

[Footnote 2311: M. Beugnot is more correct in his general estimate of
the measures enforced by Theodosius for the abolition of Paganism. He
seized (according to Zosimus) the funds bestowed by the public for the
expense of sacrifices. The public sacrifices ceased, not because they
were positively prohibited, but because the public treasury would no
longer bear the expense. The public and the private sacrifices in the
provinces, which were not under the same regulations with those of the
capital, continued to take place. In Rome itself, many pagan ceremonies,
which were without sacrifice, remained in full force. The gods,
therefore, were invoked, the temples were frequented, the pontificates
inscribed, according to ancient usage, among the family titles of honor;
and it cannot be asserted that idolatry was completely destroyed by
Theodosius. See Beugnot, p. 491.--M.]




Chapter XXVIII: Destruction Of Paganism.--Part II.

The filial piety of the emperors themselves engaged them to proceed,
with some caution and tenderness, in the reformation of the eternal
city. Those absolute monarchs acted with less regard to the prejudices
of the provincials. The pious labor which had been suspended near twenty
years since the death of Constantius, [24] was vigorously resumed, and
finally accomplished, by the zeal of Theodosius. Whilst that warlike
prince yet struggled with the Goths, not for the glory, but for the
safety, of the republic, he ventured to offend a considerable party of
his subjects, by some acts which might perhaps secure the protection of
Heaven, but which must seem rash and unseasonable in the eye of human
prudence. The success of his first experiments against the Pagans
encouraged the pious emperor to reiterate and enforce his edicts of
proscription: the same laws which had been originally published in the
provinces of the East, were applied, after the defeat of Maximus, to the
whole extent of the Western empire; and every victory of the orthodox
Theodosius contributed to the triumph of the Christian and Catholic
faith. [25] He attacked superstition in her most vital part, by
prohibiting the use of sacrifices, which he declared to be criminal as
well as infamous; and if the terms of his edicts more strictly condemned
the impious curiosity which examined the entrails of the victim, [26]
every subsequent explanation tended to involve in the same guilt the
general practice of immolation, which essentially constituted the
religion of the Pagans. As the temples had been erected for the purpose
of sacrifice, it was the duty of a benevolent prince to remove from his
subjects the dangerous temptation of offending against the laws which
he had enacted. A special commission was granted to Cynegius, the
Praetorian praefect of the East, and afterwards to the counts Jovius
and Gaudentius, two officers of distinguished rank in the West; by
which they were directed to shut the temples, to seize or destroy the
instruments of idolatry, to abolish the privileges of the priests, and
to confiscate the consecrated property for the benefit of the emperor,
of the church, or of the army. [27] Here the desolation might have
stopped: and the naked edifices, which were no longer employed in the
service of idolatry, might have been protected from the destructive
rage of fanaticism. Many of those temples were the most splendid and
beautiful monuments of Grecian architecture; and the emperor himself was
interested not to deface the splendor of his own cities, or to diminish
the value of his own possessions. Those stately edifices might be
suffered to remain, as so many lasting trophies of the victory of
Christ. In the decline of the arts they might be usefully converted into
magazines, manufactures, or places of public assembly: and perhaps, when
the walls of the temple had been sufficiently purified by holy rites,
the worship of the true Deity might be allowed to expiate the ancient
guilt of idolatry. But as long as they subsisted, the Pagans fondly
cherished the secret hope, that an auspicious revolution, a second
Julian, might again restore the altars of the gods: and the earnestness
with which they addressed their unavailing prayers to the throne, [28]
increased the zeal of the Christian reformers to extirpate, without
mercy, the root of superstition. The laws of the emperors exhibit
some symptoms of a milder disposition: [29] but their cold and languid
efforts were insufficient to stem the torrent of enthusiasm and rapine,
which was conducted, or rather impelled, by the spiritual rulers of the
church. In Gaul, the holy Martin, bishop of Tours, [30] marched at the
head of his faithful monks to destroy the idols, the temples, and the
consecrated trees of his extensive diocese; and, in the execution of
this arduous task, the prudent reader will judge whether Martin was
supported by the aid of miraculous powers, or of carnal weapons. In
Syria, the divine and excellent Marcellus, [31] as he is styled by
Theodoret, a bishop animated with apostolic fervor, resolved to level
with the ground the stately temples within the diocese of Apamea. His
attack was resisted by the skill and solidity with which the temple of
Jupiter had been constructed. The building was seated on an eminence:
on each of the four sides, the lofty roof was supported by fifteen massy
columns, sixteen feet in circumference; and the large stone, of which
they were composed, were firmly cemented with lead and iron. The force
of the strongest and sharpest tools had been tried without effect. It
was found necessary to undermine the foundations of the columns, which
fell down as soon as the temporary wooden props had been consumed with
fire; and the difficulties of the enterprise are described under the
allegory of a black daemon, who retarded, though he could not defeat,
the operations of the Christian engineers. Elated with victory,
Marcellus took the field in person against the powers of darkness; a
numerous troop of soldiers and gladiators marched under the episcopal
banner, and he successively attacked the villages and country temples
of the diocese of Apamea. Whenever any resistance or danger was
apprehended, the champion of the faith, whose lameness would not allow
him either to fight or fly, placed himself at a convenient distance,
beyond the reach of darts. But this prudence was the occasion of his
death: he was surprised and slain by a body of exasperated rustics; and
the synod of the province pronounced, without hesitation, that the holy
Marcellus had sacrificed his life in the cause of God. In the support of
this cause, the monks, who rushed with tumultuous fury from the desert,
distinguished themselves by their zeal and diligence. They deserved the
enmity of the Pagans; and some of them might deserve the reproaches of
avarice and intemperance; of avarice, which they gratified with holy
plunder, and of intemperance, which they indulged at the expense of the
people, who foolishly admired their tattered garments, loud psalmody,
and artificial paleness. [32] A small number of temples was protected
by the fears, the venality, the taste, or the prudence, of the civil and
ecclesiastical governors. The temple of the Celestial Venus at Carthage,
whose sacred precincts formed a circumference of two miles, was
judiciously converted into a Christian church; [33] and a similar
consecration has preserved inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon
at Rome. [34] But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army
of fanatics, without authority, and without discipline, invaded
the peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of
antiquity still displays the ravages of those Barbarians, who alone had
time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.

[Footnote 24: Libanius (Orat. pro Templis, p. 10, Genev. 1634, published
by James Godefroy, and now extremely scarce) accuses Valentinian and
Valens of prohibiting sacrifices. Some partial order may have been
issued by the Eastern emperor; but the idea of any general law
is contradicted by the silence of the Code, and the evidence of
ecclesiastical history. Note: See in Reiske's edition of Libanius, tom.
ii. p. 155. Sacrific was prohibited by Valens, but not the offering of
incense.--M.]

[Footnote 25: See his laws in the Theodosian Code, l. xvi. tit. x. leg.
7-11.]

[Footnote 26: Homer's sacrifices are not accompanied with any
inquisition of entrails, (see Feithius, Antiquitat. Homer. l. i. c. 10,
16.) The Tuscans, who produced the first Haruspices, subdued both the
Greeks and the Romans, (Cicero de Divinatione, ii. 23.)]

[Footnote 27: Zosimus, l. iv. p. 245, 249. Theodoret. l. v. c. 21.
Idatius in Chron. Prosper. Aquitan. l. iii. c. 38, apud Baronium, Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 389, No. 52. Libanius (pro Templis, p. 10) labors to prove
that the commands of Theodosius were not direct and positive. * Note:
Libanius appears to be the best authority for the East, where, under
Theodosius, the work of devastation was carried on with very different
degrees of violence, according to the temper of the local authorities
and of the clergy; and more especially the neighborhood of the more
fanatican monks. Neander well observes, that the prohibition of
sacrifice would be easily misinterpreted into an authority for the
destruction of the buildings in which sacrifices were performed.
(Geschichte der Christlichen religion ii. p. 156.) An abuse of this kind
led to this remarkable oration of Libanius. Neander, however, justly
doubts whether this bold vindication or at least exculpation, of
Paganism was ever delivered before, or even placed in the hands of the
Christian emperor.--M.]

[Footnote 28: Cod. Theodos, l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 8, 18. There is room to
believe, that this temple of Edessa, which Theodosius wished to save for
civil uses, was soon afterwards a heap of ruins, (Libanius pro Templis,
p. 26, 27, and Godefroy's notes, p. 59.)]

[Footnote 29: See this curious oration of Libanius pro Templis,
pronounced, or rather composed, about the year 390. I have consulted,
with advantage, Dr. Lardner's version and remarks, (Heathen Testimonies,
vol. iv. p. 135-163.)]

[Footnote 30: See the Life of Martin by Sulpicius Severus, c. 9-14. The
saint once mistook (as Don Quixote might have done) a harmless funeral
for an idolatrous procession, and imprudently committed a miracle.]

[Footnote 31: Compare Sozomen, (l. vii. c. 15) with Theodoret, (l. v. c.
21.) Between them, they relate the crusade and death of Marcellus.]

[Footnote 32: Libanius, pro Templis, p. 10-13. He rails at these
black-garbed men, the Christian monks, who eat more than elephants. Poor
elephants! they are temperate animals.]

[Footnote 33: Prosper. Aquitan. l. iii. c. 38, apud Baronium; Annal.
Eccles. A.D. 389, No. 58, &c. The temple had been shut some time, and
the access to it was overgrown with brambles.]

[Footnote 34: Donatus, Roma Antiqua et Nova, l. iv. c. 4, p. 468. This
consecration was performed by Pope Boniface IV. I am ignorant of the
favorable circumstances which had preserved the Pantheon above two
hundred years after the reign of Theodosius.]

In this wide and various prospect of devastation, the spectator may
distinguish the ruins of the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria. [35]
Serapis does not appear to have been one of the native gods, or
monsters, who sprung from the fruitful soil of superstitious Egypt. [36]
The first of the Ptolemies had been commanded, by a dream, to import
the mysterious stranger from the coast of Pontus, where he had been long
adored by the inhabitants of Sinope; but his attributes and his reign
were so imperfectly understood, that it became a subject of dispute,
whether he represented the bright orb of day, or the gloomy monarch
of the subterraneous regions. [37] The Egyptians, who were obstinately
devoted to the religion of their fathers, refused to admit this foreign
deity within the walls of their cities. [38] But the obsequious priests,
who were seduced by the liberality of the Ptolemies, submitted, without
resistance, to the power of the god of Pontus: an honorable and domestic
genealogy was provided; and this fortunate usurper was introduced
into the throne and bed of Osiris, [39] the husband of Isis, and the
celestial monarch of Egypt. Alexandria, which claimed his peculiar
protection, gloried in the name of the city of Serapis. His temple, [40]
which rivalled the pride and magnificence of the Capitol, was erected
on the spacious summit of an artificial mount, raised one hundred steps
above the level of the adjacent parts of the city; and the interior
cavity was strongly supported by arches, and distributed into vaults and
subterraneous apartments. The consecrated buildings were surrounded by
a quadrangular portico; the stately halls, and exquisite statues,
displayed the triumph of the arts; and the treasures of ancient learning
were preserved in the famous Alexandrian library, which had arisen with
new splendor from its ashes. [41] After the edicts of Theodosius had
severely prohibited the sacrifices of the Pagans, they were still
tolerated in the city and temple of Serapis; and this singular
indulgence was imprudently ascribed to the superstitious terrors of the
Christians themselves; as if they had feared to abolish those ancient
rites, which could alone secure the inundations of the Nile, the
harvests of Egypt, and the subsistence of Constantinople. [42]

[Footnote 35: Sophronius composed a recent and separate history, (Jerom,
in Script. Eccles. tom. i. p. 303,) which has furnished materials to
Socrates, (l. v. c. 16.) Theodoret, (l. v. c. 22,) and Rufinus, (l. ii.
c. 22.) Yet the last, who had been at Alexandria before and after the
event, may deserve the credit of an original witness.]

[Footnote 36: Gerard Vossius (Opera, tom. v. p. 80, and de Idoloaltria,
l. i. c. 29) strives to support the strange notion of the Fathers; that
the patriarch Joseph was adored in Egypt, as the bull Apis, and the
god Serapis. * Note: Consult du Dieu Serapis et son Origine, par J D.
Guigniaut, (the translator of Creuzer's Symbolique,) Paris, 1828; and in
the fifth volume of Bournouf's translation of Tacitus.--M.]

[Footnote 37: Origo dei nondum nostris celebrata. Aegyptiorum antistites
sic memorant, &c., Tacit. Hist. iv. 83. The Greeks, who had travelled
into Egypt, were alike ignorant of this new deity.]

[Footnote 38: Macrobius, Saturnal, l. i. c. 7. Such a living fact
decisively proves his foreign extraction.]

[Footnote 39: At Rome, Isis and Serapis were united in the same temple.
The precedency which the queen assumed, may seem to betray her unequal
alliance with the stranger of Pontus. But the superiority of the female
sex was established in Egypt as a civil and religious institution,
(Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. i. p. 31, edit. Wesseling,) and the same
order is observed in Plutarch's Treatise of Isis and Osiris; whom he
identifies with Serapis.]

[Footnote 40: Ammianus, (xxii. 16.) The Expositio totius Mundi, (p. 8,
in Hudson's Geograph. Minor. tom. iii.,) and Rufinus, (l. ii. c. 22,)
celebrate the Serapeum, as one of the wonders of the world.]

[Footnote 41: See Memoires de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, tom. ix. p.
397-416. The old library of the Ptolemies was totally consumed in
Caesar's Alexandrian war. Marc Antony gave the whole collection of
Pergamus (200,000 volumes) to Cleopatra, as the foundation of the new
library of Alexandria.]

[Footnote 42: Libanius (pro Templis, p. 21) indiscreetly provokes his
Christian masters by this insulting remark.]

At that time [43] the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria was filled by
Theophilus, [44] the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue; a bold, bad
man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood. His
pious indignation was excited by the honors of Serapis; and the insults
which he offered to an ancient temple of Bacchus, [4411] convinced the
Pagans that he meditated a more important and dangerous enterprise.
In the tumultuous capital of Egypt, the slightest provocation was
sufficient to inflame a civil war. The votaries of Serapis, whose
strength and numbers were much inferior to those of their antagonists,
rose in arms at the instigation of the philosopher Olympius, [45] who
exhorted them to die in the defence of the altars of the gods. These
Pagan fanatics fortified themselves in the temple, or rather fortress,
of Serapis; repelled the besiegers by daring sallies, and a resolute
defence; and, by the inhuman cruelties which they exercised on their
Christian prisoners, obtained the last consolation of despair. The
efforts of the prudent magistrate were usefully exerted for the
establishment of a truce, till the answer of Theodosius should determine
the fate of Serapis. The two parties assembled, without arms, in the
principal square; and the Imperial rescript was publicly read. But
when a sentence of destruction against the idols of Alexandria was
pronounced, the Christians set up a shout of joy and exultation, whilst
the unfortunate Pagans, whose fury had given way to consternation,
retired with hasty and silent steps, and eluded, by their flight or
obscurity, the resentment of their enemies. Theophilus proceeded to
demolish the temple of Serapis, without any other difficulties, than
those which he found in the weight and solidity of the materials: but
these obstacles proved so insuperable, that he was obliged to leave the
foundations; and to content himself with reducing the edifice itself to
a heap of rubbish, a part of which was soon afterwards cleared away, to
make room for a church, erected in honor of the Christian martyrs.
The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near
twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the
regret and indignation of every spectator, whose mind was not totally
darkened by religious prejudice. [46] The compositions of ancient
genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely
have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and
instruction of succeeding ages; and either the zeal or the avarice of
the archbishop, [47] might have been satiated with the rich spoils,
which were the reward of his victory. While the images and vases of gold
and silver were carefully melted, and those of a less valuable metal
were contemptuously broken, and cast into the streets, Theophilus
labored to expose the frauds and vices of the ministers of the idols;
their dexterity in the management of the loadstone; their secret methods
of introducing a human actor into a hollow statue; [4711] and their
scandalous abuse of the confidence of devout husbands and unsuspecting
females. [48] Charges like these may seem to deserve some degree of
credit, as they are not repugnant to the crafty and interested spirit of
superstition. But the same spirit is equally prone to the base practice
of insulting and calumniating a fallen enemy; and our belief is
naturally checked by the reflection, that it is much less difficult
to invent a fictitious story, than to support a practical fraud. The
colossal statue of Serapis [49] was involved in the ruin of his temple
and religion. A great number of plates of different metals, artificially
joined together, composed the majestic figure of the deity, who touched
on either side the walls of the sanctuary. The aspect of Serapis, his
sitting posture, and the sceptre, which he bore in his left hand, were
extremely similar to the ordinary representations of Jupiter. He was
distinguished from Jupiter by the basket, or bushel, which was placed on
his head; and by the emblematic monster which he held in his right hand;
the head and body of a serpent branching into three tails, which were
again terminated by the triple heads of a dog, a lion, and a wolf.
It was confidently affirmed, that if any impious hand should dare
to violate the majesty of the god, the heavens and the earth would
instantly return to their original chaos. An intrepid soldier, animated
by zeal, and armed with a weighty battle-axe, ascended the ladder; and
even the Christian multitude expected, with some anxiety, the event
of the combat. [50] He aimed a vigorous stroke against the cheek of
Serapis; the cheek fell to the ground; the thunder was still silent, and
both the heavens and the earth continued to preserve their accustomed
order and tranquillity. The victorious soldier repeated his blows: the
huge idol was overthrown, and broken in pieces; and the limbs of Serapis
were ignominiously dragged through the streets of Alexandria. His
mangled carcass was burnt in the Amphitheatre, amidst the shouts of the
populace; and many persons attributed their conversion to this discovery
of the impotence of their tutelar deity. The popular modes of religion,
that propose any visible and material objects of worship, have the
advantage of adapting and familiarizing themselves to the senses of
mankind: but this advantage is counterbalanced by the various and
inevitable accidents to which the faith of the idolater is exposed.
It is scarcely possible, that, in every disposition of mind, he should
preserve his implicit reverence for the idols, or the relics, which the
naked eye, and the profane hand, are unable to distinguish from the
most common productions of art or nature; and if, in the hour of danger,
their secret and miraculous virtue does not operate for their own
preservation, he scorns the vain apologies of his priests, and justly
derides the object, and the folly, of his superstitious attachment.
[51] After the fall of Serapis, some hopes were still entertained by
the Pagans, that the Nile would refuse his annual supply to the impious
masters of Egypt; and the extraordinary delay of the inundation seemed
to announce the displeasure of the river-god. But this delay was soon
compensated by the rapid swell of the waters. They suddenly rose to
such an unusual height, as to comfort the discontented party with the
pleasing expectation of a deluge; till the peaceful river again subsided
to the well-known and fertilizing level of sixteen cubits, or about
thirty English feet. [52]

[Footnote 43: We may choose between the date of Marcellinus (A.D. 389)
or that of Prosper, ( A.D. 391.) Tillemont (Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p.
310, 756) prefers the former, and Pagi the latter.]

[Footnote 44: Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 441-500. The ambiguous
situation of Theophilus--a saint, as the friend of Jerom a devil, as
the enemy of Chrysostom--produces a sort of impartiality; yet, upon the
whole, the balance is justly inclined against him.]

[Footnote 4411: No doubt a temple of Osiris. St. Martin, iv 398-M.]

[Footnote 45: Lardner (Heathen Testimonies, vol. iv. p. 411) has alleged
beautiful passage from Suidas, or rather from Damascius, which show the
devout and virtuous Olympius, not in the light of a warrior, but of a
prophet.]

[Footnote 46: Nos vidimus armaria librorum, quibus direptis, exinanita
ea a nostris hominibus, nostris temporibus memorant. Orosius, l. vi. c.
15, p. 421, edit. Havercamp. Though a bigot, and a controversial writer.
Orosius seems to blush.]

[Footnote 47: Eunapius, in the Lives of Antoninus and Aedesius,
execrates the sacrilegious rapine of Theophilus. Tillemont (Mem. Eccles.
tom. xiii. p. 453) quotes an epistle of Isidore of Pelusium, which
reproaches the primate with the idolatrous worship of gold, the auri
sacra fames.]

[Footnote 4711: An English traveller, Mr. Wilkinson, has discovered the
secret of the vocal Memnon. There was a cavity in which a person was
concealed, and struck a stone, which gave a ringing sound like brass.
The Arabs, who stood below when Mr. Wilkinson performed the miracle,
described sound just as the author of the epigram.--M.]

[Footnote 48: Rufinus names the priest of Saturn, who, in the character
of the god, familiarly conversed with many pious ladies of quality,
till he betrayed himself, in a moment of transport, when he could not
disguise the tone of his voice. The authentic and impartial narrative
of Aeschines, (see Bayle, Dictionnaire Critique, Scamandre,) and the
adventure of Mudus, (Joseph. Antiquitat. Judaic. l. xviii. c. 3, p. 877
edit. Havercamp,) may prove that such amorous frauds have been practised
with success.]

[Footnote 49: See the images of Serapis, in Montfaucon, (tom. ii. p.
297:) but the description of Macrobius (Saturnal. l. i. c. 20) is much
more picturesque and satisfactory.]

[Footnote 50:

     Sed fortes tremuere manus, motique verenda
     Majestate loci, si robora sacra ferirent
     In sua credebant redituras membra secures.

(Lucan. iii. 429.) "Is it true," (said Augustus to a veteran of Italy,
at whose house he supped) "that the man who gave the first blow to the
golden statue of Anaitis, was instantly deprived of his eyes, and of his
life?"--"I was that man, (replied the clear-sighted veteran,) and you
now sup on one of the legs of the goddess." (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii.
24)]

[Footnote 51: The history of the reformation affords frequent examples
of the sudden change from superstition to contempt.]

[Footnote 52: Sozomen, l. vii. c. 20. I have supplied the measure. The
same standard, of the inundation, and consequently of the cubit, has
uniformly subsisted since the time of Herodotus. See Freret, in the
Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xvi. p. 344-353. Greaves's
Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 233. The Egyptian cubit is about
twenty-two inches of the English measure. * Note: Compare Wilkinson's
Thebes and Egypt, p. 313.--M.]

The temples of the Roman empire were deserted, or destroyed; but the
ingenious superstition of the Pagans still attempted to elude the laws
of Theodosius, by which all sacrifices had been severely prohibited. The
inhabitants of the country, whose conduct was less opposed to the eye of
malicious curiosity, disguised their religious, under the appearance of
convivial, meetings. On the days of solemn festivals, they assembled in
great numbers under the spreading shade of some consecrated trees; sheep
and oxen were slaughtered and roasted; and this rural entertainment was
sanctified by the use of incense, and by the hymns which were sung in
honor of the gods. But it was alleged, that, as no part of the animal
was made a burnt-offering, as no altar was provided to receive the
blood, and as the previous oblation of salt cakes, and the concluding
ceremony of libations, were carefully omitted, these festal meetings
did not involve the guests in the guilt, or penalty, of an illegal
sacrifice. [53] Whatever might be the truth of the facts, or the merit
of the distinction, [54] these vain pretences were swept away by
the last edict of Theodosius, which inflicted a deadly wound on
the superstition of the Pagans. [55] [5511] This prohibitory law is
expressed in the most absolute and comprehensive terms. "It is our will
and pleasure," says the emperor, "that none of our subjects, whether
magistrates or private citizens, however exalted or however humble may
be their rank and condition, shall presume, in any city or in any place,
to worship an inanimate idol, by the sacrifice of a guiltless victim."
The act of sacrificing, and the practice of divination by the entrails
of the victim, are declared (without any regard to the object of
the inquiry) a crime of high treason against the state, which can
be expiated only by the death of the guilty. The rites of Pagan
superstition, which might seem less bloody and atrocious, are abolished,
as highly injurious to the truth and honor of religion; luminaries,
garlands, frankincense, and libations of wine, are specially enumerated
and condemned; and the harmless claims of the domestic genius, of the
household gods, are included in this rigorous proscription. The use of
any of these profane and illegal ceremonies, subjects the offender to
the forfeiture of the house or estate, where they have been performed;
and if he has artfully chosen the property of another for the scene of
his impiety, he is compelled to discharge, without delay, a heavy
fine of twenty-five pounds of gold, or more than one thousand pounds
sterling. A fine, not less considerable, is imposed on the connivance
of the secret enemies of religion, who shall neglect the duty of their
respective stations, either to reveal, or to punish, the guilt of
idolatry. Such was the persecuting spirit of the laws of Theodosius,
which were repeatedly enforced by his sons and grandsons, with the loud
and unanimous applause of the Christian world. [56]

[Footnote 53: Libanius (pro Templis, p. 15, 16, 17) pleads their cause
with gentle and insinuating rhetoric. From the earliest age, such feasts
had enlivened the country: and those of Bacchus (Georgic. ii. 380) had
produced the theatre of Athens. See Godefroy, ad loc. Liban. and Codex
Theodos. tom. vi. p. 284.]

[Footnote 54: Honorius tolerated these rustic festivals, (A.D. 399.)
"Absque ullo sacrificio, atque ulla superstitione damnabili." But nine
years afterwards he found it necessary to reiterate and enforce the same
proviso, (Codex Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 17, 19.)]

[Footnote 55: Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 12. Jortin (Remarks on
Eccles. History, vol. iv. p. 134) censures, with becoming asperity, the
style and sentiments of this intolerant law.]

[Footnote 5511: Paganism maintained its ground for a considerable time
in the rural districts. Endelechius, a poet who lived at the beginning
of the fifth century, speaks of the cross as Signum quod perhibent esse
crucis Dei, Magnis qui colitur solus inurbibus. In the middle of the
same century, Maximus, bishop of Turin, writes against the heathen
deities as if their worship was still in full vigor in the neighborhood
of his city. Augustine complains of the encouragement of the Pagan rites
by heathen landowners; and Zeno of Verona, still later, reproves the
apathy of the Christian proprietors in conniving at this abuse. (Compare
Neander, ii. p. 169.) M. Beugnot shows that this was the case throughout
the north and centre of Italy and in Sicily. But neither of these
authors has adverted to one fact, which must have tended greatly to
retard the progress of Christianity in these quarters. It was still
chiefly a slave population which cultivated the soil; and however, in
the towns, the better class of Christians might be eager to communicate
"the blessed liberty of the gospel" to this class of mankind; however
their condition could not but be silently ameliorated by the humanizing
influence of Christianity; yet, on the whole, no doubt the servile class
would be the least fitted to receive the gospel; and its general
propagation among them would be embarrassed by many peculiar
difficulties. The rural population was probably not entirely converted
before the general establishment of the monastic institutions. Compare
Quarterly Review of Beugnot. vol lvii. p. 52--M.]

[Footnote 56: Such a charge should not be lightly made; but it may
surely be justified by the authority of St. Augustin, who thus
addresses the Donatists: "Quis nostrum, quis vestrum non laudat leges
ab Imperatoribus datas adversus sacrificia Paganorum? Et certe longe
ibi poera severior constituta est; illius quippe impietatis capitale
supplicium est." Epist. xciii. No. 10, quoted by Le Clerc, (Bibliotheque
Choisie, tom. viii. p. 277,) who adds some judicious reflections on the
intolerance of the victorious Christians. * Note: Yet Augustine, with
laudable inconsistency, disapproved of the forcible demolition of the
temples. "Let us first extirpate the idolatry of the hearts of the
heathen, and they will either themselves invite us or anticipate us in
the execution of this good work," tom. v. p. 62. Compare Neander, ii.
169, and, in p. 155, a beautiful passage from Chrysostom against all
violent means of propagating Christianity.--M.]




Chapter XXVIII: Destruction Of Paganism.--Part III.

In the cruel reigns of Decius and Dioclesian, Christianity had been
proscribed, as a revolt from the ancient and hereditary religion of the
empire; and the unjust suspicions which were entertained of a dark
and dangerous faction, were, in some measure, countenanced by the
inseparable union and rapid conquests of the Catholic church. But the
same excuses of fear and ignorance cannot be applied to the Christian
emperors who violated the precepts of humanity and of the Gospel. The
experience of ages had betrayed the weakness, as well as folly, of
Paganism; the light of reason and of faith had already exposed, to the
greatest part of mankind, the vanity of idols; and the declining sect,
which still adhered to their worship, might have been permitted
to enjoy, in peace and obscurity, the religious costumes of their
ancestors. Had the Pagans been animated by the undaunted zeal which
possessed the minds of the primitive believers, the triumph of the
Church must have been stained with blood; and the martyrs of Jupiter and
Apollo might have embraced the glorious opportunity of devoting their
lives and fortunes at the foot of their altars. But such obstinate zeal
was not congenial to the loose and careless temper of Polytheism. The
violent and repeated strokes of the orthodox princes were broken by the
soft and yielding substance against which they were directed; and
the ready obedience of the Pagans protected them from the pains and
penalties of the Theodosian Code. [57] Instead of asserting, that
the authority of the gods was superior to that of the emperor, they
desisted, with a plaintive murmur, from the use of those sacred rites
which their sovereign had condemned. If they were sometimes tempted by
a sally of passion, or by the hopes of concealment, to indulge their
favorite superstition, their humble repentance disarmed the severity
of the Christian magistrate, and they seldom refused to atone for their
rashness, by submitting, with some secret reluctance, to the yoke of the
Gospel. The churches were filled with the increasing multitude of these
unworthy proselytes, who had conformed, from temporal motives, to the
reigning religion; and whilst they devoutly imitated the postures, and
recited the prayers, of the faithful, they satisfied their conscience by
the silent and sincere invocation of the gods of antiquity. [58] If the
Pagans wanted patience to suffer they wanted spirit to resist; and
the scattered myriads, who deplored the ruin of the temples, yielded,
without a contest, to the fortune of their adversaries. The disorderly
opposition [59] of the peasants of Syria, and the populace of
Alexandria, to the rage of private fanaticism, was silenced by the
name and authority of the emperor. The Pagans of the West, without
contributing to the elevation of Eugenius, disgraced, by their
partial attachment, the cause and character of the usurper. The clergy
vehemently exclaimed, that he aggravated the crime of rebellion by the
guilt of apostasy; that, by his permission, the altar of victory was
again restored; and that the idolatrous symbols of Jupiter and Hercules
were displayed in the field, against the invincible standard of the
cross. But the vain hopes of the Pagans were soon annihilated by the
defeat of Eugenius; and they were left exposed to the resentment of the
conqueror, who labored to deserve the favor of Heaven by the extirpation
of idolatry. [60]

[Footnote 57: Orosius, l. vii. c. 28, p. 537. Augustin (Enarrat. in
Psalm cxl apud Lardner, Heathen Testimonies, vol. iv. p. 458) insults
their cowardice. "Quis eorum comprehensus est in sacrificio (cum his
legibus sta prohiberentur) et non negavit?"]

[Footnote 58: Libanius (pro Templis, p. 17, 18) mentions, without
censure the occasional conformity, and as it were theatrical play, of
these hypocrites.]

[Footnote 59: Libanius concludes his apology (p. 32) by declaring to
the emperor, that unless he expressly warrants the destruction of the
temples, the proprietors will defend themselves and the laws.]

[Footnote 60: Paulinus, in Vit. Ambros. c. 26. Augustin de Civitat. Dei,
l. v. c. 26. Theodoret, l. v. c. 24.]

A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their
master, who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the
last extremes of injustice and oppression. Theodosius might undoubtedly
have proposed to his Pagan subjects the alternative of baptism or of
death; and the eloquent Libanius has praised the moderation of a prince,
who never enacted, by any positive law, that all his subjects should
immediately embrace and practise the religion of their sovereign. [61]
The profession of Christianity was not made an essential qualification
for the enjoyment of the civil rights of society, nor were any peculiar
hardships imposed on the sectaries, who credulously received the fables
of Ovid, and obstinately rejected the miracles of the Gospel. The
palace, the schools, the army, and the senate, were filled with declared
and devout Pagans; they obtained, without distinction, the civil and
military honors of the empire. [6111] Theodosius distinguished his
liberal regard for virtue and genius by the consular dignity, which
he bestowed on Symmachus; [62] and by the personal friendship which he
expressed to Libanius; [63] and the two eloquent apologists of Paganism
were never required either to change or to dissemble their religious
opinions. The Pagans were indulged in the most licentious freedom of
speech and writing; the historical and philosophic remains of Eunapius,
Zosimus, [64] and the fanatic teachers of the school of Plato, betray
the most furious animosity, and contain the sharpest invectives, against
the sentiments and conduct of their victorious adversaries. If these
audacious libels were publicly known, we must applaud the good sense of
the Christian princes, who viewed, with a smile of contempt, the last
struggles of superstition and despair. [65] But the Imperial laws,
which prohibited the sacrifices and ceremonies of Paganism, were rigidly
executed; and every hour contributed to destroy the influence of a
religion, which was supported by custom, rather than by argument. The
devotion or the poet, or the philosopher, may be secretly nourished
by prayer, meditation, and study; but the exercise of public worship
appears to be the only solid foundation of the religious sentiments
of the people, which derive their force from imitation and habit. The
interruption of that public exercise may consummate, in the period of
a few years, the important work of a national revolution. The memory of
theological opinions cannot long be preserved, without the artificial
helps of priests, of temples, and of books. [66] The ignorant vulgar,
whose minds are still agitated by the blind hopes and terrors of
superstition, will be soon persuaded by their superiors to direct their
vows to the reigning deities of the age; and will insensibly imbibe an
ardent zeal for the support and propagation of the new doctrine, which
spiritual hunger at first compelled them to accept. The generation that
arose in the world after the promulgation of the Imperial laws, was
attracted within the pale of the Catholic church: and so rapid, yet so
gentle, was the fall of Paganism, that only twenty-eight years after
the death of Theodosius, the faint and minute vestiges were no longer
visible to the eye of the legislator. [67]

[Footnote 61: Libanius suggests the form of a persecuting edict,
which Theodosius might enact, (pro Templis, p. 32;) a rash joke, and a
dangerous experiment. Some princes would have taken his advice.]

[Footnote 6111: The most remarkable instance of this, at a much later
period, occurs in the person of Merobaudes, a general and a poet, who
flourished in the first half of the fifth century. A statue in honor of
Merobaudes was placed in the Forum of Trajan, of which the inscription
is still extant. Fragments of his poems have been recovered by the
industry and sagacity of Niebuhr. In one passage, Merobaudes, in
the genuine heathen spirit, attributes the ruin of the empire to the
abolition of Paganism, and almost renews the old accusation of Atheism
against Christianity. He impersonates some deity, probably Discord,
who summons Bellona to take arms for the destruction of Rome; and in
a strain of fierce irony recommends to her other fatal measures, to
extirpate the gods of Rome:--

     Roma, ipsique tremant furialia murmura reges.
     Jam superos terris atque hospita numina pelle:
     Romanos populare Deos, et nullus in aris
     Vestoe exoratoe fotus strue palleat ignis.
     Ilis instructa dolis palatia celsa subibo;
     Majorum mores, et pectora prisca fugabo
     Funditus; atque simul, nullo discrimine rerum,
     Spernantur fortes, nec sic reverentia justis.
     Attica neglecto pereat facundia Phoebo:
     Indignis contingat honos, et pondera rerum;
     Non virtus sed casus agat; tristique cupido;
     Pectoribus saevi demens furor aestuet aevi;
     Omniaque hoec sine mente Jovis, sine numine sumimo.

Merobaudes in Niebuhr's edit. of the Byzantines, p. 14.--M.]

[Footnote 62: Denique pro meritis terrestribus aequa rependens

     Munera, sacricolis summos impertit honores.

     Dux bonus, et certare sinit cum laude suorum,
     Nec pago implicitos per debita culmina mundi Ire
     viros prohibet.
     Ipse magistratum tibi consulis, ipse tribunal

     Contulit.
     Prudent. in Symmach. i. 617, &c.

Note: I have inserted some lines omitted by Gibbon.--M.]

[Footnote 63: Libanius (pro Templis, p. 32) is proud that Theodosius
should thus distinguish a man, who even in his presence would swear
by Jupiter. Yet this presence seems to be no more than a figure of
rhetoric.]

[Footnote 64: Zosimus, who styles himself Count and Ex-advocate of the
Treasury, reviles, with partial and indecent bigotry, the Christian
princes, and even the father of his sovereign. His work must have
been privately circulated, since it escaped the invectives of the
ecclesiastical historians prior to Evagrius, (l. iii. c. 40-42,)
who lived towards the end of the sixth century. * Note: Heyne in his
Disquisitio in Zosimum Ejusque Fidem. places Zosimum towards the close
of the fifth century. Zosim. Heynii, p. xvii.--M.]

[Footnote 65: Yet the Pagans of Africa complained, that the times would
not allow them to answer with freedom the City of God; nor does St.
Augustin (v. 26) deny the charge.]

[Footnote 66: The Moors of Spain, who secretly preserved the Mahometan
religion above a century, under the tyranny of the Inquisition,
possessed the Koran, with the peculiar use of the Arabic tongue. See the
curious and honest story of their expulsion in Geddes, (Miscellanies,
vol. i. p. 1-198.)]

[Footnote 67: Paganos qui supersunt, quanquam jam nullos esse credamus,
&c. Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 22, A.D. 423. The younger
Theodosius was afterwards satisfied, that his judgment had been somewhat
premature. Note: The statement of Gibbon is much too strongly worded.
M. Beugnot has traced the vestiges of Paganism in the West, after this
period, in monuments and inscriptions with curious industry. Compare
likewise note, p. 112, on the more tardy progress of Christianity in the
rural districts.--M.]

The ruin of the Pagan religion is described by the sophists as a
dreadful and amazing prodigy, which covered the earth with darkness,
and restored the ancient dominion of chaos and of night. They relate,
in solemn and pathetic strains, that the temples were converted into
sepulchres, and that the holy places, which had been adorned by the
statues of the gods, were basely polluted by the relics of Christian
martyrs. "The monks" (a race of filthy animals, to whom Eunapius is
tempted to refuse the name of men) "are the authors of the new
worship, which, in the place of those deities who are conceived by the
understanding, has substituted the meanest and most contemptible slaves.
The heads, salted and pickled, of those infamous malefactors, who for
the multitude of their crimes have suffered a just and ignominious
death; their bodies still marked by the impression of the lash, and
the scars of those tortures which were inflicted by the sentence of the
magistrate; such" (continues Eunapius) "are the gods which the earth
produces in our days; such are the martyrs, the supreme arbitrators of
our prayers and petitions to the Deity, whose tombs are now consecrated
as the objects of the veneration of the people." [68] Without approving
the malice, it is natural enough to share the surprise of the sophist,
the spectator of a revolution, which raised those obscure victims of the
laws of Rome to the rank of celestial and invisible protectors of the
Roman empire. The grateful respect of the Christians for the martyrs of
the faith, was exalted, by time and victory, into religious adoration;
and the most illustrious of the saints and prophets were deservedly
associated to the honors of the martyrs. One hundred and fifty years
after the glorious deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Vatican and the
Ostian road were distinguished by the tombs, or rather by the trophies,
of those spiritual heroes. [69] In the age which followed the conversion
of Constantine, the emperors, the consuls, and the generals of armies,
devoutly visited the sepulchres of a tentmaker and a fisherman; [70]
and their venerable bones were deposited under the altars of Christ,
on which the bishops of the royal city continually offered the unbloody
sacrifice. [71] The new capital of the Eastern world, unable to produce
any ancient and domestic trophies, was enriched by the spoils of
dependent provinces. The bodies of St. Andrew, St. Luke, and St.
Timothy, had reposed near three hundred years in the obscure graves,
from whence they were transported, in solemn pomp, to the church of the
apostles, which the magnificence of Constantine had founded on the banks
of the Thracian Bosphorus. [72] About fifty years afterwards, the same
banks were honored by the presence of Samuel, the judge and prophet of
the people of Israel. His ashes, deposited in a golden vase, and covered
with a silken veil, were delivered by the bishops into each other's
hands. The relics of Samuel were received by the people with the same
joy and reverence which they would have shown to the living prophet;
the highways, from Palestine to the gates of Constantinople, were filled
with an uninterrupted procession; and the emperor Arcadius himself,
at the head of the most illustrious members of the clergy and senate,
advanced to meet his extraordinary guest, who had always deserved and
claimed the homage of kings. [73] The example of Rome and Constantinople
confirmed the faith and discipline of the Catholic world. The honors of
the saints and martyrs, after a feeble and ineffectual murmur of profane
reason, [74] were universally established; and in the age of Ambrose and
Jerom, something was still deemed wanting to the sanctity of a Christian
church, till it had been consecrated by some portion of holy relics,
which fixed and inflamed the devotion of the faithful.

[Footnote 68: See Eunapius, in the Life of the sophist Aedesius; in that
of Eustathius he foretells the ruin of Paganism.]

[Footnote 69: Caius, (apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. ii. c. 25,) a Roman
presbyter, who lived in the time of Zephyrinus, (A.D. 202-219,) is an
early witness of this superstitious practice.]

[Footnote 70: Chrysostom. Quod Christus sit Deus. Tom. i. nov. edit.
No. 9. I am indebted for this quotation to Benedict the XIVth's pastoral
letter on the Jubilee of the year 1759. See the curious and entertaining
letters of M. Chais, tom. iii.]

[Footnote 71: Male facit ergo Romanus episcopus? qui, super mortuorum
hominum, Petri & Pauli, secundum nos, ossa veneranda ... offeri Domino
sacrificia, et tumulos eorum, Christi arbitratur altaria. Jerom. tom.
ii. advers. Vigilant. p. 183.]

[Footnote 72: Jerom (tom. ii. p. 122) bears witness to these
translations, which are neglected by the ecclesiastical historians.
The passion of St. Andrew at Patrae is described in an epistle from the
clergy of Achaia, which Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 60, No. 34) wishes
to believe, and Tillemont is forced to reject. St. Andrew was adopted
as the spiritual founder of Constantinople, (Mem. Eccles. tom. i. p.
317-323, 588-594.)]

[Footnote 73: Jerom (tom. ii. p. 122) pompously describes the
translation of Samuel, which is noticed in all the chronicles of the
times.]

[Footnote 74: The presbyter Vigilantius, the Protestant of his age,
firmly, though ineffectually, withstood the superstition of monks,
relics, saints, fasts, &c., for which Jerom compares him to the Hydra,
Cerberus, the Centaurs, &c., and considers him only as the organ of the
Daemon, (tom. ii. p. 120-126.) Whoever will peruse the controversy of
St. Jerom and Vigilantius, and St. Augustin's account of the miracles of
St. Stephen, may speedily gain some idea of the spirit of the Fathers.]

In the long period of twelve hundred years, which elapsed between the
reign of Constantine and the reformation of Luther, the worship of
saints and relics corrupted the pure and perfect simplicity of the
Christian model: and some symptoms of degeneracy may be observed even
in the first generations which adopted and cherished this pernicious
innovation.

I. The satisfactory experience, that the relics of saints were more
valuable than gold or precious stones, [75] stimulated the clergy to
multiply the treasures of the church. Without much regard for truth or
probability, they invented names for skeletons, and actions for names.
The fame of the apostles, and of the holy men who had imitated their
virtues, was darkened by religious fiction. To the invincible band of
genuine and primitive martyrs, they added myriads of imaginary heroes,
who had never existed, except in the fancy of crafty or credulous
legendaries; and there is reason to suspect, that Tours might not be the
only diocese in which the bones of a malefactor were adored, instead
of those of a saint. [76] A superstitious practice, which tended
to increase the temptations of fraud, and credulity, insensibly
extinguished the light of history, and of reason, in the Christian
world.

[Footnote 75: M. de Beausobre (Hist. du Manicheisme, tom. ii. p. 648)
has applied a worldly sense to the pious observation of the clergy of
Smyrna, who carefully preserved the relics of St. Polycarp the martyr.]

[Footnote 76: Martin of Tours (see his Life, c. 8, by Sulpicius Severus)
extorted this confession from the mouth of the dead man. The error is
allowed to be natural; the discovery is supposed to be miraculous. Which
of the two was likely to happen most frequently?]

II. But the progress of superstition would have been much less rapid
and victorious, if the faith of the people had not been assisted by the
seasonable aid of visions and miracles, to ascertain the authenticity
and virtue of the most suspicious relics. In the reign of the
younger Theodosius, Lucian, [77] a presbyter of Jerusalem, and the
ecclesiastical minister of the village of Caphargamala, about twenty
miles from the city, related a very singular dream, which, to remove
his doubts, had been repeated on three successive Saturdays. A venerable
figure stood before him, in the silence of the night, with a long beard,
a white robe, and a gold rod; announced himself by the name of Gamaliel,
and revealed to the astonished presbyter, that his own corpse, with
the bodies of his son Abibas, his friend Nicodemus, and the illustrious
Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian faith, were secretly buried
in the adjacent field. He added, with some impatience, that it was time
to release himself and his companions from their obscure prison; that
their appearance would be salutary to a distressed world; and that they
had made choice of Lucian to inform the bishop of Jerusalem of their
situation and their wishes. The doubts and difficulties which still
retarded this important discovery were successively removed by new
visions; and the ground was opened by the bishop, in the presence of an
innumerable multitude. The coffins of Gamaliel, of his son, and of his
friend, were found in regular order; but when the fourth coffin, which
contained the remains of Stephen, was shown to the light, the earth
trembled, and an odor, such as that of paradise, was smelt, which
instantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the assistants.
The companions of Stephen were left in their peaceful residence of
Caphargamala: but the relics of the first martyr were transported, in
solemn procession, to a church constructed in their honor on Mount Sion;
and the minute particles of those relics, a drop of blood, [78] or the
scrapings of a bone, were acknowledged, in almost every province of the
Roman world, to possess a divine and miraculous virtue. The grave and
learned Augustin, [79] whose understanding scarcely admits the excuse of
credulity, has attested the innumerable prodigies which were performed
in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen; and this marvellous narrative is
inserted in the elaborate work of the City of God, which the bishop
of Hippo designed as a solid and immortal proof of the truth of
Christianity. Augustin solemnly declares, that he has selected those
miracles only which were publicly certified by the persons who were
either the objects, or the spectators, of the power of the martyr. Many
prodigies were omitted, or forgotten; and Hippo had been less favorably
treated than the other cities of the province. And yet the bishop
enumerates above seventy miracles, of which three were resurrections
from the dead, in the space of two years, and within the limits of his
own diocese. [80] If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses, and all
the saints, of the Christian world, it will not be easy to calculate the
fables, and the errors, which issued from this inexhaustible source.
But we may surely be allowed to observe, that a miracle, in that age of
superstition and credulity, lost its name and its merit, since it could
scarcely be considered as a deviation from the ordinary and established
laws of nature.

[Footnote 77: Lucian composed in Greek his original narrative, which has
been translated by Avitus, and published by Baronius, (Annal. Eccles.
A.D. 415, No. 7-16.) The Benedictine editors of St. Augustin have given
(at the end of the work de Civitate Dei) two several copies, with many
various readings. It is the character of falsehood to be loose and
inconsistent. The most incredible parts of the legend are smoothed and
softened by Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. ii. p. 9, &c.)]

[Footnote 78: A phial of St. Stephen's blood was annually liquefied
at Naples, till he was superseded by St. Jamarius, (Ruinart. Hist.
Persecut. Vandal p. 529.)]

[Footnote 79: Augustin composed the two-and-twenty books de Civitate Dei
in the space of thirteen years, A.D. 413-426. Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles.
tom. xiv. p. 608, &c.) His learning is too often borrowed, and his
arguments are too often his own; but the whole work claims the merit of
a magnificent design, vigorously, and not unskilfully, executed.]

[Footnote 80: See Augustin de Civitat. Dei, l. xxii. c. 22, and the
Appendix, which contains two books of St. Stephen's miracles, by
Evodius, bishop of Uzalis. Freculphus (apud Basnage, Hist. des Juifs,
tom. vii. p. 249) has preserved a Gallic or a Spanish proverb, "Whoever
pretends to have read all the miracles of St. Stephen, he lies."]

III. The innumerable miracles, of which the tombs of the martyrs were
the perpetual theatre, revealed to the pious believer the actual state
and constitution of the invisible world; and his religious speculations
appeared to be founded on the firm basis of fact and experience.
Whatever might be the condition of vulgar souls, in the long interval
between the dissolution and the resurrection of their bodies, it was
evident that the superior spirits of the saints and martyrs did not
consume that portion of their existence in silent and inglorious sleep.
[81] It was evident (without presuming to determine the place of their
habitation, or the nature of their felicity) that they enjoyed the
lively and active consciousness of their happiness, their virtue, and
their powers; and that they had already secured the possession of
their eternal reward. The enlargement of their intellectual faculties
surpassed the measure of the human imagination; since it was proved
by experience, that they were capable of hearing and understanding the
various petitions of their numerous votaries; who, in the same moment of
time, but in the most distant parts of the world, invoked the name
and assistance of Stephen or of Martin. [82] The confidence of their
petitioners was founded on the persuasion, that the saints, who reigned
with Christ, cast an eye of pity upon earth; that they were warmly
interested in the prosperity of the Catholic Church; and that the
individuals, who imitated the example of their faith and piety, were the
peculiar and favorite objects of their most tender regard. Sometimes,
indeed, their friendship might be influenced by considerations of a less
exalted kind: they viewed with partial affection the places which had
been consecrated by their birth, their residence, their death, their
burial, or the possession of their relics. The meaner passions of pride,
avarice, and revenge, may be deemed unworthy of a celestial breast; yet
the saints themselves condescended to testify their grateful approbation
of the liberality of their votaries; and the sharpest bolts of
punishment were hurled against those impious wretches, who violated
their magnificent shrines, or disbelieved their supernatural power. [83]
Atrocious, indeed, must have been the guilt, and strange would have
been the scepticism, of those men, if they had obstinately resisted the
proofs of a divine agency, which the elements, the whole range of the
animal creation, and even the subtle and invisible operations of the
human mind, were compelled to obey. [84] The immediate, and almost
instantaneous, effects that were supposed to follow the prayer, or the
offence, satisfied the Christians of the ample measure of favor and
authority which the saints enjoyed in the presence of the Supreme
God; and it seemed almost superfluous to inquire whether they were
continually obliged to intercede before the throne of grace; or whether
they might not be permitted to exercise, according to the dictates of
their benevolence and justice, the delegated powers of their subordinate
ministry. The imagination, which had been raised by a painful effort to
the contemplation and worship of the Universal Cause, eagerly embraced
such inferior objects of adoration as were more proportioned to its
gross conceptions and imperfect faculties. The sublime and simple
theology of the primitive Christians was gradually corrupted; and the
Monarchy of heaven, already clouded by metaphysical subtleties, was
degraded by the introduction of a popular mythology, which tended to
restore the reign of polytheism. [85]

[Footnote 81: Burnet (de Statu Mortuorum, p. 56-84) collects the
opinions of the Fathers, as far as they assert the sleep, or repose, of
human souls till the day of judgment. He afterwards exposes (p. 91, &c.)
the inconveniences which must arise, if they possessed a more active and
sensible existence.]

[Footnote 82: Vigilantius placed the souls of the prophets and martyrs,
either in the bosom of Abraham, (in loco refrigerii,) or else under the
altar of God. Nec posse suis tumulis et ubi voluerunt adesse praesentes.
But Jerom (tom. ii. p. 122) sternly refutes this blasphemy. Tu Deo leges
pones? Tu apostolis vincula injicies, ut usque ad diem judicii teneantur
custodia, nec sint cum Domino suo; de quibus scriptum est, Sequuntur
Agnum quocunque vadit. Si Agnus ubique, ergo, et hi, qui cum Agno sunt,
ubique esse credendi sunt. Et cum diabolus et daemones tote vagentur in
orbe, &c.]

[Footnote 83: Fleury Discours sur l'Hist. Ecclesiastique, iii p. 80.]

[Footnote 84: At Minorca, the relics of St. Stephen converted, in eight
days, 540 Jews; with the help, indeed, of some wholesome severities,
such as burning the synagogue, driving the obstinate infidels to starve
among the rocks, &c. See the original letter of Severus, bishop of
Minorca (ad calcem St. Augustin. de Civ. Dei,) and the judicious remarks
of Basnage, (tom. viii. p. 245-251.)]

[Footnote 85: Mr. Hume (Essays, vol. ii. p. 434) observes, like a
philosopher, the natural flux and reflux of polytheism and theism.]

IV. As the objects of religion were gradually reduced to the standard
of the imagination, the rites and ceremonies were introduced that seemed
most powerfully to affect the senses of the vulgar. If, in the beginning
of the fifth century, [86] Tertullian, or Lactantius, [87] had been
suddenly raised from the dead, to assist at the festival of some popular
saint, or martyr, [88] they would have gazed with astonishment, and
indignation, on the profane spectacle, which had succeeded to the pure
and spiritual worship of a Christian congregation. As soon as the doors
of the church were thrown open, they must have been offended by the
smoke of incense, the perfume of flowers, and the glare of lamps and
tapers, which diffused, at noonday, a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their
opinion, a sacrilegious light. If they approached the balustrade of the
altar, they made their way through the prostrate crowd, consisting, for
the most part, of strangers and pilgrims, who resorted to the city on
the vigil of the feast; and who already felt the strong intoxication of
fanaticism, and, perhaps, of wine. Their devout kisses were imprinted on
the walls and pavement of the sacred edifice; and their fervent prayers
were directed, whatever might be the language of their church, to
the bones, the blood, or the ashes of the saint, which were usually
concealed, by a linen or silken veil, from the eyes of the vulgar.
The Christians frequented the tombs of the martyrs, in the hope of
obtaining, from their powerful intercession, every sort of spiritual,
but more especially of temporal, blessings. They implored the
preservation of their health, or the cure of their infirmities; the
fruitfulness of their barren wives, or the safety and happiness of their
children. Whenever they undertook any distant or dangerous journey, they
requested, that the holy martyrs would be their guides and protectors
on the road; and if they returned without having experienced any
misfortune, they again hastened to the tombs of the martyrs, to
celebrate, with grateful thanksgivings, their obligations to the memory
and relics of those heavenly patrons. The walls were hung round with
symbols of the favors which they had received; eyes, and hands, and
feet, of gold and silver: and edifying pictures, which could not long
escape the abuse of indiscreet or idolatrous devotion, represented the
image, the attributes, and the miracles of the tutelar saint. The same
uniform original spirit of superstition might suggest, in the most
distant ages and countries, the same methods of deceiving the credulity,
and of affecting the senses of mankind: [89] but it must ingenuously
be confessed, that the ministers of the Catholic church imitated
the profane model, which they were impatient to destroy. The most
respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics
would more cheerfully renounce the superstitions of Paganism, if they
found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity.
The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final
conquest of the Roman empire: but the victors themselves were insensibly
subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals. [90] [9011]

[Footnote 86: D'Aubigne (see his own Memoires, p. 156-160) frankly
offered, with the consent of the Huguenot ministers, to allow the first
400 years as the rule of faith. The Cardinal du Perron haggled for forty
years more, which were indiscreetly given. Yet neither party would have
found their account in this foolish bargain.]

[Footnote 87: The worship practised and inculcated by Tertullian,
Lactantius Arnobius, &c., is so extremely pure and spiritual, that their
declamations against the Pagan sometimes glance against the Jewish,
ceremonies.]

[Footnote 88: Faustus the Manichaean accuses the Catholics of idolatry.
Vertitis idola in martyres.... quos votis similibus colitis. M. de
Beausobre, (Hist. Critique du Manicheisme, tom. ii. p. 629-700,)
a Protestant, but a philosopher, has represented, with candor and
learning, the introduction of Christian idolatry in the fourth and fifth
centuries.]

[Footnote 89: The resemblance of superstition, which could not be
imitated, might be traced from Japan to Mexico. Warburton has seized
this idea, which he distorts, by rendering it too general and absolute,
(Divine Legation, vol. iv. p. 126, &c.)]

[Footnote 90: The imitation of Paganism is the subject of Dr.
Middleton's agreeable letter from Rome. Warburton's animadversions
obliged him to connect (vol. iii. p. 120-132,) the history of the two
religions, and to prove the antiquity of the Christian copy.]

[Footnote 9011: But there was always this important difference between
Christian and heathen Polytheism. In Paganism this was the whole
religion; in the darkest ages of Christianity, some, however obscure and
vague, Christian notions of future retribution, of the life after death,
lurked at the bottom, and operated, to a certain extent, on the thoughts
and feelings, sometimes on the actions.--M.]




Chapter XXIX: Division Of Roman Empire Between Sons Of Theodosius.--Part
I.

     Final Division Of The Roman Empire Between The Sons Of
     Theodosius.--Reign Of Arcadius And Honorius--Administration
     Of Rufinus And Stilicho.--Revolt And Defeat Of Gildo In
     Africa.

The genius of Rome expired with Theodosius; the last of the successors
of Augustus and Constantine, who appeared in the field at the head
of their armies, and whose authority was universally acknowledged
throughout the whole extent of the empire. The memory of his virtues
still continued, however, to protect the feeble and inexperienced youth
of his two sons. After the death of their father, Arcadius and Honorius
were saluted, by the unanimous consent of mankind, as the lawful
emperors of the East, and of the West; and the oath of fidelity was
eagerly taken by every order of the state; the senates of old and
new Rome, the clergy, the magistrates, the soldiers, and the people.
Arcadius, who was then about eighteen years of age, was born in Spain,
in the humble habitation of a private family. But he received a princely
education in the palace of Constantinople; and his inglorious life was
spent in that peaceful and splendid seat of royalty, from whence he
appeared to reign over the provinces of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and
Egypt, from the Lower Danube to the confines of Persia and Aethiopia.
His younger brother Honorius, assumed, in the eleventh year of his age,
the nominal government of Italy, Africa, Gaul, Spain, and Britain; and
the troops, which guarded the frontiers of his kingdom, were opposed, on
one side, to the Caledonians, and on the other, to the Moors. The
great and martial praefecture of Illyricum was divided between the
two princes: the defence and possession of the provinces of Noricum,
Pannonia, and Dalmatia still belonged to the Western empire; but the two
large dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia, which Gratian had intrusted to
the valor of Theodosius, were forever united to the empire of the East.
The boundary in Europe was not very different from the line which now
separates the Germans and the Turks; and the respective advantages of
territory, riches, populousness, and military strength, were fairly
balanced and compensated, in this final and permanent division of the
Roman empire. The hereditary sceptre of the sons of Theodosius appeared
to be the gift of nature, and of their father; the generals and
ministers had been accustomed to adore the majesty of the royal infants;
and the army and people were not admonished of their rights, and of
their power, by the dangerous example of a recent election. The gradual
discovery of the weakness of Arcadius and Honorius, and the repeated
calamities of their reign, were not sufficient to obliterate the deep
and early impressions of loyalty. The subjects of Rome, who still
reverenced the persons, or rather the names, of their sovereigns,
beheld, with equal abhorrence, the rebels who opposed, and the ministers
who abused, the authority of the throne.

Theodosius had tarnished the glory of his reign by the elevation of
Rufinus; an odious favorite, who, in an age of civil and religious
faction, has deserved, from every party, the imputation of every crime.
The strong impulse of ambition and avarice [1] had urged Rufinus to
abandon his native country, an obscure corner of Gaul, [2] to advance
his fortune in the capital of the East: the talent of bold and ready
elocution, [3] qualified him to succeed in the lucrative profession of
the law; and his success in that profession was a regular step to the
most honorable and important employments of the state. He was raised, by
just degrees, to the station of master of the offices. In the exercise
of his various functions, so essentially connected with the whole system
of civil government, he acquired the confidence of a monarch, who soon
discovered his diligence and capacity in business, and who long
remained ignorant of the pride, the malice, and the covetousness of his
disposition. These vices were concealed beneath the mask of profound
dissimulation; [4] his passions were subservient only to the passions
of his master; yet in the horrid massacre of Thessalonica, the cruel
Rufinus inflamed the fury, without imitating the repentance, of
Theodosius. The minister, who viewed with proud indifference the rest
of mankind, never forgave the appearance of an injury; and his personal
enemies had forfeited, in his opinion, the merit of all public services.
Promotus, the master-general of the infantry, had saved the empire
from the invasion of the Ostrogoths; but he indignantly supported the
preeminence of a rival, whose character and profession he despised; and
in the midst of a public council, the impatient soldier was provoked
to chastise with a blow the indecent pride of the favorite. This act
of violence was represented to the emperor as an insult, which it was
incumbent on his dignity to resent. The disgrace and exile of Promotus
were signified by a peremptory order, to repair, without delay, to
a military station on the banks of the Danube; and the death of that
general (though he was slain in a skirmish with the Barbarians) was
imputed to the perfidious arts of Rufinus. [5] The sacrifice of a hero
gratified his revenge; the honors of the consulship elated his vanity;
but his power was still imperfect and precarious, as long as
the important posts of praefect of the East, and of praefect of
Constantinople, were filled by Tatian, [6] and his son Proculus; whose
united authority balanced, for some time, the ambition and favor of
the master of the offices. The two praefects were accused of rapine and
corruption in the administration of the laws and finances. For the
trial of these illustrious offenders, the emperor constituted a special
commission: several judges were named to share the guilt and reproach
of injustice; but the right of pronouncing sentence was reserved to the
president alone, and that president was Rufinus himself. The father,
stripped of the praefecture of the East, was thrown into a dungeon; but
the son, conscious that few ministers can be found innocent, where an
enemy is their judge, had secretly escaped; and Rufinus must have
been satisfied with the least obnoxious victim, if despotism had not
condescended to employ the basest and most ungenerous artifice. The
prosecution was conducted with an appearance of equity and moderation,
which flattered Tatian with the hope of a favorable event: his
confidence was fortified by the solemn assurances, and perfidious
oaths, of the president, who presumed to interpose the sacred name of
Theodosius himself; and the unhappy father was at last persuaded to
recall, by a private letter, the fugitive Proculus. He was instantly
seized, examined, condemned, and beheaded, in one of the suburbs of
Constantinople, with a precipitation which disappointed the clemency of
the emperor. Without respecting the misfortunes of a consular senator,
the cruel judges of Tatian compelled him to behold the execution of his
son: the fatal cord was fastened round his own neck; but in the moment
when he expected. and perhaps desired, the relief of a speedy death, he
was permitted to consume the miserable remnant of his old age in poverty
and exile. [7] The punishment of the two praefects might, perhaps, be
excused by the exceptionable parts of their own conduct; the enmity
of Rufinus might be palliated by the jealous and unsociable nature
of ambition. But he indulged a spirit of revenge equally repugnant to
prudence and to justice, when he degraded their native country of Lycia
from the rank of Roman provinces; stigmatized a guiltless people with
a mark of ignominy; and declared, that the countrymen of Tatian and
Proculus should forever remain incapable of holding any employment of
honor or advantage under the Imperial government. [8] The new praefect
of the East (for Rufinus instantly succeeded to the vacant honors of
his adversary) was not diverted, however, by the most criminal pursuits,
from the performance of the religious duties, which in that age
were considered as the most essential to salvation. In the suburb of
Chalcedon, surnamed the Oak, he had built a magnificent villa; to which
he devoutly added a stately church, consecrated to the apostles St.
Peter and St. Paul, and continually sanctified by the prayers and
penance of a regular society of monks. A numerous, and almost general,
synod of the bishops of the Eastern empire, was summoned to celebrate,
at the same time, the dedication of the church, and the baptism of the
founder. This double ceremony was performed with extraordinary pomp; and
when Rufinus was purified, in the holy font, from all the sins that
he had hitherto committed, a venerable hermit of Egypt rashly proposed
himself as the sponsor of a proud and ambitious statesman. [9]

[Footnote 1: Alecto, envious of the public felicity, convenes an
infernal synod Megaera recommends her pupil Rufinus, and excites him
to deeds of mischief, &c. But there is as much difference between
Claudian's fury and that of Virgil, as between the characters of Turnus
and Rufinus.]

[Footnote 2: It is evident, (Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 770,)
though De Marca is ashamed of his countryman, that Rufinus was born at
Elusa, the metropolis of Novempopulania, now a small village of Gassony,
(D'Anville, Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 289.)]

[Footnote 3: Philostorgius, l. xi c. 3, with Godefroy's Dissert. p.
440.]

[Footnote 4: A passage of Suidas is expressive of his profound
dissimulation.]

[Footnote 5: Zosimus, l. iv. p. 272, 273.]

[Footnote 6: Zosimus, who describes the fall of Tatian and his son, (l.
iv. p. 273, 274,) asserts their innocence; and even his testimony may
outweigh the charges of their enemies, (Cod. Theod. tom. iv. p. 489,)
who accuse them of oppressing the Curiae. The connection of Tatian
with the Arians, while he was praefect of Egypt, (A.D. 373,) inclines
Tillemont to believe that he was guilty of every crime, (Hist. des Emp.
tom. v. p. 360. Mem. Eccles. tom vi. p. 589.)]

[Footnote 7:--Juvenum rorantia colla Ante patrum vultus stricta cecidere
securi.

     Ibat grandaevus nato moriente superstes
     Post trabeas exsul.
    ---In Rufin. i. 248.

The facts of Zosimus explain the allusions of Claudian; but his classic
interpreters were ignorant of the fourth century. The fatal cord,
I found, with the help of Tillemont, in a sermon of St. Asterius of
Amasea.]

[Footnote 8: This odious law is recited and repealed by Arcadius, (A.D.
296,) on the Theodosian Code, l. ix. tit. xxxviii. leg. 9. The sense
as it is explained by Claudian, (in Rufin. i. 234,) and Godefroy, (tom.
iii. p. 279,) is perfectly clear.

    ---Exscindere cives
     Funditus; et nomen gentis delere laborat.

The scruples of Pagi and Tillemont can arise only from their zeal for
the glory of Theodosius.]

[Footnote 9: Ammonius.... Rufinum propriis manibus suscepit sacro fonte
mundatum. See Rosweyde's Vitae Patrum, p. 947. Sozomen (l. viii. c. 17)
mentions the church and monastery; and Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. ix.
p. 593) records this synod, in which St. Gregory of Nyssa performed a
conspicuous part.]

The character of Theodosius imposed on his minister the task of
hypocrisy, which disguised, and sometimes restrained, the abuse of
power; and Rufinus was apprehensive of disturbing the indolent slumber
of a prince still capable of exerting the abilities and the virtue,
which had raised him to the throne. [10] But the absence, and, soon
afterwards, the death, of the emperor, confirmed the absolute authority
of Rufinus over the person and dominions of Arcadius; a feeble youth,
whom the imperious praefect considered as his pupil, rather than his
sovereign. Regardless of the public opinion, he indulged his passions
without remorse, and without resistance; and his malignant and rapacious
spirit rejected every passion that might have contributed to his own
glory, or the happiness of the people. His avarice, [11] which seems
to have prevailed, in his corrupt mind, over every other sentiment,
attracted the wealth of the East, by the various arts of partial and
general extortion; oppressive taxes, scandalous bribery, immoderate
fines, unjust confiscations, forced or fictitious testaments, by
which the tyrant despoiled of their lawful inheritance the children of
strangers, or enemies; and the public sale of justice, as well as
of favor, which he instituted in the palace of Constantinople. The
ambitious candidate eagerly solicited, at the expense of the fairest
part of his patrimony, the honors and emoluments of some provincial
government; the lives and fortunes of the unhappy people were abandoned
to the most liberal purchaser; and the public discontent was sometimes
appeased by the sacrifice of an unpopular criminal, whose punishment
was profitable only to the praefect of the East, his accomplice and
his judge. If avarice were not the blindest of the human passions, the
motives of Rufinus might excite our curiosity; and we might be tempted
to inquire with what view he violated every principle of humanity and
justice, to accumulate those immense treasures, which he could not spend
without folly, nor possess without danger. Perhaps he vainly imagined,
that he labored for the interest of an only daughter, on whom he
intended to bestow his royal pupil, and the august rank of Empress of
the East. Perhaps he deceived himself by the opinion, that his avarice
was the instrument of his ambition. He aspired to place his fortune on
a secure and independent basis, which should no longer depend on the
caprice of the young emperor; yet he neglected to conciliate the hearts
of the soldiers and people, by the liberal distribution of those riches,
which he had acquired with so much toil, and with so much guilt. The
extreme parsimony of Rufinus left him only the reproach and envy of
ill-gotten wealth; his dependants served him without attachment; the
universal hatred of mankind was repressed only by the influence of
servile fear. The fate of Lucian proclaimed to the East, that the
praefect, whose industry was much abated in the despatch of ordinary
business, was active and indefatigable in the pursuit of revenge.
Lucian, the son of the praefect Florentius, the oppressor of Gaul,
and the enemy of Julian, had employed a considerable part of his
inheritance, the fruit of rapine and corruption, to purchase the
friendship of Rufinus, and the high office of Count of the East. But the
new magistrate imprudently departed from the maxims of the court, and
of the times; disgraced his benefactor by the contrast of a virtuous and
temperate administration; and presumed to refuse an act of injustice,
which might have tended to the profit of the emperor's uncle. Arcadius
was easily persuaded to resent the supposed insult; and the praefect
of the East resolved to execute in person the cruel vengeance, which he
meditated against this ungrateful delegate of his power. He performed
with incessant speed the journey of seven or eight hundred miles, from
Constantinople to Antioch, entered the capital of Syria at the dead of
night, and spread universal consternation among a people ignorant of
his design, but not ignorant of his character. The Count of the fifteen
provinces of the East was dragged, like the vilest malefactor, before
the arbitrary tribunal of Rufinus. Notwithstanding the clearest evidence
of his integrity, which was not impeached even by the voice of an
accuser, Lucian was condemned, almost with out a trial, to suffer a
cruel and ignominious punishment. The ministers of the tyrant, by the
orders, and in the presence, of their master, beat him on the neck with
leather thongs armed at the extremities with lead; and when he fainted
under the violence of the pain, he was removed in a close litter, to
conceal his dying agonies from the eyes of the indignant city. No
sooner had Rufinus perpetrated this inhuman act, the sole object of his
expedition, than he returned, amidst the deep and silent curses of a
trembling people, from Antioch to Constantinople; and his diligence was
accelerated by the hope of accomplishing, without delay, the nuptials of
his daughter with the emperor of the East. [12]

[Footnote 10: Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xii. c. 12) praises one
of the laws of Theodosius addressed to the praefect Rufinus, (l. ix.
tit. iv. leg. unic.,) to discourage the prosecution of treasonable, or
sacrilegious, words. A tyrannical statute always proves the existence of
tyranny; but a laudable edict may only contain the specious professions,
or ineffectual wishes, of the prince, or his ministers. This, I am
afraid, is a just, though mortifying, canon of criticism.]

[Footnote 11:

     --fluctibus auri Expleri sitis ista nequit--
     *****
     Congestae cumulantur opes; orbisque ruinas Accipit una domus.

This character (Claudian, in. Rufin. i. 184-220) is confirmed by Jerom,
a disinterested witness, (dedecus insatiabilis avaritiae, tom. i. ad
Heliodor. p. 26,) by Zosimus, (l. v. p. 286,) and by Suidas, who copied
the history of Eunapius.]

[Footnote 12:

     --Caetera segnis;
     Ad facinus velox; penitus regione remotas
     Impiger ire vias.

This allusion of Claudian (in Rufin. i. 241) is again explained by the
circumstantial narrative of Zosimus, (l. v. p. 288, 289.)]

But Rufinus soon experienced, that a prudent minister should constantly
secure his royal captive by the strong, though invisible chain of habit;
and that the merit, and much more easily the favor, of the absent,
are obliterated in a short time from the mind of a weak and capricious
sovereign. While the praefect satiated his revenge at Antioch, a secret
conspiracy of the favorite eunuchs, directed by the great chamberlain
Eutropius, undermined his power in the palace of Constantinople. They
discovered that Arcadius was not inclined to love the daughter of
Rufinus, who had been chosen, without his consent, for his bride; and
they contrived to substitute in her place the fair Eudoxia, the daughter
of Bauto, [13] a general of the Franks in the service of Rome; and who
was educated, since the death of her father, in the family of the sons
of Promotus. The young emperor, whose chastity had been strictly guarded
by the pious care of his tutor Arsenius, [14] eagerly listened to the
artful and flattering descriptions of the charms of Eudoxia: he gazed
with impatient ardor on her picture, and he understood the necessity of
concealing his amorous designs from the knowledge of a minister who was
so deeply interested to oppose the consummation of his happiness. Soon
after the return of Rufinus, the approaching ceremony of the royal
nuptials was announced to the people of Constantinople, who prepared
to celebrate, with false and hollow acclamations, the fortune of his
daughter. A splendid train of eunuchs and officers issued, in hymeneal
pomp, from the gates of the palace; bearing aloft the diadem, the
robes, and the inestimable ornaments, of the future empress. The solemn
procession passed through the streets of the city, which were adorned
with garlands, and filled with spectators; but when it reached the house
of the sons of Promotus, the principal eunuch respectfully entered
the mansion, invested the fair Eudoxia with the Imperial robes, and
conducted her in triumph to the palace and bed of Arcadius. [15] The
secrecy and success with which this conspiracy against Rufinus had been
conducted, imprinted a mark of indelible ridicule on the character of a
minister, who had suffered himself to be deceived, in a post where
the arts of deceit and dissimulation constitute the most distinguished
merit. He considered, with a mixture of indignation and fear, the
victory of an aspiring eunuch, who had secretly captivated the favor
of his sovereign; and the disgrace of his daughter, whose interest
was inseparably connected with his own, wounded the tenderness, or, at
least, the pride of Rufinus. At the moment when he flattered himself
that he should become the father of a line of kings, a foreign maid, who
had been educated in the house of his implacable enemies, was introduced
into the Imperial bed; and Eudoxia soon displayed a superiority of sense
and spirit, to improve the ascendant which her beauty must acquire
over the mind of a fond and youthful husband. The emperor would soon be
instructed to hate, to fear, and to destroy the powerful subject, whom
he had injured; and the consciousness of guilt deprived Rufinus of every
hope, either of safety or comfort, in the retirement of a private
life. But he still possessed the most effectual means of defending
his dignity, and perhaps of oppressing his enemies. The praefect
still exercised an uncontrolled authority over the civil and military
government of the East; and his treasures, if he could resolve to use
them, might be employed to procure proper instruments for the execution
of the blackest designs, that pride, ambition, and revenge could suggest
to a desperate statesman. The character of Rufinus seemed to justify the
accusations that he conspired against the person of his sovereign, to
seat himself on the vacant throne; and that he had secretly invited
the Huns and the Goths to invade the provinces of the empire, and to
increase the public confusion. The subtle praefect, whose life had been
spent in the intrigues of the palace, opposed, with equal arms, the
artful measures of the eunuch Eutropius; but the timid soul of Rufinus
was astonished by the hostile approach of a more formidable rival, of
the great Stilicho, the general, or rather the master, of the empire of
the West. [16]

[Footnote 13: Zosimus (l. iv. p. 243) praises the valor, prudence, and
integrity of Bauto the Frank. See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom.
v. p. 771.]

[Footnote 14: Arsenius escaped from the palace of Constantinople, and
passed fifty-five years in rigid penance in the monasteries of Egypt.
See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 676-702; and Fleury, Hist
Eccles. tom. v. p. 1, &c.; but the latter, for want of authentic
materials, has given too much credit to the legend of Metaphrastes.]

[Footnote 15: This story (Zosimus, l. v. p. 290) proves that the
hymeneal rites of antiquity were still practised, without idolatry, by
the Christians of the East; and the bride was forcibly conducted from
the house of her parents to that of her husband. Our form of marriage
requires, with less delicacy, the express and public consent of a
virgin.]

[Footnote 16: Zosimus, (l. v. p. 290,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 37,) and
the Chronicle of Marcellinus. Claudian (in Rufin. ii. 7-100) paints, in
lively colors, the distress and guilt of the praefect.]

The celestial gift, which Achilles obtained, and Alexander envied, of
a poet worthy to celebrate the actions of heroes has been enjoyed by
Stilicho, in a much higher degree than might have been expected from
the declining state of genius, and of art. The muse of Claudian,
[17] devoted to his service, was always prepared to stigmatize his
adversaries, Rufinus, or Eutropius, with eternal infamy; or to paint,
in the most splendid colors, the victories and virtues of a powerful
benefactor. In the review of a period indifferently supplied with
authentic materials, we cannot refuse to illustrate the annals of
Honorius, from the invectives, or the panegyrics, of a contemporary
writer; but as Claudian appears to have indulged the most ample
privilege of a poet and a courtier, some criticism will be requisite to
translate the language of fiction or exaggeration, into the truth and
simplicity of historic prose. His silence concerning the family of
Stilicho may be admitted as a proof, that his patron was neither able,
nor desirous, to boast of a long series of illustrious progenitors; and
the slight mention of his father, an officer of Barbarian cavalry in the
service of Valens, seems to countenance the assertion, that the general,
who so long commanded the armies of Rome, was descended from the savage
and perfidious race of the Vandals. [18] If Stilicho had not possessed
the external advantages of strength and stature, the most flattering
bard, in the presence of so many thousand spectators, would have
hesitated to affirm, that he surpassed the measure of the demi-gods of
antiquity; and that whenever he moved, with lofty steps, through the
streets of the capital, the astonished crowd made room for the stranger,
who displayed, in a private condition, the awful majesty of a hero. From
his earliest youth he embraced the profession of arms; his prudence and
valor were soon distinguished in the field; the horsemen and archers
of the East admired his superior dexterity; and in each degree of his
military promotions, the public judgment always prevented and approved
the choice of the sovereign. He was named, by Theodosius, to ratify
a solemn treaty with the monarch of Persia; he supported, during that
important embassy, the dignity of the Roman name; and after he return
to Constantinople, his merit was rewarded by an intimate and honorable
alliance with the Imperial family. Theodosius had been prompted, by a
pious motive of fraternal affection, to adopt, for his own, the daughter
of his brother Honorius; the beauty and accomplishments of Serena [19]
were universally admired by the obsequious court; and Stilicho obtained
the preference over a crowd of rivals, who ambitiously disputed the hand
of the princess, and the favor of her adopted father. [20] The assurance
that the husband of Serena would be faithful to the throne, which he was
permitted to approach, engaged the emperor to exalt the fortunes, and to
employ the abilities, of the sagacious and intrepid Stilicho. He rose,
through the successive steps of master of the horse, and count of the
domestics, to the supreme rank of master-general of all the cavalry and
infantry of the Roman, or at least of the Western, empire; [21] and his
enemies confessed, that he invariably disdained to barter for gold
the rewards of merit, or to defraud the soldiers of the pay and
gratifications which they deserved or claimed, from the liberality of
the state. [22] The valor and conduct which he afterwards displayed,
in the defence of Italy, against the arms of Alaric and Radagaisus, may
justify the fame of his early achievements and in an age less attentive
to the laws of honor, or of pride, the Roman generals might yield
the preeminence of rank, to the ascendant of superior genius. [23]
He lamented, and revenged, the murder of Promotus, his rival and his
friend; and the massacre of many thousands of the flying Bastarnae is
represented by the poet as a bloody sacrifice, which the Roman Achilles
offered to the manes of another Patroclus. The virtues and victories of
Stilicho deserved the hatred of Rufinus: and the arts of calumny might
have been successful if the tender and vigilant Serena had not protected
her husband against his domestic foes, whilst he vanquished in the
field the enemies of the empire. [24] Theodosius continued to support an
unworthy minister, to whose diligence he delegated the government of
the palace, and of the East; but when he marched against the tyrant
Eugenius, he associated his faithful general to the labors and glories
of the civil war; and in the last moments of his life, the dying monarch
recommended to Stilicho the care of his sons, and of the republic.
[25] The ambition and the abilities of Stilicho were not unequal to the
important trust; and he claimed the guardianship of the two empires,
during the minority of Arcadius and Honorius. [26] The first measure of
his administration, or rather of his reign, displayed to the nations the
vigor and activity of a spirit worthy to command. He passed the Alps
in the depth of winter; descended the stream of the Rhine, from the
fortress of Basil to the marshes of Batavia; reviewed the state of
the garrisons; repressed the enterprises of the Germans; and, after
establishing along the banks a firm and honorable peace, returned, with
incredible speed, to the palace of Milan. [27] The person and court of
Honorius were subject to the master-general of the West; and the armies
and provinces of Europe obeyed, without hesitation, a regular authority,
which was exercised in the name of their young sovereign. Two rivals
only remained to dispute the claims, and to provoke the vengeance, of
Stilicho. Within the limits of Africa, Gildo, the Moor, maintained a
proud and dangerous independence; and the minister of Constantinople
asserted his equal reign over the emperor, and the empire, of the East.

[Footnote 17: Stilicho, directly or indirectly, is the perpetual
theme of Claudian. The youth and private life of the hero are vaguely
expressed in the poem on his first consulship, 35-140.]

[Footnote 18: Vandalorum, imbellis, avarae, perfidae, et dolosae,
gentis, genere editus. Orosius, l. vii. c. 38. Jerom (tom. i. ad
Gerontiam, p. 93) call him a Semi-Barbarian.]

[Footnote 19: Claudian, in an imperfect poem, has drawn a fair, perhaps
a flattering, portrait of Serena. That favorite niece of Theodosius was
born, as well as here sister Thermantia, in Spain; from whence, in
their earliest youth, they were honorably conducted to the palace of
Constantinople.]

[Footnote 20: Some doubt may be entertained, whether this adoption was
legal or only metaphorical, (see Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 75.) An
old inscription gives Stilicho the singular title of Pro-gener Divi
Theodosius]

[Footnote 21: Claudian (Laus Serenae, 190, 193) expresses, in poetic
language "the dilectus equorum," and the "gemino mox idem culmine duxit
agmina." The inscription adds, "count of the domestics," an important
command, which Stilicho, in the height of his grandeur, might prudently
retain.]

[Footnote 22: The beautiful lines of Claudian (in i. Cons. Stilich. ii.
113) displays his genius; but the integrity of Stilicho (in the military
administration) is much more firmly established by the unwilling
evidence of Zosimus, (l. v. p. 345.)]

[Footnote 23:--Si bellica moles Ingrueret, quamvis annis et jure minori,

    Cedere grandaevos equitum peditumque magistros

Adspiceres. Claudian, Laus Seren. p. 196, &c. A modern general would
deem their submission either heroic patriotism or abject servility.]

[Footnote 24: Compare the poem on the first consulship (i. 95-115) with
the Laus Serenoe (227-237, where it unfortunately breaks off.) We may
perceive the deep, inveterate malice of Rufinus.]

[Footnote 25:--Quem fratribus ipse Discedens, clypeum defensoremque
dedisti. Yet the nomination (iv. Cons. Hon. 432) was private, (iii.
Cons. Hon. 142,) cunctos discedere... jubet; and may therefore be
suspected. Zosimus and Suidas apply to Stilicho and Rufinus the same
equal title of guardians, or procurators.]

[Footnote 26: The Roman law distinguishes two sorts of minority, which
expired at the age of fourteen, and of twenty-five. The one was subject
to the tutor, or guardian, of the person; the other, to the curator, or
trustee, of the estate, (Heineccius, Antiquitat. Rom. ad Jurisprudent.
pertinent. l. i. tit. xxii. xxiii. p. 218-232.) But these legal ideas
were never accurately transferred into the constitution of an elective
monarchy.]

[Footnote 27: See Claudian, (i. Cons. Stilich. i. 188-242;) but he must
allow more than fifteen days for the journey and return between Milan
and Leyden.]




Chapter XXIX: Division Of Roman Empire Between Sons Of Theodosius.--Part
II.

The impartiality which Stilicho affected, as the common guardian of the
royal brothers, engaged him to regulate the equal division of the arms,
the jewels, and the magnificent wardrobe and furniture of the deceased
emperor. [28] But the most important object of the inheritance
consisted of the numerous legions, cohorts, and squadrons, of Romans,
or Barbarians, whom the event of the civil war had united under the
standard of Theodosius. The various multitudes of Europe and Asia,
exasperated by recent animosities, were overawed by the authority of a
single man; and the rigid discipline of Stilicho protected the lands of
the citizens from the rapine of the licentious soldier. [29] Anxious,
however, and impatient, to relieve Italy from the presence of this
formidable host, which could be useful only on the frontiers of the
empire, he listened to the just requisition of the minister of Arcadius,
declared his intention of reconducting in person the troops of the East,
and dexterously employed the rumor of a Gothic tumult to conceal his
private designs of ambition and revenge. [30] The guilty soul of Rufinus
was alarmed by the approach of a warrior and a rival, whose enmity he
deserved; he computed, with increasing terror, the narrow space of his
life and greatness; and, as the last hope of safety, he interposed
the authority of the emperor Arcadius. Stilicho, who appears to have
directed his march along the sea-coast of the Adriatic, was not far
distant from the city of Thessalonica, when he received a peremptory
message, to recall the troops of the East, and to declare, that his
nearer approach would be considered, by the Byzantine court, as an act
of hostility. The prompt and unexpected obedience of the general of the
West, convinced the vulgar of his loyalty and moderation; and, as he had
already engaged the affection of the Eastern troops, he recommended
to their zeal the execution of his bloody design, which might be
accomplished in his absence, with less danger, perhaps, and with less
reproach. Stilicho left the command of the troops of the East to Gainas,
the Goth, on whose fidelity he firmly relied, with an assurance, at
least, that the hardy Barbarians would never be diverted from his
purpose by any consideration of fear or remorse. The soldiers were
easily persuaded to punish the enemy of Stilicho and of Rome; and such
was the general hatred which Rufinus had excited, that the fatal secret,
communicated to thousands, was faithfully preserved during the long
march from Thessalonica to the gates of Constantinople. As soon as they
had resolved his death, they condescended to flatter his pride;
the ambitious praefect was seduced to believe, that those powerful
auxiliaries might be tempted to place the diadem on his head; and the
treasures which he distributed, with a tardy and reluctant hand, were
accepted by the indignant multitude as an insult, rather than as a gift.
At the distance of a mile from the capital, in the field of Mars, before
the palace of Hebdomon, the troops halted: and the emperor, as well as
his minister, advanced, according to ancient custom, respectfully to
salute the power which supported their throne. As Rufinus passed along
the ranks, and disguised, with studied courtesy, his innate haughtiness,
the wings insensibly wheeled from the right and left, and enclosed the
devoted victim within the circle of their arms. Before he could reflect
on the danger of his situation, Gainas gave the signal of death; a
daring and forward soldier plunged his sword into the breast of the
guilty praefect, and Rufinus fell, groaned, and expired, at the feet
of the affrighted emperor. If the agonies of a moment could expiate the
crimes of a whole life, or if the outrages inflicted on a breathless
corpse could be the object of pity, our humanity might perhaps be
affected by the horrid circumstances which accompanied the murder
of Rufinus. His mangled body was abandoned to the brutal fury of the
populace of either sex, who hastened in crowds, from every quarter of
the city, to trample on the remains of the haughty minister, at whose
frown they had so lately trembled. His right hand was cut off, and
carried through the streets of Constantinople, in cruel mockery, to
extort contributions for the avaricious tyrant, whose head was publicly
exposed, borne aloft on the point of a long lance. [31] According to
the savage maxims of the Greek republics, his innocent family would have
shared the punishment of his crimes. The wife and daughter of Rufinus
were indebted for their safety to the influence of religion. Her
sanctuary protected them from the raging madness of the people; and they
were permitted to spend the remainder of their lives in the exercise of
Christian devotions, in the peaceful retirement of Jerusalem. [32]

[Footnote 28: I. Cons. Stilich. ii. 88-94. Not only the robes and
diadems of the deceased emperor, but even the helmets, sword-hilts,
belts, rasses, &c., were enriched with pearls, emeralds, and diamonds.]

[Footnote 29:--Tantoque remoto Principe, mutatas orbis non sensit
habenas. This high commendation (i. Cons. Stil. i. 149) may be justified
by the fears of the dying emperor, (de Bell. Gildon. 292-301;) and the
peace and good order which were enjoyed after his death, (i. Cons. Stil
i. 150-168.)]

[Footnote 30: Stilicho's march, and the death of Rufinus, are described
by Claudian, (in Rufin. l. ii. 101-453, Zosimus, l. v. p. 296, 297,)
Sozomen (l. viii. c. 1,) Socrates, l. vi. c. 1,) Philostorgius, (l. xi
c. 3, with Godefory, p. 441,) and the Chronicle of Marcellinus.]

[Footnote 31: The dissection of Rufinus, which Claudian performs
with the savage coolness of an anatomist, (in Rufin. ii. 405-415,) is
likewise specified by Zosimus and Jerom, (tom. i. p. 26.)]

[Footnote 32: The Pagan Zosimus mentions their sanctuary and pilgrimage.
The sister of Rufinus, Sylvania, who passed her life at Jerusalem, is
famous in monastic history. 1. The studious virgin had diligently, and
even repeatedly, perused the commentators on the Bible, Origen, Gregory,
Basil, &c., to the amount of five millions of lines. 2. At the age of
threescore, she could boast, that she had never washed her hands, face,
or any part of her whole body, except the tips of her fingers to receive
the communion. See the Vitae Patrum, p. 779, 977.] The servile poet of
Stilicho applauds, with ferocious joy, this horrid deed, which, in
the execution, perhaps, of justice, violated every law of nature and
society, profaned the majesty of the prince, and renewed the dangerous
examples of military license. The contemplation of the universal order
and harmony had satisfied Claudian of the existence of the Deity;
but the prosperous impunity of vice appeared to contradict his moral
attributes; and the fate of Rufinus was the only event which could
dispel the religious doubts of the poet. [33] Such an act might
vindicate the honor of Providence, but it did not much contribute to the
happiness of the people. In less than three months they were informed
of the maxims of the new administration, by a singular edict, which
established the exclusive right of the treasury over the spoils of
Rufinus; and silenced, under heavy penalties, the presumptuous claims
of the subjects of the Eastern empire, who had been injured by his
rapacious tyranny. [34] Even Stilicho did not derive from the murder of
his rival the fruit which he had proposed; and though he gratified his
revenge, his ambition was disappointed. Under the name of a favorite,
the weakness of Arcadius required a master, but he naturally preferred
the obsequious arts of the eunuch Eutropius, who had obtained his
domestic confidence: and the emperor contemplated, with terror and
aversion, the stern genius of a foreign warrior. Till they were divided
by the jealousy of power, the sword of Gainas, and the charms of
Eudoxia, supported the favor of the great chamberlain of the palace: the
perfidious Goth, who was appointed master-general of the East, betrayed,
without scruple, the interest of his benefactor; and the same troops,
who had so lately massacred the enemy of Stilicho, were engaged to
support, against him, the independence of the throne of Constantinople.
The favorites of Arcadius fomented a secret and irreconcilable war
against a formidable hero, who aspired to govern, and to defend, the
two empires of Rome, and the two sons of Theodosius. They incessantly
labored, by dark and treacherous machinations, to deprive him of the
esteem of the prince, the respect of the people, and the friendship of
the Barbarians. The life of Stilicho was repeatedly attempted by the
dagger of hired assassins; and a decree was obtained from the senate
of Constantinople, to declare him an enemy of the republic, and to
confiscate his ample possessions in the provinces of the East. At a time
when the only hope of delaying the ruin of the Roman name depended on
the firm union, and reciprocal aid, of all the nations to whom it had
been gradually communicated, the subjects of Arcadius and Honorius
were instructed, by their respective masters, to view each other in a
foreign, and even hostile, light; to rejoice in their mutual calamities,
and to embrace, as their faithful allies, the Barbarians, whom they
excited to invade the territories of their countrymen. [35] The natives
of Italy affected to despise the servile and effeminate Greeks of
Byzantium, who presumed to imitate the dress, and to usurp the dignity,
of Roman senators; [36] and the Greeks had not yet forgot the sentiments
of hatred and contempt, which their polished ancestors had so long
entertained for the rude inhabitants of the West. The distinction of
two governments, which soon produced the separation of two nations, will
justify my design of suspending the series of the Byzantine history, to
prosecute, without interruption, the disgraceful, but memorable, reign
of Honorius.

[Footnote 33: See the beautiful exordium of his invective against
Rufinus, which is curiously discussed by the sceptic Bayle, Dictionnaire
Critique, Rufin. Not. E.]

[Footnote 34: See the Theodosian Code, l. ix. tit. xlii. leg. 14, 15.
The new ministers attempted, with inconsistent avarice, to seize
the spoils of their predecessor, and to provide for their own future
security.]

[Footnote 35: See Claudian, (i. Cons. Stilich, l. i. 275, 292, 296, l.
ii. 83,) and Zosimus, (l. v. p. 302.)]

[Footnote 36: Claudian turns the consulship of the eunuch Eutropius into
a national reflection, (l. ii. 134):--

    ---Plaudentem cerne senatum,
     Et Byzantinos proceres Graiosque Quirites:
     O patribus plebes, O digni consule patres.

It is curious to observe the first symptoms of jealousy and schism
between old and new Rome, between the Greeks and Latins.]

The prudent Stilicho, instead of persisting to force the inclinations
of a prince, and people, who rejected his government, wisely abandoned
Arcadius to his unworthy favorites; and his reluctance to involve the
two empires in a civil war displayed the moderation of a minister,
who had so often signalized his military spirit and abilities. But if
Stilicho had any longer endured the revolt of Africa, he would have
betrayed the security of the capital, and the majesty of the Western
emperor, to the capricious insolence of a Moorish rebel. Gildo, [37] the
brother of the tyrant Firmus, had preserved and obtained, as the reward
of his apparent fidelity, the immense patrimony which was forfeited by
treason: long and meritorious service, in the armies of Rome, raised him
to the dignity of a military count; the narrow policy of the court of
Theodosius had adopted the mischievous expedient of supporting a legal
government by the interest of a powerful family; and the brother of
Firmus was invested with the command of Africa. His ambition soon
usurped the administration of justice, and of the finances, without
account, and without control; and he maintained, during a reign of
twelve years, the possession of an office, from which it was impossible
to remove him, without the danger of a civil war. During those twelve
years, the provinces of Africa groaned under the dominion of a tyrant,
who seemed to unite the unfeeling temper of a stranger with the partial
resentments of domestic faction. The forms of law were often superseded
by the use of poison; and if the trembling guests, who were invited to
the table of Gildo, presumed to express fears, the insolent suspicion
served only to excite his fury, and he loudly summoned the ministers of
death. Gildo alternately indulged the passions of avarice and lust;
[38] and if his days were terrible to the rich, his nights were not
less dreadful to husbands and parents. The fairest of their wives and
daughters were prostituted to the embraces of the tyrant; and afterwards
abandoned to a ferocious troop of Barbarians and assassins, the black,
or swarthy, natives of the desert; whom Gildo considered as the only of
his throne. In the civil war between Theodosius and Eugenius, the count,
or rather the sovereign, of Africa, maintained a haughty and suspicious
neutrality; refused to assist either of the contending parties with
troops or vessels, expected the declaration of fortune, and reserved for
the conqueror the vain professions of his allegiance. Such professions
would not have satisfied the master of the Roman world; but the death
of Theodosius, and the weakness and discord of his sons, confirmed the
power of the Moor; who condescended, as a proof of his moderation,
to abstain from the use of the diadem, and to supply Rome with the
customary tribute, or rather subsidy, of corn. In every division of the
empire, the five provinces of Africa were invariably assigned to the
West; and Gildo had to govern that extensive country in the name of
Honorius, but his knowledge of the character and designs of Stilicho
soon engaged him to address his homage to a more distant and feeble
sovereign. The ministers of Arcadius embraced the cause of a perfidious
rebel; and the delusive hope of adding the numerous cities of Africa to
the empire of the East, tempted them to assert a claim, which they were
incapable of supporting, either by reason or by arms. [39]

[Footnote 37: Claudian may have exaggerated the vices of Gildo; but his
Moorish extraction, his notorious actions, and the complaints of St.
Augustin, may justify the poet's invectives. Baronius (Annal. Eccles.
A.D. 398, No. 35-56) has treated the African rebellion with skill and
learning.]

[Footnote 38:

     Instat terribilis vivis, morientibus haeres,
     Virginibus raptor, thalamis obscoenus adulter.
     Nulla quies: oritur praeda cessante libido,
     Divitibusque dies, et nox metuenda maritis.
     Mauris clarissima quaeque
     Fastidita datur.
    ----De Bello Gildonico, 165, 189.

Baronius condemns, still more severely, the licentiousness of Gildo;
as his wife, his daughter, and his sister, were examples of perfect
chastity. The adulteries of the African soldiers are checked by one of
the Imperial laws.]

[Footnote 39: Inque tuam sortem numerosas transtulit urbes. Claudian
(de Bell. Gildonico, 230-324) has touched, with political delicacy,
the intrigues of the Byzantine court, which are likewise mentioned by
Zosimus, (l. v. p. 302.)]

When Stilicho had given a firm and decisive answer to the pretensions of
the Byzantine court, he solemnly accused the tyrant of Africa before the
tribunal, which had formerly judged the kings and nations of the earth;
and the image of the republic was revived, after a long interval, under
the reign of Honorius. The emperor transmitted an accurate and ample
detail of the complaints of the provincials, and the crimes of Gildo,
to the Roman senate; and the members of that venerable assembly were
required to pronounce the condemnation of the rebel. Their unanimous
suffrage declared him the enemy of the republic; and the decree of the
senate added a sacred and legitimate sanction to the Roman arms. [40] A
people, who still remembered that their ancestors had been the
masters of the world, would have applauded, with conscious pride, the
representation of ancient freedom; if they had not since been accustomed
to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of
liberty and greatness. The subsistence of Rome depended on the harvests
of Africa; and it was evident, that a declaration of war would be
the signal of famine. The praefect Symmachus, who presided in the
deliberations of the senate, admonished the minister of his just
apprehension, that as soon as the revengeful Moor should prohibit the
exportation of corn, the and perhaps the safety, of the capital would
be threatened by the hungry rage of a turbulent multitude. [41] The
prudence of Stilicho conceived and executed, without delay, the most
effectual measure for the relief of the Roman people. A large and
seasonable supply of corn, collected in the inland provinces of Gaul,
was embarked on the rapid stream of the Rhone, and transported, by an
easy navigation, from the Rhone to the Tyber. During the whole term
of the African war, the granaries of Rome were continually filled, her
dignity was vindicated from the humiliating dependence, and the minds
of an immense people were quieted by the calm confidence of peace and
plenty. [42]

[Footnote 40: Symmachus (l. iv. epist. 4) expresses the judicial forms
of the senate; and Claudian (i. Cons. Stilich. l. i. 325, &c.) seems to
feel the spirit of a Roman.]

[Footnote 41: Claudian finely displays these complaints of Symmachus, in
a speech of the goddess of Rome, before the throne of Jupiter, (de Bell
Gildon. 28-128.)]

[Footnote 42: See Claudian (in Eutrop. l. i 401, &c. i. Cons. Stil. l.
i. 306, &c. i. Cons. Stilich. 91, &c.)]

The cause of Rome, and the conduct of the African war, were intrusted by
Stilicho to a general, active and ardent to avenge his private injuries
on the head of the tyrant. The spirit of discord which prevailed in the
house of Nabal, had excited a deadly quarrel between two of his sons,
Gildo and Mascezel. [43] The usurper pursued, with implacable rage, the
life of his younger brother, whose courage and abilities he feared; and
Mascezel, oppressed by superior power, refuge in the court of Milan,
where he soon received the cruel intelligence that his two innocent
and helpless children had been murdered by their inhuman uncle. The
affliction of the father was suspended only by the desire of revenge.
The vigilant Stilicho already prepared to collect the naval and military
force of the Western empire; and he had resolved, if the tyrant should
be able to wage an equal and doubtful war, to march against him in
person. But as Italy required his presence, and as it might be dangerous
to weaken the of the frontier, he judged it more advisable, that
Mascezel should attempt this arduous adventure at the head of a chosen
body of Gallic veterans, who had lately served exhorted to convince
the world that they could subvert, as well as defend the throne of
a usurper, consisted of the Jovian, the Herculian, and the Augustan
legions; of the Nervian auxiliaries; of the soldiers who displayed
in their banners the symbol of a lion, and of the troops which were
distinguished by the auspicious names of Fortunate, and Invincible. Yet
such was the smallness of their establishments, or the difficulty of
recruiting, that these seven bands, [44] of high dignity and reputation
in the service of Rome, amounted to no more than five thousand effective
men. [45] The fleet of galleys and transports sailed in tempestuous
weather from the port of Pisa, in Tuscany, and steered their course to
the little island of Capraria; which had borrowed that name from the
wild goats, its original inhabitants, whose place was occupied by a new
colony of a strange and savage appearance. "The whole island (says an
ingenious traveller of those times) is filled, or rather defiled, by
men who fly from the light. They call themselves Monks, or solitaries,
because they choose to live alone, without any witnesses of their
actions. They fear the gifts of fortune, from the apprehension of
losing them; and, lest they should be miserable, they embrace a life of
voluntary wretchedness. How absurd is their choice! how perverse their
understanding! to dread the evils, without being able to support the
blessings, of the human condition. Either this melancholy madness is the
effect of disease, or exercise on their own bodies the tortures which
are inflicted on fugitive slaves by the hand of justice." [46] Such
was the contempt of a profane magistrate for the monks as the chosen
servants of God. [47] Some of them were persuaded, by his entreaties,
to embark on board the fleet; and it is observed, to the praise of
the Roman general, that his days and nights were employed in prayer,
fasting, and the occupation of singing psalms. The devout leader, who,
with such a reenforcement, appeared confident of victory, avoided the
dangerous rocks of Corsica, coasted along the eastern side of Sardinia,
and secured his ships against the violence of the south wind, by casting
anchor in the and capacious harbor of Cagliari, at the distance of one
hundred and forty miles from the African shores. [48]

[Footnote 43: He was of a mature age; since he had formerly (A.D. 373)
served against his brother Firmus (Ammian. xxix. 5.) Claudian, who
understood the court of Milan, dwells on the injuries, rather than the
merits, of Mascezel, (de Bell. Gild. 389-414.) The Moorish war was not
worthy of Honorius, or Stilicho, &c.]

[Footnote 44: Claudian, Bell. Gild. 415-423. The change of discipline
allowed him to use indifferently the names of Legio Cohors, Manipulus.
See Notitia Imperii, S. 38, 40.]

[Footnote 45: Orosius (l. vii. c. 36, p. 565) qualifies this account
with an expression of doubt, (ut aiunt;) and it scarcely coincides with
Zosimus, (l. v. p. 303.) Yet Claudian, after some declamation about
Cadmus, soldiers, frankly owns that Stilicho sent a small army lest the
rebels should fly, ne timeare times, (i. Cons. Stilich. l. i. 314 &c.)]

[Footnote 46: Claud. Rutil. Numatian. Itinerar. i. 439-448. He
afterwards (515-526) mentions a religious madman on the Isle of Gorgona.
For such profane remarks, Rutilius and his accomplices are styled, by
his commentator, Barthius, rabiosi canes diaboli. Tillemont (Mem.
Eccles com. xii. p. 471) more calmly observes, that the unbelieving poet
praises where he means to censure.]

[Footnote 47: Orosius, l. vii. c. 36, p. 564. Augustin commends two of
these savage saints of the Isle of Goats, (epist. lxxxi. apud Tillemont,
Mem. Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 317, and Baronius, Annal Eccles. A.D. 398 No.
51.)]

[Footnote 48: Here the first book of the Gildonic war is terminated. The
rest of Claudian's poem has been lost; and we are ignorant how or where
the army made good their landing in Afica.]

Gildo was prepared to resist the invasion with all the forces of Africa.
By the liberality of his gifts and promises, he endeavored to secure the
doubtful allegiance of the Roman soldiers, whilst he attracted to
his standard the distant tribes of Gaetulia and Aethiopia. He proudly
reviewed an army of seventy thousand men, and boasted, with the rash
presumption which is the forerunner of disgrace, that his numerous
cavalry would trample under their horses' feet the troops of Mascezel,
and involve, in a cloud of burning sand, the natives of the cold regions
of Gaul and Germany. [49] But the Moor, who commanded the legions of
Honorius, was too well acquainted with the manners of his countrymen,
to entertain any serious apprehension of a naked and disorderly host of
Barbarians; whose left arm, instead of a shield, was protected only
by mantle; who were totally disarmed as soon as they had darted their
javelin from their right hand; and whose horses had never He fixed his
camp of five thousand veterans in the face of a superior enemy, and,
after the delay of three days, gave the signal of a general engagement.
[50] As Mascezel advanced before the front with fair offers of peace
and pardon, he encountered one of the foremost standard-bearers of the
Africans, and, on his refusal to yield, struck him on the arm with his
sword. The arm, and the standard, sunk under the weight of the blow;
and the imaginary act of submission was hastily repeated by all the
standards of the line. At this the disaffected cohorts proclaimed
the name of their lawful sovereign; the Barbarians, astonished by the
defection of their Roman allies, dispersed, according to their custom,
in tumultuary flight; and Mascezel obtained the of an easy, and almost
bloodless, victory. [51] The tyrant escaped from the field of battle to
the sea-shore; and threw himself into a small vessel, with the hope of
reaching in safety some friendly port of the empire of the East; but the
obstinacy of the wind drove him back into the harbor of Tabraca, [52]
which had acknowledged, with the rest of the province, the dominion of
Honorius, and the authority of his lieutenant. The inhabitants, as a
proof of their repentance and loyalty, seized and confined the person of
Gildo in a dungeon; and his own despair saved him from the intolerable
torture of supporting the presence of an injured and victorious brother.
[53] The captives and the spoils of Africa were laid at the feet of the
emperor; but more sincere, in the midst of prosperity, still affected to
consult the laws of the republic; and referred to the senate and people
of Rome the judgment of the most illustrious criminals. [54] Their trial
was public and solemn; but the judges, in the exercise of this obsolete
and precarious jurisdiction, were impatient to punish the African
magistrates, who had intercepted the subsistence of the Roman people.
The rich and guilty province was oppressed by the Imperial ministers,
who had a visible interest to multiply the number of the accomplices of
Gildo; and if an edict of Honorius seems to check the malicious
industry of informers, a subsequent edict, at the distance of ten years,
continues and renews the prosecution of the which had been committed in
the time of the general rebellion. [55] The adherents of the tyrant who
escaped the first fury of the soldiers, and the judges, might derive
some consolation from the tragic fate of his brother, who could never
obtain his pardon for the extraordinary services which he had performed.
After he had finished an important war in the space of a single winter,
Mascezel was received at the court of Milan with loud applause, affected
gratitude, and secret jealousy; [56] and his death, which, perhaps, was
the effect of passage of a bridge, the Moorish prince, who accompanied
the master-general of the West, was suddenly thrown from his horse into
the river; the officious haste of the attendants was on the countenance
of Stilicho; and while they delayed the necessary assistance, the
unfortunate Mascezel was irrecoverably drowned. [57]

[Footnote 49: Orosius must be responsible for the account. The
presumption of Gildo and his various train of Barbarians is celebrated
by Claudian, Cons. Stil. l. i. 345-355.]

[Footnote 50: St. Ambrose, who had been dead about a year, revealed, in
a vision, the time and place of the victory. Mascezel afterwards related
his dream to Paulinus, the original biographer of the saint, from whom
it might easily pass to Orosius.]

[Footnote 51: Zosimus (l. v. p. 303) supposes an obstinate combat;
but the narrative of Orosius appears to conceal a real fact, under the
disguise of a miracle.]

[Footnote 52: Tabraca lay between the two Hippos, (Cellarius, tom. ii.
p. 112; D'Anville, tom. iii. p. 84.) Orosius has distinctly named the
field of battle, but our ignorance cannot define the precise situation.]

[Footnote 53: The death of Gildo is expressed by Claudian (i. Cons.
Stil. 357) and his best interpreters, Zosimus and Orosius.]

[Footnote 54: Claudian (ii. Cons. Stilich. 99-119) describes their
trial (tremuit quos Africa nuper, cernunt rostra reos,) and applauds the
restoration of the ancient constitution. It is here that he introduces
the famous sentence, so familiar to the friends of despotism:

    ---Nunquam libertas gratior exstat,
     Quam sub rege pio.

But the freedom which depends on royal piety, scarcely deserves
appellation]

[Footnote 55: See the Theodosian Code, l. ix. tit. xxxix. leg. 3, tit.
xl. leg. 19.]

[Footnote 56: Stilicho, who claimed an equal share in all the victories
of Theodosius and his son, particularly asserts, that Africa was
recovered by the wisdom of his counsels, (see an inscription produced by
Baronius.)]

[Footnote 57: I have softened the narrative of Zosimus, which, in its
crude simplicity, is almost incredible, (l. v. p. 303.) Orosius damns
the victorious general (p. 538) for violating the right of sanctuary.]

The joy of the African triumph was happily connected with the nuptials
of the emperor Honorius, and of his cousin Maria, the daughter of
Stilicho: and this equal and honorable alliance seemed to invest the
powerful minister with the authority of a parent over his submissive
pupil. The muse of Claudian was not silent on this propitious day; [58]
he sung, in various and lively strains, the happiness of the royal pair;
and the glory of the hero, who confirmed their union, and supported
their throne. The ancient fables of Greece, which had almost ceased to
be the object of religious faith, were saved from oblivion by the genius
of poetry. The picture of the Cyprian grove, the seat of harmony and
love; the triumphant progress of Venus over her native seas, and the
mild influence which her presence diffused in the palace of Milan,
express to every age the natural sentiments of the heart, in the just
and pleasing language of allegorical fiction. But the amorous impatience
which Claudian attributes to the young prince, [59] must excite the
smiles of the court; and his beauteous spouse (if she deserved the
praise of beauty) had not much to fear or to hope from the passions of
her lover. Honorius was only in the fourteenth year of his age;
Serena, the mother of his bride, deferred, by art of persuasion, the
consummation of the royal nuptials; Maria died a virgin, after she had
been ten years a wife; and the chastity of the emperor was secured
by the coldness, perhaps, the debility,of his constitution. [60]
His subjects, who attentively studied the character of their young
sovereign, discovered that Honorius was without passions, and
consequently without talents; and that his feeble and languid
disposition was alike incapable of discharging the duties of his rank,
or of enjoying the pleasures of his age. In his early youth he made some
progress in the exercises of riding and drawing the bow: but he soon
relinquished these fatiguing occupations, and the amusement of feeding
poultry became the serious and daily care of the monarch of the West,
[61] who resigned the reins of empire to the firm and skilful hand of
his guardian Stilicho. The experience of history will countenance the
suspicion that a prince who was born in the purple, received a worse
education than the meanest peasant of his dominions; and that the
ambitious minister suffered him to attain the age of manhood, without
attempting to excite his courage, or to enlighten his under standing.
[62] The predecessors of Honorius were accustomed to animate by their
example, or at least by their presence, the valor of the legions; and
the dates of their laws attest the perpetual activity of their motions
through the provinces of the Roman world. But the son of Theodosius
passed the slumber of his life, a captive in his palace, a stranger in
his country, and the patient, almost the indifferent, spectator of the
ruin of the Western empire, which was repeatedly attacked, and finally
subverted, by the arms of the Barbarians. In the eventful history of a
reign of twenty-eight years, it will seldom be necessary to mention the
name of the emperor Honorius.

[Footnote 58: Claudian,as the poet laureate, composed a serious and
elaborate epithalamium of 340 lines; besides some gay Fescennines, which
were sung, in a more licentious tone, on the wedding night.]

[Footnote 59:

     Calet obvius ire
     Jam princeps, tardumque cupit discedere solem.
     Nobilis haud aliter sonipes.

(De Nuptiis Honor. et Mariae, and more freely in the Fescennines
112-116)

     Dices, O quoties,hoc mihi dulcius
     Quam flavos decics vincere Sarmatas.
    ....
     Tum victor madido prosilias toro,
     Nocturni referens vulnera proelii.]

[Footnote 60: See Zosimus, l. v. p. 333.]

[Footnote 61: Procopius de Bell. Gothico, l. i. c. 2. I have borrowed
the general practice of Honorius, without adopting the singular, and
indeed improbable tale, which is related by the Greek historian.]

[Footnote 62: The lessons of Theodosius, or rather Claudian, (iv. Cons.
Honor 214-418,) might compose a fine institution for the future
prince of a great and free nation. It was far above Honorius, and his
degenerate subjects.]




Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths.--Part I.

     Revolt Of The Goths.--They Plunder Greece.--Two Great
     Invasions Of Italy By Alaric And Radagaisus.--They Are
     Repulsed By Stilicho.--The Germans Overrun Gaul.--Usurpation
     Of Constantine In The West.--Disgrace And Death Of Stilicho.

If the subjects of Rome could be ignorant of their obligations to the
great Theodosius, they were too soon convinced, how painfully the spirit
and abilities of their deceased emperor had supported the frail and
mouldering edifice of the republic. He died in the month of January; and
before the end of the winter of the same year, the Gothic nation was in
arms. [1] The Barbarian auxiliaries erected their independent standard;
and boldly avowed the hostile designs, which they had long cherished in
their ferocious minds. Their countrymen, who had been condemned, by
the conditions of the last treaty, to a life of tranquility and labor,
deserted their farms at the first sound of the trumpet; and eagerly
resumed the weapons which they had reluctantly laid down. The barriers
of the Danube were thrown open; the savage warriors of Scythia issued
from their forests; and the uncommon severity of the winter allowed the
poet to remark, "that they rolled their ponderous wagons over the broad
and icy back of the indignant river." [2] The unhappy natives of the
provinces to the south of the Danube submitted to the calamities, which,
in the course of twenty years, were almost grown familiar to their
imagination; and the various troops of Barbarians, who gloried in the
Gothic name, were irregularly spread from woody shores of Dalmatia,
to the walls of Constantinople. [3] The interruption, or at least
the diminution, of the subsidy, which the Goths had received from the
prudent liberality of Theodosius, was the specious pretence of their
revolt: the affront was imbittered by their contempt for the unwarlike
sons of Theodosius; and their resentment was inflamed by the weakness,
or treachery, of the minister of Arcadius. The frequent visits of
Rufinus to the camp of the Barbarians whose arms and apparel he affected
to imitate, were considered as a sufficient evidence of his guilty
correspondence, and the public enemy, from a motive either of gratitude
or of policy, was attentive, amidst the general devastation, to spare
the private estates of the unpopular praefect. The Goths, instead of
being impelled by the blind and headstrong passions of their chiefs,
were now directed by the bold and artful genius of Alaric. That renowned
leader was descended from the noble race of the Balti; [4] which yielded
only to the royal dignity of the Amali: he had solicited the command of
the Roman armies; and the Imperial court provoked him to demonstrate the
folly of their refusal, and the importance of their loss. Whatever hopes
might be entertained of the conquest of Constantinople, the judicious
general soon abandoned an impracticable enterprise. In the midst of
a divided court and a discontented people, the emperor Arcadius was
terrified by the aspect of the Gothic arms; but the want of wisdom and
valor was supplied by the strength of the city; and the fortifications,
both of the sea and land, might securely brave the impotent and random
darts of the Barbarians. Alaric disdained to trample any longer on the
prostrate and ruined countries of Thrace and Dacia, and he resolved
to seek a plentiful harvest of fame and riches in a province which had
hitherto escaped the ravages of war. [5]

[Footnote 1: The revolt of the Goths, and the blockade of
Constantinople, are distinctly mentioned by Claudian, (in Rufin. l. ii.
7-100,) Zosimus, (l. v. 292,) and Jornandes, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 29.)]

[Footnote 2:--

     Alii per toga ferocis
     Danubii solidata ruunt; expertaque remis
     Frangunt stagna rotis.

Claudian and Ovid often amuse their fancy by interchanging the metaphors
and properties of liquid water, and solid ice. Much false wit has been
expended in this easy exercise.]

[Footnote 3: Jerom, tom. i. p. 26. He endeavors to comfort his friend
Heliodorus, bishop of Altinum, for the loss of his nephew, Nepotian, by
a curious recapitulation of all the public and private misfortunes of
the times. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xii. p. 200, &c.]

[Footnote 4: Baltha or bold: origo mirifica, says Jornandes, (c. 29.)
This illustrious race long continued to flourish in France, in the
Gothic province of Septimania, or Languedoc; under the corrupted
appellation of Boax; and a branch of that family afterwards settled in
the kingdom of Naples (Grotius in Prolegom. ad Hist. Gothic. p. 53.) The
lords of Baux, near Arles, and of seventy-nine subordinate places, were
independent of the counts of Provence, (Longuerue, Description de la
France, tom. i. p. 357).]

[Footnote 5: Zosimus (l. v. p. 293-295) is our best guide for the
conquest of Greece: but the hints and allusion of Claudian are so many
rays of historic light.]

The character of the civil and military officers, on whom Rufinus had
devolved the government of Greece, confirmed the public suspicion, that
he had betrayed the ancient seat of freedom and learning to the Gothic
invader. The proconsul Antiochus was the unworthy son of a respectable
father; and Gerontius, who commanded the provincial troops, was much
better qualified to execute the oppressive orders of a tyrant, than to
defend, with courage and ability, a country most remarkably fortified by
the hand of nature. Alaric had traversed, without resistance, the plains
of Macedonia and Thessaly, as far as the foot of Mount Oeta, a steep and
woody range of hills, almost impervious to his cavalry. They stretched
from east to west, to the edge of the sea-shore; and left, between the
precipice and the Malian Gulf, an interval of three hundred feet, which,
in some places, was contracted to a road capable of admitting only a
single carriage. [6] In this narrow pass of Thermopylae, where Leonidas
and the three hundred Spartans had gloriously devoted their lives, the
Goths might have been stopped, or destroyed, by a skilful general; and
perhaps the view of that sacred spot might have kindled some sparks of
military ardor in the breasts of the degenerate Greeks. The troops which
had been posted to defend the Straits of Thermopylae, retired, as
they were directed, without attempting to disturb the secure and rapid
passage of Alaric; [7] and the fertile fields of Phocis and Boeotia were
instantly covered by a deluge of Barbarians who massacred the males
of an age to bear arms, and drove away the beautiful females, with the
spoil and cattle of the flaming villages. The travellers, who visited
Greece several years afterwards, could easily discover the deep and
bloody traces of the march of the Goths; and Thebes was less indebted
for her preservation to the strength of her seven gates, than to the
eager haste of Alaric, who advanced to occupy the city of Athens, and
the important harbor of the Piraeus. The same impatience urged him to
prevent the delay and danger of a siege, by the offer of a capitulation;
and as soon as the Athenians heard the voice of the Gothic herald, they
were easily persuaded to deliver the greatest part of their wealth, as
the ransom of the city of Minerva and its inhabitants. The treaty was
ratified by solemn oaths, and observed with mutual fidelity. The Gothic
prince, with a small and select train, was admitted within the walls;
he indulged himself in the refreshment of the bath, accepted a splendid
banquet, which was provided by the magistrate, and affected to show that
he was not ignorant of the manners of civilized nations. [8] But the
whole territory of Attica, from the promontory of Sunium to the town
of Megara, was blasted by his baleful presence; and, if we may use the
comparison of a contemporary philosopher, Athens itself resembled the
bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim. The distance between
Megara and Corinth could not much exceed thirty miles; but the bad road,
an expressive name, which it still bears among the Greeks, was, or might
easily have been made, impassable for the march of an enemy. The thick
and gloomy woods of Mount Cithaeron covered the inland country; the
Scironian rocks approached the water's edge, and hung over the
narrow and winding path, which was confined above six miles along the
sea-shore. [9] The passage of those rocks, so infamous in every age,
was terminated by the Isthmus of Corinth; and a small a body of firm
and intrepid soldiers might have successfully defended a temporary
intrenchment of five or six miles from the Ionian to the Aegean Sea. The
confidence of the cities of Peloponnesus in their natural rampart, had
tempted them to neglect the care of their antique walls; and the avarice
of the Roman governors had exhausted and betrayed the unhappy province.
[10] Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms
of the Goths; and the most fortunate of the inhabitants were saved,
by death, from beholding the slavery of their families and the
conflagration of their cities. [11] The vases and statues were
distributed among the Barbarians, with more regard to the value of the
materials, than to the elegance of the workmanship; the female captives
submitted to the laws of war; the enjoyment of beauty was the reward of
valor; and the Greeks could not reasonably complain of an abuse which
was justified by the example of the heroic times. [12] The descendants
of that extraordinary people, who had considered valor and discipline
as the walls of Sparta, no longer remembered the generous reply of their
ancestors to an invader more formidable than Alaric. "If thou art a god,
thou wilt not hurt those who have never injured thee; if thou art a
man, advance:--and thou wilt find men equal to thyself." [13] From
Thermopylae to Sparta, the leader of the Goths pursued his victorious
march without encountering any mortal antagonists: but one of the
advocates of expiring Paganism has confidently asserted, that the walls
of Athens were guarded by the goddess Minerva, with her formidable
Aegis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles; [14] and that the conqueror
was dismayed by the presence of the hostile deities of Greece. In an
age of miracles, it would perhaps be unjust to dispute the claim of the
historian Zosimus to the common benefit: yet it cannot be dissembled,
that the mind of Alaric was ill prepared to receive, either in sleeping
or waking visions, the impressions of Greek superstition. The songs of
Homer, and the fame of Achilles, had probably never reached the ear of
the illiterate Barbarian; and the Christian faith, which he had devoutly
embraced, taught him to despise the imaginary deities of Rome and
Athens. The invasion of the Goths, instead of vindicating the honor,
contributed, at least accidentally, to extirpate the last remains of
Paganism: and the mysteries of Ceres, which had subsisted eighteen
hundred years, did not survive the destruction of Eleusis, and the
calamities of Greece. [15]

[Footnote 6: Compare Herodotus (l. vii. c. 176) and Livy, (xxxvi. 15.)
The narrow entrance of Greece was probably enlarged by each successive
ravisher.]

[Footnote 7: He passed, says Eunapius, (in Vit. Philosoph. p. 93, edit.
Commelin, 1596,) through the straits, of Thermopylae.]

[Footnote 8: In obedience to Jerom and Claudian, (in Rufin. l. ii. 191,)
I have mixed some darker colors in the mild representation of Zosimus,
who wished to soften the calamities of Athens.

     Nec fera Cecropias traxissent vincula matres.

Synesius (Epist. clvi. p. 272, edit. Petav.) observes, that Athens,
whose sufferings he imputes to the proconsul's avarice, was at that time
less famous for her schools of philosophy than for her trade of honey.]

[Footnote 9:--

     Vallata mari Scironia rupes,
     Et duo continuo connectens aequora muro
     Isthmos.
     --Claudian de Bel. Getico, 188.

The Scironian rocks are described by Pausanias, (l. i. c. 44, p. 107,
edit. Kuhn,) and our modern travellers, Wheeler (p. 436) and Chandler,
(p. 298.) Hadrian made the road passable for two carriages.]

[Footnote 10: Claudian (in Rufin. l. ii. 186, and de Bello Getico,
611, &c.) vaguely, though forcibly, delineates the scene of rapine and
destruction.]

[Footnote 11: These generous lines of Homer (Odyss. l. v. 306) were
transcribed by one of the captive youths of Corinth: and the tears of
Mummius may prove that the rude conqueror, though he was ignorant of the
value of an original picture, possessed the purest source of good taste,
a benevolent heart, (Plutarch, Symposiac. l. ix. tom. ii. p. 737, edit.
Wechel.)]

[Footnote 12: Homer perpetually describes the exemplary patience of
those female captives, who gave their charms, and even their hearts,
to the murderers of their fathers, brothers, &c. Such a passion (of
Eriphile for Achilles) is touched with admirable delicacy by Racine.]

[Footnote 13: Plutarch (in Pyrrho, tom. ii. p. 474, edit. Brian) gives
the genuine answer in the Laconic dialect. Pyrrhus attacked Sparta with
25,000 foot, 2000 horse, and 24 elephants, and the defence of that open
town is a fine comment on the laws of Lycurgus, even in the last stage
of decay.]

[Footnote 14: Such, perhaps, as Homer (Iliad, xx. 164) had so nobly
painted him.]

[Footnote 15: Eunapius (in Vit. Philosoph. p. 90-93) intimates that a
troop of monks betrayed Greece, and followed the Gothic camp. * Note:
The expression is curious: Vit. Max. t. i. p. 53, edit. Boissonade.--M.]

The last hope of a people who could no longer depend on their arms,
their gods, or their sovereign, was placed in the powerful assistance
of the general of the West; and Stilicho, who had not been permitted to
repulse, advanced to chastise, the invaders of Greece. [16] A numerous
fleet was equipped in the ports of Italy; and the troops, after a short
and prosperous navigation over the Ionian Sea, were safely disembarked
on the isthmus, near the ruins of Corinth. The woody and mountainous
country of Arcadia, the fabulous residence of Pan and the Dryads, became
the scene of a long and doubtful conflict between the two generals
not unworthy of each other. The skill and perseverance of the Roman at
length prevailed; and the Goths, after sustaining a considerable loss
from disease and desertion, gradually retreated to the lofty mountain of
Pholoe, near the sources of the Peneus, and on the frontiers of Elis; a
sacred country, which had formerly been exempted from the calamities
of war. [17] The camp of the Barbarians was immediately besieged; the
waters of the river [18] were diverted into another channel; and while
they labored under the intolerable pressure of thirst and hunger, a
strong line of circumvallation was formed to prevent their escape. After
these precautions, Stilicho, too confident of victory, retired to enjoy
his triumph, in the theatrical games, and lascivious dances, of the
Greeks; his soldiers, deserting their standards, spread themselves over
the country of their allies, which they stripped of all that had been
saved from the rapacious hands of the enemy. Alaric appears to have
seized the favorable moment to execute one of those hardy enterprises,
in which the abilities of a general are displayed with more genuine
lustre, than in the tumult of a day of battle. To extricate himself from
the prison of Peloponnesus, it was necessary that he should pierce
the intrenchments which surrounded his camp; that he should perform a
difficult and dangerous march of thirty miles, as far as the Gulf of
Corinth; and that he should transport his troops, his captives, and his
spoil, over an arm of the sea, which, in the narrow interval between
Rhium and the opposite shore, is at least half a mile in breadth. [19]
The operations of Alaric must have been secret, prudent, and rapid;
since the Roman general was confounded by the intelligence, that the
Goths, who had eluded his efforts, were in full possession of the
important province of Epirus. This unfortunate delay allowed Alaric
sufficient time to conclude the treaty, which he secretly negotiated,
with the ministers of Constantinople. The apprehension of a civil war
compelled Stilicho to retire, at the haughty mandate of his rivals, from
the dominions of Arcadius; and he respected, in the enemy of Rome, the
honorable character of the ally and servant of the emperor of the East.

[Footnote 16: For Stilicho's Greek war, compare the honest narrative of
Zosimus (l. v. p. 295, 296) with the curious circumstantial flattery of
Claudian, (i. Cons. Stilich. l. i. 172-186, iv. Cons. Hon. 459-487.) As
the event was not glorious, it is artfully thrown into the shade.]

[Footnote 17: The troops who marched through Elis delivered up their
arms. This security enriched the Eleans, who were lovers of a rural
life. Riches begat pride: they disdained their privilege, and they
suffered. Polybius advises them to retire once more within their magic
circle. See a learned and judicious discourse on the Olympic games,
which Mr. West has prefixed to his translation of Pindar.]

[Footnote 18: Claudian (in iv. Cons. Hon. 480) alludes to the fact
without naming the river; perhaps the Alpheus, (i. Cons. Stil. l. i.
185.)

   ---Et Alpheus Geticis angustus acervis
    Tardior ad Siculos etiamnum pergit amores.

Yet I should prefer the Peneus, a shallow stream in a wide and deep bed,
which runs through Elis, and falls into the sea below Cyllene. It had
been joined with the Alpheus to cleanse the Augean stable. (Cellarius,
tom. i. p. 760. Chandler's Travels, p. 286.)]

[Footnote 19: Strabo, l. viii. p. 517. Plin. Hist. Natur. iv. 3.

Wheeler, p. 308. Chandler, p. 275. They measured from different points
the distance between the two lands.]

A Grecian philosopher, [20] who visited Constantinople soon after the
death of Theodosius, published his liberal opinions concerning the
duties of kings, and the state of the Roman republic. Synesius observes,
and deplores, the fatal abuse, which the imprudent bounty of the late
emperor had introduced into the military service. The citizens and
subjects had purchased an exemption from the indispensable duty of
defending their country; which was supported by the arms of Barbarian
mercenaries. The fugitives of Scythia were permitted to disgrace
the illustrious dignities of the empire; their ferocious youth, who
disdained the salutary restraint of laws, were more anxious to acquire
the riches, than to imitate the arts, of a people, the object of
their contempt and hatred; and the power of the Goths was the stone of
Tantalus, perpetually suspended over the peace and safety of the devoted
state. The measures which Synesius recommends, are the dictates of a
bold and generous patriot. He exhorts the emperor to revive the courage
of his subjects, by the example of manly virtue; to banish luxury
from the court and from the camp; to substitute, in the place of the
Barbarian mercenaries, an army of men, interested in the defence of
their laws and of their property; to force, in such a moment of public
danger, the mechanic from his shop, and the philosopher from his school;
to rouse the indolent citizen from his dream of pleasure, and to
arm, for the protection of agriculture, the hands of the laborious
husbandman. At the head of such troops, who might deserve the name, and
would display the spirit, of Romans, he animates the son of Theodosius
to encounter a race of Barbarians, who were destitute of any real
courage; and never to lay down his arms, till he had chased them far
away into the solitudes of Scythia; or had reduced them to the state of
ignominious servitude, which the Lacedaemonians formerly imposed on the
captive Helots. [21] The court of Arcadius indulged the zeal, applauded
the eloquence, and neglected the advice, of Synesius. Perhaps the
philosopher who addresses the emperor of the East in the language of
reason and virtue, which he might have used to a Spartan king, had not
condescended to form a practicable scheme, consistent with the temper,
and circumstances, of a degenerate age. Perhaps the pride of the
ministers, whose business was seldom interrupted by reflection, might
reject, as wild and visionary, every proposal, which exceeded the
measure of their capacity, and deviated from the forms and precedents
of office. While the oration of Synesius, and the downfall of the
Barbarians, were the topics of popular conversation, an edict was
published at Constantinople, which declared the promotion of Alaric
to the rank of master-general of the Eastern Illyricum. The Roman
provincials, and the allies, who had respected the faith of treaties,
were justly indignant, that the ruin of Greece and Epirus should be
so liberally rewarded. The Gothic conqueror was received as a lawful
magistrate, in the cities which he had so lately besieged. The fathers,
whose sons he had massacred, the husbands, whose wives he had violated,
were subject to his authority; and the success of his rebellion
encouraged the ambition of every leader of the foreign mercenaries. The
use to which Alaric applied his new command, distinguishes the firm
and judicious character of his policy. He issued his orders to the four
magazines and manufactures of offensive and defensive arms, Margus,
Ratiaria, Naissus, and Thessalonica, to provide his troops with an
extraordinary supply of shields, helmets, swords, and spears; the
unhappy provincials were compelled to forge the instruments of their
own destruction; and the Barbarians removed the only defect which had
sometimes disappointed the efforts of their courage. [22] The birth of
Alaric, the glory of his past exploits, and the confidence in his future
designs, insensibly united the body of the nation under his victorious
standard; and, with the unanimous consent of the Barbarian chieftains,
the master-general of Illyricum was elevated, according to ancient
custom, on a shield, and solemnly proclaimed king of the Visigoths. [23]
Armed with this double power, seated on the verge of the two empires,
he alternately sold his deceitful promises to the courts of Arcadius and
Honorius; [24] till he declared and executed his resolution of invading
the dominions of the West. The provinces of Europe which belonged to
the Eastern emperor, were already exhausted; those of Asia were
inaccessible; and the strength of Constantinople had resisted his
attack. But he was tempted by the fame, the beauty, the wealth of Italy,
which he had twice visited; and he secretly aspired to plant the
Gothic standard on the walls of Rome, and to enrich his army with the
accumulated spoils of three hundred triumphs. [25]

[Footnote 20: Synesius passed three years (A.D. 397-400) at
Constantinople, as deputy from Cyrene to the emperor Arcadius. He
presented him with a crown of gold, and pronounced before him the
instructive oration de Regno, (p. 1-32, edit. Petav. Paris, 1612.) The
philosopher was made bishop of Ptolemais, A.D. 410, and died about 430.
See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xii. p. 490, 554, 683-685.]

[Footnote 21: Synesius de Regno, p. 21-26.]

[Footnote 22:--qui foedera rumpit

      Ditatur: qui servat, eget: vastator Achivae
      Gentis, et Epirum nuper populatus inultam,
      Praesidet Illyrico: jam, quos obsedit, amicos
      Ingreditur muros; illis responsa daturus,
      Quorum conjugibus potitur, natosque peremit.

Claudian in Eutrop. l. ii. 212. Alaric applauds his own policy (de
Bell Getic. 533-543) in the use which he had made of this Illyrian
jurisdiction.]

[Footnote 23: Jornandes, c. 29, p. 651. The Gothic historian adds, with
unusual spirit, Cum suis deliberans suasit suo labore quaerere regna,
quam alienis per otium subjacere.

     Discors odiisque anceps civilibus orbis,
     Non sua vis tutata diu, dum foedera fallax
     Ludit, et alternae perjuria venditat aulae.
    ---Claudian de Bell. Get. 565]

[Footnote 25: Alpibus Italiae ruptis penetrabis ad Urbem.
This authentic prediction was announced by Alaric, or at least by
Claudian, (de Bell. Getico, 547,) seven years before the event. But as
it was not accomplished within the term which has been rashly fixed the
interpreters escaped through an ambiguous meaning.]

The scarcity of facts, [26] and the uncertainty of dates, [27] oppose
our attempts to describe the circumstances of the first invasion of
Italy by the arms of Alaric. His march, perhaps from Thessalonica,
through the warlike and hostile country of Pannonia, as far as the foot
of the Julian Alps; his passage of those mountains, which were strongly
guarded by troops and intrenchments; the siege of Aquileia, and the
conquest of the provinces of Istria and Venetia, appear to have employed
a considerable time. Unless his operations were extremely cautious and
slow, the length of the interval would suggest a probable suspicion,
that the Gothic king retreated towards the banks of the Danube; and
reenforced his army with fresh swarms of Barbarians, before he again
attempted to penetrate into the heart of Italy. Since the public and
important events escape the diligence of the historian, he may amuse
himself with contemplating, for a moment, the influence of the arms
of Alaric on the fortunes of two obscure individuals, a presbyter
of Aquileia and a husbandman of Verona. The learned Rufinus, who was
summoned by his enemies to appear before a Roman synod, [28] wisely
preferred the dangers of a besieged city; and the Barbarians, who
furiously shook the walls of Aquileia, might save him from the cruel
sentence of another heretic, who, at the request of the same bishops,
was severely whipped, and condemned to perpetual exile on a desert
island. [29] The old man, [30] who had passed his simple and innocent
life in the neighborhood of Verona, was a stranger to the quarrels both
of kings and of bishops; his pleasures, his desires, his knowledge,
were confined within the little circle of his paternal farm; and a staff
supported his aged steps, on the same ground where he had sported in
his infancy. Yet even this humble and rustic felicity (which Claudian
describes with so much truth and feeling) was still exposed to the
undistinguishing rage of war. His trees, his old contemporary trees,
[31] must blaze in the conflagration of the whole country; a detachment
of Gothic cavalry might sweep away his cottage and his family; and the
power of Alaric could destroy this happiness, which he was not able
either to taste or to bestow. "Fame," says the poet, "encircling with
terror her gloomy wings, proclaimed the march of the Barbarian army, and
filled Italy with consternation:" the apprehensions of each individual
were increased in just proportion to the measure of his fortune: and the
most timid, who had already embarked their valuable effects, meditated
their escape to the Island of Sicily, or the African coast. The public
distress was aggravated by the fears and reproaches of superstition.
[32] Every hour produced some horrid tale of strange and portentous
accidents; the Pagans deplored the neglect of omens, and the
interruption of sacrifices; but the Christians still derived some
comfort from the powerful intercession of the saints and martyrs. [33]

[Footnote 26: Our best materials are 970 verses of Claudian in the poem
on the Getic war, and the beginning of that which celebrates the sixth
consulship of Honorius. Zosimus is totally silent; and we are reduced
to such scraps, or rather crumbs, as we can pick from Orosius and the
Chronicles.]

[Footnote 27: Notwithstanding the gross errors of Jornandes, who
confounds the Italian wars of Alaric, (c. 29,) his date of the
consulship of Stilicho and Aurelian (A.D. 400) is firm and respectable.
It is certain from Claudian (Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 804)
that the battle of Polentia was fought A.D. 403; but we cannot easily
fill the interval.]

[Footnote 28: Tantum Romanae urbis judicium fugis, ut magis obsidionem
barbaricam, quam pacatoe urbis judicium velis sustinere. Jerom, tom.
ii. p. 239. Rufinus understood his own danger; the peaceful city was
inflamed by the beldam Marcella, and the rest of Jerom's faction.]

[Footnote 29: Jovinian, the enemy of fasts and of celibacy, who was
persecuted and insulted by the furious Jerom, (Jortin's Remarks, vol.
iv. p. 104, &c.) See the original edict of banishment in the Theodosian
Code, xvi. tit. v. leg. 43.]

[Footnote 30: This epigram (de Sene Veronensi qui suburbium nusquam
egres sus est) is one of the earliest and most pleasing compositions of
Claudian. Cowley's imitation (Hurd's edition, vol. ii. p. 241) has
some natural and happy strokes: but it is much inferior to the original
portrait, which is evidently drawn from the life.]

[Footnote 31:

     Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum
     Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus.

     A neighboring wood born with himself he sees,
     And loves his old contemporary trees.

In this passage, Cowley is perhaps superior to his original; and the
English poet, who was a good botanist, has concealed the oaks under a
more general expression.]

[Footnote 32: Claudian de Bell. Get. 199-266. He may seem prolix: but
fear and superstition occupied as large a space in the minds of the
Italians.]

[Footnote 33: From the passages of Paulinus, which Baronius has
produced, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 403, No. 51,) it is manifest that the
general alarm had pervaded all Italy, as far as Nola in Campania, where
that famous penitent had fixed his abode.]




Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths.--Part II.

The emperor Honorius was distinguished, above his subjects, by the
preeminence of fear, as well as of rank. The pride and luxury in which
he was educated, had not allowed him to suspect, that there existed
on the earth any power presumptuous enough to invade the repose of the
successor of Augustus. The arts of flattery concealed the impending
danger, till Alaric approached the palace of Milan. But when the sound
of war had awakened the young emperor, instead of flying to arms with
the spirit, or even the rashness, of his age, he eagerly listened to
those timid counsellors, who proposed to convey his sacred person,
and his faithful attendants, to some secure and distant station in the
provinces of Gaul. Stilicho alone [34] had courage and authority to
resist his disgraceful measure, which would have abandoned Rome and
Italy to the Barbarians; but as the troops of the palace had been lately
detached to the Rhaetian frontier, and as the resource of new levies was
slow and precarious, the general of the West could only promise, that
if the court of Milan would maintain their ground during his absence,
he would soon return with an army equal to the encounter of the Gothic
king. Without losing a moment, (while each moment was so important
to the public safety,) Stilicho hastily embarked on the Larian Lake,
ascended the mountains of ice and snow, amidst the severity of an Alpine
winter, and suddenly repressed, by his unexpected presence, the enemy,
who had disturbed the tranquillity of Rhaetia. [35] The Barbarians,
perhaps some tribes of the Alemanni, respected the firmness of a chief,
who still assumed the language of command; and the choice which he
condescended to make, of a select number of their bravest youth, was
considered as a mark of his esteem and favor. The cohorts, who were
delivered from the neighboring foe, diligently repaired to the Imperial
standard; and Stilicho issued his orders to the most remote troops of
the West, to advance, by rapid marches, to the defence of Honorius and
of Italy. The fortresses of the Rhine were abandoned; and the safety
of Gaul was protected only by the faith of the Germans, and the ancient
terror of the Roman name. Even the legion, which had been stationed
to guard the wall of Britain against the Caledonians of the North, was
hastily recalled; [36] and a numerous body of the cavalry of the Alani
was persuaded to engage in the service of the emperor, who anxiously
expected the return of his general. The prudence and vigor of Stilicho
were conspicuous on this occasion, which revealed, at the same time,
the weakness of the falling empire. The legions of Rome, which had long
since languished in the gradual decay of discipline and courage, were
exterminated by the Gothic and civil wars; and it was found impossible,
without exhausting and exposing the provinces, to assemble an army for
the defence of Italy.

[Footnote 34: Solus erat Stilicho, &c., is the exclusive commendation
which Claudian bestows, (del Bell. Get. 267,) without condescending to
except the emperor. How insignificant must Honorius have appeared in his
own court.]

[Footnote 35: The face of the country, and the hardiness of Stilicho,
are finely described, (de Bell. Get. 340-363.)]

[Footnote 36:

    Venit et extremis legio praetenta Britannis,
    Quae Scoto dat frena truci.
   ---De Bell. Get. 416.

Yet the most rapid march from Edinburgh, or Newcastle, to Milan, must
have required a longer space of time than Claudian seems willing to
allow for the duration of the Gothic war.]




Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths.--Part III.

When Stilicho seemed to abandon his sovereign in the unguarded palace of
Milan, he had probably calculated the term of his absence, the distance
of the enemy, and the obstacles that might retard their march. He
principally depended on the rivers of Italy, the Adige, the Mincius,
the Oglio, and the Addua, which, in the winter or spring, by the fall of
rains, or by the melting of the snows, are commonly swelled into broad
and impetuous torrents. [37] But the season happened to be remarkably
dry: and the Goths could traverse, without impediment, the wide and
stony beds, whose centre was faintly marked by the course of a shallow
stream. The bridge and passage of the Addua were secured by a strong
detachment of the Gothic army; and as Alaric approached the walls,
or rather the suburbs, of Milan, he enjoyed the proud satisfaction of
seeing the emperor of the Romans fly before him. Honorius, accompanied
by a feeble train of statesmen and eunuchs, hastily retreated towards
the Alps, with a design of securing his person in the city of Arles,
which had often been the royal residence of his predecessors. [3711] But
Honorius [38] had scarcely passed the Po, before he was overtaken by
the speed of the Gothic cavalry; [39] since the urgency of the danger
compelled him to seek a temporary shelter within the fortifications of
Asta, a town of Liguria or Piemont, situate on the banks of the Tanarus.
[40] The siege of an obscure place, which contained so rich a prize,
and seemed incapable of a long resistance, was instantly formed,
and indefatigably pressed, by the king of the Goths; and the bold
declaration, which the emperor might afterwards make, that his breast
had never been susceptible of fear, did not probably obtain much credit,
even in his own court. [41] In the last, and almost hopeless
extremity, after the Barbarians had already proposed the indignity of
a capitulation, the Imperial captive was suddenly relieved by the fame,
the approach, and at length the presence, of the hero, whom he had so
long expected. At the head of a chosen and intrepid vanguard, Stilicho
swam the stream of the Addua, to gain the time which he must have lost
in the attack of the bridge; the passage of the Po was an enterprise of
much less hazard and difficulty; and the successful action, in which he
cut his way through the Gothic camp under the walls of Asta, revived the
hopes, and vindicated the honor, of Rome. Instead of grasping the fruit
of his victory, the Barbarian was gradually invested, on every side, by
the troops of the West, who successively issued through all the passes
of the Alps; his quarters were straitened; his convoys were
intercepted; and the vigilance of the Romans prepared to form a chain
of fortifications, and to besiege the lines of the besiegers. A military
council was assembled of the long-haired chiefs of the Gothic nation;
of aged warriors, whose bodies were wrapped in furs, and whose stern
countenances were marked with honorable wounds. They weighed the glory
of persisting in their attempt against the advantage of securing their
plunder; and they recommended the prudent measure of a seasonable
retreat. In this important debate, Alaric displayed the spirit of the
conqueror of Rome; and after he had reminded his countrymen of their
achievements and of their designs, he concluded his animating speech by
the solemn and positive assurance that he was resolved to find in Italy
either a kingdom or a grave. [42]

[Footnote 37: Every traveller must recollect the face of Lombardy, (see
Fonvenelle, tom. v. p. 279,) which is often tormented by the capricious
and irregular abundance of waters. The Austrians, before Genoa, were
encamped in the dry bed of the Polcevera. "Ne sarebbe" (says Muratori)
"mai passato per mente a que' buoni Alemanni, che quel picciolo
torrente potesse, per cosi dire, in un instante cangiarsi in un terribil
gigante." (Annali d'Italia, tom. xvi. p. 443, Milan, 1752, 8vo edit.)]

[Footnote 3711: According to Le Beau and his commentator M. St. Martin,
Honorius did not attempt to fly. Settlements were offered to the Goths
in Lombardy, and they advanced from the Po towards the Alps to take
possession of them. But it was a treacherous stratagem of Stilicho, who
surprised them while they were reposing on the faith of this treaty. Le
Beau, v. x.]

[Footnote 38: Claudian does not clearly answer our question, Where was
Honorius himself? Yet the flight is marked by the pursuit; and my idea
of the Gothic was is justified by the Italian critics, Sigonius (tom.
P, ii. p. 369, de Imp. Occident. l. x.) and Muratori, (Annali d'Italia.
tom. iv. p. 45.)]

[Footnote 39: One of the roads may be traced in the Itineraries, (p.
98, 288, 294, with Wesseling's Notes.) Asta lay some miles on the right
hand.]

[Footnote 40: Asta, or Asti, a Roman colony, is now the capital of a
pleasant country, which, in the sixteenth century, devolved to the dukes
of Savoy, (Leandro Alberti Descrizzione d'Italia, p. 382.)]

[Footnote 41: Nec me timor impulit ullus. He might hold this proud
language the next year at Rome, five hundred miles from the scene of
danger (vi. Cons. Hon. 449.)]

[Footnote 42: Hanc ego vel victor regno, vel morte tenebo Victus,
humum.----The speeches (de Bell. Get. 479-549) of the Gothic Nestor, and
Achilles, are strong, characteristic, adapted to the circumstances; and
possibly not less genuine than those of Livy.]

The loose discipline of the Barbarians always exposed them to the danger
of a surprise; but, instead of choosing the dissolute hours of riot and
intemperance, Stilicho resolved to attack the Christian Goths, whilst
they were devoutly employed in celebrating the festival of Easter. [43]
The execution of the stratagem, or, as it was termed by the clergy of
the sacrilege, was intrusted to Saul, a Barbarian and a Pagan, who
had served, however, with distinguished reputation among the veteran
generals of Theodosius. The camp of the Goths, which Alaric had pitched
in the neighborhood of Pollentia, [44] was thrown into confusion by
the sudden and impetuous charge of the Imperial cavalry; but, in a few
moments, the undaunted genius of their leader gave them an order, and
a field of battle; and, as soon as they had recovered from their
astonishment, the pious confidence, that the God of the Christians would
assert their cause, added new strength to their native valor. In this
engagement, which was long maintained with equal courage and success,
the chief of the Alani, whose diminutive and savage form concealed a
magnanimous soul approved his suspected loyalty, by the zeal with which
he fought, and fell, in the service of the republic; and the fame of
this gallant Barbarian has been imperfectly preserved in the verses of
Claudian, since the poet, who celebrates his virtue, has omitted the
mention of his name. His death was followed by the flight and dismay of
the squadrons which he commanded; and the defeat of the wing of
cavalry might have decided the victory of Alaric, if Stilicho had not
immediately led the Roman and Barbarian infantry to the attack. The
skill of the general, and the bravery of the soldiers, surmounted every
obstacle. In the evening of the bloody day, the Goths retreated from the
field of battle; the intrenchments of their camp were forced, and the
scene of rapine and slaughter made some atonement for the calamities
which they had inflicted on the subjects of the empire. [45] The
magnificent spoils of Corinth and Argos enriched the veterans of the
West; the captive wife of Alaric, who had impatiently claimed his
promise of Roman jewels and Patrician handmaids, [46] was reduced to
implore the mercy of the insulting foe; and many thousand prisoners,
released from the Gothic chains, dispersed through the provinces of
Italy the praises of their heroic deliverer. The triumph of Stilicho
[47] was compared by the poet, and perhaps by the public, to that of
Marius; who, in the same part of Italy, had encountered and destroyed
another army of Northern Barbarians. The huge bones, and the empty
helmets, of the Cimbri and of the Goths, would easily be confounded by
succeeding generations; and posterity might erect a common trophy to the
memory of the two most illustrious generals, who had vanquished, on the
same memorable ground, the two most formidable enemies of Rome. [48]

[Footnote 43: Orosius (l. vii. c. 37) is shocked at the impiety of the
Romans, who attacked, on Easter Sunday, such pious Christians. Yet, at
the same time, public prayers were offered at the shrine of St. Thomas
of Edessa, for the destruction of the Arian robber. See Tillemont (Hist
des Emp. tom. v. p. 529) who quotes a homily, which has been erroneously
ascribed to St. Chrysostom.]

[Footnote 44: The vestiges of Pollentia are twenty-five miles to the
south-east of Turin. Urbs, in the same neighborhood, was a royal
chase of the kings of Lombardy, and a small river, which excused the
prediction, "penetrabis ad urbem," (Cluver. Ital. Antiq tom. i. p.
83-85.)]

[Footnote 45: Orosius wishes, in doubtful words, to insinuate the defeat
of the Romans. "Pugnantes vicimus, victores victi sumus." Prosper (in
Chron.) makes it an equal and bloody battle, but the Gothic writers
Cassiodorus (in Chron.) and Jornandes (de Reb. Get. c. 29) claim a
decisive victory.]

[Footnote 46: Demens Ausonidum gemmata monilia matrum, Romanasque alta
famulas cervice petebat. De Bell. Get. 627.]

[Footnote 47: Claudian (de Bell. Get. 580-647) and Prudentius (in
Symmach. n. 694-719) celebrate, without ambiguity, the Roman victory of
Pollentia. They are poetical and party writers; yet some credit is
due to the most suspicious witnesses, who are checked by the recent
notoriety of facts.]

[Footnote 48: Claudian's peroration is strong and elegant; but the
identity of the Cimbric and Gothic fields must be understood (like
Virgil's Philippi, Georgic i. 490) according to the loose geography of
a poet. Verselle and Pollentia are sixty miles from each other; and the
latitude is still greater, if the Cimbri were defeated in the wide and
barren plain of Verona, (Maffei, Verona Illustrata, P. i. p. 54-62.)]

The eloquence of Claudian [49] has celebrated, with lavish applause, the
victory of Pollentia, one of the most glorious days in the life of his
patron; but his reluctant and partial muse bestows more genuine praise
on the character of the Gothic king. His name is, indeed, branded with
the reproachful epithets of pirate and robber, to which the conquerors
of every age are so justly entitled; but the poet of Stilicho is
compelled to acknowledge that Alaric possessed the invincible temper
of mind, which rises superior to every misfortune, and derives new
resources from adversity. After the total defeat of his infantry, he
escaped, or rather withdrew, from the field of battle, with the greatest
part of his cavalry entire and unbroken. Without wasting a moment to
lament the irreparable loss of so many brave companions, he left his
victorious enemy to bind in chains the captive images of a Gothic king;
[50] and boldly resolved to break through the unguarded passes of the
Apennine, to spread desolation over the fruitful face of Tuscany, and
to conquer or die before the gates of Rome. The capital was saved by the
active and incessant diligence of Stilicho; but he respected the despair
of his enemy; and, instead of committing the fate of the republic to
the chance of another battle, he proposed to purchase the absence of
the Barbarians. The spirit of Alaric would have rejected such terms, the
permission of a retreat, and the offer of a pension, with contempt and
indignation; but he exercised a limited and precarious authority over
the independent chieftains who had raised him, for their service, above
the rank of his equals; they were still less disposed to follow an
unsuccessful general, and many of them were tempted to consult their
interest by a private negotiation with the minister of Honorius. The
king submitted to the voice of his people, ratified the treaty with
the empire of the West, and repassed the Po with the remains of the
flourishing army which he had led into Italy. A considerable part of the
Roman forces still continued to attend his motions; and Stilicho, who
maintained a secret correspondence with some of the Barbarian chiefs,
was punctually apprised of the designs that were formed in the camp and
council of Alaric. The king of the Goths, ambitious to signalize
his retreat by some splendid achievement, had resolved to occupy the
important city of Verona, which commands the principal passage of the
Rhaetian Alps; and, directing his march through the territories of those
German tribes, whose alliance would restore his exhausted strength, to
invade, on the side of the Rhine, the wealthy and unsuspecting provinces
of Gaul. Ignorant of the treason which had already betrayed his bold and
judicious enterprise, he advanced towards the passes of the mountains,
already possessed by the Imperial troops; where he was exposed, almost
at the same instant, to a general attack in the front, on his flanks,
and in the rear. In this bloody action, at a small distance from the
walls of Verona, the loss of the Goths was not less heavy than that
which they had sustained in the defeat of Pollentia; and their valiant
king, who escaped by the swiftness of his horse, must either have been
slain or made prisoner, if the hasty rashness of the Alani had not
disappointed the measures of the Roman general. Alaric secured the
remains of his army on the adjacent rocks; and prepared himself, with
undaunted resolution, to maintain a siege against the superior numbers
of the enemy, who invested him on all sides. But he could not oppose the
destructive progress of hunger and disease; nor was it possible for
him to check the continual desertion of his impatient and capricious
Barbarians. In this extremity he still found resources in his own
courage, or in the moderation of his adversary; and the retreat of the
Gothic king was considered as the deliverance of Italy. [51] Yet the
people, and even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgment
of the business of peace and war, presumed to arraign the policy of
Stilicho, who so often vanquished, so often surrounded, and so often
dismissed the implacable enemy of the republic. The first momen of
the public safety is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is
diligently occupied by envy and calumny. [52]

[Footnote 49: Claudian and Prudentius must be strictly examined, to
reduce the figures, and extort the historic sense, of those poets.]

[Footnote 50:

     Et gravant en airain ses freles avantages
     De mes etats conquis enchainer les images.

The practice of exposing in triumph the images of kings and provinces
was familiar to the Romans. The bust of Mithridates himself was twelve
feet high, of massy gold, (Freinshem. Supplement. Livian. ciii. 47.)]

[Footnote 51: The Getic war, and the sixth consulship of Honorius,
obscurely connect the events of Alaric's retreat and losses.]

[Footnote 52: Taceo de Alarico... saepe visto, saepe concluso, semperque
dimisso. Orosius, l. vii. c. 37, p. 567. Claudian (vi. Cons. Hon. 320)
drops the curtain with a fine image.]

The citizens of Rome had been astonished by the approach of Alaric;
and the diligence with which they labored to restore the walls of the
capital, confessed their own fears, and the decline of the empire.
After the retreat of the Barbarians, Honorius was directed to accept
the dutiful invitation of the senate, and to celebrate, in the Imperial
city, the auspicious aera of the Gothic victory, and of his sixth
consulship. [53] The suburbs and the streets, from the Milvian bridge to
the Palatine mount, were filled by the Roman people, who, in the space
of a hundred years, had only thrice been honored with the presence
of their sovereigns. While their eyes were fixed on the chariot where
Stilicho was deservedly seated by the side of his royal pupil, they
applauded the pomp of a triumph, which was not stained, like that of
Constantine, or of Theodosius, with civil blood. The procession passed
under a lofty arch, which had been purposely erected: but in less than
seven years, the Gothic conquerors of Rome might read, if they were able
to read, the superb inscription of that monument, which attested the
total defeat and destruction of their nation. [54] The emperor resided
several months in the capital, and every part of his behavior was
regulated with care to conciliate the affection of the clergy, the
senate, and the people of Rome. The clergy was edified by his frequent
visits and liberal gifts to the shrines of the apostles. The senate,
who, in the triumphal procession, had been excused from the humiliating
ceremony of preceding on foot the Imperial chariot, was treated with the
decent reverence which Stilicho always affected for that assembly.
The people was repeatedly gratified by the attention and courtesy of
Honorius in the public games, which were celebrated on that occasion
with a magnificence not unworthy of the spectator. As soon as the
appointed number of chariot-races was concluded, the decoration of
the Circus was suddenly changed; the hunting of wild beasts afforded
a various and splendid entertainment; and the chase was succeeded by a
military dance, which seems, in the lively description of Claudian, to
present the image of a modern tournament.

[Footnote 53: The remainder of Claudian's poem on the sixth consulship
of Honorius, describes the journey, the triumph, and the games,
(330-660.)]

[Footnote 54: See the inscription in Mascou's History of the Ancient
Germans, viii. 12. The words are positive and indiscreet: Getarum
nationem in omne aevum domitam, &c.]

In these games of Honorius, the inhuman combats of gladiators [55]
polluted, for the last time, the amphitheater of Rome. The first
Christian emperor may claim the honor of the first edict which condemned
the art and amusement of shedding human blood; [56] but this benevolent
law expressed the wishes of the prince, without reforming an inveterate
abuse, which degraded a civilized nation below the condition of savage
cannibals. Several hundred, perhaps several thousand, victims were
annually slaughtered in the great cities of the empire; and the month
of December, more peculiarly devoted to the combats of gladiators, still
exhibited to the eyes of the Roman people a grateful spectacle of blood
and cruelty. Amidst the general joy of the victory of Pollentia, a
Christian poet exhorted the emperor to extirpate, by his authority,
the horrid custom which had so long resisted the voice of humanity and
religion. [57] The pathetic representations of Prudentius were less
effectual than the generous boldness of Telemachus, and Asiatic monk,
whose death was more useful to mankind than his life. [58] The Romans
were provoked by the interruption of their pleasures; and the rash
monk, who had descended into the arena to separate the gladiators, was
overwhelmed under a shower of stones. But the madness of the people soon
subsided; they respected the memory of Telemachus, who had deserved the
honors of martyrdom; and they submitted, without a murmur, to the
laws of Honorius, which abolished forever the human sacrifices of the
amphitheater. [5811] The citizens, who adhered to the manners of their
ancestors, might perhaps insinuate that the last remains of a martial
spirit were preserved in this school of fortitude, which accustomed the
Romans to the sight of blood, and to the contempt of death; a vain and
cruel prejudice, so nobly confuted by the valor of ancient Greece, and
of modern Europe! [59]

[Footnote 55: On the curious, though horrid, subject of the gladiators,
consult the two books of the Saturnalia of Lipsius, who, as an
antiquarian, is inclined to excuse the practice of antiquity, (tom. iii.
p. 483-545.)]

[Footnote 56: Cod. Theodos. l. xv. tit. xii. leg. i. The Commentary of
Godefroy affords large materials (tom. v. p. 396) for the history of
gladiators.]

[Footnote 57: See the peroration of Prudentius (in Symmach. l. ii.
1121-1131) who had doubtless read the eloquent invective of Lactantius,
(Divin. Institut. l. vi. c. 20.) The Christian apologists have not
spared these bloody games, which were introduced in the religious
festivals of Paganism.]

[Footnote 58: Theodoret, l. v. c. 26. I wish to believe the story of St.
Telemachus. Yet no church has been dedicated, no altar has been erected,
to the only monk who died a martyr in the cause of humanity.]

[Footnote 5811: Muller, in his valuable Treatise, de Genio, moribus et
luxu aevi Theodosiani, is disposed to question the effect produced by
the heroic, or rather saintly, death of Telemachus. No prohibitory law
of Honorius is to be found in the Theodosian Code, only the old and
imperfect edict of Constantine. But Muller has produced no evidence or
allusion to gladiatorial shows after this period. The combats with wild
beasts certainly lasted till the fall of the Western empire; but the
gladiatorial combats ceased either by common consent, or by Imperial
edict.--M.]

[Footnote 59: Crudele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnullis
videri solet, et haud scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit. Cicero Tusculan. ii.
17. He faintly censures the abuse, and warmly defends the use, of these
sports; oculis nulla poterat esse fortior contra dolorem et mortem
disciplina. Seneca (epist. vii.) shows the feelings of a man.]

The recent danger, to which the person of the emperor had been exposed
in the defenceless palace of Milan, urged him to seek a retreat in some
inaccessible fortress of Italy, where he might securely remain, while
the open country was covered by a deluge of Barbarians. On the coast of
the Adriatic, about ten or twelve miles from the most southern of the
seven mouths of the Po, the Thessalians had founded the ancient colony
of Ravenna, [60] which they afterwards resigned to the natives of
Umbria. Augustus, who had observed the opportunity of the place,
prepared, at the distance of three miles from the old town, a capacious
harbor, for the reception of two hundred and fifty ships of war. This
naval establishment, which included the arsenals and magazines, the
barracks of the troops, and the houses of the artificers, derived its
origin and name from the permanent station of the Roman fleet; the
intermediate space was soon filled with buildings and inhabitants,
and the three extensive and populous quarters of Ravenna gradually
contributed to form one of the most important cities of Italy. The
principal canal of Augustus poured a copious stream of the waters of
the Po through the midst of the city, to the entrance of the harbor; the
same waters were introduced into the profound ditches that encompassed
the walls; they were distributed by a thousand subordinate canals,
into every part of the city, which they divided into a variety of small
islands; the communication was maintained only by the use of boats and
bridges; and the houses of Ravenna, whose appearance may be compared
to that of Venice, were raised on the foundation of wooden piles.
The adjacent country, to the distance of many miles, was a deep and
impassable morass; and the artificial causeway, which connected Ravenna
with the continent, might be easily guarded or destroyed, on the
approach of a hostile army These morasses were interspersed, however,
with vineyards: and though the soil was exhausted by four or five crops,
the town enjoyed a more plentiful supply of wine than of fresh water.
[61] The air, instead of receiving the sickly, and almost pestilential,
exhalations of low and marshy grounds, was distinguished, like the
neighborhood of Alexandria, as uncommonly pure and salubrious; and this
singular advantage was ascribed to the regular tides of the Adriatic,
which swept the canals, interrupted the unwholesome stagnation of the
waters, and floated, every day, the vessels of the adjacent country into
the heart of Ravenna. The gradual retreat of the sea has left the modern
city at the distance of four miles from the Adriatic; and as early as
the fifth or sixth century of the Christian aera, the port of Augustus
was converted into pleasant orchards; and a lonely grove of pines
covered the ground where the Roman fleet once rode at anchor. [62] Even
this alteration contributed to increase the natural strength of the
place, and the shallowness of the water was a sufficient barrier against
the large ships of the enemy. This advantageous situation was fortified
by art and labor; and in the twentieth year of his age, the emperor of
the West, anxious only for his personal safety, retired to the perpetual
confinement of the walls and morasses of Ravenna. The example of
Honorius was imitated by his feeble successors, the Gothic kings,
and afterwards the Exarchs, who occupied the throne and palace of
the emperors; and till the middle of the eight century, Ravenna was
considered as the seat of government, and the capital of Italy. [63]

[Footnote 60: This account of Ravenna is drawn from Strabo, (l. v. p.
327,) Pliny, (iii. 20,) Stephen of Byzantium, (sub voce, p. 651, edit.
Berkel,) Claudian, (in vi. Cons. Honor. 494, &c.,) Sidonius Apollinaris,
(l. i. epist. 5, 8,) Jornandes, (de Reb. Get. c. 29,) Procopius (de
Bell, (lothic, l. i. c. i. p. 309, edit. Louvre,) and Cluverius, (Ital.
Antiq tom i. p. 301-307.) Yet I still want a local antiquarian and a
good topographical map.]

[Footnote 61: Martial (Epigram iii. 56, 57) plays on the trick of the
knave, who had sold him wine instead of water; but he seriously declares
that a cistern at Ravenna is more valuable than a vineyard. Sidonius
complains that the town is destitute of fountains and aqueducts;
and ranks the want of fresh water among the local evils, such as the
croaking of frogs, the stinging of gnats, &c.]

[Footnote 62: The fable of Theodore and Honoria, which Dryden has so
admirably transplanted from Boccaccio, (Giornata iii. novell. viii.,)
was acted in the wood of Chiassi, a corrupt word from Classis, the naval
station which, with the intermediate road, or suburb the Via Caesaris,
constituted the triple city of Ravenna.]

[Footnote 63: From the year 404, the dates of the Theodosian Code become
sedentary at Constantinople and Ravenna. See Godefroy's Chronology of
the Laws, tom. i. p. cxlviii., &c.]

The fears of Honorius were not without foundation, nor were his
precautions without effect. While Italy rejoiced in her deliverance from
the Goths, a furious tempest was excited among the nations of Germany,
who yielded to the irresistible impulse that appears to have been
gradually communicated from the eastern extremity of the continent of
Asia. The Chinese annals, as they have been interpreted by the earned
industry of the present age, may be usefully applied to reveal the
secret and remote causes of the fall of the Roman empire. The extensive
territory to the north of the great wall was possessed, after the flight
of the Huns, by the victorious Sienpi, who were sometimes broken into
independent tribes, and sometimes reunited under a supreme chief;
till at length, styling themselves Topa, or masters of the earth, they
acquired a more solid consistence, and a more formidable power. The Topa
soon compelled the pastoral nations of the eastern desert to acknowledge
the superiority of their arms; they invaded China in a period of
weakness and intestine discord; and these fortunate Tartars, adopting
the laws and manners of the vanquished people, founded an Imperial
dynasty, which reigned near one hundred and sixty years over the
northern provinces of the monarchy. Some generations before they
ascended the throne of China, one of the Topa princes had enlisted in
his cavalry a slave of the name of Moko, renowned for his valor, but who
was tempted, by the fear of punishment, to desert his standard, and
to range the desert at the head of a hundred followers. This gang of
robbers and outlaws swelled into a camp, a tribe, a numerous people,
distinguished by the appellation of Geougen; and their hereditary
chieftains, the posterity of Moko the slave, assumed their rank
among the Scythian monarchs. The youth of Toulun, the greatest of his
descendants, was exercised by those misfortunes which are the school of
heroes. He bravely struggled with adversity, broke the imperious yoke of
the Topa, and became the legislator of his nation, and the conqueror of
Tartary. His troops were distributed into regular bands of a hundred
and of a thousand men; cowards were stoned to death; the most splendid
honors were proposed as the reward of valor; and Toulun, who had
knowledge enough to despise the learning of China, adopted only such
arts and institutions as were favorable to the military spirit of his
government. His tents, which he removed in the winter season to a more
southern latitude, were pitched, during the summer, on the fruitful
banks of the Selinga. His conquests stretched from Corea far beyond the
River Irtish. He vanquished, in the country to the north of the Caspian
Sea, the nation of the Huns; and the new title of Khan, or Cagan,
expressed the fame and power which he derived from this memorable
victory. [64]

[Footnote 64: See M. de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 179-189, tom
ii p. 295, 334-338.]

The chain of events is interrupted, or rather is concealed, as it passes
from the Volga to the Vistula, through the dark interval which separates
the extreme limits of the Chinese, and of the Roman, geography. Yet the
temper of the Barbarians, and the experience of successive emigrations,
sufficiently declare, that the Huns, who were oppressed by the arms of
the Geougen, soon withdrew from the presence of an insulting victor.
The countries towards the Euxine were already occupied by their kindred
tribes; and their hasty flight, which they soon converted into a bold
attack, would more naturally be directed towards the rich and level
plains, through which the Vistula gently flows into the Baltic Sea. The
North must again have been alarmed, and agitated, by the invasion of the
Huns; [6411] and the nations who retreated before them must have pressed
with incumbent weight on the confines of Germany. [65] The inhabitants
of those regions, which the ancients have assigned to the Suevi, the
Vandals, and the Burgundians, might embrace the resolution of abandoning
to the fugitives of Sarmatia their woods and morasses; or at least of
discharging their superfluous numbers on the provinces of the Roman
empire. [66] About four years after the victorious Toulun had assumed
the title of Khan of the Geougen, another Barbarian, the haughty
Rhodogast, or Radagaisus, [67] marched from the northern extremities of
Germany almost to the gates of Rome, and left the remains of his army
to achieve the destruction of the West. The Vandals, the Suevi, and the
Burgundians, formed the strength of this mighty host; but the Alani, who
had found a hospitable reception in their new seats, added their active
cavalry to the heavy infantry of the Germans; and the Gothic adventurers
crowded so eagerly to the standard of Radagaisus, that by some
historians, he has been styled the King of the Goths. Twelve thousand
warriors, distinguished above the vulgar by their noble birth, or their
valiant deeds, glittered in the van; [68] and the whole multitude, which
was not less than two hundred thousand fighting men, might be increased,
by the accession of women, of children, and of slaves, to the amount of
four hundred thousand persons. This formidable emigration issued from
the same coast of the Baltic, which had poured forth the myriads of
the Cimbri and Teutones, to assault Rome and Italy in the vigor of the
republic. After the departure of those Barbarians, their native country,
which was marked by the vestiges of their greatness, long ramparts,
and gigantic moles, [69] remained, during some ages, a vast and
dreary solitude; till the human species was renewed by the powers of
generation, and the vacancy was filled by the influx of new inhabitants.
The nations who now usurp an extent of land which they are unable to
cultivate, would soon be assisted by the industrious poverty of their
neighbors, if the government of Europe did not protect the claims of
dominion and property.

[Footnote 6411: There is no authority which connects this inroad of the
Teutonic tribes with the movements of the Huns. The Huns can hardly have
reached the shores of the Baltic, and probably the greater part of the
forces of Radagaisus, particularly the Vandals, had long occupied a more
southern position.--M.]

[Footnote 65: Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. iii. p. 182) has
observed an emigration from the Palus Maeotis to the north of Germany,
which he ascribes to famine. But his views of ancient history are
strangely darkened by ignorance and error.]

[Footnote 66: Zosimus (l. v. p. 331) uses the general description of
the nations beyond the Danube and the Rhine. Their situation, and
consequently their names, are manifestly shown, even in the various
epithets which each ancient writer may have casually added.]

[Footnote 67: The name of Rhadagast was that of a local deity of
the Obotrites, (in Mecklenburg.) A hero might naturally assume the
appellation of his tutelar god; but it is not probable that the
Barbarians should worship an unsuccessful hero. See Mascou, Hist. of the
Germans, viii. 14. * Note: The god of war and of hospitality with the
Vends and all the Sclavonian races of Germany bore the name of Radegast,
apparently the same with Rhadagaisus. His principal temple was at Rhetra
in Mecklenburg. It was adorned with great magnificence. The statue of
the gold was of gold. St. Martin, v. 255. A statue of Radegast, of much
coarser materials, and of the rudest workmanship, was discovered between
1760 and 1770, with those of other Wendish deities, on the supposed site
of Rhetra. The names of the gods were cut upon them in Runic characters.
See the very curious volume on these antiquities--Die Gottesdienstliche
Alterthumer der Obotriter--Masch and Wogen. Berlin, 1771.--M.]

[Footnote 68: Olympiodorus (apud Photium, p. 180), uses the Greek word
which does not convey any precise idea. I suspect that they were the
princes and nobles with their faithful companions; the knights
with their squires, as they would have been styled some centuries
afterwards.]

[Footnote 69: Tacit. de Moribus Germanorum, c. 37.]




Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths.--Part IV.

The correspondence of nations was, in that age, so imperfect and
precarious, that the revolutions of the North might escape the knowledge
of the court of Ravenna; till the dark cloud, which was collected along
the coast of the Baltic, burst in thunder upon the banks of the
Upper Danube. The emperor of the West, if his ministers disturbed his
amusements by the news of the impending danger, was satisfied with being
the occasion, and the spectator, of the war. [70] The safety of Rome was
intrusted to the counsels, and the sword, of Stilicho; but such was
the feeble and exhausted state of the empire, that it was impossible to
restore the fortifications of the Danube, or to prevent, by a vigorous
effort, the invasion of the Germans. [71] The hopes of the vigilant
minister of Honorius were confined to the defence of Italy. He once more
abandoned the provinces, recalled the troops, pressed the new levies,
which were rigorously exacted, and pusillanimously eluded; employed the
most efficacious means to arrest, or allure, the deserters; and offered
the gift of freedom, and of two pieces of gold, to all the slaves who
would enlist. [72] By these efforts he painfully collected, from the
subjects of a great empire, an army of thirty or forty thousand men,
which, in the days of Scipio or Camillus, would have been instantly
furnished by the free citizens of the territory of Rome. [73] The
thirty legions of Stilicho were reenforced by a large body of Barbarian
auxiliaries; the faithful Alani were personally attached to his service;
and the troops of Huns and of Goths, who marched under the banners of
their native princes, Huldin and Sarus, were animated by interest
and resentment to oppose the ambition of Radagaisus. The king of the
confederate Germans passed, without resistance, the Alps, the Po, and
the Apennine; leaving on one hand the inaccessible palace of Honorius,
securely buried among the marshes of Ravenna; and, on the other, the
camp of Stilicho, who had fixed his head-quarters at Ticinum, or Pavia,
but who seems to have avoided a decisive battle, till he had assembled
his distant forces. Many cities of Italy were pillaged, or destroyed;
and the siege of Florence, [74] by Radagaisus, is one of the earliest
events in the history of that celebrated republic; whose firmness
checked and delayed the unskillful fury of the Barbarians. The senate
and people trembled at their approached within a hundred and eighty
miles of Rome; and anxiously compared the danger which they had escaped,
with the new perils to which they were exposed. Alaric was a Christian
and a soldier, the leader of a disciplined army; who understood the laws
of war, who respected the sanctity of treaties, and who had familiarly
conversed with the subjects of the empire in the same camps, and the
same churches. The savage Radagaisus was a stranger to the manners, the
religion, and even the language, of the civilized nations of the South.
The fierceness of his temper was exasperated by cruel superstition; and
it was universally believed, that he had bound himself, by a solemn vow,
to reduce the city into a heap of stones and ashes, and to sacrifice the
most illustrious of the Roman senators on the altars of those gods
who were appeased by human blood. The public danger, which should have
reconciled all domestic animosities, displayed the incurable madness
of religious faction. The oppressed votaries of Jupiter and Mercury
respected, in the implacable enemy of Rome, the character of a devout
Pagan; loudly declared, that they were more apprehensive of the
sacrifices, than of the arms, of Radagaisus; and secretly rejoiced in
the calamities of their country, which condemned the faith of their
Christian adversaries. [75] [7511]

[Footnote 70:

     Cujus agendi
     Spectator vel causa fui,
    ---(Claudian, vi. Cons. Hon. 439,)

is the modest language of Honorius, in speaking of the Gothic war, which
he had seen somewhat nearer.]

[Footnote 71: Zosimus (l. v. p. 331) transports the war, and the victory
of Stilisho, beyond the Danube. A strange error, which is awkwardly and
imperfectly cured (Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 807.) In
good policy, we must use the service of Zosimus, without esteeming or
trusting him.]

[Footnote 72: Codex Theodos. l. vii. tit. xiii. leg. 16. The date of
this law A.D. 406. May 18 satisfies me, as it had done Godefroy, (tom.
ii. p. 387,) of the true year of the invasion of Radagaisus. Tillemont,
Pagi, and Muratori, prefer the preceding year; but they are bound, by
certain obligations of civility and respect, to St. Paulinus of Nola.]

[Footnote 73: Soon after Rome had been taken by the Gauls, the senate,
on a sudden emergency, armed ten legions, 3000 horse, and 42,000 foot;
a force which the city could not have sent forth under Augustus, (Livy,
xi. 25.) This declaration may puzzle an antiquary, but it is clearly
explained by Montesquieu.]

[Footnote 74: Machiavel has explained, at least as a philosopher, the
origin of Florence, which insensibly descended, for the benefit of
trade, from the rock of Faesulae to the banks of the Arno, (Istoria
Fiorentina, tom. i. p. 36. Londra, 1747.) The triumvirs sent a colony
to Florence, which, under Tiberius, (Tacit. Annal. i. 79,) deserved the
reputation and name of a flourishing city. See Cluver. Ital. Antiq. tom.
i. p. 507, &c.]

[Footnote 75: Yet the Jupiter of Radagaisus, who worshipped Thor and
Woden, was very different from the Olympic or Capitoline Jove. The
accommodating temper of Polytheism might unite those various and remote
deities; but the genuine Romans ahhorred the human sacrifices of Gaul
and Germany.]

[Footnote 7511: Gibbon has rather softened the language of Augustine as
to this threatened insurrection of the Pagans, in order to restore the
prohibited rites and ceremonies of Paganism; and their treasonable hopes
that the success of Radagaisus would be the triumph of idolatry. Compare
ii. 25--M.]

Florence was reduced to the last extremity; and the fainting courage of
the citizens was supported only by the authority of St. Ambrose; who had
communicated, in a dream, the promise of a speedy deliverance. [76] On
a sudden, they beheld, from their walls, the banners of Stilicho, who
advanced, with his united force, to the relief of the faithful city; and
who soon marked that fatal spot for the grave of the Barbarian host. The
apparent contradictions of those writers who variously relate the defeat
of Radagaisus, may be reconciled without offering much violence to
their respective testimonies. Orosius and Augustin, who were intimately
connected by friendship and religion, ascribed this miraculous victory
to the providence of God, rather than to the valor of man. [77] They
strictly exclude every idea of chance, or even of bloodshed; and
positively affirm, that the Romans, whose camp was the scene of plenty
and idleness, enjoyed the distress of the Barbarians, slowly expiring
on the sharp and barren ridge of the hills of Faesulae, which rise above
the city of Florence. Their extravagant assertion that not a single
soldier of the Christian army was killed, or even wounded, may be
dismissed with silent contempt; but the rest of the narrative of
Augustin and Orosius is consistent with the state of the war, and the
character of Stilicho. Conscious that he commanded the last army of the
republic, his prudence would not expose it, in the open field, to the
headstrong fury of the Germans. The method of surrounding the enemy with
strong lines of circumvallation, which he had twice employed against the
Gothic king, was repeated on a larger scale, and with more considerable
effect. The examples of Caesar must have been familiar to the most
illiterate of the Roman warriors; and the fortifications of Dyrrachium,
which connected twenty-four castles, by a perpetual ditch and rampart
of fifteen miles, afforded the model of an intrenchment which might
confine, and starve, the most numerous host of Barbarians. [78] The
Roman troops had less degenerated from the industry, than from the
valor, of their ancestors; and if their servile and laborious work
offended the pride of the soldiers, Tuscany could supply many thousand
peasants, who would labor, though, perhaps, they would not fight, for
the salvation of their native country. The imprisoned multitude of
horses and men [79] was gradually destroyed, by famine rather than by
the sword; but the Romans were exposed, during the progress of such
an extensive work, to the frequent attacks of an impatient enemy. The
despair of the hungry Barbarians would precipitate them against the
fortifications of Stilicho; the general might sometimes indulge the
ardor of his brave auxiliaries, who eagerly pressed to assault the camp
of the Germans; and these various incidents might produce the sharp
and bloody conflicts which dignify the narrative of Zosimus, and the
Chronicles of Prosper and Marcellinus. [80] A seasonable supply of men
and provisions had been introduced into the walls of Florence, and the
famished host of Radagaisus was in its turn besieged. The proud monarch
of so many warlike nations, after the loss of his bravest warriors,
was reduced to confide either in the faith of a capitulation, or in the
clemency of Stilicho. [81] But the death of the royal captive, who
was ignominiously beheaded, disgraced the triumph of Rome and of
Christianity; and the short delay of his execution was sufficient to
brand the conqueror with the guilt of cool and deliberate cruelty. [82]
The famished Germans, who escaped the fury of the auxiliaries, were sold
as slaves, at the contemptible price of as many single pieces of gold;
but the difference of food and climate swept away great numbers of those
unhappy strangers; and it was observed, that the inhuman purchasers,
instead of reaping the fruits of their labor were soon obliged to
provide the expense of their interment Stilicho informed the emperor
and the senate of his success; and deserved, a second time, the glorious
title of Deliverer of Italy. [83]

[Footnote 76: Paulinus (in Vit. Ambros c. 50) relates this story, which
he received from the mouth of Pansophia herself, a religious matron of
Florence. Yet the archbishop soon ceased to take an active part in the
business of the world, and never became a popular saint.]

[Footnote 77: Augustin de Civitat. Dei, v. 23. Orosius, l. vii. c. 37,
p. 567-571. The two friends wrote in Africa, ten or twelve years after
the victory; and their authority is implicitly followed by Isidore of
Seville, (in Chron. p. 713, edit. Grot.) How many interesting facts
might Orosius have inserted in the vacant space which is devoted to
pious nonsense!]

[Footnote 78:

     Franguntur montes, planumque per ardua Caesar
     Ducit opus: pandit fossas, turritaque summis
     Disponit castella jugis, magnoque necessu
     Amplexus fines, saltus, memorosaque tesqua
     Et silvas, vastaque feras indagine claudit.!

Yet the simplicity of truth (Caesar, de Bell. Civ. iii. 44) is far
greater than the amplifications of Lucan, (Pharsal. l. vi. 29-63.)]

[Footnote 79: The rhetorical expressions of Orosius, "in arido et aspero
montis jugo;" "in unum ac parvum verticem," are not very suitable to
the encampment of a great army. But Faesulae, only three miles from
Florence, might afford space for the head-quarters of Radagaisus, and
would be comprehended within the circuit of the Roman lines.]

[Footnote 80: See Zosimus, l. v. p. 331, and the Chronicles of Prosper
and Marcellinus.]

[Footnote 81: Olympiodorus (apud Photium, p. 180) uses an expression
which would denote a strict and friendly alliance, and render Stilicho
still more criminal. The paulisper detentus, deinde interfectus, of
Orosius, is sufficiently odious. * Note: Gibbon, by translating this
passage of Olympiodorus, as if it had been good Greek, has probably
fallen into an error. The natural order of the words is as Gibbon
translates it; but it is almost clear, refers to the Gothic chiefs,
"whom Stilicho, after he had defeated Radagaisus, attached to his army."
So in the version corrected by Classen for Niebuhr's edition of the
Byzantines, p. 450.--M.]

[Footnote 82: Orosius, piously inhuman, sacrifices the king and people,
Agag and the Amalekites, without a symptom of compassion. The bloody
actor is less detestable than the cool, unfeeling historian.----Note:
Considering the vow, which he was universally believed to have made, to
destroy Rome, and to sacrifice the senators on the altars, and that he
is said to have immolated his prisoners to his gods, the execution of
Radagaisus, if, as it appears, he was taken in arms, cannot deserve
Gibbon's severe condemnation. Mr. Herbert (notes to his poem of Attila,
p. 317) justly observes, that "Stilicho had probably authority for
hanging him on the first tree." Marcellinus, adds Mr. Herbert,
attributes the execution to the Gothic chiefs Sarus.--M.]

[Footnote 83: And Claudian's muse, was she asleep? had she been ill
paid! Methinks the seventh consulship of Honorius (A.D. 407) would have
furnished the subject of a noble poem. Before it was discovered that the
state could no longer be saved, Stilicho (after Romulus, Camillus and
Marius) might have been worthily surnamed the fourth founder of Rome.]

The fame of the victory, and more especially of the miracle, has
encouraged a vain persuasion, that the whole army, or rather nation, of
Germans, who migrated from the shores of the Baltic, miserably perished
under the walls of Florence. Such indeed was the fate of Radagaisus
himself, of his brave and faithful companions, and of more than one
third of the various multitude of Sueves and Vandals, of Alani and
Burgundians, who adhered to the standard of their general. [84] The
union of such an army might excite our surprise, but the causes of
separation are obvious and forcible; the pride of birth, the insolence
of valor, the jealousy of command, the impatience of subordination, and
the obstinate conflict of opinions, of interests, and of passions, among
so many kings and warriors, who were untaught to yield, or to obey.
After the defeat of Radagaisus, two parts of the German host, which must
have exceeded the number of one hundred thousand men, still remained
in arms, between the Apennine and the Alps, or between the Alps and the
Danube. It is uncertain whether they attempted to revenge the death
of their general; but their irregular fury was soon diverted by
the prudence and firmness of Stilicho, who opposed their march, and
facilitated their retreat; who considered the safety of Rome and Italy
as the great object of his care, and who sacrificed, with too much
indifference, the wealth and tranquillity of the distant provinces. [85]
The Barbarians acquired, from the junction of some Pannonian deserters,
the knowledge of the country, and of the roads; and the invasion of
Gaul, which Alaric had designed, was executed by the remains of the
great army of Radagaisus. [86]

[Footnote 84: A luminous passage of Prosper's Chronicle, "In tres
partes, pes diversos principes, diversus exercitus," reduces the miracle
of Florence and connects the history of Italy, Gaul, and Germany.]

[Footnote 85: Orosius and Jerom positively charge him with instigating
the in vasion. "Excitatae a Stilichone gentes," &c. They must mean a
directly. He saved Italy at the expense of Gaul]

[Footnote 86: The Count de Buat is satisfied, that the Germans who
invaded Gaul were the two thirds that yet remained of the army of
Radagaisus. See the Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Europe, (tom.
vii. p. 87, 121. Paris, 1772;) an elaborate work, which I had not the
advantage of perusing till the year 1777. As early as 1771, I find the
same idea expressed in a rough draught of the present History. I
have since observed a similar intimation in Mascou, (viii. 15.) Such
agreement, without mutual communication, may add some weight to our
common sentiment.]

Yet if they expected to derive any assistance from the tribes of
Germany, who inhabited the banks of the Rhine, their hopes were
disappointed. The Alemanni preserved a state of inactive neutrality; and
the Franks distinguished their zeal and courage in the defence of the
of the empire. In the rapid progress down the Rhine, which was the first
act of the administration of Stilicho, he had applied himself, with
peculiar attention, to secure the alliance of the warlike Franks, and
to remove the irreconcilable enemies of peace and of the republic.
Marcomir, one of their kings, was publicly convicted, before the
tribunal of the Roman magistrate, of violating the faith of treaties. He
was sentenced to a mild, but distant exile, in the province of Tuscany;
and this degradation of the regal dignity was so far from exciting the
resentment of his subjects, that they punished with death the turbulent
Sunno, who attempted to revenge his brother; and maintained a dutiful
allegiance to the princes, who were established on the throne by the
choice of Stilicho. [87] When the limits of Gaul and Germany were shaken
by the northern emigration, the Franks bravely encountered the single
force of the Vandals; who, regardless of the lessons of adversity,
had again separated their troops from the standard of their Barbarian
allies. They paid the penalty of their rashness; and twenty thousand
Vandals, with their king Godigisclus, were slain in the field of battle.
The whole people must have been extirpated, if the squadrons of the
Alani, advancing to their relief, had not trampled down the infantry
of the Franks; who, after an honorable resistance, were compelled to
relinquish the unequal contest. The victorious confederates pursued
their march, and on the last day of the year, in a season when the
waters of the Rhine were most probably frozen, they entered, without
opposition, the defenceless provinces of Gaul. This memorable passage
of the Suevi, the Vandals, the Alani, and the Burgundians, who never
afterwards retreated, may be considered as the fall of the Roman empire
in the countries beyond the Alps; and the barriers, which had so long
separated the savage and the civilized nations of the earth, were from
that fatal moment levelled with the ground. [88]

[Footnote 87:

     Provincia missos
     Expellet citius fasces, quam Francia reges
     Quos dederis.

Claudian (i. Cons. Stil. l. i. 235, &c.) is clear and satisfactory.
These kings of France are unknown to Gregory of Tours; but the author
of the Gesta Francorum mentions both Sunno and Marcomir, and names the
latter as the father of Pharamond, (in tom. ii. p. 543.) He seems to
write from good materials, which he did not understand.]

[Footnote 88: See Zosimus, (l. vi. p. 373,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 40, p.
576,) and the Chronicles. Gregory of Tours (l. ii. c. 9, p. 165, in
the second volume of the Historians of France) has preserved a valuable
fragment of Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, whose three names denote a
Christian, a Roman subject, and a Semi-Barbarian.]

While the peace of Germany was secured by the attachment of the Franks,
and the neutrality of the Alemanni, the subjects of Rome, unconscious of
their approaching calamities, enjoyed the state of quiet and prosperity,
which had seldom blessed the frontiers of Gaul. Their flocks and
herds were permitted to graze in the pastures of the Barbarians; their
huntsmen penetrated, without fear or danger, into the darkest recesses
of the Hercynian wood. [89] The banks of the Rhine were crowned, like
those of the Tyber, with elegant houses, and well-cultivated farms; and
if a poet descended the river, he might express his doubt, on which side
was situated the territory of the Romans. [90] This scene of peace
and plenty was suddenly changed into a desert; and the prospect of the
smoking ruins could alone distinguish the solitude of nature from the
desolation of man. The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and
destroyed; and many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the
church. Worms perished after a long and obstinate siege; Strasburgh,
Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression
of the German yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the
banks of the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of
Gaul. That rich and extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps,
and the Pyrenees, was delivered to the Barbarians, who drove before
them, in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the
virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars. [91] The
ecclesiastics, to whom we are indebted for this vague description of the
public calamities, embraced the opportunity of exhorting the Christians
to repent of the sins which had provoked the Divine Justice, and to
renounce the perishable goods of a wretched and deceitful world. But
as the Pelagian controversy, [92] which attempts to sound the abyss
of grace and predestination, soon became the serious employment of
the Latin clergy, the Providence which had decreed, or foreseen, or
permitted, such a train of moral and natural evils, was rashly weighed
in the imperfect and fallacious balance of reason. The crimes, and the
misfortunes, of the suffering people, were presumptuously compared with
those of their ancestors; and they arraigned the Divine Justice, which
did not exempt from the common destruction the feeble, the guiltless,
the infant portion of the human species. These idle disputants
overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace
with innocence, plenty with industry, and safety with valor. The timid
and selfish policy of the court of Ravenna might recall the Palatine
legions for the protection of Italy; the remains of the stationary
troops might be unequal to the arduous task; and the Barbarian
auxiliaries might prefer the unbounded license of spoil to the benefits
of a moderate and regular stipend. But the provinces of Gaul were filled
with a numerous race of hardy and robust youth, who, in the defence of
their houses, their families, and their altars, if they had dared to
die, would have deserved to vanquish. The knowledge of their native
country would have enabled them to oppose continual and insuperable
obstacles to the progress of an invader; and the deficiency of the
Barbarians, in arms, as well as in discipline, removed the only pretence
which excuses the submission of a populous country to the inferior
numbers of a veteran army. When France was invaded by Charles V., he
inquired of a prisoner, how many days Paris might be distant from the
frontier; "Perhaps twelve, but they will be days of battle:" [93] such
was the gallant answer which checked the arrogance of that ambitious
prince. The subjects of Honorius, and those of Francis I., were animated
by a very different spirit; and in less than two years, the divided
troops of the savages of the Baltic, whose numbers, were they fairly
stated, would appear contemptible, advanced, without a combat, to the
foot of the Pyrenean Mountains.

[Footnote 89: Claudian (i. Cons. Stil. l. i. 221, &c., l. ii. 186)
describes the peace and prosperity of the Gallic frontier. The Abbe
Dubos (Hist. Critique, &c., tom. i. p. 174) would read Alba (a nameless
rivulet of the Ardennes) instead of Albis; and expatiates on the
danger of the Gallic cattle grazing beyond the Elbe. Foolish enough! In
poetical geography, the Elbe, and the Hercynian, signify any river,
or any wood, in Germany. Claudian is not prepared for the strict
examination of our antiquaries.]

[Footnote 90:--Germinasque viator Cum videat ripas, quae sit Romana
requirat.]

[Footnote 91: Jerom, tom. i. p. 93. See in the 1st vol. of the
Historians of France, p. 777, 782, the proper extracts from the Carmen
de Providentil Divina, and Salvian. The anonymous poet was himself a
captive, with his bishop and fellow-citizens.]

[Footnote 92: The Pelagian doctrine, which was first agitated A.D.
405, was condemned, in the space of ten years, at Rome and Carthage. St
Augustin fought and conquered; but the Greek church was favorable to his
adversaries; and (what is singular enough) the people did not take any
part in a dispute which they could not understand.]

[Footnote 93: See the Memoires de Guillaume du Bellay, l. vi. In French,
the original reproof is less obvious, and more pointed, from the double
sense of the word journee, which alike signifies, a day's travel, or a
battle.]

In the early part of the reign of Honorius, the vigilance of Stilicho
had successfully guarded the remote island of Britain from her incessant
enemies of the ocean, the mountains, and the Irish coast. [94] But those
restless Barbarians could not neglect the fair opportunity of the Gothic
war, when the walls and stations of the province were stripped of the
Roman troops. If any of the legionaries were permitted to return from
the Italian expedition, their faithful report of the court and character
of Honorius must have tended to dissolve the bonds of allegiance, and
to exasperate the seditious temper of the British army. The spirit of
revolt, which had formerly disturbed the age of Gallienus, was revived
by the capricious violence of the soldiers; and the unfortunate, perhaps
the ambitious, candidates, who were the objects of their choice, were
the instruments, and at length the victims, of their passion. [95]
Marcus was the first whom they placed on the throne, as the lawful
emperor of Britain and of the West. They violated, by the hasty murder
of Marcus, the oath of fidelity which they had imposed on themselves;
and their disapprobation of his manners may seem to inscribe an
honorable epitaph on his tomb. Gratian was the next whom they adorned
with the diadem and the purple; and, at the end of four months, Gratian
experienced the fate of his predecessor. The memory of the great
Constantine, whom the British legions had given to the church and to
the empire, suggested the singular motive of their third choice. They
discovered in the ranks a private soldier of the name of Constantine,
and their impetuous levity had already seated him on the throne, before
they perceived his incapacity to sustain the weight of that glorious
appellation. [96] Yet the authority of Constantine was less precarious,
and his government was more successful, than the transient reigns of
Marcus and of Gratian. The danger of leaving his inactive troops in
those camps, which had been twice polluted with blood and sedition,
urged him to attempt the reduction of the Western provinces. He landed
at Boulogne with an inconsiderable force; and after he had reposed
himself some days, he summoned the cities of Gaul, which had escaped
the yoke of the Barbarians, to acknowledge their lawful sovereign.
They obeyed the summons without reluctance. The neglect of the court
of Ravenna had absolved a deserted people from the duty of allegiance;
their actual distress encouraged them to accept any circumstances of
change, without apprehension, and, perhaps, with some degree of hope;
and they might flatter themselves, that the troops, the authority, and
even the name of a Roman emperor, who fixed his residence in Gaul, would
protect the unhappy country from the rage of the Barbarians. The first
successes of Constantine against the detached parties of the Germans,
were magnified by the voice of adulation into splendid and decisive
victories; which the reunion and insolence of the enemy soon reduced
to their just value. His negotiations procured a short and precarious
truce; and if some tribes of the Barbarians were engaged, by the
liberality of his gifts and promises, to undertake the defence of the
Rhine, these expensive and uncertain treaties, instead of restoring
the pristine vigor of the Gallic frontier, served only to disgrace the
majesty of the prince, and to exhaust what yet remained of the treasures
of the republic. Elated, however, with this imaginary triumph, the vain
deliverer of Gaul advanced into the provinces of the South, to encounter
a more pressing and personal danger. Sarus the Goth was ordered to
lay the head of the rebel at the feet of the emperor Honorius; and the
forces of Britain and Italy were unworthily consumed in this domestic
quarrel. After the loss of his two bravest generals, Justinian and
Nevigastes, the former of whom was slain in the field of battle, the
latter in a peaceful but treacherous interview, Constantine fortified
himself within the walls of Vienna. The place was ineffectually attacked
seven days; and the Imperial army supported, in a precipitate retreat,
the ignominy of purchasing a secure passage from the freebooters and
outlaws of the Alps. [97] Those mountains now separated the dominions of
two rival monarchs; and the fortifications of the double frontier were
guarded by the troops of the empire, whose arms would have been more
usefully employed to maintain the Roman limits against the Barbarians of
Germany and Scythia.

[Footnote 94: Claudian, (i. Cons. Stil. l. ii. 250.) It is supposed
that the Scots of Ireland invaded, by sea, the whole western coast of
Britain: and some slight credit may be given even to Nennius and the
Irish traditions, (Carte's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 169.) Whitaker's
Genuine History of the Britons, p. 199. The sixty-six lives of St.
Patrick, which were extant in the ninth century, must have contained
as many thousand lies; yet we may believe, that, in one of these Irish
inroads the future apostle was led away captive, (Usher, Antiquit.
Eccles Britann. p. 431, and Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 45 782,
&c.)]

[Footnote 95: The British usurpers are taken from Zosimus, (l. vi. p.
371-375,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 40, p. 576, 577,) Olympiodorus,
(apud Photium, p. 180, 181,) the ecclesiastical historians, and the
Chronicles. The Latins are ignorant of Marcus.]

[Footnote 96: Cum in Constantino inconstantiam... execrarentur,
(Sidonius Apollinaris, l. v. epist. 9, p. 139, edit. secund. Sirmond.)
Yet Sidonius might be tempted, by so fair a pun, to stigmatize a prince
who had disgraced his grandfather.]

[Footnote 97: Bagaudoe is the name which Zosimus applies to them;
perhaps they deserved a less odious character, (see Dubos, Hist.
Critique, tom. i. p. 203, and this History, vol. i. p. 407.) We shall
hear of them again.]




Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths.--Part V.

On the side of the Pyrenees, the ambition of Constantine might
be justified by the proximity of danger; but his throne was soon
established by the conquest, or rather submission, of Spain; which
yielded to the influence of regular and habitual subordination, and
received the laws and magistrates of the Gallic praefecture. The only
opposition which was made to the authority of Constantine proceeded not
so much from the powers of government, or the spirit of the people, as
from the private zeal and interest of the family of Theodosius. Four
brothers [98] had obtained, by the favor of their kinsman, the deceased
emperor, an honorable rank and ample possessions in their native
country; and the grateful youths resolved to risk those advantages in
the service of his son. After an unsuccessful effort to maintain their
ground at the head of the stationary troops of Lusitania, they retired
to their estates; where they armed and levied, at their own expense, a
considerable body of slaves and dependants, and boldly marched to occupy
the strong posts of the Pyrenean Mountains. This domestic insurrection
alarmed and perplexed the sovereign of Gaul and Britain; and he was
compelled to negotiate with some troops of Barbarian auxiliaries, for
the service of the Spanish war. They were distinguished by the title of
Honorians; [99] a name which might have reminded them of their fidelity
to their lawful sovereign; and if it should candidly be allowed that the
Scots were influenced by any partial affection for a British prince, the
Moors and the Marcomanni could be tempted only by the profuse liberality
of the usurper, who distributed among the Barbarians the military, and
even the civil, honors of Spain. The nine bands of Honorians, which may
be easily traced on the establishment of the Western empire, could not
exceed the number of five thousand men: yet this inconsiderable force
was sufficient to terminate a war, which had threatened the power and
safety of Constantine. The rustic army of the Theodosian family was
surrounded and destroyed in the Pyrenees: two of the brothers had the
good fortune to escape by sea to Italy, or the East; the other two,
after an interval of suspense, were executed at Arles; and if Honorius
could remain insensible of the public disgrace, he might perhaps be
affected by the personal misfortunes of his generous kinsmen. Such were
the feeble arms which decided the possession of the Western provinces
of Europe, from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules. The
events of peace and war have undoubtedly been diminished by the narrow
and imperfect view of the historians of the times, who were equally
ignorant of the causes, and of the effects, of the most important
revolutions. But the total decay of the national strength had
annihilated even the last resource of a despotic government; and the
revenue of exhausted provinces could no longer purchase the military
service of a discontented and pusillanimous people.

[Footnote 98: Verinianus, Didymus, Theodosius, and Lagodius, who
in modern courts would be styled princes of the blood, were not
distinguished by any rank or privileges above the rest of their
fellow-subjects.]

[Footnote 99: These Honoriani, or Honoriaci, consisted of two bands of
Scots, or Attacotti, two of Moors, two of Marcomanni, the Victores, the
Asca in, and the Gallicani, (Notitia Imperii, sect. xxxiii. edit. Lab.)
They were part of the sixty-five Auxilia Palatina, and are properly
styled by Zosimus, (l. vi. 374.)]

The poet, whose flattery has ascribed to the Roman eagle the victories
of Pollentia and Verona, pursues the hasty retreat of Alaric, from the
confines of Italy, with a horrid train of imaginary spectres, such as
might hover over an army of Barbarians, which was almost exterminated
by war, famine, and disease. [100] In the course of this unfortunate
expedition, the king of the Goths must indeed have sustained a
considerable loss; and his harassed forces required an interval of
repose, to recruit their numbers and revive their confidence. Adversity
had exercised and displayed the genius of Alaric; and the fame of
his valor invited to the Gothic standard the bravest of the Barbarian
warriors; who, from the Euxine to the Rhine, were agitated by the desire
of rapine and conquest. He had deserved the esteem, and he soon accepted
the friendship, of Stilicho himself. Renouncing the service of the
emperor of the East, Alaric concluded, with the court of Ravenna, a
treaty of peace and alliance, by which he was declared master-general
of the Roman armies throughout the praefecture of Illyricum; as it was
claimed, according to the true and ancient limits, by the minister of
Honorius. [101] The execution of the ambitious design, which was either
stipulated, or implied, in the articles of the treaty, appears to
have been suspended by the formidable irruption of Radagaisus; and
the neutrality of the Gothic king may perhaps be compared to the
indifference of Caesar, who, in the conspiracy of Catiline, refused
either to assist, or to oppose, the enemy of the republic. After the
defeat of the Vandals, Stilicho resumed his pretensions to the provinces
of the East; appointed civil magistrates for the administration of
justice, and of the finances; and declared his impatience to lead to
the gates of Constantinople the united armies of the Romans and of the
Goths. The prudence, however, of Stilicho, his aversion to civil war,
and his perfect knowledge of the weakness of the state, may countenance
the suspicion, that domestic peace, rather than foreign conquest, was
the object of his policy; and that his principal care was to employ the
forces of Alaric at a distance from Italy. This design could not long
escape the penetration of the Gothic king, who continued to hold a
doubtful, and perhaps a treacherous, correspondence with the rival
courts; who protracted, like a dissatisfied mercenary, his languid
operations in Thessaly and Epirus, and who soon returned to claim the
extravagant reward of his ineffectual services. From his camp near
Aemona, [102] on the confines of Italy, he transmitted to the emperor of
the West a long account of promises, of expenses, and of demands; called
for immediate satisfaction, and clearly intimated the consequences of
a refusal. Yet if his conduct was hostile, his language was decent and
dutiful. He humbly professed himself the friend of Stilicho, and the
soldier of Honorius; offered his person and his troops to march, without
delay, against the usurper of Gaul; and solicited, as a permanent
retreat for the Gothic nation, the possession of some vacant province of
the Western empire.

[Footnote 100:

     Comitatur euntem
     Pallor, et atra fames; et saucia lividus ora
     Luctus; et inferno stridentes agmine morbi.
    ---Claudian in vi. Cons. Hon. 821, &c.]

[Footnote 101: These dark transactions are investigated by the Count
de Bual (Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. vii. c. iii.--viii. p.
69-206,) whose laborious accuracy may sometimes fatigue a superficial
reader.]

[Footnote 102: See Zosimus, l. v. p. 334, 335. He interrupts his scanty
narrative to relate the fable of Aemona, and of the ship Argo; which was
drawn overland from that place to the Adriatic. Sozomen (l. viii. c.
25, l. ix. c. 4) and Socrates (l. vii. c. 10) cast a pale and doubtful
light; and Orosius (l. vii. c. 38, p. 571) is abominably partial.]

The political and secret transactions of two statesmen, who labored to
deceive each other and the world, must forever have been concealed in
the impenetrable darkness of the cabinet, if the debates of a popular
assembly had not thrown some rays of light on the correspondence of
Alaric and Stilicho. The necessity of finding some artificial support
for a government, which, from a principle, not of moderation, but of
weakness, was reduced to negotiate with its own subjects, had insensibly
revived the authority of the Roman senate; and the minister of Honorius
respectfully consulted the legislative council of the republic. Stilicho
assembled the senate in the palace of the Caesars; represented, in a
studied oration, the actual state of affairs; proposed the demands of
the Gothic king, and submitted to their consideration the choice of
peace or war. The senators, as if they had been suddenly awakened from a
dream of four hundred years, appeared, on this important occasion, to
be inspired by the courage, rather than by the wisdom, of their
predecessors. They loudly declared, in regular speeches, or in
tumultuary acclamations, that it was unworthy of the majesty of Rome to
purchase a precarious and disgraceful truce from a Barbarian king; and
that, in the judgment of a magnanimous people, the chance of ruin was
always preferable to the certainty of dishonor. The minister, whose
pacific intentions were seconded only by the voice of a few servile and
venal followers, attempted to allay the general ferment, by an apology
for his own conduct, and even for the demands of the Gothic prince. "The
payment of a subsidy, which had excited the indignation of the Romans,
ought not (such was the language of Stilicho) to be considered in the
odious light, either of a tribute, or of a ransom, extorted by the
menaces of a Barbarian enemy. Alaric had faithfully asserted the just
pretensions of the republic to the provinces which were usurped by the
Greeks of Constantinople: he modestly required the fair and stipulated
recompense of his services; and if he had desisted from the prosecution
of his enterprise, he had obeyed, in his retreat, the peremptory, though
private, letters of the emperor himself. These contradictory orders (he
would not dissemble the errors of his own family) had been procured by
the intercession of Serena. The tender piety of his wife had been too
deeply affected by the discord of the royal brothers, the sons of her
adopted father; and the sentiments of nature had too easily prevailed
over the stern dictates of the public welfare." These ostensible
reasons, which faintly disguise the obscure intrigues of the palace
of Ravenna, were supported by the authority of Stilicho; and obtained,
after a warm debate, the reluctant approbation of the senate. The tumult
of virtue and freedom subsided; and the sum of four thousand pounds of
gold was granted, under the name of a subsidy, to secure the peace
of Italy, and to conciliate the friendship of the king of the Goths.
Lampadius alone, one of the most illustrious members of the assembly,
still persisted in his dissent; exclaimed, with a loud voice, "This is
not a treaty of peace, but of servitude;" [103] and escaped the danger
of such bold opposition by immediately retiring to the sanctuary of a
Christian church. [See Palace Of The Caesars]

[Footnote 103: Zosimus, l. v. p. 338, 339. He repeats the words of
Lampadius, as they were spoke in Latin, "Non est ista pax, sed pactio
servi tutis," and then translates them into Greek for the benefit of his
readers. * Note: From Cicero's XIIth Philippic, 14.--M.]

But the reign of Stilicho drew towards its end; and the proud minister
might perceive the symptoms of his approaching disgrace. The generous
boldness of Lampadius had been applauded; and the senate, so patiently
resigned to a long servitude, rejected with disdain the offer of
invidious and imaginary freedom. The troops, who still assumed the name
and prerogatives of the Roman legions, were exasperated by the partial
affection of Stilicho for the Barbarians: and the people imputed to the
mischievous policy of the minister the public misfortunes, which were
the natural consequence of their own degeneracy. Yet Stilicho might have
continued to brave the clamors of the people, and even of the soldiers,
if he could have maintained his dominion over the feeble mind of his
pupil. But the respectful attachment of Honorius was converted into
fear, suspicion, and hatred. The crafty Olympius, [104] who concealed
his vices under the mask of Christian piety, had secretly undermined the
benefactor, by whose favor he was promoted to the honorable offices of
the Imperial palace. Olympius revealed to the unsuspecting emperor,
who had attained the twenty-fifth year of his age, that he was without
weight, or authority, in his own government; and artfully alarmed his
timid and indolent disposition by a lively picture of the designs of
Stilicho, who already meditated the death of his sovereign, with the
ambitious hope of placing the diadem on the head of his son Eucherius.
The emperor was instigated, by his new favorite, to assume the tone
of independent dignity; and the minister was astonished to find, that
secret resolutions were formed in the court and council, which were
repugnant to his interest, or to his intentions. Instead of residing in
the palace of Rome, Honorius declared that it was his pleasure to return
to the secure fortress of Ravenna. On the first intelligence of the
death of his brother Arcadius, he prepared to visit Constantinople,
and to regulate, with the authority of a guardian, the provinces of
the infant Theodosius. [105] The representation of the difficulty and
expense of such a distant expedition, checked this strange and sudden
sally of active diligence; but the dangerous project of showing the
emperor to the camp of Pavia, which was composed of the Roman troops,
the enemies of Stilicho, and his Barbarian auxiliaries, remained
fixed and unalterable. The minister was pressed, by the advice of his
confidant, Justinian, a Roman advocate, of a lively and penetrating
genius, to oppose a journey so prejudicial to his reputation and safety.
His strenuous but ineffectual efforts confirmed the triumph of Olympius;
and the prudent lawyer withdrew himself from the impending ruin of his
patron.

[Footnote 104: He came from the coast of the Euxine, and exercised a
splendid office. His actions justify his character, which Zosimus (l. v.
p. 340) exposes with visible satisfaction. Augustin revered the piety
of Olympius, whom he styles a true son of the church, (Baronius, Annal.
Eccles, Eccles. A.D. 408, No. 19, &c. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiii.
p. 467, 468.) But these praises, which the African saint so unworthily
bestows, might proceed as well from ignorance as from adulation.]

[Footnote 105: Zosimus, l. v. p. 338, 339. Sozomen, l. ix. c. 4.
Stilicho offered to undertake the journey to Constantinople, that he
might divert Honorius from the vain attempt. The Eastern empire would
not have obeyed, and could not have been conquered.]

In the passage of the emperor through Bologna, a mutiny of the guards
was excited and appeased by the secret policy of Stilicho; who announced
his instructions to decimate the guilty, and ascribed to his own
intercession the merit of their pardon. After this tumult, Honorius
embraced, for the last time, the minister whom he now considered as
a tyrant, and proceeded on his way to the camp of Pavia; where he was
received by the loyal acclamations of the troops who were assembled
for the service of the Gallic war. On the morning of the fourth day, he
pronounced, as he had been taught, a military oration in the presence
of the soldiers, whom the charitable visits, and artful discourses, of
Olympius had prepared to execute a dark and bloody conspiracy. At
the first signal, they massacred the friends of Stilicho, the most
illustrious officers of the empire; two Praetorian praefects, of Gaul
and of Italy; two masters-general of the cavalry and infantry; the
master of the offices; the quaestor, the treasurer, and the count of the
domestics. Many lives were lost; many houses were plundered; the furious
sedition continued to rage till the close of the evening; and the
trembling emperor, who was seen in the streets of Pavia without his
robes or diadem, yielded to the persuasions of his favorite; condemned
the memory of the slain; and solemnly approved the innocence and
fidelity of their assassins. The intelligence of the massacre of Pavia
filled the mind of Stilicho with just and gloomy apprehensions; and he
instantly summoned, in the camp of Bologna, a council of the confederate
leaders, who were attached to his service, and would be involved in his
ruin. The impetuous voice of the assembly called aloud for arms, and
for revenge; to march, without a moment's delay, under the banners of
a hero, whom they had so often followed to victory; to surprise, to
oppress, to extirpate the guilty Olympius, and his degenerate Romans;
and perhaps to fix the diadem on the head of their injured general.
Instead of executing a resolution, which might have been justified by
success, Stilicho hesitated till he was irrecoverably lost. He was still
ignorant of the fate of the emperor; he distrusted the fidelity of his
own party; and he viewed with horror the fatal consequences of arming a
crowd of licentious Barbarians against the soldiers and people of Italy.
The confederates, impatient of his timorous and doubtful delay, hastily
retired, with fear and indignation. At the hour of midnight, Sarus,
a Gothic warrior, renowned among the Barbarians themselves for his
strength and valor, suddenly invaded the camp of his benefactor,
plundered the baggage, cut in pieces the faithful Huns, who guarded
his person, and penetrated to the tent, where the minister, pensive and
sleepless, meditated on the dangers of his situation. Stilicho escaped
with difficulty from the sword of the Goths and, after issuing a last
and generous admonition to the cities of Italy, to shut their gates
against the Barbarians, his confidence, or his despair, urged him to
throw himself into Ravenna, which was already in the absolute possession
of his enemies. Olympius, who had assumed the dominion of Honorius, was
speedily informed, that his rival had embraced, as a suppliant the altar
of the Christian church. The base and cruel disposition of the hypocrite
was incapable of pity or remorse; but he piously affected to elude,
rather than to violate, the privilege of the sanctuary. Count Heraclian,
with a troop of soldiers, appeared, at the dawn of day, before the gates
of the church of Ravenna. The bishop was satisfied by a solemn oath,
that the Imperial mandate only directed them to secure the person of
Stilicho: but as soon as the unfortunate minister had been tempted
beyond the holy threshold, he produced the warrant for his instant
execution. Stilicho supported, with calm resignation, the injurious
names of traitor and parricide; repressed the unseasonable zeal of his
followers, who were ready to attempt an ineffectual rescue; and, with a
firmness not unworthy of the last of the Roman generals, submitted his
neck to the sword of Heraclian. [106]

[Footnote 106: Zosimus (l. v. p. 336-345) has copiously, though not
clearly, related the disgrace and death of Stilicho. Olympiodorus, (apud
Phot. p. 177.) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 38, p. 571, 572,) Sozomen, (l.
ix. c. 4,) and Philostorgius, (l. xi. c. 3, l. xii. c. 2,) afford
supplemental hints.]

The servile crowd of the palace, who had so long adored the fortune of
Stilicho, affected to insult his fall; and the most distant connection
with the master-general of the West, which had so lately been a title to
wealth and honors, was studiously denied, and rigorously punished. His
family, united by a triple alliance with the family of Theodosius,
might envy the condition of the meanest peasant. The flight of his son
Eucherius was intercepted; and the death of that innocent youth soon
followed the divorce of Thermantia, who filled the place of her sister
Maria; and who, like Maria, had remained a virgin in the Imperial bed.
[107] The friends of Stilicho, who had escaped the massacre of Pavia,
were persecuted by the implacable revenge of Olympius; and the most
exquisite cruelty was employed to extort the confession of a treasonable
and sacrilegious conspiracy. They died in silence: their firmness
justified the choice, [108] and perhaps absolved the innocence of their
patron: and the despotic power, which could take his life without a
trial, and stigmatize his memory without a proof, has no jurisdiction
over the impartial suffrage of posterity. [109] The services of Stilicho
are great and manifest; his crimes, as they are vaguely stated in the
language of flattery and hatred, are obscure at least, and improbable.
About four months after his death, an edict was published, in the name
of Honorius, to restore the free communication of the two empires, which
had been so long interrupted by the public enemy. [110] The minister,
whose fame and fortune depended on the prosperity of the state, was
accused of betraying Italy to the Barbarians; whom he repeatedly
vanquished at Pollentia, at Verona, and before the walls of Florence.
His pretended design of placing the diadem on the head of his son
Eucherius, could not have been conducted without preparations or
accomplices; and the ambitious father would not surely have left the
future emperor, till the twentieth year of his age, in the humble
station of tribune of the notaries. Even the religion of Stilicho
was arraigned by the malice of his rival. The seasonable, and almost
miraculous, deliverance was devoutly celebrated by the applause of the
clergy; who asserted, that the restoration of idols, and the persecution
of the church, would have been the first measure of the reign of
Eucherius. The son of Stilicho, however, was educated in the bosom of
Christianity, which his father had uniformly professed, and zealously
supported. [111] [1111] Serena had borrowed her magnificent necklace
from the statue of Vesta; [112] and the Pagans execrated the memory
of the sacrilegious minister, by whose order the Sibylline books, the
oracles of Rome, had been committed to the flames. [113] The pride and
power of Stilicho constituted his real guilt. An honorable reluctance
to shed the blood of his countrymen appears to have contributed to the
success of his unworthy rival; and it is the last humiliation of the
character of Honorius, that posterity has not condescended to reproach
him with his base ingratitude to the guardian of his youth, and the
support of his empire.

[Footnote 107: Zosimus, l. v. p. 333. The marriage of a Christian with
two sisters, scandalizes Tillemont, (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p.
557;) who expects, in vain, that Pope Innocent I. should have done
something in the way either of censure or of dispensation.]

[Footnote 108: Two of his friends are honorably mentioned, (Zosimus,
l. v. p. 346:) Peter, chief of the school of notaries, and the great
chamberlain Deuterius. Stilicho had secured the bed-chamber; and it is
surprising that, under a feeble prince, the bed-chamber was not able to
secure him.]

[Footnote 109: Orosius (l. vii. c. 38, p. 571, 572) seems to copy the
false and furious manifestos, which were dispersed through the provinces
by the new administration.]

[Footnote 110: See the Theodosian code, l. vii. tit. xvi. leg. 1, l.
ix. tit. xlii. leg. 22. Stilicho is branded with the name of proedo
publicus, who employed his wealth, ad omnem ditandam, inquietandamque
Barbariem.]

[Footnote 111: Augustin himself is satisfied with the effectual laws,
which Stilicho had enacted against heretics and idolaters; and which
are still extant in the Code. He only applies to Olympius for their
confirmation, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 408, No. 19.)]

[Footnote 112: Zosimus, l. v. p. 351. We may observe the bad taste of
the age, in dressing their statues with such awkward finery.]

[Footnote 113: See Rutilius Numatianus, (Itinerar. l. ii. 41-60,) to
whom religious enthusiasm has dictated some elegant and forcible
lines. Stilicho likewise stripped the gold plates from the doors of the
Capitol, and read a prophetic sentence which was engraven under them,
(Zosimus, l. v. p. 352.) These are foolish stories: yet the charge of
impiety adds weight and credit to the praise which Zosimus reluctantly
bestows on his virtues. Note: One particular in the extorted praise of
Zosimus, deserved the notice of the historian, as strongly opposed to
the former imputations of Zosimus himself, and indicative of he corrupt
practices of a declining age. "He had never bartered promotion in the
army for bribes, nor peculated in the supplies of provisions for the
army." l. v. c. xxxiv.--M.]

[Footnote 1111: Hence, perhaps, the accusation of treachery is
countenanced by Hatilius:--

     Quo magis est facinus diri Stilichonis iniquum
     Proditor arcani quod fuit imperii.
     Romano generi dum nititur esse superstes,
     Crudelis summis miscuit ima furor.
     Dumque timet, quicquid se fecerat ipso timeri,
     Immisit Latiae barbara tela neci.  Rutil. Itin. II. 41.--M.]
     Among the train of dependants whose wealth and dignity
     attracted the notice of their own times, our curiosity is excited
     by the celebrated name of the poet Claudian, who enjoyed the
     favor of Stilicho, and was overwhelmed in the ruin of his patron.

The titular offices of tribune and notary fixed his rank in the Imperial
court: he was indebted to the powerful intercession of Serena for his
marriage with a very rich heiress of the province of Africa; [114] and
the statute of Claudian, erected in the forum of Trajan, was a monument
of the taste and liberality of the Roman senate. [115] After the praises
of Stilicho became offensive and criminal, Claudian was exposed to the
enmity of a powerful and unforgiving courtier, whom he had provoked by
the insolence of wit. He had compared, in a lively epigram, the opposite
characters of two Praetorian praefects of Italy; he contrasts the
innocent repose of a philosopher, who sometimes resigned the hours of
business to slumber, perhaps to study, with the interesting diligence
of a rapacious minister, indefatigable in the pursuit of unjust or
sacrilegious, gain. "How happy," continues Claudian, "how happy might it
be for the people of Italy, if Mallius could be constantly awake, and
if Hadrian would always sleep!" [116] The repose of Mallius was
not disturbed by this friendly and gentle admonition; but the cruel
vigilance of Hadrian watched the opportunity of revenge, and easily
obtained, from the enemies of Stilicho, the trifling sacrifice of an
obnoxious poet. The poet concealed himself, however, during the tumult
of the revolution; and, consulting the dictates of prudence rather
than of honor, he addressed, in the form of an epistle, a suppliant and
humble recantation to the offended praefect. He deplores, in mournful
strains, the fatal indiscretion into which he had been hurried by
passion and folly; submits to the imitation of his adversary the
generous examples of the clemency of gods, of heroes, and of lions; and
expresses his hope that the magnanimity of Hadrian will not trample on
a defenceless and contemptible foe, already humbled by disgrace and
poverty, and deeply wounded by the exile, the tortures, and the death of
his dearest friends. [117] Whatever might be the success of his prayer,
or the accidents of his future life, the period of a few years levelled
in the grave the minister and the poet: but the name of Hadrian is
almost sunk in oblivion, while Claudian is read with pleasure in every
country which has retained, or acquired, the knowledge of the Latin
language. If we fairly balance his merits and his defects, we shall
acknowledge that Claudian does not either satisfy, or silence, our
reason. It would not be easy to produce a passage that deserves the
epithet of sublime or pathetic; to select a verse that melts the heart
or enlarges the imagination. We should vainly seek, in the poems of
Claudian, the happy invention, and artificial conduct, of an interesting
fable; or the just and lively representation of the characters and
situations of real life. For the service of his patron, he published
occasional panegyrics and invectives: and the design of these slavish
compositions encouraged his propensity to exceed the limits of truth and
nature. These imperfections, however, are compensated in some degree
by the poetical virtues of Claudian. He was endowed with the rare and
precious talent of raising the meanest, of adorning the most barren, and
of diversifying the most similar, topics: his coloring, more especially
in descriptive poetry, is soft and splendid; and he seldom fails
to display, and even to abuse, the advantages of a cultivated
understanding, a copious fancy, an easy, and sometimes forcible,
expression; and a perpetual flow of harmonious versification. To these
commendations, independent of any accidents of time and place, we must
add the peculiar merit which Claudian derived from the unfavorable
circumstances of his birth. In the decline of arts, and of empire,
a native of Egypt, [118] who had received the education of a Greek,
assumed, in a mature age, the familiar use, and absolute command, of
the Latin language; [119] soared above the heads of his feeble
contemporaries; and placed himself, after an interval of three hundred
years, among the poets of ancient Rome. [120]

[Footnote 114: At the nuptials of Orpheus (a modest comparison!) all the
parts of animated nature contributed their various gifts; and the gods
themselves enriched their favorite. Claudian had neither flocks, nor
herds, nor vines, nor olives. His wealthy bride was heiress to them all.
But he carried to Africa a recommendatory letter from Serena, his Juno,
and was made happy, (Epist. ii. ad Serenam.)]

[Footnote 115: Claudian feels the honor like a man who deserved it, (in
praefat Bell. Get.) The original inscription, on marble, was found at
Rome, in the fifteenth century, in the house of Pomponius Laetus. The
statue of a poet, far superior to Claudian, should have been erected,
during his lifetime, by the men of letters, his countrymen and
contemporaries. It was a noble design.]

[Footnote 116: See Epigram xxx.

     Mallius indulget somno noctesque diesque:
     Insomnis Pharius sacra, profana, rapit.
     Omnibus, hoc, Italae gentes, exposcite votis;
     Mallius ut vigilet, dormiat ut Pharius.

Hadrian was a Pharian, (of Alexandrian.) See his public life in
Godefroy, Cod. Theodos. tom. vi. p. 364. Mallius did not always sleep.
He composed some elegant dialogues on the Greek systems of natural
philosophy, (Claud, in Mall. Theodor. Cons. 61-112.)]

[Footnote 117: See Claudian's first Epistle. Yet, in some places, an
air of irony and indignation betrays his secret reluctance. * Note:
M. Beugnot has pointed out one remarkable characteristic of Claudian's
poetry, and of the times--his extraordinary religious indifference. Here
is a poet writing at the actual crisis of the complete triumph of the
new religion, the visible extinction of the old: if we may so speak, a
strictly historical poet, whose works, excepting his Mythological poem
on the rape of Proserpine, are confined to temporary subjects, and to
the politics of his own eventful day; yet, excepting in one or two
small and indifferent pieces, manifestly written by a Christian, and
interpolated among his poems, there is no allusion whatever to the great
religious strife. No one would know the existence of Christianity
at that period of the world, by reading the works of Claudian. His
panegyric and his satire preserve the same religious impartiality; award
their most lavish praise or their bitterest invective on Christian or
Pagan; he insults the fall of Eugenius, and glories in the victories
of Theodosius. Under the child,--and Honorius never became more than a
child,--Christianity continued to inflict wounds more and more deadly on
expiring Paganism. Are the gods of Olympus agitated with apprehension
at the birth of this new enemy? They are introduced as rejoicing at his
appearance, and promising long years of glory. The whole prophetic
choir of Paganism, all the oracles throughout the world, are summoned
to predict the felicity of his reign. His birth is compared to that
of Apollo, but the narrow limits of an island must not confine the new
deity--

     ... Non littora nostro
     Sufficerent angusta Deo.

Augury and divination, the shrines of Ammon, and of Delphi, the Persian
Magi, and the Etruscan seers, the Chaldean astrologers, the Sibyl
herself, are described as still discharging their prophetic functions,
and celebrating the natal day of this Christian prince. They are noble
lines, as well as curious illustrations of the times:

     ... Quae tunc documenta futuri?
     Quae voces avium? quanti per inane volatus?
     Quis vatum discursus erat?  Tibi corniger Ammon,
     Et dudum taciti rupere silentia Delphi.
     Te Persae cecinere Magi, te sensit Etruscus
     Augur, et inspectis Babylonius horruit astris;
     Chaldaei stupuere senes, Cumanaque rursus
     Itonuit rupes, rabidae delubra Sibyllae.
     --Claud. iv. Cons. Hon. 141.

From the Quarterly Review of Beugnot. Hist. de la Paganisme en Occident,
Q. R. v. lvii. p. 61.--M.]

[Footnote 118: National vanity has made him a Florentine, or a Spaniard.
But the first Epistle of Claudian proves him a native of Alexandria,
(Fabricius, Bibliot. Latin. tom. iii. p. 191-202, edit. Ernest.)]

[Footnote 119: His first Latin verses were composed during the
consulship of Probinus, A.D. 395.

Romanos bibimus primum, te consule, fontes, Et Latiae cessit Graia
Thalia togae.

Besides some Greek epigrams, which are still extant, the Latin poet had
composed, in Greek, the Antiquities of Tarsus, Anazarbus, Berytus, Nice,
&c. It is more easy to supply the loss of good poetry, than of authentic
history.]

[Footnote 120: Strada (Prolusion v. vi.) allows him to contend with
the five heroic poets, Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius. His
patron is the accomplished courtier Balthazar Castiglione. His admirers
are numerous and passionate. Yet the rigid critics reproach the exotic
weeds, or flowers, which spring too luxuriantly in his Latian soil]




Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.--Part I.

     Invasion Of Italy By Alaric.--Manners Of The Roman Senate
     And People.--Rome Is Thrice Besieged, And At Length
     Pillaged, By The Goths.--Death Of Alaric.--The Goths
     Evacuate Italy.--Fall Of Constantine.--Gaul And Spain Are
     Occupied By The Barbarians. --Independence Of Britain.

The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the
appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence
with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the
council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures
which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius. [1] The king
of the Goths would have conspired, perhaps with some reluctance, to
destroy the formidable adversary, by whose arms, in Italy, as well as in
Greece, he had been twice overthrown. Their active and interested hatred
laboriously accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho.
The valor of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal, or hereditary,
influence over the confederate Barbarians, could recommend him only to
the friends of their country, who despised, or detested, the worthless
characters of Turpilio, Varanes, and Vigilantius. By the pressing
instances of the new favorites, these generals, unworthy as they had
shown themselves of the names of soldiers, [2] were promoted to the
command of the cavalry, of the infantry, and of the domestic troops. The
Gothic prince would have subscribed with pleasure the edict which
the fanaticism of Olympius dictated to the simple and devout emperor.
Honorius excluded all persons, who were adverse to the Catholic church,
from holding any office in the state; obstinately rejected the service
of all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly disqualified
many of his bravest and most skilful officers, who adhered to the
Pagan worship, or who had imbibed the opinions of Arianism. [3] These
measures, so advantageous to an enemy, Alaric would have approved, and
might perhaps have suggested; but it may seem doubtful, whether the
Barbarian would have promoted his interest at the expense of the inhuman
and absurd cruelty which was perpetrated by the direction, or at least
with the connivance of the Imperial ministers. The foreign auxiliaries,
who had been attached to the person of Stilicho, lamented his death;
but the desire of revenge was checked by a natural apprehension for the
safety of their wives and children; who were detained as hostages in
the strong cities of Italy, where they had likewise deposited their most
valuable effects. At the same hour, and as if by a common signal, the
cities of Italy were polluted by the same horrid scenes of universal
massacre and pillage, which involved, in promiscuous destruction, the
families and fortunes of the Barbarians. Exasperated by such an injury,
which might have awakened the tamest and most servile spirit, they
cast a look of indignation and hope towards the camp of Alaric,
and unanimously swore to pursue, with just and implacable war, the
perfidious nation who had so basely violated the laws of hospitality.
By the imprudent conduct of the ministers of Honorius, the republic
lost the assistance, and deserved the enmity, of thirty thousand of her
bravest soldiers; and the weight of that formidable army, which alone
might have determined the event of the war, was transferred from the
scale of the Romans into that of the Goths.

[Footnote 1: The series of events, from the death of Stilicho to the
arrival of Alaric before Rome, can only be found in Zosimus, l. v. p.
347-350.]

[Footnote 2: The expression of Zosimus is strong and lively, sufficient
to excite the contempt of the enemy.]

[Footnote 3: Eos qui catholicae sectae sunt inimici, intra palatium
militare pro hibemus. Nullus nobis sit aliqua ratione conjunctus, qui a
nobis fidest religione discordat. Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. v. leg. 42,
and Godefroy's Commentary, tom. vi. p. 164. This law was applied in the
utmost latitude, and rigorously executed. Zosimus, l. v. p. 364.]

In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the Gothic king
maintained his superior ascendant over an enemy, whose seeming changes
proceeded from the total want of counsel and design. From his camp, on
the confines of Italy, Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of
the palace, watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised
the hostile aspect of a Barbarian invader, and assumed the more popular
appearance of the friend and ally of the great Stilicho: to whose
virtues, when they were no longer formidable, he could pay a just
tribute of sincere praise and regret. The pressing invitation of the
malecontents, who urged the king of the Goths to invade Italy, was
enforced by a lively sense of his personal injuries; and he might
especially complain, that the Imperial ministers still delayed and
eluded the payment of the four thousand pounds of gold which had been
granted by the Roman senate, either to reward his services, or to
appease his fury. His decent firmness was supported by an artful
moderation, which contributed to the success of his designs. He
required a fair and reasonable satisfaction; but he gave the strongest
assurances, that, as soon as he had obtained it, he would immediately
retire. He refused to trust the faith of the Romans, unless Aetius and
Jason, the sons of two great officers of state, were sent as hostages to
his camp; but he offered to deliver, in exchange, several of the noblest
youths of the Gothic nation. The modesty of Alaric was interpreted, by
the ministers of Ravenna, as a sure evidence of his weakness and fear.
They disdained either to negotiate a treaty, or to assemble an army; and
with a rash confidence, derived only from their ignorance of the extreme
danger, irretrievably wasted the decisive moments of peace and war.
While they expected, in sullen silence, that the Barbarians would
evacuate the confines of Italy, Alaric, with bold and rapid marches,
passed the Alps and the Po; hastily pillaged the cities of Aquileia,
Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona, which yielded to his arms; increased
his forces by the accession of thirty thousand auxiliaries; and, without
meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced as far as the edge of the
morass which protected the impregnable residence of the emperor of the
West. Instead of attempting the hopeless siege of Ravenna, the prudent
leader of the Goths proceeded to Rimini, stretched his ravages along the
sea-coast of the Hadriatic, and meditated the conquest of the ancient
mistress of the world. An Italian hermit, whose zeal and sanctity were
respected by the Barbarians themselves, encountered the victorious
monarch, and boldly denounced the indignation of Heaven against the
oppressors of the earth; but the saint himself was confounded by the
solemn asseveration of Alaric, that he felt a secret and praeternatural
impulse, which directed, and even compelled, his march to the gates of
Rome. He felt, that his genius and his fortune were equal to the most
arduous enterprises; and the enthusiasm which he communicated to
the Goths, insensibly removed the popular, and almost superstitious,
reverence of the nations for the majesty of the Roman name. His troops,
animated by the hopes of spoil, followed the course of the Flaminian
way, occupied the unguarded passes of the Apennine, [4] descended into
the rich plains of Umbria; and, as they lay encamped on the banks of
the Clitumnus, might wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen,
which had been so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs. [5] A
lofty situation, and a seasonable tempest of thunder and lightning,
preserved the little city of Narni; but the king of the Goths, despising
the ignoble prey, still advanced with unabated vigor; and after he had
passed through the stately arches, adorned with the spoils of Barbaric
victories, he pitched his camp under the walls of Rome. [6]

[Footnote 4: Addison (see his Works, vol. ii. p. 54, edit. Baskerville)
has given a very picturesque description of the road through the
Apennine. The Goths were not at leisure to observe the beauties of
the prospect; but they were pleased to find that the Saxa Intercisa, a
narrow passage which Vespasian had cut through the rock, (Cluver. Italia
Antiq. tom. i. p. 168,) was totally neglected.

     Hine albi, Clitumne, greges, et maxima taurus
     Victima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,
     Romanos ad templa Deum duxere triumphos.
     --Georg. ii. 147.

Besides Virgil, most of the Latin poets, Propertius, Lucan, Silius
Italicus, Claudian, &c., whose passages may be found in Cluverius and
Addison, have celebrated the triumphal victims of the Clitumnus.]

[Footnote 6: Some ideas of the march of Alaric are borrowed from the
journey of Honorius over the same ground. (See Claudian in vi. Cons.
Hon. 494-522.) The measured distance between Ravenna and Rome was
254 Roman miles. Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 126.] During a period of six
hundred and nineteen years, the seat of empire had never been violated
by the presence of a foreign enemy. The unsuccessful expedition of
Hannibal [7] served only to display the character of the senate and
people; of a senate degraded, rather than ennobled, by the comparison of
an assembly of kings; and of a people, to whom the ambassador of Pyrrhus
ascribed the inexhaustible resources of the Hydra. [8] Each of the
senators, in the time of the Punic war, had accomplished his term of the
military service, either in a subordinate or a superior station; and
the decree, which invested with temporary command all those who had
been consuls, or censors, or dictators, gave the republic the immediate
assistance of many brave and experienced generals. In the beginning of
the war, the Roman people consisted of two hundred and fifty thousand
citizens of an age to bear arms. [9] Fifty thousand had already died in
the defence of their country; and the twenty-three legions which were
employed in the different camps of Italy, Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, and
Spain, required about one hundred thousand men. But there still remained
an equal number in Rome, and the adjacent territory, who were animated
by the same intrepid courage; and every citizen was trained, from his
earliest youth, in the discipline and exercises of a soldier. Hannibal
was astonished by the constancy of the senate, who, without raising
the siege of Capua, or recalling their scattered forces, expected his
approach. He encamped on the banks of the Anio, at the distance of three
miles from the city; and he was soon informed, that the ground on which
he had pitched his tent, was sold for an adequate price at a public
auction; [911] and that a body of troops was dismissed by an opposite
road, to reenforce the legions of Spain. [10] He led his Africans to the
gates of Rome, where he found three armies in order of battle, prepared
to receive him; but Hannibal dreaded the event of a combat, from
which he could not hope to escape, unless he destroyed the last of his
enemies; and his speedy retreat confessed the invincible courage of the
Romans.

[Footnote 7: The march and retreat of Hannibal are described by Livy,
l. xxvi. c. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11; and the reader is made a spectator of the
interesting scene.]

[Footnote 8: These comparisons were used by Cyneas, the counsellor of
Pyrrhus, after his return from his embassy, in which he had diligently
studied the discipline and manners of Rome. See Plutarch in Pyrrho. tom.
ii. p. 459.]

[Footnote 9: In the three census which were made of the Roman people,
about the time of the second Punic war, the numbers stand as follows,
(see Livy, Epitom. l. xx. Hist. l. xxvii. 36. xxix. 37:) 270,213,
137,108 214,000. The fall of the second, and the rise of the third,
appears so enormous, that several critics, notwithstanding the unanimity
of the Mss., have suspected some corruption of the text of Livy. (See
Drakenborch ad xxvii. 36, and Beaufort, Republique Romaine, tom. i. p.
325.) They did not consider that the second census was taken only at
Rome, and that the numbers were diminished, not only by the death, but
likewise by the absence, of many soldiers. In the third census, Livy
expressly affirms, that the legions were mustered by the care of
particular commissaries. From the numbers on the list we must always
deduct one twelfth above threescore, and incapable of bearing arms. See
Population de la France, p. 72.]

[Footnote 911: Compare the remarkable transaction in Jeremiah xxxii. 6,
to 44, where the prophet purchases his uncle's estate at the approach
of the Babylonian captivity, in his undoubting confidence in the
future restoration of the people. In the one case it is the triumph of
religious faith, in the other of national pride.--M.]

[Footnote 10: Livy considers these two incidents as the effects only
of chance and courage. I suspect that they were both managed by the
admirable policy of the senate.]

From the time of the Punic war, the uninterrupted succession of senators
had preserved the name and image of the republic; and the degenerate
subjects of Honorius ambitiously derived their descent from the heroes
who had repulsed the arms of Hannibal, and subdued the nations of the
earth. The temporal honors which the devout Paula [11] inherited
and despised, are carefully recapitulated by Jerom, the guide of her
conscience, and the historian of her life. The genealogy of her father,
Rogatus, which ascended as high as Agamemnon, might seem to betray
a Grecian origin; but her mother, Blaesilla, numbered the Scipios,
Aemilius Paulus, and the Gracchi, in the list of her ancestors; and
Toxotius, the husband of Paula, deduced his royal lineage from Aeneas,
the father of the Julian line. The vanity of the rich, who desired to
be noble, was gratified by these lofty pretensions. Encouraged by the
applause of their parasites, they easily imposed on the credulity of
the vulgar; and were countenanced, in some measure, by the custom of
adopting the name of their patron, which had always prevailed among the
freedmen and clients of illustrious families. Most of those families,
however, attacked by so many causes of external violence or internal
decay, were gradually extirpated; and it would be more reasonable to
seek for a lineal descent of twenty generations, among the mountains of
the Alps, or in the peaceful solitude of Apulia, than on the theatre
of Rome, the seat of fortune, of danger, and of perpetual revolutions.
Under each successive reign, and from every province of the empire, a
crowd of hardy adventurers, rising to eminence by their talents or their
vices, usurped the wealth, the honors, and the palaces of Rome; and
oppressed, or protected, the poor and humble remains of consular
families; who were ignorant, perhaps, of the glory of their ancestors.
[12]

[Footnote 11: See Jerom, tom. i. p. 169, 170, ad Eustochium; he bestows
on Paula the splendid titles of Gracchorum stirps, soboles Scipionum,
Pauli haeres, cujus vocabulum trahit, Martiae Papyriae Matris Africani
vera et germana propago. This particular description supposes a more
solid title than the surname of Julius, which Toxotius shared with a
thousand families of the western provinces. See the Index of Tacitus, of
Gruter's Inscriptions, &c.]

[Footnote 12: Tacitus (Annal. iii. 55) affirms, that between the battle
of Actium and the reign of Vespasian, the senate was gradually filled
with new families from the Municipia and colonies of Italy.]

In the time of Jerom and Claudian, the senators unanimously yielded the
preeminence to the Anician line; and a slight view of their history will
serve to appreciate the rank and antiquity of the noble families, which
contended only for the second place. [13] During the five first ages
of the city, the name of the Anicians was unknown; they appear to have
derived their origin from Praeneste; and the ambition of those new
citizens was long satisfied with the Plebeian honors of tribunes of
the people. [14] One hundred and sixty-eight years before the Christian
aera, the family was ennobled by the Praetorship of Anicius, who
gloriously terminated the Illyrian war, by the conquest of the nation,
and the captivity of their king. [15] From the triumph of that general,
three consulships, in distant periods, mark the succession of the
Anician name. [16] From the reign of Diocletian to the final extinction
of the Western empire, that name shone with a lustre which was not
eclipsed, in the public estimation, by the majesty of the Imperial
purple. [17] The several branches, to whom it was communicated, united,
by marriage or inheritance, the wealth and titles of the Annian, the
Petronian, and the Olybrian houses; and in each generation the number
of consulships was multiplied by an hereditary claim. [18] The Anician
family excelled in faith and in riches: they were the first of the
Roman senate who embraced Christianity; and it is probable that Anicius
Julian, who was afterwards consul and praefect of the city, atoned for
his attachment to the party of Maxentius, by the readiness with which
he accepted the religion of Constantine. [19] Their ample patrimony was
increased by the industry of Probus, the chief of the Anician family;
who shared with Gratian the honors of the consulship, and exercised,
four times, the high office of Praetorian praefect. [20] His immense
estates were scattered over the wide extent of the Roman world; and
though the public might suspect or disapprove the methods by which they
had been acquired, the generosity and magnificence of that fortunate
statesman deserved the gratitude of his clients, and the admiration of
strangers. [21] Such was the respect entertained for his memory, that
the two sons of Probus, in their earliest youth, and at the request
of the senate, were associated in the consular dignity; a memorable
distinction, without example, in the annals of Rome. [22]

[Footnote 13:

     Nec quisquam Procerum tentet (licet aere vetusto
     Floreat, et claro cingatur Roma senatu)
     Se jactare parem; sed prima sede relicta
     Aucheniis, de jure licet certare secundo.
    ---Claud. in Prob. et Olybrii Coss. 18.

Such a compliment paid to the obscure name of the Auchenii has amazed
the critics; but they all agree, that whatever may be the true reading,
the sense of Claudian can be applied only to the Anician family.]

[Footnote 14: The earliest date in the annals of Pighius, is that of M.
Anicius Gallus. Trib. Pl. A. U. C. 506. Another tribune, Q. Anicius, A.
U. C. 508, is distinguished by the epithet of Praenestinus. Livy (xlv.
43) places the Anicii below the great families of Rome.]

[Footnote 15: Livy, xliv. 30, 31, xlv. 3, 26, 43. He fairly appreciates
the merit of Anicius, and justly observes, that his fame was clouded
by the superior lustre of the Macedonian, which preceded the Illyrian
triumph.]

[Footnote 16: The dates of the three consulships are, A. U. C. 593, 818,
967 the two last under the reigns of Nero and Caracalla. The second
of these consuls distinguished himself only by his infamous flattery,
(Tacit. Annal. xv. 74;) but even the evidence of crimes, if they bear
the stamp of greatness and antiquity, is admitted, without reluctance,
to prove the genealogy of a noble house.]

[Footnote 17: In the sixth century, the nobility of the Anician name is
mentioned (Cassiodor. Variar. l. x. Ep. 10, 12) with singular respect by
the minister of a Gothic king of Italy.]

[Footnote 18:

     Fixus in omnes
     Cognatos procedit honos; quemcumque requiras
     Hac de stirpe virum, certum est de Consule
     nasci. Per fasces numerantur Avi, semperque
     renata Nobilitate virent, et prolem fata sequuntur.

(Claudian in Prob. et Olyb. Consulat. 12, &c.) The Annii, whose
name seems to have merged in the Anician, mark the Fasti with many
consulships, from the time of Vespasian to the fourth century.]

[Footnote 19: The title of first Christian senator may be justified by
the authority of Prudentius (in Symmach. i. 553) and the dislike of the
Pagans to the Anician family. See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom.
iv. p. 183, v. p. 44. Baron. Annal. A.D. 312, No. 78, A.D. 322, No. 2.]

[Footnote 20: Probus... claritudine generis et potentia et opum
magnitudine, cognitus Orbi Romano, per quem universum poene patrimonia
sparsa possedit, juste an secus non judicioli est nostri. Ammian
Marcellin. xxvii. 11. His children and widow erected for him a
magnificent tomb in the Vatican, which was demolished in the time of
Pope Nicholas V. to make room for the new church of St. Peter Baronius,
who laments the ruin of this Christian monument, has diligently
preserved the inscriptions and basso-relievos. See Annal. Eccles. A.D.
395, No. 5-17.]

[Footnote 21: Two Persian satraps travelled to Milan and Rome, to hear
St. Ambrose, and to see Probus, (Paulin. in Vit. Ambros.) Claudian (in
Cons. Probin. et Olybr. 30-60) seems at a loss how to express the glory
of Probus.]

[Footnote 22: See the poem which Claudian addressed to the two noble
youths.]




Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.--Part II.

"The marbles of the Anician palace," were used as a proverbial
expression of opulence and splendor; [23] but the nobles and senators of
Rome aspired, in due gradation, to imitate that illustrious family. The
accurate description of the city, which was composed in the Theodosian
age, enumerates one thousand seven hundred and eighty houses, the
residence of wealthy and honorable citizens. [24] Many of these stately
mansions might almost excuse the exaggeration of the poet; that Rome
contained a multitude of palaces, and that each palace was equal to a
city: since it included within its own precincts every thing which could
be subservient either to use or luxury; markets, hippodromes, temples,
fountains, baths, porticos, shady groves, and artificial aviaries. [25]
The historian Olympiodorus, who represents the state of Rome when it was
besieged by the Goths, [26] continues to observe, that several of the
richest senators received from their estates an annual income of four
thousand pounds of gold, above one hundred and sixty thousand pounds
sterling; without computing the stated provision of corn and wine,
which, had they been sold, might have equalled in value one third of
the money. Compared to this immoderate wealth, an ordinary revenue of
a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds of gold might be considered as no
more than adequate to the dignity of the senatorian rank, which required
many expenses of a public and ostentatious kind. Several examples
are recorded, in the age of Honorius, of vain and popular nobles, who
celebrated the year of their praetorship by a festival, which lasted
seven days, and cost above one hundred thousand pounds sterling. [27]
The estates of the Roman senators, which so far exceeded the proportion
of modern wealth, were not confined to the limits of Italy. Their
possessions extended far beyond the Ionian and Aegean Seas, to the most
distant provinces: the city of Nicopolis, which Augustus had founded
as an eternal monument of the Actian victory, was the property of the
devout Paula; [28] and it is observed by Seneca, that the rivers, which
had divided hostile nations, now flowed through the lands of private
citizens. [29] According to their temper and circumstances, the estates
of the Romans were either cultivated by the labor of their slaves, or
granted, for a certain and stipulated rent, to the industrious farmer.
The economical writers of antiquity strenuously recommend the former
method, wherever it may be practicable; but if the object should be
removed, by its distance or magnitude, from the immediate eye of
the master, they prefer the active care of an old hereditary tenant,
attached to the soil, and interested in the produce, to the mercenary
administration of a negligent, perhaps an unfaithful, steward. [30]

[Footnote 23: Secundinus, the Manichaean, ap. Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D.
390, No. 34.]

[Footnote 24: See Nardini, Roma Antica, p. 89, 498, 500.]

[Footnote 25:

    Quid loquar inclusas inter laquearia sylvas;
    Vernula queis vario carmine ludit avis.

Claud. Rutil. Numatian. Itinerar. ver. 111. The poet lived at the
time of the Gothic invasion. A moderate palace would have covered
Cincinnatus's farm of four acres (Val. Max. iv. 4.) In laxitatem ruris
excurrunt, says Seneca, Epist. 114. See a judicious note of Mr. Hume,
Essays, vol. i. p. 562, last 8vo edition.]

[Footnote 26: This curious account of Rome, in the reign of Honorius, is
found in a fragment of the historian Olympiodorus, ap. Photium, p. 197.]

[Footnote 27: The sons of Alypius, of Symmachus, and of Maximus, spent,
during their respective praetorships, twelve, or twenty, or forty,
centenaries, (or hundred weight of gold.) See Olympiodor. ap. Phot. p.
197. This popular estimation allows some latitude; but it is difficult
to explain a law in the Theodosian Code, (l. vi. leg. 5,) which fixes
the expense of the first praetor at 25,000, of the second at 20,000,
and of the third at 15,000 folles. The name of follis (see Mem. de
l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxviii. p. 727) was equally applied to
a purse of 125 pieces of silver, and to a small copper coin of the value
of 1/2625 part of that purse. In the former sense, the 25,000 folles
would be equal to 150,000 L.; in the latter, to five or six ponuds
sterling The one appears extravagant, the other is ridiculous. There
must have existed some third and middle value, which is here understood;
but ambiguity is an excusable fault in the language of laws.]

[Footnote 28: Nicopolis...... in Actiaco littore sita possessioris
vestra nunc pars vel maxima est. Jerom. in Praefat. Comment. ad Epistol.
ad Titum, tom. ix. p. 243. M. D. Tillemont supposes, strangely enough,
that it was part of Agamemnon's inheritance. Mem. Eccles. tom. xii. p.
85.]

[Footnote 29: Seneca, Epist. lxxxix. His language is of the declamatory
kind: but declamation could scarcely exaggerate the avarice and luxury
of the Romans. The philosopher himself deserved some share of the
reproach, if it be true that his rigorous exaction of Quadringenties,
above three hundred thousand pounds which he had lent at high interest,
provoked a rebellion in Britain, (Dion Cassius, l. lxii. p. 1003.)
According to the conjecture of Gale (Antoninus's Itinerary in Britain,
p. 92,) the same Faustinus possessed an estate near Bury, in Suffolk and
another in the kingdom of Naples.]

[Footnote 30: Volusius, a wealthy senator, (Tacit. Annal. iii. 30,)
always preferred tenants born on the estate. Columella, who received
this maxim from him, argues very judiciously on the subject. De Re
Rustica, l. i. c. 7, p. 408, edit. Gesner. Leipsig, 1735.]

The opulent nobles of an immense capital, who were never excited by
the pursuit of military glory, and seldom engaged in the occupations of
civil government, naturally resigned their leisure to the business
and amusements of private life. At Rome, commerce was always held
in contempt: but the senators, from the first age of the republic,
increased their patrimony, and multiplied their clients, by the
lucrative practice of usury; and the obselete laws were eluded, or
violated, by the mutual inclinations and interest of both parties. [31]
A considerable mass of treasure must always have existed at Rome, either
in the current coin of the empire, or in the form of gold and silver
plate; and there were many sideboards in the time of Pliny which
contained more solid silver, than had been transported by Scipio from
vanquished Carthage. [32] The greater part of the nobles, who dissipated
their fortunes in profuse luxury, found themselves poor in the midst of
wealth, and idle in a constant round of dissipation. Their desires were
continually gratified by the labor of a thousand hands; of the numerous
train of their domestic slaves, who were actuated by the fear of
punishment; and of the various professions of artificers and merchants,
who were more powerfully impelled by the hopes of gain. The ancients
were destitute of many of the conveniences of life, which have been
invented or improved by the progress of industry; and the plenty of
glass and linen has diffused more real comforts among the modern
nations of Europe, than the senators of Rome could derive from all the
refinements of pompous or sensual luxury. [33] Their luxury, and their
manners, have been the subject of minute and laborious disposition:
but as such inquiries would divert me too long from the design of
the present work, I shall produce an authentic state of Rome and its
inhabitants, which is more peculiarly applicable to the period of the
Gothic invasion. Ammianus Marcellinus, who prudently chose the capital
of the empire as the residence the best adapted to the historian of
his own times, has mixed with the narrative of public events a lively
representation of the scenes with which he was familiarly conversant.
The judicious reader will not always approve of the asperity of censure,
the choice of circumstances, or the style of expression; he will perhaps
detect the latent prejudices, and personal resentments, which soured the
temper of Ammianus himself; but he will surely observe, with philosophic
curiosity, the interesting and original picture of the manners of Rome.
[34]

[Footnote 31: Valesius (ad Ammian. xiv. 6) has proved, from Chrysostom
and Augustin, that the senators were not allowed to lend money at usury.
Yet it appears from the Theodosian Code, (see Godefroy ad l. ii. tit.
xxxiii. tom. i. p. 230-289,) that they were permitted to take six
percent., or one half of the legal interest; and, what is more singular,
this permission was granted to the young senators.]

[Footnote 32: Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 50. He states the silver at
only 4380 pounds, which is increased by Livy (xxx. 45) to 100,023: the
former seems too little for an opulent city, the latter too much for any
private sideboard.]

[Footnote 33: The learned Arbuthnot (Tables of Ancient Coins, &c. p.
153) has observed with humor, and I believe with truth, that Augustus
had neither glass to his windows, nor a shirt to his back. Under the
lower empire, the use of linen and glass became somewhat more common. *
Note: The discovery of glass in such common use at Pompeii, spoils the
argument of Arbuthnot. See Sir W. Gell. Pompeiana, 2d ser. p. 98.--M.]

[Footnote 34: It is incumbent on me to explain the liberties which I
have taken with the text of Ammianus. 1. I have melted down into
one piece the sixth chapter of the fourteenth and the fourth of the
twenty-eighth book. 2. I have given order and connection to the confused
mass of materials. 3. I have softened some extravagant hyperbeles, and
pared away some superfluities of the original. 4. I have developed some
observations which were insinuated rather than expressed. With these
allowances, my version will be found, not literal indeed, but faithful
and exact.]

"The greatness of Rome"--such is the language of the historian--"was
founded on the rare, and almost incredible, alliance of virtue and of
fortune. The long period of her infancy was employed in a laborious
struggle against the tribes of Italy, the neighbors and enemies of
the rising city. In the strength and ardor of youth, she sustained
the storms of war; carried her victorious arms beyond the seas and the
mountains; and brought home triumphal laurels from every country of the
globe. At length, verging towards old age, and sometimes conquering
by the terror only of her name, she sought the blessings of ease and
tranquillity. The venerable city, which had trampled on the necks of
the fiercest nations, and established a system of laws, the perpetual
guardians of justice and freedom, was content, like a wise and wealthy
parent, to devolve on the Caesars, her favorite sons, the care of
governing her ample patrimony. [35] A secure and profound peace, such as
had been once enjoyed in the reign of Numa, succeeded to the tumults of
a republic; while Rome was still adored as the queen of the earth; and
the subject nations still reverenced the name of the people, and the
majesty of the senate. But this native splendor," continues Ammianus,
"is degraded, and sullied, by the conduct of some nobles, who, unmindful
of their own dignity, and of that of their country, assume an unbounded
license of vice and folly. They contend with each other in the empty
vanity of titles and surnames; and curiously select, or invent, the most
lofty and sonorous appellations, Reburrus, or Fabunius, Pagonius,
or Tarasius, [36] which may impress the ears of the vulgar with
astonishment and respect. From a vain ambition of perpetuating their
memory, they affect to multiply their likeness, in statues of bronze and
marble; nor are they satisfied, unless those statues are covered with
plates of gold; an honorable distinction, first granted to Acilius the
consul, after he had subdued, by his arms and counsels, the power of
King Antiochus. The ostentation of displaying, of magnifying, perhaps,
the rent-roll of the estates which they possess in all the provinces,
from the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just resentment of
every man, who recollects, that their poor and invincible ancestors were
not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers, by the delicacy
of their food, or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern nobles
measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their
chariots, [37] and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long
robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by
art or accident, they occasionally discover the under garments, the rich
tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals. [38] Followed
by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move
along the streets with the same impetuous speed as if they travelled
with post-horses; and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by
the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving
round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons
of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume,
on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate
to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman
people. If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet
any of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express
their affection by a tender embrace; while they proudly decline the
salutations of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire
above the honor of kissing their hands, or their knees. As soon as they
have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume
their rings, and the other ensigns of their dignity, select from their
private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen
persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain
till their departure the same haughty demeanor; which perhaps might have
been excused in the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse.
Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements;
they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil
of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. [39] If at any time,
but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail, in their
painted galleys, from the Lucrine Lake [40] to their elegant villas
on the seacoast of Puteoli and Cayeta, [41] they compare their own
expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly
presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas; should
a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they
deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language,
that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, [42] the regions
of eternal darkness. In these journeys into the country, [43] the whole
body of the household marches with their master. In the same manner
as the cavalry and infantry, the heavy and the light armed troops,
the advanced guard and the rear, are marshalled by the skill of their
military leaders; so the domestic officers, who bear a rod, as an ensign
of authority, distribute and arrange the numerous train of slaves
and attendants. The baggage and wardrobe move in the front; and are
immediately followed by a multitude of cooks, and inferior ministers,
employed in the service of the kitchens, and of the table. The main
body is composed of a promiscuous crowd of slaves, increased by the
accidental concourse of idle or dependent plebeians. The rear is
closed by the favorite band of eunuchs, distributed from age to youth,
according to the order of seniority. Their numbers and their deformity
excite the horror of the indignant spectators, who are ready to execrate
the memory of Semiramis, for the cruel art which she invented, of
frustrating the purposes of nature, and of blasting in the bud the hopes
of future generations. In the exercise of domestic jurisdiction, the
nobles of Rome express an exquisite sensibility for any personal injury,
and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of the human species.
When they have called for warm water, if a slave has been tardy in his
obedience, he is instantly chastised with three hundred lashes: but
should the same slave commit a wilful murder, the master will mildly
observe, that he is a worthless fellow; but that, if he repeats the
offence, he shall not escape punishment. Hospitality was formerly the
virtue of the Romans; and every stranger, who could plead either
merit or misfortune, was relieved, or rewarded by their generosity. At
present, if a foreigner, perhaps of no contemptible rank, is introduced
to one of the proud and wealthy senators, he is welcomed indeed in the
first audience, with such warm professions, and such kind inquiries,
that he retires, enchanted with the affability of his illustrious
friend, and full of regret that he had so long delayed his journey to
Rome, the active seat of manners, as well as of empire. Secure of
a favorable reception, he repeats his visit the ensuing day, and is
mortified by the discovery, that his person, his name, and his country,
are already forgotten. If he still has resolution to persevere, he
is gradually numbered in the train of dependants, and obtains the
permission to pay his assiduous and unprofitable court to a haughty
patron, incapable of gratitude or friendship; who scarcely deigns to
remark his presence, his departure, or his return. Whenever the
rich prepare a solemn and popular entertainment; [44] whenever they
celebrate, with profuse and pernicious luxury, their private banquets;
the choice of the guests is the subject of anxious deliberation. The
modest, the sober, and the learned, are seldom preferred; and the
nomenclators, who are commonly swayed by interested motives, have the
address to insert, in the list of invitations, the obscure names of the
most worthless of mankind. But the frequent and familiar companions
of the great, are those parasites, who practise the most useful of all
arts, the art of flattery; who eagerly applaud each word, and every
action, of their immortal patron; gaze with rapture on his marble
columns and variegated pavements; and strenuously praise the pomp and
elegance which he is taught to consider as a part of his personal merit.
At the Roman tables, the birds, the squirrels, [45] or the fish, which
appear of an uncommon size, are contemplated with curious attention; a
pair of scales is accurately applied, to ascertain their real weight;
and, while the more rational guests are disgusted by the vain and
tedious repetition, notaries are summoned to attest, by an authentic
record, the truth of such a marvelous event. Another method of
introduction into the houses and society of the great, is derived from
the profession of gaming, or, as it is more politely styled, of play.
The confederates are united by a strict and indissoluble bond of
friendship, or rather of conspiracy; a superior degree of skill in the
Tesserarian art (which may be interpreted the game of dice and tables)
[46] is a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of that sublime
science, who in a supper, or assembly, is placed below a magistrate,
displays in his countenance the surprise and indignation which Cato
might be supposed to feel, when he was refused the praetorship by
the votes of a capricious people. The acquisition of knowledge seldom
engages the curiosity of nobles, who abhor the fatigue, and disdain
the advantages, of study; and the only books which they peruse are the
Satires of Juvenal, and the verbose and fabulous histories of Marius
Maximus. [47] The libraries, which they have inherited from their
fathers, are secluded, like dreary sepulchres, from the light of day.
[48] But the costly instruments of the theatre, flutes, and enormous
lyres, and hydraulic organs, are constructed for their use; and the
harmony of vocal and instrumental music is incessantly repeated in the
palaces of Rome. In those palaces, sound is preferred to sense, and the
care of the body to that of the mind."

It is allowed as a salutary maxim, that the light and frivolous
suspicion of a contagious malady, is of sufficient weight to excuse
the visits of the most intimate friends; and even the servants, who
are despatched to make the decent inquiries, are not suffered to return
home, till they have undergone the ceremony of a previous ablution.
Yet this selfish and unmanly delicacy occasionally yields to the more
imperious passion of avarice. The prospect of gain will urge a rich
and gouty senator as far as Spoleto; every sentiment of arrogance and
dignity is subdued by the hopes of an inheritance, or even of a legacy;
and a wealthy childless citizen is the most powerful of the Romans. The
art of obtaining the signature of a favorable testament, and sometimes
of hastening the moment of its execution, is perfectly understood; and
it has happened, that in the same house, though in different apartments,
a husband and a wife, with the laudable design of overreaching each
other, have summoned their respective lawyers, to declare, at the same
time, their mutual, but contradictory, intentions. The distress which
follows and chastises extravagant luxury, often reduces the great to the
use of the most humiliating expedients. When they desire to borrow, they
employ the base and supplicating style of the slave in the comedy;
but when they are called upon to pay, they assume the royal and tragic
declamation of the grandsons of Hercules. If the demand is repeated,
they readily procure some trusty sycophant, instructed to maintain a
charge of poison, or magic, against the insolent creditor; who is seldom
released from prison, till he has signed a discharge of the whole debt.
These vices, which degrade the moral character of the Romans, are mixed
with a puerile superstition, that disgraces their understanding. They
listen with confidence to the predictions of haruspices, who pretend
to read, in the entrails of victims, the signs of future greatness and
prosperity; and there are many who do not presume either to bathe, or
to dine, or to appear in public, till they have diligently consulted,
according to the rules of astrology, the situation of Mercury, and the
aspect of the moon. [49] It is singular enough, that this vain credulity
may often be discovered among the profane sceptics, who impiously doubt,
or deny, the existence of a celestial power."

[Footnote 35: Claudian, who seems to have read the history of Ammianus,
speaks of this great revolution in a much less courtly style:--

     Postquam jura ferox in se communia Caesar
     Transtulit; et lapsi mores; desuetaque priscis
     Artibus, in gremium pacis servile recessi.
     --De Be. Gildonico, p. 49.]

[Footnote 36: The minute diligence of antiquarians has not been able
to verify these extraordinary names. I am of opinion that they were
invented by the historian himself, who was afraid of any personal satire
or application. It is certain, however, that the simple denominations
of the Romans were gradually lengthened to the number of four, five, or
even seven, pompous surnames; as, for instance, Marcus Maecius Maemmius
Furius Balburius Caecilianus Placidus. See Noris Cenotaph Piran Dissert.
iv. p. 438.]

[Footnote 37: The or coaches of the romans, were often of solid silver,
curiously carved and engraved; and the trappings of the mules, or
horses, were embossed with gold. This magnificence continued from the
reign of Nero to that of Honorius; and the Appian way was covered with
the splendid equipages of the nobles, who came out to meet St. Melania,
when she returned to Rome, six years before the Gothic siege, (Seneca,
epist. lxxxvii. Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii. 49. Paulin. Nolan. apud
Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 397, No. 5.) Yet pomp is well exchange for
convenience; and a plain modern coach, that is hung upon springs, is
much preferable to the silver or gold carts of antiquity, which rolled
on the axle-tree, and were exposed, for the most part, to the inclemency
of the weather.]

[Footnote 38: In a homily of Asterius, bishop of Amasia, M. de Valois
has discovered (ad Ammian. xiv. 6) that this was a new fashion; that
bears, wolves lions, and tigers, woods, hunting-matches, &c., were
represented in embroidery: and that the more pious coxcombs substituted
the figure or legend of some favorite saint.]

[Footnote 39: See Pliny's Epistles, i. 6. Three large wild boars were
allured and taken in the toils without interrupting the studies of the
philosophic sportsman.]

[Footnote 40: The change from the inauspicious word Avernus, which
stands in the text, is immaterial. The two lakes, Avernus and Lucrinus,
communicated with each other, and were fashioned by the stupendous
moles of Agrippa into the Julian port, which opened, through a narrow
entrance, into the Gulf of Puteoli. Virgil, who resided on the spot, has
described (Georgic ii. 161) this work at the moment of its execution:
and his commentators, especially Catrou, have derived much light from
Strabo, Suetonius, and Dion. Earthquakes and volcanoes have changed the
face of the country, and turned the Lucrine Lake, since the year 1538,
into the Monte Nuovo. See Camillo Pellegrino Discorsi della Campania
Felice, p. 239, 244, &c. Antonii Sanfelicii Campania, p. 13, 88--Note:
Compare Lyell's Geology, ii. 72.--M.]

[Footnote 41: The regna Cumana et Puteolana; loca caetiroqui valde
expe tenda, interpellantium autem multitudine paene fugienda. Cicero ad
Attic. xvi. 17.]

[Footnote 42: The proverbial expression of Cimmerian darkness was
originally borrowed from the description of Homer, (in the eleventh book
of the Odyssey,) which he applies to a remote and fabulous country on
the shores of the ocean. See Erasmi Adagia, in his works, tom. ii. p.
593, the Leyden edition.]

[Footnote 43: We may learn from Seneca (epist. cxxiii.) three curious
circumstances relative to the journeys of the Romans. 1. They were
preceded by a troop of Numidian light horse, who announced, by a cloud
of dust, the approach of a great man. 2. Their baggage mules transported
not only the precious vases, but even the fragile vessels of crystal and
murra, which last is almost proved, by the learned French translator
of Seneca, (tom. iii. p. 402-422,) to mean the porcelain of China and
Japan. 3. The beautiful faces of the young slaves were covered with a
medicated crust, or ointment, which secured them against the effects of
the sun and frost.]

[Footnote 44: Distributio solemnium sportularum. The sportuloe, or
sportelloe, were small baskets, supposed to contain a quantity of hot
provisions of the value of 100 quadrantes, or twelvepence halfpenny,
which were ranged in order in the hall, and ostentatiously distributed
to the hungry or servile crowd who waited at the door. This indelicate
custom is very frequently mentioned in the epigrams of Martial, and the
satires of Juvenal. See likewise Suetonius, in Claud. c. 21, in Neron.
c. 16, in Domitian, c. 4, 7. These baskets of provisions were afterwards
converted into large pieces of gold and silver coin, or plate, which
were mutually given and accepted even by persons of the highest rank,
(see Symmach. epist. iv. 55, ix. 124, and Miscell. p. 256,) on solemn
occasions, of consulships, marriages, &c.]

[Footnote 45: The want of an English name obliges me to refer to the
common genus of squirrels, the Latin glis, the French loir; a little
animal, who inhabits the woods, and remains torpid in cold weather, (see
Plin. Hist. Natur. viii. 82. Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. viii. 153.
Pennant's Synopsis of Quadrupeds, p. 289.) The art of rearing and
fattening great numbers of glires was practised in Roman villas as a
profitable article of rural economy, (Varro, de Re Rustica, iii. 15.)
The excessive demand of them for luxurious tables was increased by the
foolish prohibitions of the censors; and it is reported that they are
still esteemed in modern Rome, and are frequently sent as presents by
the Colonna princes, (see Brotier, the last editor of Pliny tom. ii. p.
453. epud Barbou, 1779.)--Note: Is it not the dormouse?--M.]

[Footnote 46: This game, which might be translated by the more familiar
names of trictrac, or backgammon, was a favorite amusement of the
gravest Romans; and old Mucius Scaevola, the lawyer, had the reputation
of a very skilful player. It was called ludus duodecim scriptorum, from
the twelve scripta, or lines, which equally divided the alvevolus
or table. On these, the two armies, the white and the black, each
consisting of fifteen men, or catculi, were regularly placed, and
alternately moved according to the laws of the game, and the chances of
the tesseroe, or dice. Dr. Hyde, who diligently traces the history and
varieties of the nerdiludium (a name of Persic etymology) from Ireland
to Japan, pours forth, on this trifling subject, a copious torrent
of classic and Oriental learning. See Syntagma Dissertat. tom. ii. p.
217-405.]

[Footnote 47: Marius Maximus, homo omnium verbosissimus, qui, et
mythistoricis se voluminibus implicavit. Vopiscus in Hist. August.
p. 242. He wrote the lives of the emperors, from Trajan to Alexander
Severus. See Gerard Vossius de Historicis Latin. l. ii. c. 3, in his
works, vol. iv. p. 47.]

[Footnote 48: This satire is probably exaggerated. The Saturnalia of
Macrobius, and the epistles of Jerom, afford satisfactory proofs, that
Christian theology and classic literature were studiously cultivated by
several Romans, of both sexes, and of the highest rank.]

[Footnote 49: Macrobius, the friend of these Roman nobles, considered
the siara as the cause, or at least the signs, of future events, (de
Somn. Scipion l. i. c 19. p. 68.)]




Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.--Part II.

In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures,
the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the
dexterity or labor of their hands, are commonly the most prolific,
the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the
community. But the plebeians of Rome, who disdained such sedentary and
servile arts, had been oppressed from the earliest times by the weight
of debt and usury; and the husbandman, during the term of his military
service, was obliged to abandon the cultivation of his farm. [50] The
lands of Italy which had been originally divided among the families of
free and indigent proprietors, were insensibly purchased or usurped by
the avarice of the nobles; and in the age which preceded the fall of the
republic, it was computed that only two thousand citizens were possessed
of an independent substance. [51] Yet as long as the people bestowed,
by their suffrages, the honors of the state, the command of the legions,
and the administration of wealthy provinces, their conscious pride
alleviated in some measure, the hardships of poverty; and their wants
were seasonably supplied by the ambitious liberality of the candidates,
who aspired to secure a venal majority in the thirty-five tribes, or
the hundred and ninety-three centuries, of Rome. But when the prodigal
commons had not only imprudently alienated the use, but the inheritance
of power, they sunk, under the reign of the Caesars, into a vile and
wretched populace, which must, in a few generations, have been
totally extinguished, if it had not been continually recruited by the
manumission of slaves, and the influx of strangers. As early as the time
of Hadrian, it was the just complaint of the ingenuous natives, that the
capital had attracted the vices of the universe, and the manners of the
most opposite nations. The intemperance of the Gauls, the cunning and
levity of the Greeks, the savage obstinacy of the Egyptians and Jews,
the servile temper of the Asiatics, and the dissolute, effeminate
prostitution of the Syrians, were mingled in the various multitude,
which, under the proud and false denomination of Romans, presumed to
despise their fellow-subjects, and even their sovereigns, who dwelt
beyond the precincts of the Eternal City. [52]

[Footnote 50: The histories of Livy (see particularly vi. 36) are full
of the extortions of the rich, and the sufferings of the poor debtors.
The melancholy story of a brave old soldier (Dionys. Hal. l. vi. c.
26, p. 347, edit. Hudson, and Livy, ii. 23) must have been frequently
repeated in those primitive times, which have been so undeservedly
praised.]

[Footnote 51: Non esse in civitate duo millia hominum qui rem habereni.
Cicero. Offic. ii. 21, and Comment. Paul. Manut. in edit. Graev. This
vague computation was made A. U. C. 649, in a speech of the tribune
Philippus, and it was his object, as well as that of the Gracchi, (see
Plutarch,) to deplore, and perhaps to exaggerate, the misery of the
common people.]

[Footnote 52: See the third Satire (60-125) of Juvenal, who indignantly
complains,

     Quamvis quota portio faecis Achaei!
     Jampridem Syrus in Tiberem defluxit Orontes;
     Et linguam et mores, &c.

Seneca, when he proposes to comfort his mother (Consolat. ad Helv. c.
6) by the reflection, that a great part of mankind were in a state of
exile, reminds her how few of the inhabitants of Rome were born in the
city.]

Yet the name of that city was still pronounced with respect: the
frequent and capricious tumults of its inhabitants were indulged with
impunity; and the successors of Constantine, instead of crushing the
last remains of the democracy by the strong arm of military power,
embraced the mild policy of Augustus, and studied to relieve the
poverty, and to amuse the idleness, of an innumerable people. [53] I.
For the convenience of the lazy plebeians, the monthly distributions of
corn were converted into a daily allowance of bread; a great number of
ovens were constructed and maintained at the public expense; and at the
appointed hour, each citizen, who was furnished with a ticket, ascended
the flight of steps, which had been assigned to his peculiar quarter or
division, and received, either as a gift, or at a very low price, a loaf
of bread of the weight of three pounds, for the use of his family. II.
The forest of Lucania, whose acorns fattened large droves of wild hogs,
[54] afforded, as a species of tribute, a plentiful supply of cheap and
wholesome meat. During five months of the year, a regular allowance of
bacon was distributed to the poorer citizens; and the annual consumption
of the capital, at a time when it was much declined from its former
lustre, was ascertained, by an edict from Valentinian the Third, at
three millions six hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds. [55] III.
In the manners of antiquity, the use of oil was indispensable for the
lamp, as well as for the bath; and the annual tax, which was imposed on
Africa for the benefit of Rome, amounted to the weight of three millions
of pounds, to the measure, perhaps, of three hundred thousand English
gallons. IV. The anxiety of Augustus to provide the metropolis with
sufficient plenty of corn, was not extended beyond that necessary
article of human subsistence; and when the popular clamor accused the
dearness and scarcity of wine, a proclamation was issued, by the grave
reformer, to remind his subjects that no man could reasonably complain
of thirst, since the aqueducts of Agrippa had introduced into the city
so many copious streams of pure and salubrious water. [56] This rigid
sobriety was insensibly relaxed; and, although the generous design of
Aurelian [57] does not appear to have been executed in its full
extent, the use of wine was allowed on very easy and liberal terms. The
administration of the public cellars was delegated to a magistrate of
honorable rank; and a considerable part of the vintage of Campania was
reserved for the fortunate inhabitants of Rome.

[Footnote 53: Almost all that is said of the bread, bacon, oil, wine,
&c., may be found in the fourteenth book of the Theodosian Code; which
expressly treats of the police of the great cities. See particularly
the titles iii. iv. xv. xvi. xvii. xxiv. The collateral testimonies
are produced in Godefroy's Commentary, and it is needless to transcribe
them. According to a law of Theodosius, which appreciates in money the
military allowance, a piece of gold (eleven shillings) was equivalent to
eighty pounds of bacon, or to eighty pounds of oil, or to twelve modii
(or pecks) of salt, (Cod. Theod. l. viii. tit. iv. leg. 17.) This
equation, compared with another of seventy pounds of bacon for an
amphora, (Cod. Theod. l. xiv. tit. iv. leg. 4,) fixes the price of wine
at about sixteenpence the gallon.]

[Footnote 54: The anonymous author of the Description of the World (p.
14. in tom. iii. Geograph. Minor. Hudson) observes of Lucania, in his
barbarous Latin, Regio optima, et ipsa omnibus habundans, et lardum
multum foras. Proptor quod est in montibus, cujus aescam animalium
rariam, &c.]

[Footnote 55: See Novell. ad calcem Cod. Theod. D. Valent. l. i. tit.
xv. This law was published at Rome, June 29th, A.D. 452.]

[Footnote 56: Sueton. in August. c. 42. The utmost debauch of the
emperor himself, in his favorite wine of Rhaetia, never exceeded
a sextarius, (an English pint.) Id. c. 77. Torrentius ad loc. and
Arbuthnot's Tables, p. 86.]

[Footnote 57: His design was to plant vineyards along the sea-coast of
Hetruria, (Vopiscus, in Hist. August. p. 225;) the dreary, unwholesome,
uncultivated Maremme of modern Tuscany]

The stupendous aqueducts, so justly celebrated by the praises of
Augustus himself, replenished the Thermoe, or baths, which had been
constructed in every part of the city, with Imperial magnificence. The
baths of Antoninus Caracalla, which were open, at stated hours, for the
indiscriminate service of the senators and the people, contained above
sixteen hundred seats of marble; and more than three thousand were
reckoned in the baths of Diocletian. [58] The walls of the lofty
apartments were covered with curious mosaics, that imitated the art of
the pencil in the elegance of design, and the variety of colors. The
Egyptian granite was beautifully encrusted with the precious green
marble of Numidia; the perpetual stream of hot water was poured into
the capacious basins, through so many wide mouths of bright and massy
silver; and the meanest Roman could purchase, with a small copper coin,
the daily enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury, which might excite
the envy of the kings of Asia. [59] From these stately palaces issued a
swarm of dirty and ragged plebeians, without shoes and without a mantle;
who loitered away whole days in the street of Forum, to hear news and
to hold disputes; who dissipated in extravagant gaming, the miserable
pittance of their wives and children; and spent the hours of the night
in the obscure taverns, and brothels, in the indulgence of gross and
vulgar sensuality. [60]

[Footnote 58: Olympiodor. apud Phot. p. 197.]

[Footnote 59: Seneca (epistol. lxxxvi.) compares the baths of Scipio
Africanus, at his villa of Liternum, with the magnificence (which was
continually increasing) of the public baths of Rome, long before the
stately Thermae of Antoninus and Diocletian were erected. The quadrans
paid for admission was the quarter of the as, about one eighth of an
English penny.]

[Footnote 60: Ammianus, (l. xiv. c. 6, and l. xxviii. c. 4,) after
describing the luxury and pride of the nobles of Rome, exposes, with
equal indignation, the vices and follies of the common people.]

But the most lively and splendid amusement of the idle multitude,
depended on the frequent exhibition of public games and spectacles.
The piety of Christian princes had suppressed the inhuman combats of
gladiators; but the Roman people still considered the Circus as their
home, their temple, and the seat of the republic. The impatient crowd
rushed at the dawn of day to secure their places, and there were many
who passed a sleepless and anxious night in the adjacent porticos. From
the morning to the evening, careless of the sun, or of the rain,
the spectators, who sometimes amounted to the number of four hundred
thousand, remained in eager attention; their eyes fixed on the horses
and charioteers, their minds agitated with hope and fear, for the
success of the colors which they espoused: and the happiness of Rome
appeared to hang on the event of a race. [61] The same immoderate
ardor inspired their clamors and their applause, as often as they were
entertained with the hunting of wild beasts, and the various modes of
theatrical representation. These representations in modern capitals
may deserve to be considered as a pure and elegant school of taste,
and perhaps of virtue. But the Tragic and Comic Muse of the Romans,
who seldom aspired beyond the imitation of Attic genius, [62] had been
almost totally silent since the fall of the republic; [63] and their
place was unworthily occupied by licentious farce, effeminate music, and
splendid pageantry. The pantomimes, [64] who maintained their reputation
from the age of Augustus to the sixth century, expressed, without the
use of words, the various fables of the gods and heroes of antiquity;
and the perfection of their art, which sometimes disarmed the gravity of
the philosopher, always excited the applause and wonder of the people.
The vast and magnificent theatres of Rome were filled by three thousand
female dancers, and by three thousand singers, with the masters of the
respective choruses. Such was the popular favor which they enjoyed,
that, in a time of scarcity, when all strangers were banished from the
city, the merit of contributing to the public pleasures exempted them
from a law, which was strictly executed against the professors of the
liberal arts. [65]

[Footnote 61: Juvenal. Satir. xi. 191, &c. The expressions of the
historian Ammianus are not less strong and animated than those of the
satirist and both the one and the other painted from the life. The
numbers which the great Circus was capable of receiving are taken from
the original Notitioe of the city. The differences between them prove
that they did not transcribe each other; but the same may appear
incredible, though the country on these occasions flocked to the city.]

[Footnote 62: Sometimes indeed they composed original pieces.

     Vestigia Graeca
     Ausi deserere et celeb rare domestica facta.

Horat. Epistol. ad Pisones, 285, and the learned, though perplexed note
of Dacier, who might have allowed the name of tragedies to the Brutus
and the Decius of Pacuvius, or to the Cato of Maternus. The Octavia,
ascribed to one of the Senecas, still remains a very unfavorable
specimen of Roman tragedy.]

[Footnote 63: In the time of Quintilian and Pliny, a tragic poet was
reduced to the imperfect method of hiring a great room, and reading his
play to the company, whom he invited for that purpose. (See Dialog. de
Oratoribus, c. 9, 11, and Plin. Epistol. vii. 17.)]

[Footnote 64: See the dialogue of Lucian, entitled the Saltatione, tom.
ii. p. 265-317, edit. Reitz. The pantomimes obtained the honorable name;
and it was required, that they should be conversant with almost
every art and science. Burette (in the Memoires de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. i. p. 127, &c.) has given a short history of the art
of pantomimes.]

[Footnote 65: Ammianus, l. xiv. c. 6. He complains, with decent
indignation that the streets of Rome were filled with crowds of females,
who might have given children to the state, but whose only occupation
was to curl and dress their hair, and jactari volubilibus gyris, dum
experimunt innumera simulacra, quae finxere fabulae theatrales.]

It is said, that the foolish curiosity of Elagabalus attempted to
discover, from the quantity of spiders' webs, the number of the
inhabitants of Rome. A more rational method of inquiry might not have
been undeserving of the attention of the wisest princes, who could
easily have resolved a question so important for the Roman government,
and so interesting to succeeding ages. The births and deaths of the
citizens were duly registered; and if any writer of antiquity had
condescended to mention the annual amount, or the common average, we
might now produce some satisfactory calculation, which would destroy the
extravagant assertions of critics, and perhaps confirm the modest and
probable conjectures of philosophers. [66] The most diligent researches
have collected only the following circumstances; which, slight and
imperfect as they are, may tend, in some degree, to illustrate the
question of the populousness of ancient Rome. I. When the capital of
the empire was besieged by the Goths, the circuit of the walls was
accurately measured, by Ammonius, the mathematician, who found it equal
to twenty-one miles. [67] It should not be forgotten that the form of
the city was almost that of a circle; the geometrical figure which is
known to contain the largest space within any given circumference. II.
The architect Vitruvius, who flourished in the Augustan age, and whose
evidence, on this occasion, has peculiar weight and authority, observes,
that the innumerable habitations of the Roman people would have spread
themselves far beyond the narrow limits of the city; and that the want
of ground, which was probably contracted on every side by gardens and
villas, suggested the common, though inconvenient, practice of raising
the houses to a considerable height in the air. [68] But the loftiness
of these buildings, which often consisted of hasty work and insufficient
materials, was the cause of frequent and fatal accidents; and it was
repeatedly enacted by Augustus, as well as by Nero, that the height of
private edifices within the walls of Rome, should not exceed the measure
of seventy feet from the ground. [69] III. Juvenal [70] laments, as
it should seem from his own experience, the hardships of the poorer
citizens, to whom he addresses the salutary advice of emigrating,
without delay, from the smoke of Rome, since they might purchase, in the
little towns of Italy, a cheerful commodious dwelling, at the same price
which they annually paid for a dark and miserable lodging. House-rent
was therefore immoderately dear: the rich acquired, at an enormous
expense, the ground, which they covered with palaces and gardens; but
the body of the Roman people was crowded into a narrow space; and the
different floors, and apartments, of the same house, were divided, as it
is still the custom of Paris, and other cities, among several families
of plebeians. IV. The total number of houses in the fourteen regions
of the city, is accurately stated in the description of Rome, composed
under the reign of Theodosius, and they amount to forty-eight thousand
three hundred and eighty-two. [71] The two classes of domus and of
insuloe, into which they are divided, include all the habitations of
the capital, of every rank and condition from the marble palace of the
Anicii, with a numerous establishment of freedmen and slaves, to the
lofty and narrow lodging-house, where the poet Codrus and his wife were
permitted to hire a wretched garret immediately under the files. If we
adopt the same average, which, under similar circumstances, has
been found applicable to Paris, [72] and indifferently allow about
twenty-five persons for each house, of every degree, we may fairly
estimate the inhabitants of Rome at twelve hundred thousand: a number
which cannot be thought excessive for the capital of a mighty empire,
though it exceeds the populousness of the greatest cities of modern
Europe. [73] [7311]

[Footnote 66: Lipsius (tom. iii. p. 423, de Magnitud. Romana, l. iii.
c. 3) and Isaac Vossius (Observant. Var. p. 26-34) have indulged strange
dreams, of four, or eight, or fourteen, millions in Rome. Mr. Hume,
(Essays, vol. i. p. 450-457,) with admirable good sense and scepticism
betrays some secret disposition to extenuate the populousness of ancient
times.]

[Footnote 67: Olympiodor. ap. Phot. p. 197. See Fabricius, Bibl. Graec.
tom. ix. p. 400.]

[Footnote 68: In ea autem majestate urbis, et civium infinita
frequentia, innumerabiles habitationes opus fuit explicare. Ergo cum
recipero non posset area plana tantam multitudinem in urbe, ad auxilium
altitudinis aedificiorum res ipsa coegit devenire. Vitruv. ii. 8. This
passage, which I owe to Vossius, is clear, strong, and comprehensive.]

[Footnote 69: The successive testimonies of Pliny, Aristides, Claudian,
Rutilius, &c., prove the insufficiency of these restrictive edicts. See
Lipsius, de Magnitud. Romana, l. iii. c. 4.

     Tabulata tibi jam tertia fumant;
     Tu nescis; nam si gradibus trepidatur ab imis
     Ultimus ardebit, quem tegula sola tuetur
     A pluvia. ---Juvenal. Satir. iii. 199]

[Footnote 70: Read the whole third satire, but particularly 166, 223,
&c. The description of a crowded insula, or lodging-house, in Petronius,
(c. 95, 97,) perfectly tallies with the complaints of Juvenal; and we
learn from legal authority, that, in the time of Augustus, (Heineccius,
Hist. Juris. Roman. c. iv. p. 181,) the ordinary rent of the several
coenacula, or apartments of an insula, annually produced forty thousand
sesterces, between three and four hundred pounds sterling, (Pandect. l.
xix. tit. ii. No. 30,) a sum which proves at once the large extent, and
high value, of those common buildings.]

[Footnote 71: This sum total is composed of 1780 domus, or great houses
of 46,602 insuloe, or plebeian habitations, (see Nardini, Roma Antica,
l. iii. p. 88;) and these numbers are ascertained by the agreement of
the texts of the different Notitioe. Nardini, l. viii. p. 498, 500.]

[Footnote 72: See that accurate writer M. de Messance, Recherches sur la
Population, p. 175-187. From probable, or certain grounds, he assigns to
Paris 23,565 houses, 71,114 families, and 576,630 inhabitants.]

[Footnote 73: This computation is not very different from that which M.
Brotier, the last editor of Tacitus, (tom. ii. p. 380,) has assumed
from similar principles; though he seems to aim at a degree of precision
which it is neither possible nor important to obtain.]

[Footnote 7311: M. Dureau de la Malle (Economic Politique des Romaines,
t. i. p. 369) quotes a passage from the xvth chapter of Gibbon, in which
he estimates the population of Rome at not less than a million, and adds
(omitting any reference to this passage,) that he (Gibbon) could not
have seriously studied the question. M. Dureau de la Malle proceeds
to argue that Rome, as contained within the walls of Servius Tullius,
occupying an area only one fifth of that of Paris, could not have
contained 300,000 inhabitants; within those of Aurelian not more than
560,000, inclusive of soldiers and strangers. The suburbs, he endeavors
to show, both up to the time of Aurelian, and after his reign, were
neither so extensive, nor so populous, as generally supposed. M.
Dureau de la Malle has but imperfectly quoted the important passage
of Dionysius, that which proves that when he wrote (in the time of
Augustus) the walls of Servius no longer marked the boundary of the
city. In many places they were so built upon, that it was impossible to
trace them. There was no certain limit, where the city ended and ceased
to be the city; it stretched out to so boundless an extent into the
country. Ant. Rom. iv. 13. None of M. de la Malle's arguments appear to
me to prove, against this statement, that these irregular suburbs did
not extend so far in many parts, as to make it impossible to calculate
accurately the inhabited area of the city. Though no doubt the city, as
reconstructed by Nero, was much less closely built and with many more
open spaces for palaces, temples, and other public edifices, yet many
passages seem to prove that the laws respecting the height of houses
were not rigidly enforced. A great part of the lower especially of the
slave population, were very densely crowded, and lived, even more than
in our modern towns, in cellars and subterranean dwellings under the
public edifices. Nor do M. de la Malle's arguments, by which he would
explain the insulae insulae (of which the Notitiae Urbis give us the
number) as rows of shops, with a chamber or two within the domus,
or houses of the wealthy, satisfy me as to their soundness of their
scholarship. Some passages which he adduces directly contradict his
theory; none, as appears to me, distinctly prove it. I must adhere
to the old interpretation of the word, as chiefly dwellings for the
middling or lower classes, or clusters of tenements, often perhaps,
under the same roof. On this point, Zumpt, in the Dissertation before
quoted, entirely disagrees with M. de la Malle. Zumpt has likewise
detected the mistake of M. de la Malle as to the "canon" of corn,
mentioned in the life of Septimius Severus by Spartianus. On this canon
the French writer calculates the inhabitants of Rome at that time. But
the "canon" was not the whole supply of Rome, but that quantity which
the state required for the public granaries to supply the gratuitous
distributions to the people, and the public officers and slaves; no
doubt likewise to keep down the general price. M. Zumpt reckons the
population of Rome at 2,000,000. After careful consideration, I should
conceive the number in the text, 1,200,000, to be nearest the truth--M.
1845.]

Such was the state of Rome under the reign of Honorius; at the time when
the Gothic army formed the siege, or rather the blockade, of the city.
[74] By a skilful disposition of his numerous forces, who impatiently
watched the moment of an assault, Alaric encompassed the walls,
commanded the twelve principal gates, intercepted all communication
with the adjacent country, and vigilantly guarded the navigation of
the Tyber, from which the Romans derived the surest and most plentiful
supply of provisions. The first emotions of the nobles, and of the
people, were those of surprise and indignation, that a vile Barbarian
should dare to insult the capital of the world: but their arrogance was
soon humbled by misfortune; and their unmanly rage, instead of being
directed against an enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a defenceless
and innocent victim. Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans might
have respected the niece of Theodosius, the aunt, nay, even the
adoptive mother, of the reigning emperor: but they abhorred the widow
of Stilicho; and they listened with credulous passion to the tale
of calumny, which accused her of maintaining a secret and criminal
correspondence with the Gothic invader. Actuated, or overawed, by the
same popular frenzy, the senate, without requiring any evidence of his
guilt, pronounced the sentence of her death. Serena was ignominiously
strangled; and the infatuated multitude were astonished to find, that
this cruel act of injustice did not immediately produce the retreat of
the Barbarians, and the deliverance of the city. That unfortunate city
gradually experienced the distress of scarcity, and at length the horrid
calamities of famine. The daily allowance of three pounds of bread was
reduced to one half, to one third, to nothing; and the price of corn
still continued to rise in a rapid and extravagant proportion. The
poorer citizens, who were unable to purchase the necessaries of life,
solicited the precarious charity of the rich; and for a while the public
misery was alleviated by the humanity of Laeta, the widow of the emperor
Gratian, who had fixed her residence at Rome, and consecrated to the use
of the indigent the princely revenue which she annually received from
the grateful successors of her husband. [75] But these private and
temporary donatives were insufficient to appease the hunger of a
numerous people; and the progress of famine invaded the marble palaces
of the senators themselves. The persons of both sexes, who had been
educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is
requisite to supply the demands of nature; and lavished their unavailing
treasures of gold and silver, to obtain the coarse and scanty sustenance
which they would formerly have rejected with disdain. The food the most
repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the most unwholesome
and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured, and fiercely
disputed, by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained, that
some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their fellow-creatures,
whom they had secretly murdered; and even mothers, (such was the horrid
conflict of the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the
human breast,) even mothers are said to have tasted the flesh of their
slaughtered infants! [76] Many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome
expired in their houses, or in the streets, for want of sustenance;
and as the public sepulchres without the walls were in the power of
the enemy the stench, which arose from so many putrid and unburied
carcasses, infected the air; and the miseries of famine were succeeded
and aggravated by the contagion of a pestilential disease. The
assurances of speedy and effectual relief, which were repeatedly
transmitted from the court of Ravenna, supported for some time, the
fainting resolution of the Romans, till at length the despair of
any human aid tempted them to accept the offers of a praeternatural
deliverance. Pompeianus, praefect of the city, had been persuaded, by
the art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners, that, by the mysterious
force of spells and sacrifices, they could extract the lightning from
the clouds, and point those celestial fires against the camp of the
Barbarians. [77] The important secret was communicated to Innocent,
the bishop of Rome; and the successor of St. Peter is accused, perhaps
without foundation, of preferring the safety of the republic to the
rigid severity of the Christian worship. But when the question was
agitated in the senate; when it was proposed, as an essential condition,
that those sacrifices should be performed in the Capitol, by the
authority, and in the presence, of the magistrates, the majority of
that respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the Divine or of the
Imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act, which appeared almost
equivalent to the public restoration of Paganism. [78]

[Footnote 74: For the events of the first siege of Rome, which are often
confounded with those of the second and third, see Zosimus, l. v.
p. 350-354, Sozomen, l. ix. c. 6, Olympiodorus, ap. Phot. p. 180,
Philostorgius, l. xii. c. 3, and Godefroy, Dissertat. p. 467-475.]

[Footnote 75: The mother of Laeta was named Pissumena. Her father,
family, and country, are unknown. Ducange, Fam. Byzantium, p. 59.]

[Footnote 76: Ad nefandos cibos erupit esurientium rabies, et sua
invicem membra laniarunt, dum mater non parcit lactenti infantiae; et
recipit utero, quem paullo ante effuderat. Jerom. ad Principiam, tom. i.
p. 121. The same horrid circumstance is likewise told of the sieges
of Jerusalem and Paris. For the latter, compare the tenth book of the
Henriade, and the Journal de Henri IV. tom. i. p. 47-83; and observe
that a plain narrative of facts is much more pathetic, than the most
labored descriptions of epic poetry]

[Footnote 77: Zosimus (l. v. p. 355, 356) speaks of these ceremonies
like a Greek unacquainted with the national superstition of Rome and
Tuscany. I suspect, that they consisted of two parts, the secret and the
public; the former were probably an imitation of the arts and spells, by
which Numa had drawn down Jupiter and his thunder on Mount Aventine.

     Quid agant laqueis, quae carmine dicant,
     Quaque trahant superis sedibus arte Jovem,
     Scire nefas homini.

The ancilia, or shields of Mars, the pignora Imperii, which were carried
in solemn procession on the calends of March, derived their origin
from this mysterious event, (Ovid. Fast. iii. 259-398.) It was probably
designed to revive this ancient festival, which had been suppressed by
Theodosius. In that case, we recover a chronological date (March the
1st, A.D. 409) which has not hitherto been observed. * Note: On this
curious question of the knowledge of conducting lightning, processed by
the ancients, consult Eusebe Salverte, des Sciences Occultes, l. xxiv.
Paris, 1829.--M.]

[Footnote 78: Sozomen (l. ix. c. 6) insinuates that the experiment was
actually, though unsuccessfully, made; but he does not mention the name
of Innocent: and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. x. p. 645) is
determined not to believe, that a pope could be guilty of such impious
condescension.]

The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at least in the
moderation, of the king of the Goths. The senate, who in this emergency
assumed the supreme powers of government, appointed two ambassadors
to negotiate with the enemy. This important trust was delegated to
Basilius, a senator, of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in
the administration of provinces; and to John, the first tribune of the
notaries, who was peculiarly qualified, by his dexterity in business,
as well as by his former intimacy with the Gothic prince. When they were
introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty
style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved
to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that, if Alaric
refused them a fair and honorable capitulation, he might sound his
trumpets, and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised
in arms, and animated by despair. "The thicker the hay, the easier it is
mowed," was the concise reply of the Barbarian; and this rustic metaphor
was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his
contempt for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury
before they were emaciated by famine. He then condescended to fix the
ransom, which he would accept as the price of his retreat from the
walls of Rome: all the gold and silver in the city, whether it were
the property of the state, or of individuals; all the rich and precious
movables; and all the slaves that could prove their title to the name of
Barbarians. The ministers of the senate presumed to ask, in a modest and
suppliant tone, "If such, O king, are your demands, what do you
intend to leave us?" "Your Lives!" replied the haughty conqueror: they
trembled, and retired. Yet, before they retired, a short suspension
of arms was granted, which allowed some time for a more temperate
negotiation. The stern features of Alaric were insensibly relaxed; he
abated much of the rigor of his terms; and at length consented to raise
the siege, on the immediate payment of five thousand pounds of gold,
of thirty thousand pounds of silver, of four thousand robes of silk,
of three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and of three thousand
pounds weight of pepper. [79] But the public treasury was exhausted; the
annual rents of the great estates in Italy and the provinces, had been
exchanged, during the famine, for the vilest sustenance; the hoards of
secret wealth were still concealed by the obstinacy of avarice; and
some remains of consecrated spoils afforded the only resource that
could avert the impending ruin of the city. As soon as the Romans had
satisfied the rapacious demands of Alaric, they were restored, in some
measure, to the enjoyment of peace and plenty. Several of the gates were
cautiously opened; the importation of provisions from the river and the
adjacent country was no longer obstructed by the Goths; the citizens
resorted in crowds to the free market, which was held during three days
in the suburbs; and while the merchants who undertook this gainful
trade made a considerable profit, the future subsistence of the city was
secured by the ample magazines which were deposited in the public
and private granaries. A more regular discipline than could have been
expected, was maintained in the camp of Alaric; and the wise Barbarian
justified his regard for the faith of treaties, by the just severity
with which he chastised a party of licentious Goths, who had insulted
some Roman citizens on the road to Ostia. His army, enriched by the
contributions of the capital, slowly advanced into the fair and fruitful
province of Tuscany, where he proposed to establish his winter quarters;
and the Gothic standard became the refuge of forty thousand Barbarian
slaves, who had broke their chains, and aspired, under the command of
their great deliverer, to revenge the injuries and the disgrace of
their cruel servitude. About the same time, he received a more honorable
reenforcement of Goths and Huns, whom Adolphus, [80] the brother of his
wife, had conducted, at his pressing invitation, from the banks of
the Danube to those of the Tyber, and who had cut their way, with some
difficulty and loss, through the superior number of the Imperial troops.
A victorious leader, who united the daring spirit of a Barbarian with
the art and discipline of a Roman general, was at the head of a hundred
thousand fighting men; and Italy pronounced, with terror and respect,
the formidable name of Alaric. [81]

[Footnote 79: Pepper was a favorite ingredient of the most expensive
Roman cookery, and the best sort commonly sold for fifteen denarii,
or ten shillings, the pound. See Pliny, Hist. Natur. xii. 14. It was
brought from India; and the same country, the coast of Malabar, still
affords the greatest plenty: but the improvement of trade and navigation
has multiplied the quantity and reduced the price. See Histoire
Politique et Philosophique, &c., tom. i. p. 457.]

[Footnote 80: This Gothic chieftain is called by Jornandes and Isidore,
Athaulphus; by Zosimus and Orosius, Ataulphus; and by Olympiodorus,
Adaoulphus. I have used the celebrated name of Adolphus, which seems to
be authorized by the practice of the Swedes, the sons or brothers of the
ancient Goths.]

[Footnote 81: The treaty between Alaric and the Romans, &c., is taken
from Zosimus, l. v. p. 354, 355, 358, 359, 362, 363. The additional
circumstances are too few and trifling to require any other quotation.]




Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.--Part III.

At the distance of fourteen centuries, we may be satisfied with relating
the military exploits of the conquerors of Rome, without presuming to
investigate the motives of their political conduct. In the midst of
his apparent prosperity, Alaric was conscious, perhaps, of some secret
weakness, some internal defect; or perhaps the moderation which he
displayed, was intended only to deceive and disarm the easy credulity
of the ministers of Honorius. The king of the Goths repeatedly declared,
that it was his desire to be considered as the friend of peace, and
of the Romans. Three senators, at his earnest request, were sent
ambassadors to the court of Ravenna, to solicit the exchange of
hostages, and the conclusion of the treaty; and the proposals, which he
more clearly expressed during the course of the negotiations, could only
inspire a doubt of his sincerity, as they might seem inadequate to
the state of his fortune. The Barbarian still aspired to the rank
of master-general of the armies of the West; he stipulated an annual
subsidy of corn and money; and he chose the provinces of Dalmatia,
Noricum, and Venetia, for the seat of his new kingdom, which would have
commanded the important communication between Italy and the Danube. If
these modest terms should be rejected, Alaric showed a disposition to
relinquish his pecuniary demands, and even to content himself with
the possession of Noricum; an exhausted and impoverished country,
perpetually exposed to the inroads of the Barbarians of Germany. [82]
But the hopes of peace were disappointed by the weak obstinacy, or
interested views, of the minister Olympius. Without listening to the
salutary remonstrances of the senate, he dismissed their ambassadors
under the conduct of a military escort, too numerous for a retinue of
honor, and too feeble for any army of defence. Six thousand Dalmatians,
the flower of the Imperial legions, were ordered to march from Ravenna
to Rome, through an open country which was occupied by the formidable
myriads of the Barbarians. These brave legionaries, encompassed and
betrayed, fell a sacrifice to ministerial folly; their general, Valens,
with a hundred soldiers, escaped from the field of battle; and one of
the ambassadors, who could no longer claim the protection of the law
of nations, was obliged to purchase his freedom with a ransom of thirty
thousand pieces of gold. Yet Alaric, instead of resenting this act of
impotent hostility, immediately renewed his proposals of peace; and the
second embassy of the Roman senate, which derived weight and dignity
from the presence of Innocent, bishop of the city, was guarded from the
dangers of the road by a detachment of Gothic soldiers. [83]

[Footnote 82: Zosimus, l. v. p. 367 368, 369.]

[Footnote 83: Zosimus, l. v. p. 360, 361, 362. The bishop, by remaining
at Ravenna, escaped the impending calamities of the city. Orosius, l.
vii. c. 39, p. 573.]

Olympius [84] might have continued to insult the just resentment of a
people who loudly accused him as the author of the public calamities;
but his power was undermined by the secret intrigues of the palace. The
favorite eunuchs transferred the government of Honorius, and the empire,
to Jovius, the Praetorian praefect; an unworthy servant, who did
not atone, by the merit of personal attachment, for the errors and
misfortunes of his administration. The exile, or escape, of the guilty
Olympius, reserved him for more vicissitudes of fortune: he experienced
the adventures of an obscure and wandering life; he again rose to power;
he fell a second time into disgrace; his ears were cut off; he expired
under the lash; and his ignominious death afforded a grateful spectacle
to the friends of Stilicho. After the removal of Olympius, whose
character was deeply tainted with religious fanaticism, the Pagans and
heretics were delivered from the impolitic proscription, which excluded
them from the dignities of the state. The brave Gennerid, [85] a soldier
of Barbarian origin, who still adhered to the worship of his ancestors,
had been obliged to lay aside the military belt: and though he was
repeatedly assured by the emperor himself, that laws were not made
for persons of his rank or merit, he refused to accept any partial
dispensation, and persevered in honorable disgrace, till he had extorted
a general act of justice from the distress of the Roman government. The
conduct of Gennerid in the important station to which he was promoted or
restored, of master-general of Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhaetia,
seemed to revive the discipline and spirit of the republic. From a life
of idleness and want, his troops were soon habituated to severe exercise
and plentiful subsistence; and his private generosity often supplied the
rewards, which were denied by the avarice, or poverty, of the court of
Ravenna. The valor of Gennerid, formidable to the adjacent Barbarians,
was the firmest bulwark of the Illyrian frontier; and his vigilant
care assisted the empire with a reenforcement of ten thousand Huns,
who arrived on the confines of Italy, attended by such a convoy of
provisions, and such a numerous train of sheep and oxen, as might
have been sufficient, not only for the march of an army, but for the
settlement of a colony. But the court and councils of Honorius still
remained a scene of weakness and distraction, of corruption and anarchy.
Instigated by the praefect Jovius, the guards rose in furious mutiny,
and demanded the heads of two generals, and of the two principal
eunuchs. The generals, under a perfidious promise of safety, were sent
on shipboard, and privately executed; while the favor of the eunuchs
procured them a mild and secure exile at Milan and Constantinople.
Eusebius the eunuch, and the Barbarian Allobich, succeeded to the
command of the bed-chamber and of the guards; and the mutual jealousy of
these subordinate ministers was the cause of their mutual destruction.
By the insolent order of the count of the domestics, the great
chamberlain was shamefully beaten to death with sticks, before the eyes
of the astonished emperor; and the subsequent assassination of Allobich,
in the midst of a public procession, is the only circumstance of his
life, in which Honorius discovered the faintest symptom of courage or
resentment. Yet before they fell, Eusebius and Allobich had contributed
their part to the ruin of the empire, by opposing the conclusion of a
treaty which Jovius, from a selfish, and perhaps a criminal, motive,
had negotiated with Alaric, in a personal interview under the walls
of Rimini. During the absence of Jovius, the emperor was persuaded
to assume a lofty tone of inflexible dignity, such as neither his
situation, nor his character, could enable him to support; and a letter,
signed with the name of Honorius, was immediately despatched to the
Praetorian praefect, granting him a free permission to dispose of the
public money, but sternly refusing to prostitute the military honors of
Rome to the proud demands of a Barbarian. This letter was imprudently
communicated to Alaric himself; and the Goth, who in the whole
transaction had behaved with temper and decency, expressed, in the most
outrageous language, his lively sense of the insult so wantonly offered
to his person and to his nation. The conference of Rimini was hastily
interrupted; and the praefect Jovius, on his return to Ravenna, was
compelled to adopt, and even to encourage, the fashionable opinions
of the court. By his advice and example, the principal officers of the
state and army were obliged to swear, that, without listening, in any
circumstances, to any conditions of peace, they would still persevere
in perpetual and implacable war against the enemy of the republic. This
rash engagement opposed an insuperable bar to all future negotiation.
The ministers of Honorius were heard to declare, that, if they had only
in voked the name of the Deity, they would consult the public safety,
and trust their souls to the mercy of Heaven: but they had sworn by the
sacred head of the emperor himself; they had sworn by the sacred head of
the emperor himself; they had touched, in solemn ceremony, that august
seat of majesty and wisdom; and the violation of their oath would
exposethem to the temporal penalties of sacrilege and rebellion. [86]

[Footnote 84: For the adventures of Olympius, and his successors in the
ministry, see Zosimus, l. v. p. 363, 365, 366, and Olympiodor. ap. Phot.
p. 180, 181. ]

[Footnote 85: Zosimus (l. v. p. 364) relates this circumstance with
visible complacency, and celebrates the character of Gennerid as the
last glory of expiring Paganism. Very different were the sentiments
of the council of Carthage, who deputed four bishops to the court of
Ravenna to complain of the law, which had been just enacted, that all
conversions to Christianity should be free and voluntary. See Baronius,
Annal. Eccles. A.D. 409, No. 12, A.D. 410, No. 47, 48.]

[Footnote 86: Zosimus, l. v. p. 367, 368, 369. This custom of swearing
by the head, or life, or safety, or genius, of the sovereign, was of the
highest antiquity, both in Egypt (Genesis, xlii. 15) and Scythia. It was
soon transferred, by flattery, to the Caesars; and Tertullian complains,
that it was the only oath which the Romans of his time affected to
reverence. See an elegant Dissertation of the Abbe Mossieu on the Oaths
of the Ancients, in the Mem de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. i. p.
208, 209.]

While the emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, the security
of the marches and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned Rome,
almost without defence, to the resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the
moderation which he still preserved, or affected, that, as he moved with
his army along the Flaminian way, he successively despatched the
bishops of the towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace, and
to congradulate the emperor, that he would save the city and its
inhabitants from hostile fire, and the sword of the Barbarians. [87]
These impending calamities were, however, averted, not indeed by the
wisdom of Honorius, but by the prudence or humanity of the Gothic king;
who employed a milder, though not less effectual, method of conquest.
Instead of assaulting the capital, he successfully directed his efforts
against the Port of Ostia, one of the boldest and most stupendous
works of Roman magnificence. [88] The accidents to which the precarious
subsistence of the city was continually exposed in a winter navigation,
and an open road, had suggested to the genius of the first Caesar the
useful design, which was executed under the reign of Claudius. The
artificial moles, which formed the narrow entrance, advanced far into
the sea, and firmly repelled the fury of the waves, while the largest
vessels securely rode at anchor within three deep and capacious basins,
which received the northern branch of the Tyber, about two miles from
the ancient colony of Ostia. [89] The Roman Port insensibly swelled
to the size of an episcopal city, [90] where the corn of Africa was
deposited in spacious granaries for the use of the capital. As soon as
Alaric was in possession of that important place, he summoned the
city to surrender at discretion; and his demands were enforced by
the positive declaration, that a refusal, or even a delay, should be
instantly followed by the destruction of the magazines, on which the
life of the Roman people depended. The clamors of that people, and
the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the senate; they listened,
without reluctance, to the proposal of placing a new emperor on
the throne of the unworthy Honorius; and the suffrage of the Gothic
conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, praefect of the city.
The grateful monarch immediately acknowledged his protector as
master-general of the armies of the West; Adolphus, with the rank of
count of the domestics, obtained the custody of the person of Attalus;
and the two hostile nations seemed to be united in the closest bands of
friendship and alliance. [91]

[Footnote 87: Zosimus, l. v. p. 368, 369. I have softened the
expressions of Alaric, who expatiates, in too florid a manner, on the
history of Rome]

[Footnote 88: See Sueton. in Claud. c. 20. Dion Cassius, l. lx. p. 949,
edit Reimar, and the lively description of Juvenal, Satir. xii. 75, &c.
In the sixteenth century, when the remains of this Augustan port were
still visible, the antiquarians sketched the plan, (see D'Anville, Mem.
de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxx. p. 198,) and declared, with
enthusiasm, that all the monarchs of Europe would be unable to execute
so great a work, (Bergier, Hist. des grands Chemins des Romains, tom.
ii. p. 356.)]

[Footnote 89: The Ostia Tyberina, (see Cluver. Italia Antiq. l. iii.
p. 870-879,) in the plural number, the two mouths of the Tyber, were
separated by the Holy Island, an equilateral triangle, whose sides
were each of them computed at about two miles. The colony of Ostia
was founded immediately beyond the left, or southern, and the Port
immediately beyond the right, or northern, branch of hte river; and the
distance between their remains measures something more than two miles
on Cingolani's map. In the time of Strabo, the sand and mud deposited by
the Tyber had choked the harbor of Ostia; the progress of the same cause
has added much to the size of the Holy Islands, and gradually left both
Ostia and the Port at a considerable distance from the shore. The dry
channels (fiumi morti) and the large estuaries (stagno di Ponente, di
Levante) mark the changes of the river, and the efforts of the sea.
Consult, for the present state of this dreary and desolate tract, the
excellent map of the ecclesiastical state by the mathematicians of
Benedict XIV.; an actual survey of the Agro Romano, in six sheets, by
Cingolani, which contains 113,819 rubbia, (about 570,000 acres;) and the
large topographical map of Ameti, in eight sheets.]

[Footnote 90: As early as the third, (Lardner's Credibility of the
Gospel, part ii. vol. iii. p. 89-92,) or at least the fourth, century,
(Carol. a Sancta Paulo, Notit. Eccles. p. 47,) the Port of Rome was an
episcopal city, which was demolished, as it should seem in the ninth
century, by Pope Gregory IV., during the incursions of the Arabs. It
is now reduced to an inn, a church, and the house, or palace, of the
bishop; who ranks as one of six cardinal-bishops of the Roman church.
See Eschinard, Deserizione di Roman et dell' Agro Romano, p. 328. *
Note: Compare Sir W. Gell. Rome and its Vicinity vol. ii p. 134.--M.]

[Footnote 91: For the elevation of Attalus, consult Zosimus, l. vi. p.
377-380, Sozomen, l. ix. c. 8, 9, Olympiodor. ap. Phot. p. 180, 181,
Philostorg. l. xii. c. 3, and Godefroy's Dissertat. p. 470.]

The gates of the city were thrown open, and the new emperor of the
Romans, encompassed on every side by the Gothic arms, was conducted, in
tumultuous procession, to the palace of Augustus and Trajan. After he
had distributed the civil and military dignities among his favorites and
followers, Attalus convened an assembly of the senate; before whom, in
a format and florid speech, he asserted his resolution of restoring the
majesty of the republic, and of uniting to the empire the provinces of
Egypt and the East, which had once acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome.
Such extravagant promises inspired every reasonable citizen with a just
contempt for the character of an unwarlike usurper, whose elevation
was the deepest and most ignominious wound which the republic had yet
sustained from the insolence of the Barbarians. But the populace,
with their usual levity, applauded the change of masters. The public
discontent was favorable to the rival of Honorius; and the sectaries,
oppressed by his persecuting edicts, expected some degree of
countenance, or at least of toleration, from a prince, who, in his
native country of Ionia, had been educated in the Pagan superstition,
and who had since received the sacrament of baptism from the hands of an
Arian bishop. [92] The first days of the reign of Attalus were fair and
prosperous. An officer of confidence was sent with an inconsiderable
body of troops to secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest part of
Italy submitted to the terror of the Gothic powers; and though the
city of Bologna made a vigorous and effectual resistance, the people of
Milan, dissatisfied perhaps with the absence of Honorius, accepted,
with loud acclamations, the choice of the Roman senate. At the head of a
formidable army, Alaric conducted his royal captive almost to the gates
of Ravenna; and a solemn embassy of the principal ministers, of Jovius,
the Praetorian praefect, of Valens, master of the cavalry and infantry,
of the quaestor Potamius, and of Julian, the first of the notaries,
was introduced, with martial pomp, into the Gothic camp. In the name of
their sovereign, they consented to acknowledge the lawful election
of his competitor, and to divide the provinces of Italy and the West
between the two emperors. Their proposals were rejected with disdain;
and the refusal was aggravated by the insulting clemency of Attalus, who
condescended to promise, that, if Honorius would instantly resign the
purple, he should be permitted to pass the remainder of his life in the
peaceful exile of some remote island. [93] So desperate indeed did the
situation of the son of Theodosius appear, to those who were the best
acquainted with his strength and resources, that Jovius and Valens, his
minister and his general, betrayed their trust, infamously deserted
the sinking cause of their benefactor, and devoted their treacherous
allegiance to the service of his more fortunate rival. Astonished by
such examples of domestic treason, Honorius trembled at the approach of
every servant, at the arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret
enemies, who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bed-chamber;
and some ships lay ready in the harbor of Ravenna, to transport the
abdicated monarch to the dominions of his infant nephew, the emperor of
the East.

[Footnote 92: We may admit the evidence of Sozomen for the Arian
baptism, and that of Philostorgius for the Pagan education, of Attalus.
The visible joy of Zosimus, and the discontent which he imputes to the
Anician family, are very unfavorable to the Christianity of the new
emperor.]

[Footnote 93: He carried his insolence so far, as to declare that
he should mutilate Honorius before he sent him into exile. But this
assertion of Zosimus is destroyed by the more impartial testimony
of Olympiodorus; who attributes the ungenerous proposal (which was
absolutely rejected by Attalus) to the baseness, and perhaps the
treachery, of Jovius.]

But there is a Providence (such at least was the opinion of the
historian Procopius) [94] that watches over innocence and folly; and
the pretensions of Honorius to its peculiar care cannot reasonably be
disputed. At the moment when his despair, incapable of any wise or manly
resolution, meditated a shameful flight, a seasonable reenforcement of
four thousand veterans unexpectedly landed in the port of Ravenna. To
these valiant strangers, whose fidelity had not been corrupted by the
factions of the court, he committed the walls and gates of the city; and
the slumbers of the emperor were no longer disturbed by the apprehension
of imminent and internal danger. The favorable intelligence which was
received from Africa suddenly changed the opinions of men, and the state
of public affairs. The troops and officers, whom Attalus had sent into
that province, were defeated and slain; and the active zeal of Heraclian
maintained his own allegiance, and that of his people. The faithful
count of Africa transmitted a large sum of money, which fixed the
attachment of the Imperial guards; and his vigilance, in preventing the
exportation of corn and oil, introduced famine, tumult, and discontent,
into the walls of Rome. The failure of the African expedition was the
source of mutual complaint and recrimination in the party of Attalus;
and the mind of his protector was insensibly alienated from the interest
of a prince, who wanted spirit to command, or docility to obey. The most
imprudent measures were adopted, without the knowledge, or against the
advice, of Alaric; and the obstinate refusal of the senate, to allow,
in the embarkation, the mixture even of five hundred Goths, betrayed
a suspicious and distrustful temper, which, in their situation, was
neither generous nor prudent. The resentment of the Gothic king was
exasperated by the malicious arts of Jovius, who had been raised to the
rank of patrician, and who afterwards excused his double perfidy, by
declaring, without a blush, that he had only seemed to abandon the
service of Honorius, more effectually to ruin the cause of the usurper.
In a large plain near Rimini, and in the presence of an innumerable
multitude of Romans and Barbarians, the wretched Attalus was publicly
despoiled of the diadem and purple; and those ensigns of royalty were
sent by Alaric, as the pledge of peace and friendship, to the son
of Theodosius. [95] The officers who returned to their duty, were
reinstated in their employments, and even the merit of a tardy
repentance was graciously allowed; but the degraded emperor of the
Romans, desirous of life, and insensible of disgrace, implored the
permission of following the Gothic camp, in the train of a haughty and
capricious Barbarian. [96]

[Footnote 94: Procop. de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 2.]

[Footnote 95: See the cause and circumstances of the fall of Attalus in
Zosimus, l. vi. p. 380-383. Sozomen, l. ix. c. 8. Philostorg. l. xii.
c. 3. The two acts of indemnity in the Theodosian Code, l. ix. tit.
xxxviii. leg. 11, 12, which were published the 12th of February, and the
8th of August, A.D. 410, evidently relate to this usurper.]

[Footnote 96: In hoc, Alaricus, imperatore, facto, infecto, refecto, ac
defecto... Mimum risit, et ludum spectavit imperii. Orosius, l. vii. c.
42, p. 582.]

The degradation of Attalus removed the only real obstacle to the
conclusion of the peace; and Alaric advanced within three miles of
Ravenna, to press the irresolution of the Imperial ministers, whose
insolence soon returned with the return of fortune. His indignation was
kindled by the report, that a rival chieftain, that Sarus, the personal
enemy of Adolphus, and the hereditary foe of the house of Balti, had
been received into the palace. At the head of three hundred followers,
that fearless Barbarian immediately sallied from the gates of Ravenna;
surprised, and cut in pieces, a considerable body of Goths; reentered
the city in triumph; and was permitted to insult his adversary, by the
voice of a herald, who publicly declared that the guilt of Alaric had
forever excluded him from the friendship and alliance of the emperor.
[97] The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna was expiated, a third
time, by the calamities of Rome. The king of the Goths, who no longer
dissembled his appetite for plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under
the walls of the capital; and the trembling senate, without any hopes of
relief, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to defray the ruin of their
country. But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy
of their slaves and domestics; who, either from birth or interest,
were attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the
Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened
by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and
sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city,
which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was
delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.
[98]

[Footnote 97: Zosimus, l. vi. p. 384. Sozomen, l. ix. c. 9.
Philostorgius, l. xii. c. 3. In this place the text of Zosimus is
mutilated, and we have lost the remainder of his sixth and last book,
which ended with the sack of Rome. Credulous and partial as he is, we
must take our leave of that historian with some regret.]

[Footnote 98: Adest Alaricus, trepidam Romam obsidet, turbat, irrumpit.
Orosius, l. vii. c. 39, p. 573. He despatches this great event in seven
words; but he employs whole pages in celebrating the devotion of the
Goths. I have extracted from an improbable story of Procopius, the
circumstances which had an air of probability. Procop. de Bell. Vandal.
l. i. c. 2. He supposes that the city was surprised while the senators
slept in the afternoon; but Jerom, with more authority and more reason,
affirms, that it was in the night, nocte Moab capta est. nocte cecidit
murus ejus, tom. i. p. 121, ad Principiam.]

The proclamation of Alaric, when he forced his entrance into a
vanquished city, discovered, however, some regard for the laws of
humanity and religion. He encouraged his troops boldly to seize the
rewards of valor, and to enrich themselves with the spoils of a wealthy
and effeminate people: but he exhorted them, at the same time, to spare
the lives of the unresisting citizens, and to respect the churches
of the apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, as holy and inviolable
sanctuaries. Amidst the horrors of a nocturnal tumult, several of the
Christian Goths displayed the fervor of a recent conversion; and some
instances of their uncommon piety and moderation are related, and
perhaps adorned, by the zeal of ecclesiastical writers. [99] While the
Barbarians roamed through the city in quest of prey, the humble dwelling
of an aged virgin, who had devoted her life to the service of the altar,
was forced open by one of the powerful Goths. He immediately demanded,
though in civil language, all the gold and silver in her possession;
and was astonished at the readiness with which she conducted him to a
splendid hoard of massy plate, of the richest materials, and the most
curious workmanship. The Barbarian viewed with wonder and delight this
valuable acquisition, till he was interrupted by a serious admonition,
addressed to him in the following words: "These," said she, "are the
consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter: if you presume to touch
them, the sacrilegious deed will remain on your conscience.
For my part, I dare not keep what I am unable to defend." The Gothic
captain, struck with reverential awe, despatched a messenger to inform
the king of the treasure which he had discovered; and received a
peremptory order from Alaric, that all the consecrated plate and
ornaments should be transported, without damage or delay, to the church
of the apostle. From the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal hill, to
the distant quarter of the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths,
marching in order of battle through the principal streets, protected,
with glittering arms, the long train of their devout companions, who
bore aloft, on their heads, the sacred vessels of gold and silver; and
the martial shouts of the Barbarians were mingled with the sound of
religious psalmody. From all the adjacent houses, a crowd of Christians
hastened to join this edifying procession; and a multitude of fugitives,
without distinction of age, or rank, or even of sect, had the good
fortune to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican.
The learned work, concerning the City of God, was professedly composed
by St. Augustin, to justify the ways of Providence in the destruction
of the Roman greatness. He celebrates, with peculiar satisfaction, this
memorable triumph of Christ; and insults his adversaries, by challenging
them to produce some similar example of a town taken by storm, in
which the fabulous gods of antiquity had been able to protect either
themselves or their deluded votaries. [100]

[Footnote 99: Orosius (l. vii. c. 39, p. 573-576) applauds the piety of
the Christian Goths, without seeming to perceive that the greatest part
of them were Arian heretics. Jornandes (c. 30, p. 653) and Isidore of
Seville, (Chron. p. 417, edit. Grot.,) who were both attached to the
Gothic cause, have repeated and embellished these edifying tales.
According to Isidore, Alaric himself was heard to say, that he waged war
with the Romans, and not with the apostles. Such was the style of the
seventh century; two hundred years before, the fame and merit had been
ascribed, not to the apostles, but to Christ.]

[Footnote 100: See Augustin, de Civitat. Dei, l. i. c. 1-6. He
particularly appeals to the examples of Troy, Syracuse, and Tarentum.]

In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples of Barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of
the Vatican, and the apostolic churches, could receive a very small
proportion of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially
of the Huns, who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers
to the name, or at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect,
without any breach of charity or candor, that in the hour of savage
license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was
removed, the precepts of the Gospel seldom influenced the behavior of
the Gothic Christians. The writers, the best disposed to exaggerate
their clemency, have freely confessed, that a cruel slaughter was made
of the Romans; [101] and that the streets of the city were filled
with dead bodies, which remained without burial during the general
consternation. The despair of the citizens was sometimes converted into
fury: and whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they
extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the
helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves was exercised
without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes, which they had
formerly received, were washed away in the blood of the guilty, or
obnoxious, families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to
injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death
itself; and the ecclesiastical historian has selected an example of
female virtue, for the admiration of future ages. [102] A Roman lady, of
singular beauty and orthodox faith, had excited the impatient desires
of a young Goth, who, according to the sagacious remark of Sozomen, was
attached to the Arian heresy. Exasperated by her obstinate resistance,
he drew his sword, and, with the anger of a lover, slightly wounded her
neck. The bleeding heroine still continued to brave his resentment,
and to repel his love, till the ravisher desisted from his unavailing
efforts, respectfully conducted her to the sanctuary of the Vatican, and
gave six pieces of gold to the guards of the church, on condition that
they should restore her inviolate to the arms of her husband. Such
instances of courage and generosity were not extremely common. The
brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual appetites, without consulting
either the inclination or the duties of their female captives: and a
nice question of casuistry was seriously agitated, Whether those tender
victims, who had inflexibly refused their consent to the violation which
they sustained, had lost, by their misfortune, the glorious crown of
virginity. [103] Their were other losses indeed of a more substantial
kind, and more general concern. It cannot be presumed, that all the
Barbarians were at all times capable of perpetrating such amorous
outrages; and the want of youth, or beauty, or chastity, protected the
greatest part of the Roman women from the danger of a rape. But avarice
is an insatiate and universal passion; since the enjoyment of almost
every object that can afford pleasure to the different tastes and
tempers of mankind may be procured by the possession of wealth. In the
pillage of Rome, a just preference was given to gold and jewels, which
contain the greatest value in the smallest compass and weight: but,
after these portable riches had been removed by the more diligent
robbers, the palaces of Rome were rudely stripped of their splendid
and costly furniture. The sideboards of massy plate, and the variegated
wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons, that
always followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works
of art were roughly handled, or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was
melted for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in the
division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke of a
battle-axe.

The acquisition of riches served only to stimulate the avarice of
the rapacious Barbarians, who proceeded, by threats, by blows, and
by tortures, to force from their prisoners the confession of hidden
treasure. [104] Visible splendor and expense were alleged as the proof
of a plentiful fortune; the appearance of poverty was imputed to a
parsimonious disposition; and the obstinacy of some misers, who endured
the most cruel torments before they would discover the secret object of
their affection, was fatal to many unhappy wretches, who expired under
the lash, for refusing to reveal their imaginary treasures. The edifices
of Rome, though the damage has been much exaggerated, received some
injury from the violence of the Goths. At their entrance through the
Salarian gate, they fired the adjacent houses to guide their march, and
to distract the attention of the citizens; the flames, which encountered
no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many private and
public buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust [105] remained,
in the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration.
[106] Yet a contemporary historian has observed, that fire could
scarcely consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the
strength of man was insufficient to subvert the foundations of
ancient structures. Some truth may possibly be concealed in his devout
assertion, that the wrath of Heaven supplied the imperfections of
hostile rage; and that the proud Forum of Rome, decorated with the
statues of so many gods and heroes, was levelled in the dust by the
stroke of lightning. [107]

[Footnote 101: Jerom (tom. i. p. 121, ad Principiam) has applied to the
sack of Rome all the strong expressions of Virgil:--

     Quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando,
     Explicet, &c.

Procopius (l. i. c. 2) positively affirms that great numbers were slain
by the Goths. Augustin (de Civ. Dei, l. i. c. 12, 13) offers Christian
comfort for the death of those whose bodies (multa corpora) had remained
(in tanta strage) unburied. Baronius, from the different writings of the
Fathers, has thrown some light on the sack of Rome. Annal. Eccles. A.D.
410, No. 16-34.]

[Footnote 102: Sozomen. l. ix. c. 10. Augustin (de Civitat. Dei, l.
i. c. 17) intimates, that some virgins or matrons actually killed
themselves to escape violation; and though he admires their spirit, he
is obliged, by his theology, to condemn their rash presumption. Perhaps
the good bishop of Hippo was too easy in the belief, as well as too
rigid in the censure, of this act of female heroism. The twenty
maidens (if they ever existed) who threw themselves into the Elbe, when
Magdeburgh was taken by storm, have been multiplied to the number of
twelve hundred. See Harte's History of Gustavus Adolphus, vol. i. p.
308.]

[Footnote 103: See Augustin de Civitat. Dei, l. i. c. 16, 18. He treats
the subject with remarkable accuracy: and after admitting that there
cannot be any crime where there is no consent, he adds, Sed quia non
solum quod ad dolorem, verum etiam quod ad libidinem, pertinet, in
corpore alieno pepetrari potest; quicquid tale factum fuerit, etsi
retentam constantissimo animo pudicitiam non excutit, pudorem tamen
incutit, ne credatur factum cum mentis etiam voluntate, quod fieri
fortasse sine carnis aliqua voluptate non potuit. In c. 18 he makes some
curious distinctions between moral and physical virginity.]

[Footnote 104: Marcella, a Roman lady, equally respectable for her rank,
her age, and her piety, was thrown on the ground, and cruelly beaten
and whipped, caesam fustibus flagellisque, &c. Jerom, tom. i. p. 121,
ad Principiam. See Augustin, de Civ. Dei, l. c. 10. The modern Sacco
di Roma, p. 208, gives an idea of the various methods of torturing
prisoners for gold.]

[Footnote 105: The historian Sallust, who usefully practiced the vices
which he has so eloquently censured, employed the plunder of Numidia to
adorn his palace and gardens on the Quirinal hill. The spot where the
house stood is now marked by the church of St. Susanna, separated only
by a street from the baths of Diocletian, and not far distant from the
Salarian gate. See Nardini, Roma Antica, p. 192, 193, and the great
I'lan of Modern Rome, by Nolli.]

[Footnote 106: The expressions of Procopius are distinct and moderate,
(de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 2.) The Chronicle of Marcellinus speaks too
strongly partem urbis Romae cremavit; and the words of Philostorgius (l.
xii. c. 3) convey a false and exaggerated idea. Bargaeus has composed
a particular dissertation (see tom. iv. Antiquit. Rom. Graev.) to prove
that the edifices of Rome were not subverted by the Goths and Vandals.]

[Footnote 107: Orosius, l. ii. c. 19, p. 143. He speaks as if he
disapproved all statues; vel Deum vel hominem mentiuntur. They consisted
of the kings of Alba and Rome from Aeneas, the Romans, illustrious
either in arms or arts, and the deified Caesars. The expression which he
uses of Forum is somewhat ambiguous, since there existed five principal
Fora; but as they were all contiguous and adjacent, in the plain which
is surrounded by the Capitoline, the Quirinal, the Esquiline, and the
Palatine hills, they might fairly be considered as one. See the Roma
Antiqua of Donatus, p. 162-201, and the Roma Antica of Nardini, p.
212-273. The former is more useful for the ancient descriptions, the
latter for the actual topography.]




Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.--Part IV.

Whatever might be the numbers of equestrian or plebeian rank, who
perished in the massacre of Rome, it is confidently affirmed that only
one senator lost his life by the sword of the enemy. [108] But it was
not easy to compute the multitudes, who, from an honorable station and a
prosperous fortune, were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of
captives and exiles. As the Barbarians had more occasion for money
than for slaves, they fixed at a moderate price the redemption of their
indigent prisoners; and the ransom was often paid by the benevolence of
their friends, or the charity of strangers. [109] The captives, who were
regularly sold, either in open market, or by private contract, would
have legally regained their native freedom, which it was impossible for
a citizen to lose, or to alienate. [110] But as it was soon discovered
that the vindication of their liberty would endanger their lives; and
that the Goths, unless they were tempted to sell, might be provoked
to murder, their useless prisoners; the civil jurisprudence had been
already qualified by a wise regulation, that they should be obliged to
serve the moderate term of five years, till they had discharged by their
labor the price of their redemption. [111] The nations who invaded the
Roman empire, had driven before them, into Italy, whole troops of hungry
and affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of servitude than of
famine. The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the inhabitants to
the most lonely, the most secure, the most distant places of refuge.
While the Gothic cavalry spread terror and desolation along the
sea-coast of Campania and Tuscany, the little island of Igilium,
separated by a narrow channel from the Argentarian promontory, repulsed,
or eluded, their hostile attempts; and at so small a distance from Rome,
great numbers of citizens were securely concealed in the thick woods
of that sequestered spot. [112] The ample patrimonies, which many
senatorian families possessed in Africa, invited them, if they had time,
and prudence, to escape from the ruin of their country, to embrace
the shelter of that hospitable province. The most illustrious of these
fugitives was the noble and pious Proba, [113] the widow of the praefect
Petronius. After the death of her husband, the most powerful subject
of Rome, she had remained at the head of the Anician family, and
successively supplied, from her private fortune, the expense of the
consulships of her three sons. When the city was besieged and taken
by the Goths, Proba supported, with Christian resignation, the loss of
immense riches; embarked in a small vessel, from whence she beheld, at
sea, the flames of her burning palace, and fled with her daughter Laeta,
and her granddaughter, the celebrated virgin, Demetrias, to the coast of
Africa. The benevolent profusion with which the matron distributed
the fruits, or the price, of her estates, contributed to alleviate the
misfortunes of exile and captivity. But even the family of Proba herself
was not exempt from the rapacious oppression of Count Heraclian, who
basely sold, in matrimonial prostitution, the noblest maidens of Rome to
the lust or avarice of the Syrian merchants. The Italian fugitives were
dispersed through the provinces, along the coast of Egypt and Asia, as
far as Constantinople and Jerusalem; and the village of Bethlem, the
solitary residence of St. Jerom and his female converts, was crowded
with illustrious beggars of either sex, and every age, who excited the
public compassion by the remembrance of their past fortune. [114] This
awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire with grief and
terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin, disposed the
fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the
afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who applied to recent
events the lofty metaphors of oriental prophecy, were sometimes tempted
to confound the destruction of the capital and the dissolution of the
globe.

[Footnote 108: Orosius (l. ii. c. 19, p. 142) compares the cruelty
of the Gauls and the clemency of the Goths. Ibi vix quemquam inventum
senatorem, qui vel absens evaserit; hic vix quemquam requiri, qui forte
ut latens perierit. But there is an air of rhetoric, and perhaps of
falsehood, in this antithesis; and Socrates (l. vii. c. 10) affirms,
perhaps by an opposite exaggeration, that many senators were put to
death with various and exquisite tortures.]

[Footnote 109: Multi... Christiani incaptivitatem ducti sunt. Augustin,
de Civ Dei, l. i. c. 14; and the Christians experienced no peculiar
hardships.]

[Footnote 110: See Heineccius, Antiquitat. Juris Roman. tom. i. p. 96.]

[Footnote 111: Appendix Cod. Theodos. xvi. in Sirmond. Opera, tom. i. p.
735. This edict was published on the 11th of December, A.D. 408, and is
more reasonable than properly belonged to the ministers of Honorius.]

[Footnote 112: Eminus Igilii sylvosa cacumina miror; Quem fraudare nefas
laudis honore suae.

     Haec proprios nuper tutata est insula saltus;

     Sive loci ingenio, seu Domini genio.
     Gurgite cum modico victricibus obstitit
     armis, Tanquam longinquo dissociata mari.

     Haec multos lacera suscepit ab urbe fugates,

     Hic fessis posito certa timore salus.
     Plurima terreno populaverat aequora bello,

     Contra naturam classe timendus eques:
     Unum, mira fides, vario discrimine portum!

     Tam prope Romanis, tam procul esse Getis.

    ---Rutilius, in Itinerar. l. i. 325

The island is now called Giglio. See Cluver. Ital. Antiq. l. ii. ]

[Footnote 113: As the adventures of Proba and her family are connected
with the life of St. Augustin, they are diligently illustrated by
Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 620-635. Some time after their
arrival in Africa, Demetrias took the veil, and made a vow of virginity;
an event which was considered as of the highest importance to Rome and
to the world. All the Saints wrote congratulatory letters to her; that
of Jerom is still extant, (tom. i. p. 62-73, ad Demetriad. de servand
Virginitat.,) and contains a mixture of absurd reasoning, spirited
declamation, and curious facts, some of which relate to the siege and
sack of Rome.]

[Footnote 114: See the pathetic complaint of Jerom, (tom. v. p. 400,)
in his preface to the second book of his Commentaries on the Prophet
Ezekiel.]

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the
advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. Yet, when
the first emotions had subsided, and a fair estimate was made of the
real damage, the more learned and judicious contemporaries were forced
to confess, that infant Rome had formerly received more essential
injury from the Gauls, than she had now sustained from the Goths in
her declining age. [115] The experience of eleven centuries has enabled
posterity to produce a much more singular parallel; and to affirm with
confidence, that the ravages of the Barbarians, whom Alaric had led
from the banks of the Danube, were less destructive than the hostilities
exercised by the troops of Charles the Fifth, a Catholic prince, who
styled himself Emperor of the Romans. [116] The Goths evacuated the
city at the end of six days, but Rome remained above nine months in
the possession of the Imperialists; and every hour was stained by some
atrocious act of cruelty, lust, and rapine. The authority of Alaric
preserved some order and moderation among the ferocious multitude which
acknowledged him for their leader and king; but the constable of Bourbon
had gloriously fallen in the attack of the walls; and the death of
the general removed every restraint of discipline from an army which
consisted of three independent nations, the Italians, the Spaniards, and
the Germans. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the manners of
Italy exhibited a remarkable scene of the depravity of mankind. They
united the sanguinary crimes that prevail in an unsettled state of
society, with the polished vices which spring from the abuse of art and
luxury; and the loose adventurers, who had violated every prejudice of
patriotism and superstition to assault the palace of the Roman pontiff,
must deserve to be considered as the most profligate of the Italians.
At the same aera, the Spaniards were the terror both of the Old and
New World: but their high-spirited valor was disgraced by gloomy pride,
rapacious avarice, and unrelenting cruelty. Indefatigable in the pursuit
of fame and riches, they had improved, by repeated practice, the most
exquisite and effectual methods of torturing their prisoners: many
of the Castilians, who pillaged Rome, were familiars of the holy
inquisition; and some volunteers, perhaps, were lately returned from the
conquest of Mexico The Germans were less corrupt than the Italians,
less cruel than the Spaniards; and the rustic, or even savage, aspect
of those Tramontane warriors, often disguised a simple and merciful
disposition. But they had imbibed, in the first fervor of the
reformation, the spirit, as well as the principles of Luther. It was
their favorite amusement to insult, or destroy, the consecrated objects
of Catholic superstition; they indulged, without pity or remorse, a
devout hatred against the clergy of every denomination and degree, who
form so considerable a part of the inhabitants of modern Rome; and
their fanatic zeal might aspire to subvert the throne of Anti-christ, to
purify, with blood and fire, the abominations of the spiritual Babylon.
[117]

[Footnote 115: Orosius, though with some theological partiality, states
this comparison, l. ii. c. 19, p. 142, l. vii. c. 39, p. 575. But,
in the history of the taking of Rome by the Gauls, every thing is
uncertain, and perhaps fabulous. See Beaufort sur l'Incertitude, &c.,
de l'Histoire Romaine, p. 356; and Melot, in the Mem. de l'Academie des
Inscript. tom. xv. p. 1-21.]

[Footnote 116: The reader who wishes to inform himself of the
circumstances of his famous event, may peruse an admirable narrative in
Dr. Robertson's History of Charles V. vol. ii. p. 283; or consult the
Annali d'Italia of the learned Muratori, tom. xiv. p. 230-244, octavo
edition. If he is desirous of examining the originals, he may have
recourse to the eighteenth book of the great, but unfinished, history
of Guicciardini. But the account which most truly deserves the name of
authentic and original, is a little book, entitled, Il Sacco di Roma,
composed, within less than a month after the assault of the city, by the
brother of the historian Guicciardini, who appears to have been an able
magistrate and a dispassionate writer.]

[Footnote 117: The furious spirit of Luther, the effect of temper and
enthusiasm, has been forcibly attacked, (Bossuet, Hist. des Variations
des Eglises Protestantes, livre i. p. 20-36,) and feebly defended,
(Seckendorf. Comment. de Lutheranismo, especially l. i. No. 78, p. 120,
and l. iii. No. 122, p. 556.)] The retreat of the victorious Goths, who
evacuated Rome on the sixth day, [118] might be the result of prudence;
but it was not surely the effect of fear. [119] At the head of an army
encumbered with rich and weighty spoils, their intrepid leader advanced
along the Appian way into the southern provinces of Italy, destroying
whatever dared to oppose his passage, and contenting himself with the
plunder of the unresisting country. The fate of Capua, the proud and
luxurious metropolis of Campania, and which was respected, even in its
decay, as the eighth city of the empire, [120] is buried in oblivion;
whilst the adjacent town of Nola [121] has been illustrated, on this
occasion, by the sanctity of Paulinus, [122] who was successively a
consul, a monk, and a bishop. At the age of forty, he renounced the
enjoyment of wealth and honor, of society and literature, to embrace
a life of solitude and penance; and the loud applause of the clergy
encouraged him to despise the reproaches of his worldly friends, who
ascribed this desperate act to some disorder of the mind or body. [123]
An early and passionate attachment determined him to fix his humble
dwelling in one of the suburbs of Nola, near the miraculous tomb of St.
Faelix, which the public devotion had already surrounded with five
large and populous churches. The remains of his fortune, and of his
understanding, were dedicated to the service of the glorious martyr;
whose praise, on the day of his festival, Paulinus never failed to
celebrate by a solemn hymn; and in whose name he erected a sixth church,
of superior elegance and beauty, which was decorated with many curious
pictures, from the history of the Old and New Testament. Such assiduous
zeal secured the favor of the saint, [124] or at least of the people;
and, after fifteen years' retirement, the Roman consul was compelled to
accept the bishopric of Nola, a few months before the city was invested
by the Goths. During the siege, some religious persons were satisfied
that they had seen, either in dreams or visions, the divine form of
their tutelar patron; yet it soon appeared by the event, that Faelix
wanted power, or inclination, to preserve the flock of which he
had formerly been the shepherd. Nola was not saved from the general
devastation; [125] and the captive bishop was protected only by the
general opinion of his innocence and poverty. Above four years elapsed
from the successful invasion of Italy by the arms of Alaric, to the
voluntary retreat of the Goths under the conduct of his successor
Adolphus; and, during the whole time, they reigned without control over
a country, which, in the opinion of the ancients, had united all the
various excellences of nature and art. The prosperity, indeed, which
Italy had attained in the auspicious age of the Antonines, had gradually
declined with the decline of the empire.

The fruits of a long peace perished under the rude grasp of the
Barbarians; and they themselves were incapable of tasting the more
elegant refinements of luxury, which had been prepared for the use of
the soft and polished Italians. Each soldier, however, claimed an ample
portion of the substantial plenty, the corn and cattle, oil and wine,
that was daily collected and consumed in the Gothic camp; and the
principal warriors insulted the villas and gardens, once inhabited
by Lucullus and Cicero, along the beauteous coast of Campania. Their
trembling captives, the sons and daughters of Roman senators, presented,
in goblets of gold and gems, large draughts of Falernian wine to the
haughty victors; who stretched their huge limbs under the shade of
plane-trees, [126] artificially disposed to exclude the scorching rays,
and to admit the genial warmth, of the sun. These delights were enhanced
by the memory of past hardships: the comparison of their native soil,
the bleak and barren hills of Scythia, and the frozen banks of the Elbe
and Danube, added new charms to the felicity of the Italian climate.
[127]

[Footnote 118: Marcellinus, in Chron. Orosius, (l. vii. c. 39, p. 575,)
asserts, that he left Rome on the third day; but this difference is
easily reconciled by the successive motions of great bodies of troops.]

[Footnote 119: Socrates (l. vii. c. 10) pretends, without any color of
truth, or reason, that Alaric fled on the report that the armies of the
Eastern empire were in full march to attack him.]

[Footnote 120: Ausonius de Claris Urbibus, p. 233, edit. Toll. The
luxury of Capua had formerly surpassed that of Sybaris itself. See
Athenaeus Deipnosophist. l. xii. p. 528, edit. Casaubon.]

[Footnote 121: Forty-eight years before the foundation of Rome, (about
800 before the Christian aera,) the Tuscans built Capua and Nola, at the
distance of twenty-three miles from each other; but the latter of the
two cities never emerged from a state of mediocrity.]

[Footnote 122: Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 1-46) has compiled,
with his usual diligence, all that relates to the life and writings of
Paulinus, whose retreat is celebrated by his own pen, and by the praises
of St. Ambrose, St. Jerom, St. Augustin, Sulpicius Severus, &c., his
Christian friends and contemporaries.]

[Footnote 123: See the affectionate letters of Ausonius (epist.
xix.--xxv. p. 650-698, edit. Toll.) to his colleague, his friend, and
his disciple, Paulinus. The religion of Ausonius is still a problem,
(see Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xv. p. 123-138.) I
believe that it was such in his own time, and, consequently, that in his
heart he was a Pagan.]

[Footnote 124: The humble Paulinus once presumed to say, that he
believed St. Faelix did love him; at least, as a master loves his little
dog.]

[Footnote 125: See Jornandes, de Reb. Get. c. 30, p. 653. Philostorgius,
l. xii. c. 3. Augustin. de Civ. Dei, l.i.c. 10. Baronius, Annal. Eccles.
A.D. 410, No. 45, 46.]

[Footnote 126: The platanus, or plane-tree, was a favorite of the
ancients, by whom it was propagated, for the sake of shade, from the
East to Gaul. Plin. Hist. Natur. xii. 3, 4, 5. He mentions several of
an enormous size; one in the Imperial villa, at Velitrae, which Caligula
called his nest, as the branches were capable of holding a large table,
the proper attendants, and the emperor himself, whom Pliny quaintly
styles pars umbroe; an expression which might, with equal reason, be
applied to Alaric]

[Footnote 127: The prostrate South to the destroyer yields

     Her boasted titles, and her golden fields;
     With grim delight the brood of winter view
     A brighter day, and skies of azure hue;
     Scent the new fragrance of the opening rose,
     And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows.

See Gray's Poems, published by Mr. Mason, p. 197. Instead of compiling
tables of chronology and natural history, why did not Mr. Gray apply
the powers of his genius to finish the philosophic poem, of which he has
left such an exquisite specimen?]

Whether fame, or conquest, or riches, were the object or Alaric, he
pursued that object with an indefatigable ardor, which could neither be
quelled by adversity nor satiated by success. No sooner had he reached
the extreme land of Italy, than he was attracted by the neighboring
prospect of a fertile and peaceful island. Yet even the possession
of Sicily he considered only as an intermediate step to the important
expedition, which he already meditated against the continent of Africa.
The Straits of Rhegium and Messina [128] are twelve miles in length,
and, in the narrowest passage, about one mile and a half broad; and the
fabulous monsters of the deep, the rocks of Scylla, and the whirlpool of
Charybdis, could terrify none but the most timid and unskilful mariners.
Yet as soon as the first division of the Goths had embarked, a sudden
tempest arose, which sunk, or scattered, many of the transports; their
courage was daunted by the terrors of a new element; and the whole
design was defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed,
after a short illness, the fatal term of his conquests. The ferocious
character of the Barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero whose
valor and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause. By the
labor of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the
Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia. The royal
sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was
constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were then restored to their
natural channel; and the secret spot, where the remains of Alaric had
been deposited, was forever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the
prisoners, who had been employed to execute the work. [129]

[Footnote 128: For the perfect description of the Straits of Messina,
Scylla, Clarybdis, &c., see Cluverius, (Ital. Antiq. l. iv. p. 1293, and
Sicilia Antiq. l. i. p. 60-76), who had diligently studied the ancients,
and surveyed with a curious eye the actual face of the country.]

[Footnote 129: Jornandes, de Reb Get. c. 30, p. 654.]




Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.--Part V.

The personal animosities and hereditary feuds of the Barbarians were
suspended by the strong necessity of their affairs; and the brave
Adolphus, the brother-in-law of the deceased monarch, was unanimously
elected to succeed to his throne. The character and political system
of the new king of the Goths may be best understood from his own
conversation with an illustrious citizen of Narbonne; who afterwards, in
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerom, in the presence
of the historian Orosius. "In the full confidence of valor and victory,
I once aspired (said Adolphus) to change the face of the universe; to
obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the
Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder
of a new empire. By repeated experiments, I was gradually convinced,
that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a
well-constituted state; and that the fierce, untractable humor of the
Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of laws and civil
government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different object of
glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of
future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger, who employed
the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain,
the prosperity of the Roman empire." [130] With these pacific views,
the successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war; and seriously
negotiated with the Imperial court a treaty of friendship and alliance.
It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were now released
from the obligation of their extravagant oath, to deliver Italy from the
intolerable weight of the Gothic powers; and they readily accepted their
service against the tyrants and Barbarians who infested the provinces
beyond the Alps. [131] Adolphus, assuming the character of a Roman
general, directed his march from the extremity of Campania to the
southern provinces of Gaul. His troops, either by force of agreement,
immediately occupied the cities of Narbonne, Thoulouse, and Bordeaux;
and though they were repulsed by Count Boniface from the walls of
Marseilles, they soon extended their quarters from the Mediterranean to
the Ocean.

The oppressed provincials might exclaim, that the miserable remnant,
which the enemy had spared, was cruelly ravished by their pretended
allies; yet some specious colors were not wanting to palliate, or
justify the violence of the Goths. The cities of Gaul, which they
attacked, might perhaps be considered as in a state of rebellion against
the government of Honorius: the articles of the treaty, or the secret
instructions of the court, might sometimes be alleged in favor of
the seeming usurpations of Adolphus; and the guilt of any irregular,
unsuccessful act of hostility might always be imputed, with an
appearance of truth, to the ungovernable spirit of a Barbarian host,
impatient of peace or discipline. The luxury of Italy had been less
effectual to soften the temper, than to relax the courage, of the
Goths; and they had imbibed the vices, without imitating the arts and
institutions, of civilized society. [132]

[Footnote 130: Orosius, l. vii. c. 43, p. 584, 585. He was sent by St.
Augustin in the year 415, from Africa to Palestine, to visit St. Jerom,
and to consult with him on the subject of the Pelagian controversy.]

[Footnote 131: Jornandes supposes, without much probability, that
Adolphus visited and plundered Rome a second time, (more locustarum
erasit) Yet he agrees with Orosius in supposing that a treaty of peace
was concluded between the Gothic prince and Honorius. See Oros. l. vii.
c. 43 p. 584, 585. Jornandes, de Reb. Geticis, c. 31, p. 654, 655.]

[Footnote 132: The retreat of the Goths from Italy, and their first
transactions in Gaul, are dark and doubtful. I have derived much
assistance from Mascou, (Hist. of the Ancient Germans, l. viii. c. 29,
35, 36, 37,) who has illustrated, and connected, the broken chronicles
and fragments of the times.]

The professions of Adolphus were probably sincere, and his attachment
to the cause of the republic was secured by the ascendant which a Roman
princess had acquired over the heart and understanding of the Barbarian
king. Placidia, [133] the daughter of the great Theodosius, and of
Galla, his second wife, had received a royal education in the palace of
Constantinople; but the eventful story of her life is connected with
the revolutions which agitated the Western empire under the reign of her
brother Honorius. When Rome was first invested by the arms of Alaric,
Placidia, who was then about twenty years of age, resided in the city;
and her ready consent to the death of her cousin Serena has a cruel
and ungrateful appearance, which, according to the circumstances of
the action, may be aggravated, or excused, by the consideration of
her tender age. [134] The victorious Barbarians detained, either as a
hostage or a captive, [135] the sister of Honorius; but, while she was
exposed to the disgrace of following round Italy the motions of a Gothic
camp, she experienced, however, a decent and respectful treatment. The
authority of Jornandes, who praises the beauty of Placidia, may perhaps
be counterbalanced by the silence, the expressive silence, of her
flatterers: yet the splendor of her birth, the bloom of youth,
the elegance of manners, and the dexterous insinuation which she
condescended to employ, made a deep impression on the mind of Adolphus;
and the Gothic king aspired to call himself the brother of the emperor.
The ministers of Honorius rejected with disdain the proposal of an
alliance so injurious to every sentiment of Roman pride; and repeatedly
urged the restitution of Placidia, as an indispensable condition of
the treaty of peace. But the daughter of Theodosius submitted, without
reluctance, to the desires of the conqueror, a young and valiant prince,
who yielded to Alaric in loftiness of stature, but who excelled in the
more attractive qualities of grace and beauty. The marriage of Adolphus
and Placidia [136] was consummated before the Goths retired from Italy;
and the solemn, perhaps the anniversary day of their nuptials was
afterwards celebrated in the house of Ingenuus, one of the most
illustrious citizens of Narbonne in Gaul. The bride, attired and adorned
like a Roman empress, was placed on a throne of state; and the king of
the Goths, who assumed, on this occasion, the Roman habit, contented
himself with a less honorable seat by her side. The nuptial gift, which,
according to the custom of his nation, [137] was offered to Placidia,
consisted of the rare and magnificent spoils of her country. Fifty
beautiful youths, in silken robes, carried a basin in each hand; and one
of these basins was filled with pieces of gold, the other with precious
stones of an inestimable value. Attalus, so long the sport of fortune,
and of the Goths, was appointed to lead the chorus of the Hymeneal
song; and the degraded emperor might aspire to the praise of a skilful
musician. The Barbarians enjoyed the insolence of their triumph; and
the provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild
influence of love and reason, the fierce spirit of their Gothic lord.
[138]

[Footnote 133: See an account of Placidia in Ducange Fam. Byzant. p. 72;
and Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 260, 386, &c. tom. vi. p.
240.]

[Footnote 134: Zosim. l. v. p. 350.]

[Footnote 135: Zosim. l. vi. p. 383. Orosius, (l. vii. c. 40, p. 576,)
and the Chronicles of Marcellinus and Idatius, seem to suppose, that the
Goths did not carry away Placidia till after the last siege of Rome.]

[Footnote 136: See the pictures of Adolphus and Placidia, and the
account of their marriage, in Jornandes, de Reb. Geticis, c. 31, p. 654,
655. With regard to the place where the nuptials were stipulated, or
consummated, or celebrated, the Mss. of Jornandes vary between two
neighboring cities, Forli and Imola, (Forum Livii and Forum Cornelii.)
It is fair and easy to reconcile the Gothic historian with Olympiodorus,
(see Mascou, l. viii. c. 46:) but Tillemont grows peevish, and swears
that it is not worth while to try to conciliate Jornandes with any good
authors.]

[Footnote 137: The Visigoths (the subjects of Adolphus) restrained by
subsequent laws, the prodigality of conjugal love. It was illegal for
a husband to make any gift or settlement for the benefit of his wife
during the first year of their marriage; and his liberality could not
at any time exceed the tenth part of his property. The Lombards were
somewhat more indulgent: they allowed the morgingcap immediately after
the wedding night; and this famous gift, the reward of virginity might
equal the fourth part of the husband's substance. Some cautious maidens,
indeed, were wise enough to stipulate beforehand a present, which they
were too sure of not deserving. See Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, l.
xix. c. 25. Muratori, delle Antichita Italiane, tom. i. Dissertazion,
xx. p. 243.]

[Footnote 138: We owe the curious detail of this nuptial feast to the
historian Olympiodorus, ap. Photium, p. 185, 188.]

The hundred basins of gold and gems, presented to Placidia at her
nuptial feast, formed an inconsiderable portion of the Gothic treasures;
of which some extraordinary specimens may be selected from the history
of the successors of Adolphus. Many curious and costly ornaments of pure
gold, enriched with jewels, were found in their palace of Narbonne, when
it was pillaged, in the sixth century, by the Franks: sixty cups, caps,
or chalices; fifteen patens, or plates, for the use of the communion;
twenty boxes, or cases, to hold the books of the Gospels: this
consecrated wealth [139] was distributed by the son of Clovis among the
churches of his dominions, and his pious liberality seems to upbraid
some former sacrilege of the Goths. They possessed, with more security
of conscience, the famous missorium, or great dish for the service of
the table, of massy gold, of the weight of five hundred pounds, and of
far superior value, from the precious stones, the exquisite workmanship,
and the tradition, that it had been presented by Aetius, the patrician,
to Torismond, king of the Goths. One of the successors of Torismond
purchased the aid of the French monarch by the promise of this
magnificent gift. When he was seated on the throne of Spain, he
delivered it with reluctance to the ambassadors of Dagobert; despoiled
them on the road; stipulated, after a long negotiation, the inadequate
ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold; and preserved the
missorium, as the pride of the Gothic treasury. [140] When that
treasury, after the conquest of Spain, was plundered by the Arabs, they
admired, and they have celebrated, another object still more remarkable;
a table of considerable size, of one single piece of solid emerald,
[141] encircled with three rows of fine pearls, supported by three
hundred and sixty-five feet of gems and massy gold, and estimated at the
price of five hundred thousand pieces of gold. [142] Some portion of
the Gothic treasures might be the gift of friendship, or the tribute
of obedience; but the far greater part had been the fruits of war and
rapine, the spoils of the empire, and perhaps of Rome.

[Footnote 139: See in the great collection of the Historians of France
by Dom Bouquet, tom. ii. Greg. Turonens. l. iii. c. 10, p. 191. Gesta
Regum Francorum, c. 23, p. 557. The anonymous writer, with an ignorance
worthy of his times, supposes that these instruments of Christian
worship had belonged to the temple of Solomon. If he has any meaning it
must be, that they were found in the sack of Rome.]

[Footnote 140: Consult the following original testimonies in the
Historians of France, tom. ii. Fredegarii Scholastici Chron. c. 73, p.
441. Fredegar. Fragment. iii. p. 463. Gesta Regis Dagobert, c. 29, p.
587. The accession of Sisenand to the throne of Spain happened A.D.
631. The 200,000 pieces of gold were appropriated by Dagobert to the
foundation of the church of St. Denys.]

[Footnote 141: The president Goguet (Origine des Loix, &c., tom. ii. p.
239) is of opinion, that the stupendous pieces of emerald, the
statues and columns which antiquity has placed in Egypt, at Gades,
at Constantinople, were in reality artificial compositions of colored
glass. The famous emerald dish, which is shown at Genoa, is supposed to
countenance the suspicion.]

[Footnote 142: Elmacin. Hist. Saracenica, l. i. p. 85. Roderic. Tolet.
Hist. Arab. c. 9. Cardonne, Hist. de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne sous les
Arabes tom. i. p. 83. It was called the Table of Solomon, according to
the custom of the Orientals, who ascribe to that prince every ancient
work of knowledge or magnificence.]

After the deliverance of Italy from the oppression of the Goths, some
secret counsellor was permitted, amidst the factions of the palace, to
heal the wounds of that afflicted country. [143] By a wise and humane
regulation, the eight provinces which had been the most deeply injured,
Campania, Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and
Lucania, obtained an indulgence of five years: the ordinary tribute was
reduced to one fifth, and even that fifth was destined to restore and
support the useful institution of the public posts. By another law,
the lands which had been left without inhabitants or cultivation, were
granted, with some diminution of taxes, to the neighbors who should
occupy, or the strangers who should solicit them; and the new possessors
were secured against the future claims of the fugitive proprietors.
About the same time a general amnesty was published in the name of
Honorius, to abolish the guilt and memory of all the involuntary
offences which had been committed by his unhappy subjects, during
the term of the public disorder and calamity A decent and respectful
attention was paid to the restoration of the capital; the citizens were
encouraged to rebuild the edifices which had been destroyed or damaged
by hostile fire; and extraordinary supplies of corn were imported from
the coast of Africa. The crowds that so lately fled before the sword of
the Barbarians, were soon recalled by the hopes of plenty and pleasure;
and Albinus, praefect of Rome, informed the court, with some anxiety and
surprise, that, in a single day, he had taken an account of the arrival
of fourteen thousand strangers. [144] In less than seven years, the
vestiges of the Gothic invasion were almost obliterated; and the city
appeared to resume its former splendor and tranquillity. The venerable
matron replaced her crown of laurel, which had been ruffled by the
storms of war; and was still amused, in the last moment of her decay,
with the prophecies of revenge, of victory, and of eternal dominion.
[145]

[Footnote 143: His three laws are inserted in the Theodosian Code, l.
xi. tit. xxviii. leg. 7. L. xiii. tit. xi. leg. 12. L. xv. tit. xiv.
leg. 14 The expressions of the last are very remarkable; since they
contain not only a pardon, but an apology.]

[Footnote 144: Olympiodorus ap. Phot. p. 188. Philostorgius (l. xii. c.
5) observes, that when Honorius made his triumphal entry, he encouraged
the Romans, with his hand and voice, to rebuild their city; and
the Chronicle of Prosper commends Heraclian, qui in Romanae urbis
reparationem strenuum exhibuerat ministerium.]

[Footnote 145: The date of the voyage of Claudius Rutilius Numatianus
is clogged with some difficulties; but Scaliger has deduced from
astronomical characters, that he left Rome the 24th of September and
embarked at Porto the 9th of October, A.D. 416. See Tillemont, Hist. des
Empereurs, tom, v. p. 820. In this poetical Itinerary, Rutilius (l. i.
115, &c.) addresses Rome in a high strain of congratulation:--

Erige crinales lauros, seniumque sacrati Verticis in virides, Roma,
recinge comas, &c.]

This apparent tranquillity was soon disturbed by the approach of a
hostile armament from the country which afforded the daily subsistence
of the Roman people. Heraclian, count of Africa, who, under the most
difficult and distressful circumstances, had supported, with active
loyalty, the cause of Honorius, was tempted, in the year of his
consulship, to assume the character of a rebel, and the title of
emperor. The ports of Africa were immediately filled with the naval
forces, at the head of which he prepared to invade Italy: and his fleet,
when it cast anchor at the mouth of the Tyber, indeed surpassed the
fleets of Xerxes and Alexander, if all the vessels, including the royal
galley, and the smallest boat, did actually amount to the incredible
number of three thousand two hundred. [146] Yet with such an armament,
which might have subverted, or restored, the greatest empires of the
earth, the African usurper made a very faint and feeble impression on
the provinces of his rival. As he marched from the port, along the road
which leads to the gates of Rome, he was encountered, terrified, and
routed, by one of the Imperial captains; and the lord of this mighty
host, deserting his fortune and his friends, ignominiously fled with a
single ship. [147] When Heraclian landed in the harbor of Carthage, he
found that the whole province, disdaining such an unworthy ruler, had
returned to their allegiance. The rebel was beheaded in the ancient
temple of Memory his consulship was abolished: [148] and the remains
of his private fortune, not exceeding the moderate sum of four thousand
pounds of gold, were granted to the brave Constantius, who had already
defended the throne, which he afterwards shared with his feeble
sovereign. Honorius viewed, with supine indifference, the calamities
of Rome and Italy; [149] but the rebellious attempts of Attalus and
Heraclian, against his personal safety, awakened, for a moment, the
torpid instinct of his nature. He was probably ignorant of the causes
and events which preserved him from these impending dangers; and as
Italy was no longer invaded by any foreign or domestic enemies, he
peaceably existed in the palace of Ravenna, while the tyrants beyond the
Alps were repeatedly vanquished in the name, and by the lieutenants,
of the son of Theodosius. [150] In the course of a busy and interesting
narrative I might possibly forget to mention the death of such a prince:
and I shall therefore take the precaution of observing, in this place,
that he survived the last siege of Rome about thirteen years.

[Footnote 146: Orosius composed his history in Africa, only two years
after the event; yet his authority seems to be overbalanced by the
improbability of the fact. The Chronicle of Marcellinus gives Heraclian
700 ships and 3000 men: the latter of these numbers is ridiculously
corrupt; but the former would please me very much.]

[Footnote 147: The Chronicle of Idatius affirms, without the least
appearance of truth, that he advanced as far as Otriculum, in Umbria,
where he was overthrown in a great battle, with the loss of 50,000 men.]

[Footnote 148: See Cod. Theod. l. xv. tit. xiv. leg. 13. The legal acts
performed in his name, even the manumission of slaves, were declared
invalid, till they had been formally repeated.]

[Footnote 149: I have disdained to mention a very foolish, and probably
a false, report, (Procop. de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 2,) that Honorius
was alarmed by the loss of Rome, till he understood that it was not a
favorite chicken of that name, but only the capital of the world,
which had been lost. Yet even this story is some evidence of the public
opinion.]

[Footnote 150: The materials for the lives of all these tyrants are
taken from six contemporary historians, two Latins and four Greeks:
Orosius, l. vii. c. 42, p. 581, 582, 583; Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus,
apud Gregor Turon. l. ii. c. 9, in the Historians of France, tom. ii. p.
165, 166; Zosimus, l. v. p. 370, 371; Olympiodorus, apud Phot. p. 180,
181, 184, 185; Sozomen, l. ix. c. 12, 13, 14, 15; and Philostorgius, l.
xii. c. 5, 6, with Godefroy's Dissertation, p. 477-481; besides the
four Chronicles of Prosper Tyro, Prosper of Aquitain, Idatius, and
Marcellinus.]

The usurpation of Constantine, who received the purple from the legions
of Britain, had been successful, and seemed to be secure. His title was
acknowledged, from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules;
and, in the midst of the public disorder he shared the dominion, and
the plunder, of Gaul and Spain, with the tribes of Barbarians, whose
destructive progress was no longer checked by the Rhine or Pyrenees.
Stained with the blood of the kinsmen of Honorius, he extorted, from the
court of Ravenna, with which he secretly corresponded, the ratification
of his rebellious claims Constantine engaged himself, by a solemn
promise, to deliver Italy from the Goths; advanced as far as the banks
of the Po; and after alarming, rather than assisting, his pusillanimous
ally, hastily returned to the palace of Arles, to celebrate, with
intemperate luxury, his vain and ostentatious triumph. But this
transient prosperity was soon interrupted and destroyed by the revolt of
Count Gerontius, the bravest of his generals; who, during the absence of
his son Constants, a prince already invested with the Imperial purple,
had been left to command in the provinces of Spain. From some reason, of
which we are ignorant, Gerontius, instead of assuming the diadem,
placed it on the head of his friend Maximus, who fixed his residence
at Tarragona, while the active count pressed forwards, through the
Pyrenees, to surprise the two emperors, Constantine and Constans, before
they could prepare for their defence. The son was made prisoner at
Vienna, and immediately put to death: and the unfortunate youth had
scarcely leisure to deplore the elevation of his family; which had
tempted, or compelled him, sacrilegiously to desert the peaceful
obscurity of the monastic life. The father maintained a siege within the
walls of Arles; but those walls must have yielded to the assailants, had
not the city been unexpectedly relieved by the approach of an Italian
army. The name of Honorius, the proclamation of a lawful emperor,
astonished the contending parties of the rebels. Gerontius, abandoned by
his own troops, escaped to the confines of Spain; and rescued his name
from oblivion, by the Roman courage which appeared to animate the last
moments of his life. In the middle of the night, a great body of his
perfidious soldiers surrounded and attacked his house, which he had
strongly barricaded. His wife, a valiant friend of the nation of the
Alani, and some faithful slaves, were still attached to his person; and
he used, with so much skill and resolution, a large magazine of darts
and arrows, that above three hundred of the assailants lost their lives
in the attempt. His slaves when all the missile weapons were spent,
fled at the dawn of day; and Gerontius, if he had not been restrained
by conjugal tenderness, might have imitated their example; till the
soldiers, provoked by such obstinate resistance, applied fire on all
sides to the house. In this fatal extremity, he complied with the
request of his Barbarian friend, and cut off his head. The wife of
Gerontius, who conjured him not to abandon her to a life of misery and
disgrace, eagerly presented her neck to his sword; and the tragic scene
was terminated by the death of the count himself, who, after three
ineffectual strokes, drew a short dagger, and sheathed it in his heart.
[151] The unprotected Maximus, whom he had invested with the purple, was
indebted for his life to the contempt that was entertained of his power
and abilities. The caprice of the Barbarians, who ravaged Spain, once
more seated this Imperial phantom on the throne: but they soon resigned
him to the justice of Honorius; and the tyrant Maximus, after he had
been shown to the people of Ravenna and Rome, was publicly executed.

[Footnote 151: The praises which Sozomen has bestowed on this act of
despair, appear strange and scandalous in the mouth of an ecclesiastical
historian. He observes (p. 379) that the wife of Gerontius was a
Christian; and that her death was worthy of her religion, and of
immortal fame.]

The general, (Constantius was his name,) who raised by his approach
the siege of Arles, and dissipated the troops of Gerontius, was born
a Roman; and this remarkable distinction is strongly expressive of the
decay of military spirit among the subjects of the empire. The strength
and majesty which were conspicuous in the person of that general, [152]
marked him, in the popular opinion, as a candidate worthy of the throne,
which he afterwards ascended. In the familiar intercourse of private
life, his manners were cheerful and engaging; nor would he sometimes
disdain, in the license of convivial mirth, to vie with the pantomimes
themselves, in the exercises of their ridiculous profession. But when
the trumpet summoned him to arms; when he mounted his horse, and,
bending down (for such was his singular practice) almost upon the neck,
fiercely rolled his large animated eyes round the field, Constantius
then struck terror into his foes, and inspired his soldiers with the
assurance of victory. He had received from the court of Ravenna the
important commission of extirpating rebellion in the provinces of the
West; and the pretended emperor Constantine, after enjoying a short and
anxious respite, was again besieged in his capital by the arms of a
more formidable enemy. Yet this interval allowed time for a successful
negotiation with the Franks and Alemanni and his ambassador, Edobic,
soon returned at the head of an army, to disturb the operations of the
siege of Arles. The Roman general, instead of expecting the attack in
his lines, boldly and perhaps wisely, resolved to pass the Rhone, and to
meet the Barbarians. His measures were conducted with so much skill and
secrecy, that, while they engaged the infantry of Constantius in the
front, they were suddenly attacked, surrounded, and destroyed, by
the cavalry of his lieutenant Ulphilas, who had silently gained an
advantageous post in their rear. The remains of the army of Edobic were
preserved by flight or submission, and their leader escaped from the
field of battle to the house of a faithless friend; who too clearly
understood, that the head of his obnoxious guest would be an acceptable
and lucrative present for the Imperial general. On this occasion,
Constantius behaved with the magnanimity of a genuine Roman. Subduing,
or suppressing, every sentiment of jealousy, he publicly acknowledged
the merit and services of Ulphilas; but he turned with horror from the
assassin of Edobic; and sternly intimated his commands, that the camp
should no longer be polluted by the presence of an ungrateful wretch,
who had violated the laws of friendship and hospitality. The usurper,
who beheld, from the walls of Arles, the ruin of his last hopes, was
tempted to place some confidence in so generous a conqueror. He
required a solemn promise for his security; and after receiving, by the
imposition of hands, the sacred character of a Christian Presbyter, he
ventured to open the gates of the city. But he soon experienced that
the principles of honor and integrity, which might regulate the ordinary
conduct of Constantius, were superseded by the loose doctrines of
political morality. The Roman general, indeed, refused to sully his
laurels with the blood of Constantine; but the abdicated emperor, and
his son Julian, were sent under a strong guard into Italy; and before
they reached the palace of Ravenna, they met the ministers of death.

[Footnote 152: It is the expression of Olympiodorus, which he seems
to have borrowed from Aeolus, a tragedy of Euripides, of which some
fragments only are now extant, (Euripid. Barnes, tom. ii. p. 443, ver
38.) This allusion may prove, that the ancient tragic poets were still
familiar to the Greeks of the fifth century.]

At a time when it was universally confessed, that almost every man
in the empire was superior in personal merit to the princes whom the
accident of their birth had seated on the throne, a rapid succession of
usurpers, regardless of the fate of their predecessors, still continued
to arise. This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of
Spain and Gaul, where the principles of order and obedience had been
extinguished by war and rebellion. Before Constantine resigned the
purple, and in the fourth month of the siege of Arles, intelligence was
received in the Imperial camp, that Jovinus has assumed the diadem at
Mentz, in the Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of
the Alani, and of Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the
candidate, on whom they had bestowed the empire, advanced with a
formidable host of Barbarians, from the banks of the Rhine to those of
the Rhone. Every circumstance is dark and extraordinary in the short
history of the reign of Jovinus. It was natural to expect, that a
brave and skilful general, at the head of a victorious army, would have
asserted, in a field of battle, the justice of the cause of Honorius.
The hasty retreat of Constantius might be justified by weighty reasons;
but he resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul; and
Dardanus, the Praetorian praefect, is recorded as the only magistrate
who refused to yield obedience to the usurper. [153] When the Goths, two
years after the siege of Rome, established their quarters in Gaul, it
was natural to suppose that their inclinations could be divided only
between the emperor Honorius, with whom they had formed a recent
alliance, and the degraded Attalus, whom they reserved in their camp for
the occasional purpose of acting the part of a musician or a monarch.
Yet in a moment of disgust, (for which it is not easy to assign a cause,
or a date,) Adolphus connected himself with the usurper of Gaul; and
imposed on Attalus the ignominious task of negotiating the treaty, which
ratified his own disgrace. We are again surprised to read, that, instead
of considering the Gothic alliance as the firmest support of his
throne, Jovinus upbraided, in dark and ambiguous language, the officious
importunity of Attalus; that, scorning the advice of his great ally,
he invested with the purple his brother Sebastian; and that he most
imprudently accepted the service of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the
soldier of Honorius, was provoked to desert the court of a prince, who
knew not how to reward or punish. Adolphus, educated among a race of
warriors, who esteemed the duty of revenge as the most precious and
sacred portion of their inheritance, advanced with a body of ten
thousand Goths to encounter the hereditary enemy of the house of Balti.
He attacked Sarus at an unguarded moment, when he was accompanied only
by eighteen or twenty of his valiant followers. United by friendship,
animated by despair, but at length oppressed by multitudes, this band
of heroes deserved the esteem, without exciting the compassion, of their
enemies; and the lion was no sooner taken in the toils, [154] than
he was instantly despatched. The death of Sarus dissolved the loose
alliance which Adolphus still maintained with the usurpers of Gaul. He
again listened to the dictates of love and prudence; and soon satisfied
the brother of Placidia, by the assurance that he would immediately
transmit to the palace of Ravenna the heads of the two tyrants, Jovinus
and Sebastian. The king of the Goths executed his promise without
difficulty or delay; the helpless brothers, unsupported by any personal
merit, were abandoned by their Barbarian auxiliaries; and the short
opposition of Valentia was expiated by the ruin of one of the noblest
cities of Gaul. The emperor, chosen by the Roman senate, who had been
promoted, degraded, insulted, restored, again degraded, and again
insulted, was finally abandoned to his fate; but when the Gothic king
withdrew his protection, he was restrained, by pity or contempt, from
offering any violence to the person of Attalus. The unfortunate Attalus,
who was left without subjects or allies, embarked in one of the ports
of Spain, in search of some secure and solitary retreat: but he was
intercepted at sea, conducted to the presence of Honorius, led in
triumph through the streets of Rome or Ravenna, and publicly exposed to
the gazing multitude, on the second step of the throne of his invincible
conqueror. The same measure of punishment, with which, in the days of
his prosperity, he was accused of menacing his rival, was inflicted on
Attalus himself; he was condemned, after the amputation of two fingers,
to a perpetual exile in the Isle of Lipari, where he was supplied with
the decent necessaries of life. The remainder of the reign of Honorius
was undisturbed by rebellion; and it may be observed, that, in the space
of five years, seven usurpers had yielded to the fortune of a prince,
who was himself incapable either of counsel or of action.

[Footnote 153: Sidonius Apollinaris, (l. v. epist. 9, p. 139, and Not.
Sirmond. p. 58,) after stigmatizing the inconstancy of Constantine, the
facility of Jovinus, the perfidy of Gerontius, continues to observe,
that all the vices of these tyrants were united in the person of
Dardanus. Yet the praefect supported a respectable character in the
world, and even in the church; held a devout correspondence with St.
Augustin and St. Jerom; and was complimented by the latter (tom. iii.
p. 66) with the epithets of Christianorum Nobilissime, and Nobilium
Christianissime.]

[Footnote 154: The expression may be understood almost literally:
Olympiodorus says a sack, or a loose garment; and this method of
entangling and catching an enemy, laciniis contortis, was much practised
by the Huns, (Ammian. xxxi. 2.) Il fut pris vif avec des filets, is the
translation of Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 608. * Note:
Bekker in his Photius reads something, but in the new edition of the
Bysantines, he retains the old version, which is translated Scutis, as
if they protected him with their shields, in order to take him alive.
Photius, Bekker, p. 58.--M]




Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.--Part VI.

The situation of Spain, separated, on all sides, from the enemies of
Rome, by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate provinces, had
secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country;
and we may observe, as a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that, in a
period of four hundred years, Spain furnished very few materials to the
history of the Roman empire. The footsteps of the Barbarians, who, in
the reign of Gallienus, had penetrated beyond the Pyrenees, were soon
obliterated by the return of peace; and in the fourth century of the
Christian aera, the cities of Emerita, or Merida, of Corduba, Seville,
Bracara, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious of the
Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, the vegetable, and the
mineral kingdoms, was improved and manufactured by the skill of
an industrious people; and the peculiar advantages of naval stores
contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade. [155] The arts
and sciences flourished under the protection of the emperors; and if
the character of the Spaniards was enfeebled by peace and servitude, the
hostile approach of the Germans, who had spread terror and desolation
from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, seemed to rekindle some sparks of
military ardor. As long as the defence of the mountains was intrusted
to the hardy and faithful militia of the country, they successfully
repelled the frequent attempts of the Barbarians. But no sooner had
the national troops been compelled to resign their post to the Honorian
bands, in the service of Constantine, than the gates of Spain were
treacherously betrayed to the public enemy, about ten months before the
sack of Rome by the Goths. [156] The consciousness of guilt, and the
thirst of rapine, prompted the mercenary guards of the Pyrenees to
desert their station; to invite the arms of the Suevi, the Vandals, and
the Alani; and to swell the torrent which was poured with irresistible
violence from the frontiers of Gaul to the sea of Africa. The
misfortunes of Spain may be described in the language of its most
eloquent historian, who has concisely expressed the passionate, and
perhaps exaggerated, declamations of contemporary writers. [157] "The
irruption of these nations was followed by the most dreadful calamities;
as the Barbarians exercised their indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes
of the Romans and the Spaniards, and ravaged with equal fury the cities
and the open country. The progress of famine reduced the miserable
inhabitants to feed on the flesh of their fellow-creatures; and even
the wild beasts, who multiplied, without control, in the desert, were
exasperated, by the taste of blood, and the impatience of hunger, boldly
to attack and devour their human prey. Pestilence soon appeared, the
inseparable companion of famine; a large proportion of the people was
swept away; and the groans of the dying excited only the envy of their
surviving friends. At length the Barbarians, satiated with carnage and
rapine, and afflicted by the contagious evils which they themselves had
introduced, fixed their permanent seats in the depopulated country. The
ancient Gallicia, whose limits included the kingdom of Old Castille, was
divided between the Suevi and the Vandals; the Alani were scattered over
the provinces of Carthagena and Lusitania, from the Mediterranean to the
Atlantic Ocean; and the fruitful territory of Boetica was allotted to
the Silingi, another branch of the Vandalic nation. After regulating
this partition, the conquerors contracted with their new subjects some
reciprocal engagements of protection and obedience: the lands were again
cultivated; and the towns and villages were again occupied by a captive
people. The greatest part of the Spaniards was even disposed to prefer
this new condition of poverty and barbarism, to the severe oppressions
of the Roman government; yet there were many who still asserted their
native freedom; and who refused, more especially in the mountains of
Gallicia, to submit to the Barbarian yoke." [158]

[Footnote 155: Without recurring to the more ancient writers, I shall
quote three respectable testimonies which belong to the fourth and
seventh centuries; the Expositio totius Mundi, (p. 16, in the third
volume of Hudson's Minor Geographers,) Ausonius, (de Claris Urbibus,
p. 242, edit. Toll.,) and Isidore of Seville, (Praefat. ad. Chron. ap.
Grotium, Hist. Goth. 707.) Many particulars relative to the fertility
and trade of Spain may be found in Nonnius, Hispania Illustrata; and in
Huet, Hist. du Commerce des Anciens, c. 40. p. 228-234.]

[Footnote 156: The date is accurately fixed in the Fasti, and the
Chronicle of Idatius. Orosius (l. vii. c. 40, p. 578) imputes the loss
of Spain to the treachery of the Honorians; while Sozomen (l. ix. c. 12)
accuses only their negligence.]

[Footnote 157: Idatius wishes to apply the prophecies of Daniel to
these national calamities; and is therefore obliged to accommodate the
circumstances of the event to the terms of the prediction.]

[Footnote 158: Mariana de Rebus Hispanicis, l. v. c. 1, tom. i. p. 148.
Comit. 1733. He had read, in Orosius, (l. vii. c. 41, p. 579,) that the
Barbarians had turned their swords into ploughshares; and that many of
the Provincials had preferred inter Barbaros pauperem libertatem, quam
inter Romanos tributariam solicitudinem, sustinere.]

The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian had approved
the friendship of Adolphus, and restored Gaul to the obedience of his
brother Honorius. Peace was incompatible with the situation and temper
of the king of the Goths. He readily accepted the proposal of turning
his victorious arms against the Barbarians of Spain; the troops of
Constantius intercepted his communication with the seaports of Gaul,
and gently pressed his march towards the Pyrenees: [159] he passed
the mountains, and surprised, in the name of the emperor, the city of
Barcelona. The fondness of Adolphus for his Roman bride, was not abated
by time or possession: and the birth of a son, surnamed, from his
illustrious grandsire, Theodosius, appeared to fix him forever in the
interest of the republic. The loss of that infant, whose remains were
deposited in a silver coffin in one of the churches near Barcelona,
afflicted his parents; but the grief of the Gothic king was suspended
by the labors of the field; and the course of his victories was soon
interrupted by domestic treason.

He had imprudently received into his service one of the followers of
Sarus; a Barbarian of a daring spirit, but of a diminutive stature;
whose secret desire of revenging the death of his beloved patron was
continually irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent master. Adolphus
was assassinated in the palace of Barcelona; the laws of the succession
were violated by a tumultuous faction; [160] and a stranger to the royal
race, Singeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on the Gothic
throne. The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of the six
children of Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he tore,
without pity, from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop. [161] The
unfortunate Placidia, instead of the respectful compassion, which she
might have excited in the most savage breasts, was treated with cruel
and wanton insult. The daughter of the emperor Theodosius, confounded
among a crowd of vulgar captives, was compelled to march on foot above
twelve miles, before the horse of a Barbarian, the assassin of a husband
whom Placidia loved and lamented. [162]

[Footnote 159: This mixture of force and persuasion may be fairly
inferred from comparing Orosius and Jornandes, the Roman and the Gothic
historian.]

[Footnote 160: According to the system of Jornandes, (c. 33, p. 659,)
the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested in the Amali;
but those princes, who were the vassals of the Huns, commanded the
tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant parts of Germany or Scythia.]

[Footnote 161: The murder is related by Olympiodorus: but the number of
the children is taken from an epitaph of suspected authority.]

[Footnote 162: The death of Adolphus was celebrated at Constantinople
with illuminations and Circensian games. (See Chron. Alexandrin.) It
may seem doubtful whether the Greeks were actuated, on this occasion, be
their hatred of the Barbarians, or of the Latins.]

But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge, and the view of
her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant people against the
tyrant, who was assassinated on the seventh day of his usurpation. After
the death of Singeric, the free choice of the nation bestowed the Gothic
sceptre on Wallia; whose warlike and ambitious temper appeared, in the
beginning of his reign, extremely hostile to the republic. He marched
in arms from Barcelona to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which the
ancients revered and dreaded as the boundary of the world. But when he
reached the southern promontory of Spain, [163] and, from the rock now
covered by the fortress of Gibraltar, contemplated the neighboring and
fertile coast of Africa, Wallia resumed the designs of conquest, which
had been interrupted by the death of Alaric. The winds and waves
again disappointed the enterprise of the Goths; and the minds of a
superstitious people were deeply affected by the repeated disasters of
storms and shipwrecks. In this disposition the successor of Adolphus
no longer refused to listen to a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were
enforced by the real, or supposed, approach of a numerous army, under
the conduct of the brave Constantius. A solemn treaty was stipulated and
observed; Placidia was honorably restored to her brother; six hundred
thousand measures of wheat were delivered to the hungry Goths; [164] and
Wallia engaged to draw his sword in the service of the empire. A
bloody war was instantly excited among the Barbarians of Spain; and
the contending princes are said to have addressed their letters, their
ambassadors, and their hostages, to the throne of the Western emperor,
exhorting him to remain a tranquil spectator of their contest; the
events of which must be favorable to the Romans, by the mutual
slaughter of their common enemies. [165] The Spanish war was obstinately
supported, during three campaigns, with desperate valor, and various
success; and the martial achievements of Wallia diffused through the
empire the superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the
Silingi, who had irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of the province
of Boetica. He slew, in battle, the king of the Alani; and the remains
of those Scythian wanderers, who escaped from the field, instead of
choosing a new leader, humbly sought a refuge under the standard of the
Vandals, with whom they were ever afterwards confounded. The Vandals
themselves, and the Suevi, yielded to the efforts of the invincible
Goths. The promiscuous multitude of Barbarians, whose retreat had been
intercepted, were driven into the mountains of Gallicia; where they
still continued, in a narrow compass and on a barren soil, to exercise
their domestic and implacable hostilities. In the pride of victory,
Wallia was faithful to his engagements: he restored his Spanish
conquests to the obedience of Honorius; and the tyranny of the Imperial
officers soon reduced an oppressed people to regret the time of their
Barbarian servitude. While the event of the war was still doubtful, the
first advantages obtained by the arms of Wallia had encouraged the court
of Ravenna to decree the honors of a triumph to their feeble sovereign.
He entered Rome like the ancient conquerors of nations; and if the
monuments of servile corruption had not long since met with the fate
which they deserved, we should probably find that a crowd of poets and
orators, of magistrates and bishops, applauded the fortune, the wisdom,
and the invincible courage, of the emperor Honorius. [166]

[Footnote 163:

     Quod Tartessiacis avus hujus Vallia terris
     Vandalicas turmas, et juncti Martis Alanos
     Stravit, et occiduam texere cadavera Calpen.

Sidon. Apollinar. in Panegyr. Anthem. 363 p. 300, edit. Sirmond.]

[Footnote 164: This supply was very acceptable: the Goths were insulted
by the Vandals of Spain with the epithet of Truli, because in their
extreme distress, they had given a piece of gold for a trula, or about
half a pound of flour. Olympiod. apud Phot. p. 189.]

[Footnote 165: Orosius inserts a copy of these pretended letters.

Tu cum omnibus pacem habe, omniumque obsides accipe; nos nobis
confligimus nobis perimus, tibi vincimus; immortalis vero quaestus erit
Reipublicae tuae, si utrique pereamus. The idea is just; but I cannot
persuade myself that it was entertained or expressed by the Barbarians.]

[Footnote 166: Roman triumphans ingreditur, is the formal expression of
Prosper's Chronicle. The facts which relate to the death of Adolphus,
and the exploits of Wallia, are related from Olympiodorus, (ap. Phot. p.
188,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 43 p. 584-587,) Jornandes, (de Rebus p. 31,
32,) and the chronicles of Idatius and Isidore.]

Such a triumph might have been justly claimed by the ally of Rome, if
Wallia, before he repassed the Pyrenees, had extirpated the seeds of
the Spanish war. His victorious Goths, forty-three years after they had
passed the Danube, were established, according to the faith of treaties,
in the possession of the second Aquitain; a maritime province
between the Garonne and the Loire, under the civil and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of Bourdeaux. That metropolis, advantageously situated for
the trade of the ocean, was built in a regular and elegant form; and its
numerous inhabitants were distinguished among the Gauls by their wealth,
their learning, and the politeness of their manners. The adjacent
province, which has been fondly compared to the garden of Eden, is
blessed with a fruitful soil, and a temperate climate; the face of the
country displayed the arts and the rewards of industry; and the Goths,
after their martial toils, luxuriously exhausted the rich vineyards of
Aquitain. [167] The Gothic limits were enlarged by the additional gift
of some neighboring dioceses; and the successors of Alaric fixed their
royal residence at Thoulouse, which included five populous quarters, or
cities, within the spacious circuit of its walls. About the same time,
in the last years of the reign of Honorius, the Goths, the Burgundians,
and the Franks, obtained a permanent seat and dominion in the provinces
of Gaul. The liberal grant of the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian
allies, was confirmed by the lawful emperor; the lands of the First,
or Upper, Germany, were ceded to those formidable Barbarians; and they
gradually occupied, either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces
which still retain, with the titles of Duchy and County, the national
appellation of Burgundy. [168] The Franks, the valiant and faithful
allies of the Roman republic, were soon tempted to imitate the invaders,
whom they had so bravely resisted. Treves, the capital of Gaul, was
pillaged by their lawless bands; and the humble colony, which they so
long maintained in the district of Toxandia, in Brabant, insensibly
multiplied along the banks of the Meuse and Scheld, till their
independent power filled the whole extent of the Second, or Lower
Germany. These facts may be sufficiently justified by historic evidence;
but the foundation of the French monarchy by Pharamond, the conquests,
the laws, and even the existence, of that hero, have been justly
arraigned by the impartial severity of modern criticism. [169]

[Footnote 167: Ausonius (de Claris Urbibus, p. 257-262) celebrates
Bourdeaux with the partial affection of a native. See in Salvian (de
Gubern. Dei, p. 228. Paris, 1608) a florid description of the provinces
of Aquitain and Novempopulania.]

[Footnote 168: Orosius (l. vii. c. 32, p. 550) commends the mildness
and modesty of these Burgundians, who treated their subjects of Gaul
as their Christian brethren. Mascou has illustrated the origin of
their kingdom in the four first annotations at the end of his laborious
History of the Ancient Germans, vol. ii. p. 555-572, of the English
translation.]

[Footnote 169: See Mascou, l. viii. c. 43, 44, 45. Except in a short and
suspicious line of the Chronicle of Prosper, (in tom. i. p. 638,) the
name of Pharamond is never mentioned before the seventh century. The
author of the Gesta Francorum (in tom. ii. p. 543) suggests, probably
enough, that the choice of Pharamond, or at least of a king, was
recommended to the Franks by his father Marcomir, who was an exile in
Tuscany. Note: The first mention of Pharamond is in the Gesta Francorum,
assigned to about the year 720. St. Martin, iv. 469. The modern French
writers in general subscribe to the opinion of Thierry: Faramond fils de
Markomir, quo que son nom soit bien germanique, et son regne possible,
ne figure pas dans les histoires les plus dignes de foi. A. Thierry,
Lettres l'Histoire de France, p. 90.--M.]

The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the
establishment of these Barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous and
oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, by interest or passion,
to violate the public peace. A heavy and partial ransom was imposed on
the surviving provincials, who had escaped the calamities of war; the
fairest and most fertile lands were assigned to the rapacious strangers,
for the use of their families, their slaves, and their cattle; and the
trembling natives relinquished with a sigh the inheritance of their
fathers. Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot of a
vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the Romans themselves,
not only in the insolence of foreign conquest, but in the madness of
civil discord. The Triumvirs proscribed eighteen of the most flourishing
colonies of Italy; and distributed their lands and houses to the
veterans who revenged the death of Caesar, and oppressed the liberty
of their country. Two poets of unequal fame have deplored, in similar
circumstances, the loss of their patrimony; but the legionaries of
Augustus appear to have surpassed, in violence and injustice, the
Barbarians who invaded Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not
without the utmost difficulty that Virgil escaped from the sword of the
Centurion, who had usurped his farm in the neighborhood of Mantua;
[170] but Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of money from his Gothic
purchaser, which he accepted with pleasure and surprise; and though it
was much inferior to the real value of his estate, this act of rapine
was disguised by some colors of moderation and equity. [171] The odious
name of conquerors was softened into the mild and friendly appellation
of the guests of the Romans; and the Barbarians of Gaul, more especially
the Goths, repeatedly declared, that they were bound to the people by
the ties of hospitality, and to the emperor by the duty of allegiance
and military service. The title of Honorius and his successors, their
laws, and their civil magistrates, were still respected in the provinces
of Gaul, of which they had resigned the possession to the Barbarian
allies; and the kings, who exercised a supreme and independent authority
over their native subjects, ambitiously solicited the more honorable
rank of master-generals of the Imperial armies. [172] Such was the
involuntary reverence which the Roman name still impressed on the minds
of those warriors, who had borne away in triumph the spoils of the
Capitol.

[Footnote 170: O Lycida, vivi pervenimus: advena nostri (Quod nunquam
veriti sumus) ut possessor agelli Diseret: Haec mea sunt; veteres
migrate coloni. Nunc victi tristes, &c.----See the whole of the ninth
eclogue, with the useful Commentary of Servius. Fifteen miles of the
Mantuan territory were assigned to the veterans, with a reservation, in
favor of the inhabitants, of three miles round the city. Even in this
favor they were cheated by Alfenus Varus, a famous lawyer, and one
of the commissioners, who measured eight hundred paces of water and
morass.]

[Footnote 171: See the remarkable passage of the Eucharisticon of
Paulinus, 575, apud Mascou, l. viii. c. 42.]

[Footnote 172: This important truth is established by the accuracy of
Tillemont, (Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 641,) and by the ingenuity of the
Abbe Dubos, (Hist. de l'Etablissement de la Monarchie Francoise dans les
Gaules, tom. i. p. 259.)]

Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble
tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island
separated itself from the body of the Roman empire. The regular forces,
which guarded that remote province, had been gradually withdrawn; and
Britain was abandoned without defence to the Saxon pirates, and
the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this
extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining
monarchy. They assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced
in the important discovery of their own strength. [173] Afflicted by
similar calamities, and actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican
provinces (a name which comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul
between the Seine and the Loire [174) resolved to imitate the example of
the neighboring island. They expelled the Roman magistrates, who acted
under the authority of the usurper Constantine; and a free government
was established among a people who had so long been subject to the
arbitrary will of a master. The independence of Britain and Armorica was
soon confirmed by Honorius himself, the lawful emperor of the West; and
the letters, by which he committed to the new states the care of their
own safety, might be interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication
of the exercise and rights of sovereignty. This interpretation was, in
some measure, justified by the event.

After the usurpers of Gaul had successively fallen, the maritime
provinces were restored to the empire. Yet their obedience was imperfect
and precarious: the vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the
people, was incompatible either with freedom or servitude; [175] and
Armorica, though it could not long maintain the form of a republic,
[176] was agitated by frequent and destructive revolts. Britain was
irrecoverably lost. [177] But as the emperors wisely acquiesced in the
independence of a remote province, the separation was not imbittered by
the reproach of tyranny or rebellion; and the claims of allegiance
and protection were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary offices of
national friendship. [178]

[Footnote 173: Zosimus (l. vi. 376, 383) relates in a few words the
revolt of Britain and Armorica. Our antiquarians, even the great Cambder
himself, have been betrayed into many gross errors, by their imperfect
knowledge of the history of the continent.]

[Footnote 174: The limits of Armorica are defined by two national
geographers, Messieurs De Valois and D'Anville, in their Notitias
of Ancient Gaul. The word had been used in a more extensive, and was
afterwards contracted to a much narrower, signification.]

[Footnote 175: Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes,

     Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta.
     Torva, ferox, ventosa, procax, incauta, rebellis;
     Inconstans, disparque sibi novitatis amore;
     Prodiga verborum, sed non et prodiga facti.

Erricus, Monach. in Vit. St. Germani. l. v. apud Vales. Notit.
Galliarum, p. 43. Valesius alleges several testimonies to confirm
this character; to which I shall add the evidence of the presbyter
Constantine, (A.D. 488,) who, in the life of St. Germain, calls the
Armorican rebels mobilem et indisciplinatum populum. See the Historians
of France, tom. i. p. 643.]

[Footnote 176: I thought it necessary to enter my protest against
this part of the system of the Abbe Dubos, which Montesquieu has so
vigorously opposed. See Esprit des Loix, l. xxx. c. 24. Note: See
Memoires de Gallet sur l'Origine des Bretons, quoted by Daru Histoire
de Bretagne, i. p. 57. According to the opinion of these authors,
the government of Armorica was monarchical from the period of its
independence on the Roman empire.--M.]

[Footnote 177: The words of Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 2, p.
181, Louvre edition) in a very important passage, which has been too
much neglected Even Bede (Hist. Gent. Anglican. l. i. c. 12, p. 50,
edit. Smith) acknowledges that the Romans finally left Britain in the
reign of Honorius. Yet our modern historians and antiquaries extend the
term of their dominion; and there are some who allow only the interval
of a few months between their departure and the arrival of the Saxons.]

[Footnote 178: Bede has not forgotten the occasional aid of the legions
against the Scots and Picts; and more authentic proof will hereafter be
produced, that the independent Britons raised 12,000 men for the service
of the emperor Anthemius, in Gaul.]

This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and military
government; and the independent country, during a period of forty
years, till the descent of the Saxons, was ruled by the authority of the
clergy, the nobles, and the municipal towns. [179] I. Zosimus, who alone
has preserved the memory of this singular transaction, very accurately
observes, that the letters of Honorius were addressed to the cities
of Britain. [180] Under the protection of the Romans, ninety-two
considerable towns had arisen in the several parts of that great
province; and, among these, thirty-three cities were distinguished above
the rest by their superior privileges and importance. [181] Each of
these cities, as in all the other provinces of the empire, formed a
legal corporation, for the purpose of regulating their domestic policy;
and the powers of municipal government were distributed among annual
magistrates, a select senate, and the assembly of the people, according
to the original model of the Roman constitution. [182] The management of
a common revenue, the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and
the habits of public counsel and command, were inherent to these petty
republics; and when they asserted their independence, the youth of the
city, and of the adjacent districts, would naturally range themselves
under the standard of the magistrate. But the desire of obtaining the
advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a
perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor can it reasonably be
presumed, that the restoration of British freedom was exempt from
tumult and faction. The preeminence of birth and fortune must have
been frequently violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty
nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of their
own servants, [183] would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary
monarch.

II. The jurisdiction of each city over the adjacent country, was
supported by the patrimonial influence of the principal senators; and
the smaller towns, the villages, and the proprietors of land, consulted
their own safety by adhering to the shelter of these rising republics.
The sphere of their attraction was proportioned to the respective
degrees of their wealth and populousness; but the hereditary lords of
ample possessions, who were not oppressed by the neighborhood of any
powerful city, aspired to the rank of independent princes, and boldly
exercised the rights of peace and war. The gardens and villas, which
exhibited some faint imitation of Italian elegance, would soon be
converted into strong castles, the refuge, in time of danger, of the
adjacent country: [184] the produce of the land was applied to purchase
arms and horses; to maintain a military force of slaves, of peasants,
and of licentious followers; and the chieftain might assume, within his
own domain, the powers of a civil magistrate. Several of these British
chiefs might be the genuine posterity of ancient kings; and many more
would be tempted to adopt this honorable genealogy, and to vindicate
their hereditary claims, which had been suspended by the usurpation of
the Caesars. [185] Their situation and their hopes would dispose them to
affect the dress, the language, and the customs of their ancestors.
If the princes of Britain relapsed into barbarism, while the cities
studiously preserved the laws and manners of Rome, the whole island must
have been gradually divided by the distinction of two national parties;
again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war and faction, by the
various provocations of interest and resentment. The public strength,
instead of being united against a foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure
and intestine quarrels; and the personal merit which had placed a
successful leader at the head of his equals, might enable him to subdue
the freedom of some neighboring cities; and to claim a rank among the
tyrants, [186] who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman
government. III. The British church might be composed of thirty or forty
bishops, [187] with an adequate proportion of the inferior clergy; and
the want of riches (for they seem to have been poor [188) would compel
them to deserve the public esteem, by a decent and exemplary behavior.

The interest, as well as the temper of the clergy, was favorable to
the peace and union of their distracted country: those salutary lessons
might be frequently inculcated in their popular discourses; and the
episcopal synods were the only councils that could pretend to the weight
and authority of a national assembly.

In such councils, where the princes and magistrates sat promiscuously
with the bishops, the important affairs of the state, as well as of
the church, might be freely debated; differences reconciled, alliances
formed, contributions imposed, wise resolutions often concerted, and
sometimes executed; and there is reason to believe, that, in moments
of extreme danger, a Pendragon, or Dictator, was elected by the general
consent of the Britons. These pastoral cares, so worthy of the episcopal
character, were interrupted, however, by zeal and superstition; and the
British clergy incessantly labored to eradicate the Pelagian heresy,
which they abhorred, as the peculiar disgrace of their native country.
[189]

[Footnote 179: I owe it to myself, and to historic truth, to declare,
that some circumstances in this paragraph are founded only on conjecture
and analogy. The stubbornness of our language has sometimes forced me to
deviate from the conditional into the indicative mood.]

[Footnote 180: Zosimus, l. vi. p. 383.]

[Footnote 181: Two cities of Britain were municipia, nine colonies, ten
Latii jure donatoe, twelve stipendiarioe of eminent note. This detail is
taken from Richard of Cirencester, de Situ Britanniae, p. 36; and though
it may not seem probable that he wrote from the Mss. of a Roman general,
he shows a genuine knowledge of antiquity, very extraordinary for a monk
of the fourteenth century.

Note: The names may be found in Whitaker's Hist. of Manchester vol. ii.
330, 379. Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxons, i. 216.--M.]

[Footnote 182: See Maffei Verona Illustrata, part i. l. v. p. 83-106.]

[Footnote 183: Leges restituit, libertatemque reducit, Et servos famulis
non sinit esse suis. Itinerar. Rutil. l. i. 215.]

[Footnote 184: An inscription (apud Sirmond, Not. ad Sidon. Apollinar.
p. 59) describes a castle, cum muris et portis, tutioni omnium, erected
by Dardanus on his own estate, near Sisteron, in the second Narbonnese,
and named by him Theopolis.]

[Footnote 185: The establishment of their power would have been easy
indeed, if we could adopt the impracticable scheme of a lively and
learned antiquarian; who supposes that the British monarchs of the
several tribes continued to reign, though with subordinate jurisdiction,
from the time of Claudius to that of Honorius. See Whitaker's History of
Manchester, vol. i. p. 247-257.]

[Footnote 186: Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 3, p. 181. Britannia
fertilis provincia tyrannorum, was the expression of Jerom, in the year
415 (tom. ii. p. 255, ad Ctesiphont.) By the pilgrims, who resorted
every year to the Holy Land, the monk of Bethlem received the earliest
and most accurate intelligence.]

[Footnote 187: See Bingham's Eccles. Antiquities, vol. i. l. ix. c. 6,
p. 394.]

[Footnote 188: It is reported of three British bishops who assisted at
the council of Rimini, A.D. 359, tam pauperes fuisse ut nihil haberent.
Sulpicius Severus, Hist. Sacra, l. ii. p. 420. Some of their brethren
however, were in better circumstances.]

[Footnote 189: Consult Usher, de Antiq. Eccles. Britannicar. c. 8-12.]
It is somewhat remarkable, or rather it is extremely natural, that the
revolt of Britain and Armorica should have introduced an appearance of
liberty into the obedient provinces of Gaul. In a solemn edict, [190]
filled with the strongest assurances of that paternal affection which
princes so often express, and so seldom feel, the emperor Honorius
promulgated his intention of convening an annual assembly of the seven
provinces: a name peculiarly appropriated to Aquitain and the ancient
Narbonnese, which had long since exchanged their Celtic rudeness for the
useful and elegant arts of Italy. [191] Arles, the seat of government
and commerce, was appointed for the place of the assembly; which
regularly continued twenty-eight days, from the fifteenth of August
to the thirteenth of September, of every year. It consisted of the
Praetorian praefect of the Gauls; of seven provincial governors, one
consular, and six presidents; of the magistrates, and perhaps the
bishops, of about sixty cities; and of a competent, though indefinite,
number of the most honorable and opulent possessors of land, who might
justly be considered as the representatives of their country. They were
empowered to interpret and communicate the laws of their sovereign; to
expose the grievances and wishes of their constituents; to moderate the
excessive or unequal weight of taxes; and to deliberate on every subject
of local or national importance, that could tend to the restoration of
the peace and prosperity of the seven provinces. If such an institution,
which gave the people an interest in their own government, had been
universally established by Trajan or the Antonines, the seeds of public
wisdom and virtue might have been cherished and propagated in the empire
of Rome. The privileges of the subject would have secured the throne of
the monarch; the abuses of an arbitrary administration might have been
prevented, in some degree, or corrected, by the interposition of these
representative assemblies; and the country would have been defended
against a foreign enemy by the arms of natives and freemen. Under the
mild and generous influence of liberty, the Roman empire might have
remained invincible and immortal; or if its excessive magnitude, and the
instability of human affairs, had opposed such perpetual continuance,
its vital and constituent members might have separately preserved their
vigor and independence. But in the decline of the empire, when every
principle of health and life had been exhausted, the tardy application
of this partial remedy was incapable of producing any important or
salutary effects. The emperor Honorius expresses his surprise, that he
must compel the reluctant provinces to accept a privilege which they
should ardently have solicited. A fine of three, or even five, pounds
of gold, was imposed on the absent representatives; who seem to have
declined this imaginary gift of a free constitution, as the last and
most cruel insult of their oppressors.

[Footnote 190: See the correct text of this edict, as published by
Sirmond, (Not. ad Sidon. Apollin. p. 148.) Hincmar of Rheims, who
assigns a place to the bishops, had probably seen (in the ninth century)
a more perfect copy. Dubos, Hist. Critique de la Monarchie Francoise,
tom. i. p. 241-255]

[Footnote 191: It is evident from the Notitia, that the seven provinces
were the Viennensis, the maritime Alps, the first and second Narbonnese
Novempopulania, and the first and second Aquitain. In the room of the
first Aquitain, the Abbe Dubos, on the authority of Hincmar, desires to
introduce the first Lugdunensis, or Lyonnese.]




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 Caesar 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 [1] 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 Aethiopia, [2] 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.

[Footnote 1: Father Montfaucon, who, by the command of his Benedictine
superiors, was compelled (see Longueruana, tom. i. p. 205) to execute
the laborious edition of St. Chrysostom, in thirteen volumes in
folio, (Paris, 1738,) amused himself with extracting from that immense
collection of morals, some curious antiquities, which illustrate the
manners of the Theodosian age, (see Chrysostom, Opera, tom. xiii. p.
192-196,) and his French Dissertation, in the Memoires de l'Acad. des
Inscriptions, tom. xiii. p. 474-490.]

[Footnote 2: According to the loose reckoning, that a ship could sail,
with a fair wind, 1000 stadia, or 125 miles, in the revolution of a day
and night, Diodorus Siculus computes ten days from the Palus Moeotis to
Rhodes, and four days from Rhodes to Alexandria. The navigation of the
Nile from Alexandria to Syene, under the tropic of Cancer, required, as
it was against the stream, ten days more. Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii.
p. 200, edit. Wesseling. He might, without much impropriety, measure
the extreme heat from the verge of the torrid zone; but he speaks of the
Moeotis in the 47th degree of northern latitude, as if it lay within the
polar circle.]

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, [3] 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, [4] 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. [5] 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, [6] 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.
[7] 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
consulship of a eunuch and a slave. This strange and inexpiable prodigy
[8] 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,
[9] sufficiently represented the different maxims of the two
administrations.

[Footnote 3: Barthius, who adored his author with the blind superstition
of a commentator, gives the preference to the two books which Claudian
composed against Eutropius, above all his other productions, (Baillet
Jugemens des Savans, tom. iv. p. 227.) They are indeed a very elegant
and spirited satire; and would be more valuable in an historical light,
if the invective were less vague and more temperate.]

[Footnote 4: After lamenting the progress of the eunuchs in the Roman
palace, and defining their proper functions, Claudian adds,

     A fronte recedant.
     Imperii.
    ---In Eutrop. i. 422.

Yet it does not appear that the eunuchs had assumed any of the efficient
offices of the empire, and he is styled only Praepositun sacri cubiculi,
in the edict of his banishment. See Cod. Theod. l. leg 17.

     Jamque oblita sui, nec sobria divitiis mens
     In miseras leges hominumque negotia ludit
     Judicat eunuchus.......
     Arma etiam violare parat......

Claudian, (i. 229-270,) with that mixture of indignation and humor which
always pleases in a satiric poet, describes the insolent folly of the
eunuch, the disgrace of the empire, and the joy of the Goths.

     Gaudet, cum viderit, hostis,
     Et sentit jam deesse viros.]

[Footnote 6: The poet's lively description of his deformity (i. 110-125)
is confirmed by the authentic testimony of Chrysostom, (tom. iii. p.
384, edit Montfaucon;) who observes, that when the paint was washed away
the face of Eutropius appeared more ugly and wrinkled than that of an
old woman. Claudian remarks, (i. 469,) and the remark must have been
founded on experience, that there was scarcely an interval between the
youth and the decrepit age of a eunuch.]

[Footnote 7: Eutropius appears to have been a native of Armenia or
Assyria. His three services, which Claudian more particularly describes,
were these: 1. He spent many years as the catamite of Ptolemy, a groom
or soldier of the Imperial stables. 2. Ptolemy gave him to the old
general Arintheus, for whom he very skilfully exercised the profession
of a pimp. 3. He was given, on her marriage, to the daughter of
Arintheus; and the future consul was employed to comb her hair, to
present the silver ewer to wash and to fan his mistress in hot weather.
See l. i. 31-137.]

[Footnote 8: Claudian, (l. i. in Eutrop. l.--22,) after enumerating
the various prodigies of monstrous births, speaking animals, showers of
blood or stones, double suns, &c., adds, with some exaggeration,

Omnia cesserunt eunucho consule monstra.

The first book concludes with a noble speech of the goddess of Rome to
her favorite Honorius, deprecating the new ignominy to which she was
exposed.]

[Footnote 9: Fl. Mallius Theodorus, whose civil honors, and
philosophical works, have been celebrated by Claudian in a very elegant
panegyric.]

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 praefect. [10] 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 Haemus 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. [11] 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 future
crimes; but the riches, which Eutropius derived from confiscation, were
already stained 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 [12] 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
Phoenicia. The destruction of Timasius [13] 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 dependant 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. [14] 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. [15] 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. [16]
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. [17] 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.

[Footnote 10: Drunk with riches, is the forcible expression of Zosimus,
(l. v. p. 301;) and the avarice of Eutropius is equally execrated in the
Lexicon of Suidas and the Chronicle of Marcellinus Chrysostom had often
admonished the favorite of the vanity and danger of immoderate wealth,
tom. iii. p. 381. -certantum saepe duorum Diversum suspendit onus: cum
pondere judex Vergit, et in geminas nutat provincia lances. Claudian (i.
192-209) so curiously distinguishes the circumstances of the sale, that
they all seem to allude to particular anecdotes.]

[Footnote 12: Claudian (i. 154-170) mentions the guilt and exile of
Abundantius; nor could he fail to quote the example of the artist, who
made the first trial of the brazen bull, which he presented to Phalaris.
See Zosimus, l. v. p. 302. Jerom, tom. i. p. 26. The difference of place
is easily reconciled; but the decisive authority of Asterius of Amasia
(Orat. iv. p. 76, apud Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 435)
must turn the scale in favor of Pityus.]

[Footnote 13: Suidas (most probably from the history of Eunapius)
has given a very unfavorable picture of Timasius. The account of his
accuser, the judges, trial, &c., is perfectly agreeable to the practice
of ancient and modern courts. (See Zosimus, l. v. p. 298, 299, 300.) I
am almost tempted to quote the romance of a great master, (Fielding's
Works, vol. iv. p. 49, &c., 8vo. edit.,) which may be considered as the
history of human nature.]

[Footnote 14: The great Oasis was one of the spots in the sands of
Libya, watered with springs, and capable of producing wheat, barley, and
palm-trees. It was about three days' journey from north to south, about
half a day in breadth, and at the distance of about five days' march to
the west of Abydus, on the Nile. See D'Anville, Description de l'Egypte,
p. 186, 187, 188. The barren desert which encompasses Oasis (Zosimus, l.
v. p. 300) has suggested the idea of comparative fertility, and even the
epithet of the happy island ]

[Footnote 15: The line of Claudian, in Eutrop. l. i. 180,

     Marmaricus claris violatur caedibus Hammon,

evidently alludes to his persuasion of the death of Timasius. * Note: A
fragment of Eunapius confirms this account. "Thus having deprived this
great person of his life--a eunuch, a man, a slave, a consul, a minister
of the bed-chamber, one bred in camps." Mai, p. 283, in Niebuhr. 87--M.]

[Footnote 16: Sozomen, l. viii. c. 7. He speaks from report.]

[Footnote 17: Zosimus, l. v. p. 300. Yet he seems to suspect that this
rumor was spread by the friends of Eutropius.]

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. [18] 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 illustrious officers 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, thoughts and
actions ought 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; [19] 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. [20]

[Footnote 18: See the Theodosian Code, l. ix. tit. 14, ad legem
Corneliam de Sicariis, leg. 3, and the Code of Justinian, l. ix. tit.
viii, viii. ad legem Juliam de Majestate, leg. 5. The alteration of
the title, from murder to treason, was an improvement of the subtle
Tribonian. Godefroy, in a formal dissertation, which he has inserted in
his Commentary, illustrates this law of Arcadius, and explains all the
difficult passages which had been perverted by the jurisconsults of the
darker ages. See tom. iii. p. 88-111.]

[Footnote 19: Bartolus understands a simple and naked consciousness,
without any sign of approbation or concurrence. For this opinion, says
Baldus, he is now roasting in hell. For my own part, continues the
discreet Heineccius, (Element. Jur. Civil l. iv. p. 411,) I must
approve the theory of Bartolus; but in practice I should incline to the
sentiments of Baldus. Yet Bartolus was gravely quoted by the lawyers of
Cardinal Richelieu; and Eutropius was indirectly guilty of the murder of
the virtuous De Thou.]

[Footnote 20: Godefroy, tom. iii. p. 89. It is, however, suspected,
that this law, so repugnant to the maxims of Germanic freedom, has been
surreptitiously added to the golden bull.] 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 [21] the
Ostrogoth. The colony of that warlike nation, which had been planted
by Theodosius in one of the most fertile districts of Phrygia, [22]
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 Maeander,
[23] 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 Selgae, [24] 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. [25] 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, [26] 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. [27] 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.

[Footnote 21: A copious and circumstantial narrative (which he might
have reserved for more important events) is bestowed by Zosimus (l.
v. p. 304-312) on the revolt of Tribigild and Gainas. See likewise
Socrates, l. vi. c. 6, and Sozomen, l. viii. c. 4. The second book
of Claudian against Eutropius, is a fine, though imperfect, piece of
history.]

[Footnote 22: Claudian (in Eutrop. l. ii. 237-250) very accurately
observes, that the ancient name and nation of the Phrygians extended
very far on every side, till their limits were contracted by the
colonies of the Bithvnians of Thrace, of the Greeks, and at last of the
Gauls. His description (ii. 257-272) of the fertility of Phrygia, and of
the four rivers that produced gold, is just and picturesque.]

[Footnote 23: Xenophon, Anabasis, l. i. p. 11, 12, edit. Hutchinson.
Strabo, l. xii p. 865, edit. Amstel. Q. Curt. l. iii. c. 1. Claudian
compares the junction of the Marsyas and Maeander to that of the Saone
and the Rhone, with this difference, however, that the smaller of the
Phrygian rivers is not accelerated, but retarded, by the larger.]

[Footnote 24: Selgae, a colony of the Lacedaemonians, had formerly
numbered twenty thousand citizens; but in the age of Zosimus it was
reduced to a small town. See Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq tom. ii. p.
117.]

[Footnote 25: The council of Eutropius, in Claudian, may be compared to
that of Domitian in the fourth Satire of Juvenal. The principal members
of the former were juvenes protervi lascivique senes; one of them had
been a cook, a second a woolcomber. The language of their original
profession exposes their assumed dignity; and their trifling
conversation about tragedies, dancers, &c., is made still more
ridiculous by the importance of the debate.]

[Footnote 26: Claudian (l. ii. 376-461) has branded him with infamy; and
Zosimus, in more temperate language, confirms his reproaches. L. v. p.
305.]

[Footnote 27: The conspiracy of Gainas and Tribigild, which is attested
by the Greek historian, had not reached the ears of Claudian, who
attributes the revolt of the Ostrogoth to his own martial spirit, and
the advice of his wife.]




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. [28] 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. [29] 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. [30]
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. [31] 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 sacred animals, who, from their breed or
color, were reserved for the use of the emperor alone. [32]

[Footnote 28: This anecdote, which Philostorgius alone has preserved,
(l xi. c. 6, and Gothofred. Dissertat. p. 451-456) is curious and
important; since it connects the revolt of the Goths with the secret
intrigues of the palace.]

[Footnote 29: See the Homily of Chrysostom, tom. iii. p. 381-386, which
the exordium is particularly beautiful. Socrates, l. vi. c. 5. Sozomen,
l. viii. c. 7. Montfaucon (in his Life of Chrysostom, tom. xiii. p. 135)
too hastily supposes that Tribigild was actually in Constantinople; and
that he commanded the soldiers who were ordered to seize Eutropius
Even Claudian, a Pagan poet, (praefat. ad l. ii. in Eutrop. 27,) has
mentioned the flight of the eunuch to the sanctuary.

     Suppliciterque pias humilis prostratus ad aras,
     Mitigat iratas voce tremente nurus,]

[Footnote 30: Chrysostom, in another homily, (tom. iii. p. 386,) affects
to declare that Eutropius would not have been taken, had he not deserted
the church. Zosimus, (l. v. p. 313,) on the contrary, pretends, that his
enemies forced him from the sanctuary. Yet the promise is an evidence of
some treaty; and the strong assurance of Claudian, (Praefat. ad l. ii.
46,) Sed tamen exemplo non feriere tuo, may be considered as an evidence
of some promise.]

[Footnote 31: Cod. Theod. l. ix. tit. xi. leg. 14. The date of that
law (Jan. 17, A.D. 399) is erroneous and corrupt; since the fall
of Eutropius could not happen till the autumn of the same year. See
Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 780.]

[Footnote 32: Zosimus, l. v. p. 313. Philostorgius, l. xi. c. 6.] While
this domestic revolution was transacted, Gainas [33] 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, [34] 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. [35] 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. [36] 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, [37] 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; [38] 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, [3811]
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. [39] 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; [40] 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.

[Footnote 33: Zosimus, l. v. p. 313-323,) Socrates, (l. vi. c. 4,)
Sozomen, (l. viii. c. 4,) and Theodoret, (l. v. c. 32, 33,) represent,
though with some various circumstances, the conspiracy, defeat, and
death of Gainas.]

[Footnote 34: It is the expression of Zosimus himself, (l. v. p. 314,)
who inadvertently uses the fashionable language of the Christians.
Evagrius describes (l. ii. c. 3) the situation, architecture, relics,
and miracles, of that celebrated church, in which the general council of
Chalcedon was afterwards held.]

[Footnote 35: The pious remonstrances of Chrysostom, which do not
appear in his own writings, are strongly urged by Theodoret; but his
insinuation, that they were successful, is disproved by facts. Tillemont
(Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 383) has discovered that the emperor,
to satisfy the rapacious demands of Gainas, was obliged to melt the
plate of the church of the apostles.]

[Footnote 36: The ecclesiastical historians, who sometimes guide, and
sometimes follow, the public opinion, most confidently assert, that the
palace of Constantinople was guarded by legions of angels.]

[Footnote 37: Zosmius (l. v. p. 319) mentions these galleys by the name
of Liburnians, and observes that they were as swift (without explaining
the difference between them) as the vessels with fifty oars; but that
they were far inferior in speed to the triremes, which had been long
disused. Yet he reasonably concludes, from the testimony of Polybius,
that galleys of a still larger size had been constructed in the
Punic wars. Since the establishment of the Roman empire over the
Mediterranean, the useless art of building large ships of war had
probably been neglected, and at length forgotten.]

[Footnote 38: Chishull (Travels, p. 61-63, 72-76) proceeded from
Gallipoli, through Hadrianople to the Danube, in about fifteen days. He
was in the train of an English ambassador, whose baggage consisted of
seventy-one wagons. That learned traveller has the merit of tracing a
curious and unfrequented route.]

[Footnote 3833: Fravitta, according to Zosimus, though a Pagan,
received the honors of the consulate. Zosim, v. c. 20. On Fravitta,
see a very imperfect fragment of Eunapius. Mai. ii. 290, in Niebuhr.
92.--M.]

[Footnote 39: The narrative of Zosimus, who actually leads Gainas beyond
the Danube, must be corrected by the testimony of Socrates, aud Sozomen,
that he was killed in Thrace; and by the precise and authentic dates of
the Alexandrian, or Paschal, Chronicle, p. 307. The naval victory of the
Hellespont is fixed to the month Apellaeus, the tenth of the Calends of
January, (December 23;) the head of Gainas was brought to Constantinople
the third of the nones of January, (January 3,) in the month Audynaeus.]

[Footnote 40: Eusebius Scholasticus acquired much fame by his poem on
the Gothic war, in which he had served. Near forty years afterwards
Ammonius recited another poem on the same subject, in the presence of
the emperor Theodosius. See Socrates, l. vi. c. 6.]

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. [41] 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 [42] 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.

[Footnote 41: The sixth book of Socrates, the eighth of Sozomen, and the
fifth of Theodoret, afford curious and authentic materials for the life
of John Chrysostom. Besides those general historians, I have taken for
my guides the four principal biographers of the saint. 1. The author
of a partial and passionate Vindication of the archbishop of
Constantinople, composed in the form of a dialogue, and under the name
of his zealous partisan, Palladius, bishop of Helenopolis, (Tillemont,
Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 500-533.) It is inserted among the works
of Chrysostom. tom. xiii. p. 1-90, edit. Montfaucon. 2. The moderate
Erasmus, (tom. iii. epist. Mcl. p. 1331-1347, edit. Lugd. Bat.) His
vivacity and good sense were his own; his errors, in the uncultivated
state of ecclesiastical antiquity, were almost inevitable. 3. The
learned Tillemont, (Mem. Ecclesiastiques, tom. xi. p. 1-405, 547-626,
&c. &c.,) who compiles the lives of the saints with incredible patience
and religious accuracy. He has minutely searched the voluminous works
of Chrysostom himself. 4. Father Montfaucon, who has perused those
works with the curious diligence of an editor, discovered several new
homilies, and again reviewed and composed the Life of Chrysostom, (Opera
Chrysostom. tom. xiii. p. 91-177.)]

[Footnote 42: As I am almost a stranger to the voluminous sermons of
Chrysostom, I have given my confidence to the two most judicious and
moderate of the ecclesiastical critics, Erasmus (tom. iii. p. 1344)
and Dupin, (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom. iii. p. 38:) yet the
good taste of the former is sometimes vitiated by an excessive love
of antiquity; and the good sense of the latter is always restrained by
prudential considerations.]

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, [43] 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. [44] 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, [45] 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. [46] 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.

[Footnote 43: The females of Constantinople distinguished themselves by
their enmity or their attachment to Chrysostom. Three noble and opulent
widows, Marsa, Castricia, and Eugraphia, were the leaders of the
persecution, (Pallad. Dialog. tom. xiii. p. 14.) It was impossible
that they should forgive a preacher who reproached their affectation to
conceal, by the ornaments of dress, their age and ugliness, (Pallad
p. 27.) Olympias, by equal zeal, displayed in a more pious cause, has
obtained the title of saint. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi p.
416-440.]

[Footnote 44: Sozomen, and more especially Socrates, have defined the
real character of Chrysostom with a temperate and impartial freedom,
very offensive to his blind admirers. Those historians lived in the next
generation, when party violence was abated, and had conversed with many
persons intimately acquainted with the virtues and imperfections of the
saint.]

[Footnote 45: Palladius (tom. xiii. p. 40, &c.) very seriously defends
the archbishop 1. He never tasted wine. 2. The weakness of his stomach
required a peculiar diet. 3. Business, or study, or devotion, often kept
him fasting till sunset. 4. He detested the noise and levity of great
dinners. 5. He saved the expense for the use of the poor. 6. He was
apprehensive, in a capital like Constantinople, of the envy and reproach
of partial invitations.]

[Footnote 46: Chrysostom declares his free opinion (tom. ix. hom. iii
in Act. Apostol. p. 29) that the number of bishops, who might be saved,
bore a very small proportion to those who would be damned.]

This ecclesiastical conspiracy was managed by Theophilus, [47]
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. [48] By the private invitation of
the empress, Theophilus landed at Constantinople with a stou 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
[49] 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 Oak
immediately 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.

[Footnote 47: See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 441-500.]

[Footnote 48: I have purposely omitted the controversy which arose
among the monks of Egypt, concerning Origenism and Anthropomorphism; the
dissimulation and violence of Theophilus; his artful management of the
simplicity of Epiphanius; the persecution and flight of the long,
or tall, brothers; the ambiguous support which they received at
Constantinople from Chrysostom, &c. &c.]

[Footnote 49: Photius (p. 53-60) has preserved the original acts of the
synod of the Oak; which destroys the false assertion, that Chrysostom
was condemned by no more than thirty-six bishops, of whom twenty-nine
were Egyptians. Forty-five bishops subscribed his sentence. See
Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xi. p. 595. * Note: Tillemont argues
strongly for the number of thirty-six--M]

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. [50] 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 female
vices; 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. [51] 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. [52]

[Footnote 50: Palladius owns (p. 30) that if the people of
Constantinople had found Theophilus, they would certainly have thrown
him into the sea. Socrates mentions (l. vi. c. 17) a battle between the
mob and the sailors of Alexandria, in which many wounds were given, and
some lives were lost. The massacre of the monks is observed only by the
Pagan Zosimus, (l. v. p. 324,) who acknowledges that Chrysostom had a
singular talent to lead the illiterate multitude.]

[Footnote 51: See Socrates, l. vi. c. 18. Sozomen, l. viii. c. 20.
Zosimus (l. v. p 324, 327) mentions, in general terms, his invectives
against Eudoxia. The homily, which begins with those famous words, is
rejected as spurious. Montfaucon, tom. xiii. p. 151. Tillemont, Mem.
Eccles. tom xi. p. 603.]

[Footnote 52: We might naturally expect such a charge from Zosimus, (l.
v. p. 327;) but it is remarkable enough, that it should be confirmed by
Socrates, (l. vi. c. 18,) and the Paschal Chronicle, (p. 307.)]

Cicero might claim some merit, if his voluntary banishment preserved
the peace of the republic; [53] 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 [54] 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 Phoenicia, 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. [55] 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. [56] 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. [57] 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. [58]

[Footnote 53: He displays those specious motives (Post Reditum, c. 13,
14) in the language of an orator and a politician.]

[Footnote 54: Two hundred and forty-two of the epistles of Chrysostom
are still extant, (Opera, tom. iii. p. 528-736.) They are addressed to
a great variety of persons, and show a firmness of mind much superior to
that of Cicero in his exile. The fourteenth epistle contains a curious
narrative of the dangers of his journey.]

[Footnote 55: After the exile of Chrysostom, Theophilus published
an enormous and horrible volume against him, in which he perpetually
repeats the polite expressions of hostem humanitatis, sacrilegorum
principem, immundum daemonem; he affirms, that John Chrysostom had
delivered his soul to be adulterated by the devil; and wishes that
some further punishment, adequate (if possible) to the magnitude of his
crimes, may be inflicted on him. St. Jerom, at the request of his friend
Theophilus, translated this edifying performance from Greek into Latin.
See Facundus Hermian. Defens. pro iii. Capitul. l. vi. c. 5 published by
Sirmond. Opera, tom. ii. p. 595, 596, 597.]

[Footnote 56: His name was inserted by his successor Atticus in the
Dyptics of the church of Constantinople, A.D. 418. Ten years afterwards
he was revered as a saint. Cyril, who inherited the place, and the
passions, of his uncle Theophilus, yielded with much reluctance. See
Facund. Hermian. l. 4, c. 1. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p.
277-283.]

[Footnote 57: Socrates, l. vii. c. 45. Theodoret, l. v. c. 36. This
event reconciled the Joannites, who had hitherto refused to acknowledge
his successors. During his lifetime, the Joannites were respected, by
the Catholics, as the true and orthodox communion of Constantinople.
Their obstinacy gradually drove them to the brink of schism.]

[Footnote 58: According to some accounts, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D.
438 No. 9, 10,) the emperor was forced to send a letter of invitation
and excuses, before the body of the ceremonious saint could be moved
from Comana.]




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. [59] 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
Caesar 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, [60] 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 him more deeply than the public calamities of the
East; [61] 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, [62] 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.

[Footnote 59: Zosimus, l. v. p. 315. The chastity of an empress should
not be impeached without producing a witness; but it is astonishing,
that the witness should write and live under a prince whose legitimacy
he dared to attack. We must suppose that his history was a party libel,
privately read and circulated by the Pagans. Tillemont (Hist. des
Empereurs, tom. v. p. 782) is not averse to brand the reputation of
Eudoxia.]

[Footnote 60: Porphyry of Gaza. His zeal was transported by the order
which he had obtained for the destruction of eight Pagan temples of
that city. See the curious details of his life, (Baronius, A.D. 401, No.
17-51,) originally written in Greek, or perhaps in Syriac, by a monk,
one of his favorite deacons.]

[Footnote 61: Philostorg. l. xi. c. 8, and Godefroy, Dissertat. p. 457.]

[Footnote 62: Jerom (tom. vi. p. 73, 76) describes, in lively colors,
the regular and destructive march of the locusts, which spread a dark
cloud, between heaven and earth, over the land of Palestine. Seasonable
winds scattered them, partly into the Dead Sea, and partly into the
Mediterranean.]

The historian Procopius [63] 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, [64] 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.

[Footnote 63: Procopius, de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 2, p. 8, edit.
Louvre.]

[Footnote 64: Agathias, l. iv. p. 136, 137. Although he confesses the
prevalence of the tradition, he asserts, that Procopius was the first
who had committed it to writing. Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom.
vi. p. 597) argues very sensibly on the merits of this fable. His
criticism was not warped by any ecclesiastical authority: both Procopius
and Agathias are half Pagans. * Note: See St Martin's article on
Jezdegerd, in the Biographie Universelle de Michand.--M.]

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 praefect
Anthemius, [65] 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. [66] 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. [67]

[Footnote 65: Socrates, l. vii. c. l. Anthemius was the grandson of
Philip, one of the ministers of Constantius, and the grandfather of the
emperor Anthemius. After his return from the Persian embassy, he was
appointed consul and Praetorian praefect of the East, in the year 405
and held the praefecture about ten years. See his honors and praises in
Godefroy, Cod. Theod. tom. vi. p. 350. Tillemont, Hist. des Emptom. vi.
p. 1. &c.]

[Footnote 66: Sozomen, l. ix. c. 5. He saw some Scyrri at work near
Mount Olympus, in Bithynia, and cherished the vain hope that those
captives were the last of the nation.]

[Footnote 67: Cod. Theod. l. vii. tit. xvi. l. xv. tit. i. leg. 49.]

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, [68] 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, [69] 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 [70] 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. [71] 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.

[Footnote 68: Sozomen has filled three chapters with a magnificent
panegyric of Pulcheria, (l. ix. c. 1, 2, 3;) and Tillemont (Memoires
Eccles. tom. xv. p. 171-184) has dedicated a separate article to the
honor of St. Pulcheria, virgin and empress. * Note: The heathen Eunapius
gives a frightful picture of the venality and a justice of the court of
Pulcheria. Fragm. Eunap. in Mai, ii. 293, in p. 97.--M.]

[Footnote 69: Suidas, (Excerpta, p. 68, in Script. Byzant.) pretends,
on the credit of the Nestorians, that Pulcheria was exasperated against
their founder, because he censured her connection with the beautiful
Paulinus, and her incest with her brother Theodosius.]

[Footnote 70: See Ducange, Famil. Byzantin. p. 70. Flaccilla, the eldest
daughter, either died before Arcadius, or, if she lived till the year
431, (Marcellin. Chron.,) some defect of mind or body must have excluded
her from the honors of her rank.]

[Footnote 71: She was admonished, by repeated dreams, of the place
where the relics of the forty martyrs had been buried. The ground
had successively belonged to the house and garden of a woman of
Constantinople, to a monastery of Macedonian monks, and to a church
of St. Thyrsus, erected by Caesarius, who was consul A.D. 397; and
the memory of the relics was almost obliterated. Notwithstanding the
charitable wishes of Dr. Jortin, (Remarks, tom. iv. p. 234,) it is not
easy to acquit Pulcheria of some share in the pious fraud; which must
have been transacted when she was more than five-and-thirty years of
age.]

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 [72] 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. [73]

[Footnote 72: There is a remarkable difference between the two
ecclesiastical historians, who in general bear so close a resemblance.
Sozomen (l. ix. c. 1) ascribes to Pulcheria the government of the
empire, and the education of her brother, whom he scarcely condescends
to praise. Socrates, though he affectedly disclaims all hopes of favor
or fame, composes an elaborate panegyric on the emperor, and cautiously
suppresses the merits of his sister, (l. vii. c. 22, 42.) Philostorgius
(l. xii. c. 7) expresses the influence of Pulcheria in gentle and
courtly language. Suidas (Excerpt. p. 53) gives a true character of
Theodosius; and I have followed the example of Tillemont (tom. vi. p.
25) in borrowing some strokes from the modern Greeks.]

[Footnote 73: Theodoret, l. v. c. 37. The bishop of Cyrrhus, one of the
first men of his age for his learning and piety, applauds the obedience
of Theodosius to the divine laws.]

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 [74] 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 praefects. 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. [75] 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. [76] 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, Praetorian
praefect 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. [77] 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, [78] 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. [79]

[Footnote 74: Socrates (l. vii. c. 21) mentions her name, (Athenais, the
daughter of Leontius, an Athenian sophist,) her baptism, marriage, and
poetical genius. The most ancient account of her history is in John
Malala (part ii. p. 20, 21, edit. Venet. 1743) and in the Paschal
Chronicle, (p. 311, 312.) Those authors had probably seen original
pictures of the empress Eudocia. The modern Greeks, Zonaras, Cedrenus,
&c., have displayed the love, rather than the talent of fiction. From
Nicephorus, indeed, I have ventured to assume her age. The writer of
a romance would not have imagined, that Athenais was near twenty eight
years old when she inflamed the heart of a young emperor.]

[Footnote 75: Socrates, l. vii. c. 21, Photius, p. 413-420. The Homeric
cento is still extant, and has been repeatedly printed: but the claim
of Eudocia to that insipid performance is disputed by the critics. See
Fabricius, Biblioth. Graec. tom. i. p. 357. The Ionia, a miscellaneous
dictionary of history and fable, was compiled by another empress of
the name of Eudocia, who lived in the eleventh century: and the work is
still extant in manuscript.]

[Footnote 76: Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 438, 439) is copious and
florid, but he is accused of placing the lies of different ages on the
same level of authenticity.]

[Footnote 77: In this short view of the disgrace of Eudocia, I have
imitated the caution of Evagrius (l. i. c. 21) and Count Marcellinus,
(in Chron A.D. 440 and 444.) The two authentic dates assigned by the
latter, overturn a great part of the Greek fictions; and the celebrated
story of the apple, &c., is fit only for the Arabian Nights, where
something not very unlike it may be found.]

[Footnote 78: Priscus, (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 69,) a contemporary, and
a courtier, dryly mentions her Pagan and Christian names, without adding
any title of honor or respect.]

[Footnote 79: For the two pilgrimages of Eudocia, and her long residence
at Jerusalem, her devotion, alms, &c., see Socrates (l. vii. c. 47) and
Evagrius, (l. i. c. 21, 22.) The Paschal Chronicle may sometimes deserve
regard; and in the domestic history of Antioch, John Malala becomes a
writer of good authority. The Abbe Guenee, in a memoir on the fertility
of Palestine, of which I have only seen an extract, calculates the gifts
of Eudocia at 20,488 pounds of gold, above 800,000 pounds sterling.]

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. [80] 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 [81] 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.

[Footnote 80: Theodoret, l. v. c. 39 Tillemont. Mem. Eccles tom. xii.
356-364. Assemanni, Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 396, tom. iv. p. 61.
Theodoret blames the rashness of Abdas, but extols the constancy of his
martyrdom. Yet I do not clearly understand the casuistry which prohibits
our repairing the damage which we have unlawfully committed.]

[Footnote 81: Socrates (l. vii. c. 18, 19, 20, 21) is the best author
for the Persian war. We may likewise consult the three Chronicles, the
Paschal and those of Marcellinus and Malala.]

Since the Roman and Parthian standards first encountered on the banks of
the Euphrates, the kingdom of Armenia [82] 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 Christian princes of
Constantinople. In the beginning of the fifth century, Armenia was
divided by the progress of war and faction; [83] 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. [8111] 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 [84] 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 [8411] 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." [85]
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, [86] which
they had possessed above five hundred and sixty years; [87] and the
dominions of the unfortunate Artasires, [8711] 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: [8712] and a
territorial acquisition, which Augustus might have despised, reflected
some lustre on the declining empire of the younger Theodosius.

[Footnote 82: This account of the ruin and division of the kingdom of
Armenia is taken from the third book of the Armenian history of Moses of
Chorene. Deficient as he is in every qualification of a good historian,
his local information, his passions, and his prejudices are strongly
expressive of a native and contemporary. Procopius (de Edificiis, l.
iii. c. 1, 5) relates the same facts in a very different manner; but I
have extracted the circumstances the most probable in themselves, and
the least inconsistent with Moses of Chorene.]

[Footnote 83: The western Armenians used the Greek language and
characters in their religious offices; but the use of that hostile
tongue was prohibited by the Persians in the Eastern provinces, which
were obliged to use the Syriac, till the invention of the Armenian
letters by Mesrobes, in the beginning of the fifth century, and the
subsequent version of the Bible into the Armenian language; an
event which relaxed to the connection of the church and nation with
Constantinople.]

[Footnote 84: Moses Choren. l. iii. c. 59, p. 309, and p. 358.
Procopius, de Edificiis, l. iii. c. 5. Theodosiopolis stands, or rather
stood, about thirty-five miles to the east of Arzeroum, the modern
capital of Turkish Armenia. See D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii.
p. 99, 100.]

[Footnote 8111: The division of Armenia, according to M. St. Martin,
took place much earlier, A. C. 390. The Eastern or Persian division was
four times as large as the Western or Roman. This partition took place
during the reigns of Theodosius the First, and Varanes (Bahram) the
Fourth. St. Martin, Sup. to Le Beau, iv. 429. This partition was but
imperfectly accomplished, as both parts were afterwards reunited under
Chosroes, who paid tribute both to the Roman emperor and to the Persian
king. v. 439.--M.]

[Footnote 8411: Chosroes, according to Procopius (who calls him
Arsaces, the common name of the Armenian kings) and the Armenian
writers, bequeathed to his two sons, to Tigranes the Persian, to Arsaces
the Roman, division of Armenia, A. C. 416. With the assistance of the
discontented nobles the Persian king placed his son Sapor on the throne
of the Eastern division; the Western at the same time was united to
the Roman empire, and called the Greater Armenia. It was then that
Theodosiopolis was built. Sapor abandoned the throne of Armenia to
assert his rights to that of Persia; he perished in the struggle, and
after a period of anarchy, Bahram V., who had ascended the throne
of Persia, placed the last native prince, Ardaschir, son of Bahram
Schahpour, on the throne of the Persian division of Armenia. St. Martin,
v. 506. This Ardaschir was the Artasires of Gibbon. The archbishop Isaac
is called by the Armenians the Patriarch Schag. St. Martin, vi. 29.--M.]

[Footnote 85: Moses Choren, l. iii. c. 63, p. 316. According to the
institution of St. Gregory, the Apostle of Armenia, the archbishop
was always of the royal family; a circumstance which, in some degree,
corrected the influence of the sacerdotal character, and united the
mitre with the crown.]

[Footnote 86: A branch of the royal house of Arsaces still subsisted
with the rank and possessions (as it should seem) of Armenian satraps.
See Moses Choren. l. iii. c. 65, p. 321.]

[Footnote 87: Valarsaces was appointed king of Armenia by his brother
the Parthian monarch, immediately after the defeat of Antiochus Sidetes,
(Moses Choren. l. ii. c. 2, p. 85,) one hundred and thirty years before
Christ. Without depending on the various and contradictory periods of
the reigns of the last kings, we may be assured, that the ruin of the
Armenian kingdom happened after the council of Chalcedon, A.D. 431, (l.
iii. c. 61, p. 312;) and under Varamus, or Bahram, king of Persia, (l.
iii. c. 64, p. 317,) who reigned from A.D. 420 to 440. See Assemanni,
Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iii. p. 396. * Note: Five hundred and eighty.
St. Martin, ibid. He places this event A. C 429.--M.----Note: According
to M. St. Martin, vi. 32, Vagharschah, or Valarsaces, was appointed king
by his brother Mithridates the Great, king of Parthia.--M.]

[Footnote 8711: Artasires or Ardaschir was probably sent to the castle
of Oblivion. St. Martin, vi. 31.--M.]

[Footnote 8712: The duration of the Armenian kingdom according to M. St.
Martin, was 580 years.--M]




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

     Death Of Honorius.--Valentinian III.--Emperor Of The East.
     --Administration Of His Mother Placidia--Aetius 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 [1] 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 inerease
the power of Placidia; and the indecent familiarity [2] 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 sea-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.

[Footnote 1: See vol. iii. p. 296.]

[Footnote 2: It is the expression of Olympiodorus (apud Phetium p. 197;)
who means, perhaps, to describe the same caresses which Mahomet bestowed
on his daughter Phatemah. Quando, (says the prophet himself,) quando
subit mihi desiderium Paradisi, osculor eam, et ingero linguam meam
in os ejus. But this sensual indulgence was justified by miracle and
mystery; and the anecdote has been communicated to the public by the
Reverend Father Maracci in his Version and Confutation of the Koran,
tom. i. p. 32.]

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. [3]

[Footnote 3: For these revolutions of the Western empire, consult
Olympiodor, apud Phot. p. 192, 193, 196, 197, 200; Sozomen, l. ix. c.
16; Socrates, l. vii. 23, 24; Philostorgius, l. xii. c. 10, 11, and
Godefroy, Dissertat p. 486; Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 3, p.
182, 183, in Chronograph, p. 72, 73, and the Chronicles.]

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; [4] 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 Caesar; 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. [5] 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. [6] 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. [7]

[Footnote 4: See Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis, l. ii. c. 7. He
has laboriously out vainly, attempted to form a reasonable system of
jurisprudence from the various and discordant modes of royal succession,
which have been introduced by fraud or force, by time or accident.]

[Footnote 5: The original writers are not agreed (see Muratori, Annali
d'Italia tom. iv. p. 139) whether Valentinian received the Imperial
diadem at Rome or Ravenna. In this uncertainty, I am willing to believe,
that some respect was shown to the senate.]

[Footnote 6: The count de Buat (Hist. des Peup es de l'Europe, tom.
vii. p. 292-300) has established the reality, explained the motives, and
traced the consequences, of this remarkable cession.]

[Footnote 7: See the first Novel of Theodosius, by which he ratifies and
communicates (A.D. 438) the Theodosian Code. About forty years before
that time, the unity of legislation had been proved by an exception. The
Jews, who were numerous in the cities of Apulia and Calabria, produced a
law of the East to justify their exemption from municipal offices, (Cod.
Theod. l. xvi. tit. viii. leg. 13;) and the Western emperor was obliged
to invalidate, by a special edict, the law, quam constat meis partibus
esse damnosam. Cod. Theod. l. xi. tit. i. leg. 158.] 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; [8] 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,
Aetius [9] and Boniface, [10] 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 Aetius;
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 Aetius 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 Aetius, 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 Aetius
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 [11] 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, Aetius 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 Aetius 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.

[Footnote 8: Cassiodorus (Variar. l. xi. Epist. i. p. 238) has compared
the regencies of Placidia and Amalasuntha. He arraigns the weakness
of the mother of Valentinian, and praises the virtues of his royal
mistress. On this occasion, flattery seems to have spoken the language
of truth.]

[Footnote 9: Philostorgius, l. xii. c. 12, and Godefroy's Dissertat. p.
493, &c.; and Renatus Frigeridus, apud Gregor. Turon. l. ii. c. 8, in
tom. ii. p. 163. The father of Aetius was Gaudentius, an illustrious
citizen of the province of Scythia, and master-general of the cavalry;
his mother was a rich and noble Italian. From his earliest youth,
Aetius, as a soldier and a hostage, had conversed with the Barbarians.]

[Footnote 10: For the character of Boniface, see Olympiodorus, apud
Phot. p. 196; and St. Augustin apud Tillemont, Memoires Eccles. tom.
xiii. p. 712-715, 886. The bishop of Hippo at length deplored the fall
of his friend, who, after a solemn vow of chastity, had married a
second wife of the Arian sect, and who was suspected of keeping several
concubines in his house.]

[Footnote 11: Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 3, 4, p. 182-186)
relates the fraud of Aetius, the revolt of Boniface, and the loss of
Africa. This anecdote, which is supported by some collateral testimony,
(see Ruinart, Hist. Persecut. Vandal. p. 420, 421,) seems agreeable
to the practice of ancient and modern courts, and would be naturally
revealed by the repentance of Boniface.]

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 Boetica. 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. [12] 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; [13] 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. [14]

[Footnote 12: See the Chronicles of Prosper and Idatius. Salvian (de
Gubernat. Dei, l. vii. p. 246, Paris, 1608) ascribes the victory of the
Vandals to their superior piety. They fasted, they prayed, they
carried a Bible in the front of the Host, with the design, perhaps, of
reproaching the perfidy and sacrilege of their enemies.]

[Footnote 13: Gizericus (his name is variously expressed) statura
mediocris et equi casu claudicans, animo profundus, sermone rarus,
luxuriae contemptor, ira turbidus, habendi cupidus, ad solicitandas
gentes providentissimus, semina contentionum jacere, odia miscere
paratus. Jornandes, de Rebus Geticis, c. 33, p. 657. This portrait,
which is drawn with some skill, and a strong likeness, must have been
copied from the Gothic history of Cassiodorus.]

[Footnote 14: See the Chronicle of Idatius. That bishop, a Spaniard and
a contemporary, places the passage of the Vandals in the month of May,
of the year of Abraham, (which commences in October,) 2444. This date,
which coincides with A.D. 429, is confirmed by Isidore, another Spanish
bishop, and is justly preferred to the opinion of those writers who have
marked for that event one of the two preceding years. See Pagi Critica,
tom. ii. p. 205, &c.]

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
chinarchs, 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. [15] 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, [16] 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.

[Footnote 15: Compare Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 5, p. 190)
and Victor Vitensis, (de Persecutione Vandal. l. i. c. 1, p. 3, edit.
Ruinart.) We are assured by Idatius, that Genseric evacuated Spain, cum
Vandalis omnibus eorumque familiis; and Possidius (in Vit. Augustin. c.
28, apud Ruinart, p. 427) describes his army as manus ingens immanium
gentium Vandalorum et Alanorum, commixtam secum babens Gothorum gentem,
aliarumque diversarum personas.]

[Footnote 16: For the manners of the Moors, see Procopius, (de Bell.
Vandal. l. ii. c. 6, p. 249;) for their figure and complexion, M.
de Buffon, (Histoire Naturelle, tom. iii. p. 430.) Procopius says in
general, that the Moors had joined the Vandals before the death of
Valentinian, (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 5, p. 190;) and it is probable
that the independent tribes did not embrace any uniform system of
policy.]

The persecution of the Donatists [17] 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, [18] 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. [19] By these
severities, which obtained the warmest approbation of St. Augustin, [20]
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. [21]
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. [22] 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. [23]

[Footnote 17: See Tillemont, Memoires Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 516-558;
and the whole series of the persecution, in the original monuments,
published by Dupin at the end of Optatus, p. 323-515.]

[Footnote 18: The Donatist Bishops, at the conference of Carthage,
amounted to 279; and they asserted that their whole number was not less
than 400. The Catholics had 286 present, 120 absent, besides sixty four
vacant bishoprics.]

[Footnote 19: The fifth title of the sixteenth book of the Theodosian
Code exhibits a series of the Imperial laws against the Donatists, from
the year 400 to the year 428. Of these the 54th law, promulgated by
Honorius, A.D. 414, is the most severe and effectual.]

[Footnote 20: St. Augustin altered his opinion with regard tosthe proper
treatment of heretics. His pathetic declaration of pity and indulgence
for the Manichaeans, has been inserted by Mr. Locke (vol. iii. p.
469) among the choice specimens of his common-place book. Another
philosopher, the celebrated Bayle, (tom. ii. p. 445-496,) has refuted,
with superfluous diligence and ingenuity, the arguments by which the
bishop of Hippo justified, in his old age, the persecution of the
Donatists.]

[Footnote 21: See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 586-592, 806.
The Donatists boasted of thousands of these voluntary martyrs.
Augustin asserts, and probably with truth, that these numbers were much
exaggerated; but he sternly maintains, that it was better that some
should burn themselves in this world, than that all should burn in hell
flames.]

[Footnote 22: According to St. Augustin and Theodoret, the Donatists
were inclined to the principles, or at least to the party, of the
Arians, which Genseric supported. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. vi. p.
68.]

[Footnote 23: See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 428, No. 7, A.D. 439,
No. 35. The cardinal, though more inclined to seek the cause of great
events in heaven than on the earth, has observed the apparent connection
of the Vandals and the Donatists. Under the reign of the Barbarians, the
schismatics of Africa enjoyed an obscure peace of one hundred years; at
the end of which we may again trace them by the fight of the Imperial
persecutions. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. vi. p. 192. &c.]

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 Aetius, a free conference with
the Count of Africa; and Darius, an officer of high distinction, was
named for the important embassy. [24] In their first interview at
Carthage, the imaginary provocations were mutually explained; the
opposite letters of Aetius 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.

[Footnote 24: In a confidential letter to Count Boniface, St. Augustin,
without examining the grounds of the quarrel, piously exhorts him to
discharge the duties of a Christian and a subject: to extricate himself
without delay from his dangerous and guilty situation; and even, if he
could obtain the consent of his wife, to embrace a life of celibacy and
penance, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 890.) The bishop was
intimately connected with Darius, the minister of peace, (Id. tom. xiii.
p. 928.)]

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. [25]

[Footnote 25: The original complaints of the desolation of Africa are
contained 1. In a letter from Capreolus, bishop of Carthage, to excuse
his absence from the council of Ephesus, (ap. Ruinart, p. 427.) 2. In
the life of St. Augustin, by his friend and colleague Possidius, (ap.
Ruinart, p. 427.) 3. In the history of the Vandalic persecution, by
Victor Vitensis, (l. i. c. 1, 2, 3, edit. Ruinart.) The last picture,
which was drawn sixty years after the event, is more expressive of the
author's passions than of the truth of facts.]

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, [26] 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;
[27] 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 Manichaeans,
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.
[28] According to the judgment of the most impartial critics, the
superficial learning of Augustin was confined to the Latin language;
[29] 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, [30] has
been entertained, with public applause, and secret reluctance, by the
Latin church. [31]

[Footnote 26: See Cellarius, Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii. part ii. p. 112.
Leo African. in Ramusio, tom. i. fol. 70. L'Afrique de Marmol, tom. ii.
p. 434, 437. Shaw's Travels, p. 46, 47. The old Hippo Regius was finally
destroyed by the Arabs in the seventh century; but a new town, at the
distance of two miles, was built with the materials; and it contained,
in the sixteenth century, about three hundred families of industrious,
but turbulent manufacturers. The adjacent territory is renowned for a
pure air, a fertile soil, and plenty of exquisite fruits.]

[Footnote 27: The life of St. Augustin, by Tillemont, fills a quarto
volume (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiii.) of more than one thousand pages; and
the diligence of that learned Jansenist was excited, on this occasion,
by factious and devout zeal for the founder of his sect.]

[Footnote 28: Such, at least, is the account of Victor Vitensis, (de
Persecut. Vandal. l. i. c. 3;) though Gennadius seems to doubt whether
any person had read, or even collected, all the works of St. Augustin,
(see Hieronym. Opera, tom. i. p. 319, in Catalog. Scriptor. Eccles.)
They have been repeatedly printed; and Dupin (Bibliotheque Eccles. tom.
iii. p. 158-257) has given a large and satisfactory abstract of them
as they stand in the last edition of the Benedictines. My personal
acquaintance with the bishop of Hippo does not extend beyond the
Confessions, and the City of God.]

[Footnote 29: In his early youth (Confess. i. 14) St. Augustin disliked
and neglected the study of Greek; and he frankly owns that he read the
Platonists in a Latin version, (Confes. vii. 9.) Some modern critics
have thought, that his ignorance of Greek disqualified him from
expounding the Scriptures; and Cicero or Quintilian would have required
the knowledge of that language in a professor of rhetoric.]

[Footnote 30: These questions were seldom agitated, from the time of
St. Paul to that of St. Augustin. I am informed that the Greek fathers
maintain the natural sentiments of the Semi-Pelagians; and that the
orthodoxy of St. Augustin was derived from the Manichaean school.]

[Footnote 31: The church of Rome has canonized Augustin, and reprobated
Calvin. Yet as the real difference between them is invisible even to a
theological microscope, the Molinists are oppressed by the authority of
the saint, and the Jansenists are disgraced by their resemblance to the
heretic. In the mean while, the Protestant Arminians stand aloof, and
deride the mutual perplexity of the disputants, (see a curious Review
of the Controversy, by Le Clerc, Bibliotheque Universelle, tom. xiv.
p. 144-398.) Perhaps a reasoner still more independent may smile in
his turn, when he peruses an Arminian Commentary on the Epistle to the
Romans.]




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 reenforced 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.
[32] The discovery of his fraud, the displeasure of the empress, and the
distinguished favor of his rival, exasperated the haughty and perfidious
soul of Aetius. 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 Aetius for
her second husband. But Aetius 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. [33]

[Footnote 32: Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 67. On one side, the head of
Valentinian; on the reverse, Boniface, with a scourge in one hand, and
a palm in the other, standing in a triumphal car, which is drawn by four
horses, or, in another medal, by four stags; an unlucky emblem! I should
doubt whether another example can be found of the head of a subject on
the reverse of an Imperial medal. See Science des Medailles, by the Pere
Jobert, tom. i. p. 132-150, edit. of 1739, by the haron de la Bastie. *
Note: Lord Mahon, Life of Belisarius, p. 133, mentions one of Belisarius
on the authority of Cedrenus--M.]

[Footnote 33: Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 3, p. 185) continues
the history of Boniface no further than his return to Italy. His death
is mentioned by Prosper and Marcellinus; the expression of the latter,
that Aetius, the day before, had provided himself with a longer spear,
implies something like a regular duel.]

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. [34] 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. [35] 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. [36] 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. [37]

[Footnote 34: See Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 4, p. 186.
Valentinian published several humane laws, to relieve the distress of
his Numidian and Mauritanian subjects; he discharged them, in a great
measure, from the payment of their debts, reduced their tribute to one
eighth, and gave them a right of appeal from their provincial
magistrates to the praefect of Rome. Cod. Theod. tom. vi. Novell. p. 11,
12.]

[Footnote 35: Victor Vitensis, de Persecut. Vandal. l. ii. c. 5, p. 26.
The cruelties of Genseric towards his subjects are strongly expressed in
Prosper's Chronicle, A.D. 442.]

[Footnote 36: Possidius, in Vit. Augustin. c. 28, apud Ruinart, p. 428.]

[Footnote 37: See the Chronicles of Idatius, Isidore, Prosper, and
Marcellinus. They mark the same year, but different days, for the
surprisal of Carthage.]

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 [38] 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 gymnasia were 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 new port, a
secure and capacious harbor, was subservient to the commercial indus
try 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. [39] 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.
[40] 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. [41]

[Footnote 38: The picture of Carthage; as it flourished in the fourth
and fifth centuries, is taken from the Expositio totius Mundi, p. 17,
18, in the third volume of Hudson's Minor Geographers, from Ausonius
de Claris Urbibus, p. 228, 229; and principally from Salvian, de
Gubernatione Dei, l. vii. p. 257, 258.]

[Footnote 39: The anonymous author of the Expositio totius Mundi
compares in his barbarous Latin, the country and the inhabitants; and,
after stigmatizing their want of faith, he coolly concludes, Difficile
autem inter eos invenitur bonus, tamen in multis pauci boni esse possunt
P. 18.]

[Footnote 40: He declares, that the peculiar vices of each country were
collected in the sink of Carthage, (l. vii. p. 257.) In the indulgence
of vice, the Africans applauded their manly virtue. Et illi se magis
virilis fortitudinis esse crederent, qui maxime vires foeminei usus
probositate fregissent, (p. 268.) The streets of Carthage were polluted
by effeminate wretches, who publicly assumed the countenance, the dress,
and the character of women, (p. 264.) If a monk appeared in the city,
the holy man was pursued with impious scorn and ridicule; de testantibus
ridentium cachinnis, (p. 289.)]

[Footnote 41: Compare Procopius de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 5, p. 189,
190, and Victor Vitensis, de Persecut Vandal. l. i. c. 4.]

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 Theod
oret still preserve the names and misfortunes of Caelestian and Maria.
[42] The Syrian bishop deplores the misfortunes of Caelestian, 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
Eudaemon, 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 Eudaemon 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 oy 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 Aegae, 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.

[Footnote 42: Ruinart (p. 441-457) has collected from Theodoret, and
other authors, the misfortunes, real and fabulous, of the inhabitants of
Carthage.]

Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted
to distinguish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers; [43] whose
imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius,
and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. [44] 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 modern Greeks,
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. [45] 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. [46] 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. [47] The
story of the Seven Sleepers has been adopted and adorned by the nations,
from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion; [48] and
some vestiges of a similar tradition have been discovered in the remote
extremities of Scandinavia. [49] 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 aeras could be
instantly annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of
two hundred years, to display the new world 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.

[Footnote 43: The choice of fabulous circumstances is of small
importance; yet I have confined myself to the narrative which was
translated from the Syriac by the care of Gregory of Tours, (de Gloria
Martyrum, l. i. c. 95, in Max. Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. xi. p. 856,) to
the Greek acts of their martyrdom (apud Photium, p. 1400, 1401) and to
the Annals of the Patriarch Eutychius, (tom. i. p. 391, 531, 532, 535,
Vers. Pocock.)]

[Footnote 44: Two Syriac writers, as they are quoted by Assemanni,
(Bibliot. Oriental. tom. i. p. 336, 338,) place the resurrection of the
Seven Sleepers in the year 736 (A.D. 425) or 748, (A.D. 437,) of the
aera of the Seleucides. Their Greek acts, which Photius had read, assign
the date of the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Theodosius, which
may coincide either with A.D. 439, or 446. The period which had elapsed
since the persecution of Decius is easily ascertained; and nothing less
than the ignorance of Mahomet, or the legendaries, could suppose an
internal of three or four hundred years.]

[Footnote 45: James, one of the orthodox fathers of the Syrian church,
was born A.D. 452; he began to compose his sermons A.D. 474; he was made
bishop of Batnae, in the district of Sarug, and province of Mesopotamia,
A.D. 519, and died A.D. 521. (Assemanni, tom. i. p. 288, 289.) For the
homily de Pueris Ephesinis, see p. 335-339: though I could wish
that Assemanni had translated the text of James of Sarug, instead of
answering the objections of Baronius.]

[Footnote 46: See the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, Mensis Julii,
tom. vi. p. 375-397. This immense calendar of Saints, in one hundred
and twenty-six years, (1644-1770,) and in fifty volumes in folio, has
advanced no further than the 7th day of October. The suppression of the
Jesuits has most probably checked an undertaking, which, through the
medium of fable and superstition, communicates much historical and
philosophical instruction.]

[Footnote 47: See Maracci Alcoran. Sura xviii. tom. ii. p. 420-427, and
tom. i. part iv. p. 103. With such an ample privilege, Mahomet has not
shown much taste or ingenuity. He has invented the dog (Al Rakim) the
Seven Sleepers; the respect of the sun, who altered his course twice
a day, that he might not shine into the cavern; and the care of God
himself, who preserved their bodies from putrefaction, by turning them
to the right and left.]

[Footnote 48: See D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 139; and
Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 39, 40.]

[Footnote 49: Paul, the deacon of Aquileia, (de Gestis Langobardorum,
l. i. c. 4, p. 745, 746, edit. Grot.,) who lived towards the end of the
eight century, has placed in a cavern, under a rock, on the shore of the
ocean, the Seven Sleepers of the North, whose long repose was respected
by the Barbarians. Their dress declared them to be Romans and the
deacon conjectures, that they were reserved by Providence as the future
apostles of those unbelieving countries.]




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, [1]
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.

[Footnote 1: The authentic materials for the history of Attila, may be
found in Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 34-50, p. 668-688, edit. Grot.)
and Priscus (Excerpta de Legationibus, p. 33-76, Paris, 1648.) I have
not seen the Lives of Attila, composed by Juvencus Caelius Calanus
Dalmatinus, in the twelfth century, or by Nicholas Olahus, archbishop
of Gran, in the sixteenth. See Mascou's History of the Germans, ix., and
Maffei Osservazioni Litterarie, tom. i. p. 88, 89. Whatever the modern
Hungarians have added must be fabulous; and they do not seem to have
excelled in the art of fiction. They suppose, that when Attila invaded
Gaul and Italy, married innumerable wives, &c., he was one hundred and
twenty years of age. Thewrocz Chron. c. i. p. 22, in Script. Hunger.
tom. i. p. 76.]

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, [2] 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 Aetius; 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 Aetius 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; [3] 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 quaestor Epigenes, a wise
and experienced statesman, who was recommended to that office by his
ambitious colleague.

[Footnote 2: Hungary has been successively occupied by three Scythian
colonies. 1. The Huns of Attila; 2. The Abares, in the sixth century;
and, 3. The Turks or Magiars, A.D. 889; the immediate and genuine
ancestors of the modern Hungarians, whose connection with the two former
is extremely faint and remote. The Prodromus and Notitia of Matthew
Belius appear to contain a rich fund of information concerning ancient
and modern Hungary. I have seen the extracts in Bibli otheque Ancienne
et Moderne, tom. xxii. p. 1-51, and Bibliotheque Raisonnee, tom. xvi. p.
127-175. * Note: Mailath (in his Geschichte der Magyaren) considers
the question of the origin of the Magyars as still undecided. The old
Hungarian chronicles unanimously derived them from the Huns of Attila
See note, vol. iv. pp. 341, 342. The later opinion, adopted by Schlozer,
Belnay, and Dankowsky, ascribes them, from their language, to the
Finnish race. Fessler, in his history of Hungary, agrees with Gibbon in
supposing them Turks. Mailath has inserted an ingenious dissertation
of Fejer, which attempts to connect them with the Parthians. Vol. i.
Ammerkungen p. 50--M.]

[Footnote 3: Socrates, l. vii. c. 43. Theodoret, l. v. c. 36. Tillemont,
who always depends on the faith of his ecclesiastical authors,
strenuously contends (Hist. des Emp. tom. vi. p. 136, 607) that the wars
and personages were not the same.]

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 Maesia. 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. [4]

[Footnote 4: See Priscus, p. 47, 48, and Hist. de Peuples de l'Europe,
tom. v. i. c. xii, xiii, xiv, xv.]

Attila, the son of Mundzuk, deduced his noble, perhaps his regal,
descent [5] 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;
[6] 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.
[7] 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. [8] 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. [9] 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. [10] 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 rended 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. [11] 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. [12] 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.

[Footnote 5: Priscus, p. 39. The modern Hungarians have deduced his
genealogy, which ascends, in the thirty-fifth degree, to Ham, the son
of Noah; yet they are ignorant of his father's real name. (De Guignes,
Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 297.)]

[Footnote 6: Compare Jornandes (c. 35, p. 661) with Buffon, Hist.
Naturelle, tom. iii. p. 380. The former had a right to observe, originis
suae sigua restituens. The character and portrait of Attila are probably
transcribed from Cassiodorus.]

[Footnote 7: Abulpharag. Pocock, p. 281. Genealogical History of the
Tartars, by Abulghazi Bahader Khan, part iii c. 15, part iv c. 3. Vie
de Gengiscan, par Petit de la Croix, l. 1, c. 1, 6. The relations of the
missionaries, who visited Tartary in the thirteenth century, (see
the seventh volume of the Histoire des Voyages,) express the popular
language and opinions; Zingis is styled the son of God, &c. &c.]

[Footnote 8: Nec templum apud eos visitur, aut delubrum, ne tugurium
quidem culmo tectum cerni usquam potest; sed gladius Barbarico ritu humi
figitur nudus, eumque ut Martem regionum quas circumcircant praesulem
verecundius colunt. Ammian. Marcellin. xxxi. 2, and the learned Notes of
Lindenbrogius and Valesius.]

[Footnote 9: Priscus relates this remarkable story, both in his own
text (p. 65) and in the quotation made by Jornandes, (c. 35, p. 662.) He
might have explained the tradition, or fable, which characterized this
famous sword, and the name, as well as attributes, of the Scythian
deity, whom he has translated into the Mars of the Greeks and Romans.]

[Footnote 10: Herodot. l. iv. c. 62. For the sake of economy, I have
calculated by the smallest stadium. In the human sacrifices, they cut
off the shoulder and arm of the victim, which they threw up into the
air, and drew omens and presages from the manner of their falling on the
pile]

[Footnote 11: Priscus, p. 65. A more civilized hero, Augustus himself,
was pleased, if the person on whom he fixed his eyes seemed unable to
support their divine lustre. Sueton. in August. c. 79.]

[Footnote 12: The Count de Buat (Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom.
vii. p. 428, 429) attempts to clear Attila from the murder of his
brother; and is almost inclined to reject the concurrent testimony of
Jornandes, and the contemporary Chronicles.]

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.
[13] 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; [14]
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 Gepidae and the Ostrogoths were
distinguished by their numbers, their bravery, and the personal merits
of their chiefs. The renowned Ardaric, king of the Gepidae, 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. [15]

[Footnote 13: Fortissimarum gentium dominus, qui inaudita ante se
potentia colus Scythica et Germanica regna possedit. Jornandes, c.
49, p. 684. Priscus, p. 64, 65. M. de Guignes, by his knowledge of the
Chinese, has acquired (tom. ii. p. 295-301) an adequate idea of the
empire of Attila.]

[Footnote 14: See Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 296. The Geougen believed
that the Huns could excite, at pleasure, storms of wind and rain. This
phenomenon was produced by the stone Gezi; to whose magic power the
loss of a battle was ascribed by the Mahometan Tartars of the fourteenth
century. See Cherefeddin Ali, Hist. de Timur Bec, tom. i. p. 82, 83.]

[Footnote 15: Jornandes, c. 35, p. 661, c. 37, p. 667. See Tillemont,
Hist. dea Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 129, 138. Corneille has represented the
pride of Attila to his subject kings, and his tragedy opens with these
two ridiculous lines:--

     Ils ne sont pas venus, nos deux rois!  qu'on leur die
     Qu'ils se font trop attendre, et qu'Attila s'ennuie.

The two kings of the Gepidae and the Ostrogoths are profound politicians
and sentimental lovers, and the whole piece exhibits the defects without
the genius, of the poet.]

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. [16] 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 Maeotis, 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. [1611]
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, that the Medes and Persians were incapable
of resisting the arms of the Huns; and that the 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. [17]

[Footnote 16:

     Alii per Caspia claustra
     Armeniasque nives, inopino tramite ducti
     Invadunt Orientis opes: jam pascua fumant
     Cappadocum, volucrumque parens Argaeus equorum.
     Jam rubet altus Halys, nec se defendit iniquo
     Monte Cilix; Syriae tractus vestantur amoeni
     Assuetumque choris, et laeta plebe canorum,
     Proterit imbellem sonipes hostilis Orontem.
    ---Claudian, in Rufin. l. ii. 28-35.

See likewise, in Eutrop. l. i. 243-251, and the strong description of
Jerom, who wrote from his feelings, tom. i. p. 26, ad Heliodor. p. 200
ad Ocean. Philostorgius (l. ix. c. 8) mentions this irruption.]

[Footnote 1611: Gibbon has made a curious mistake; Basic and Cursic
were the names of the commanders of the Huns. Priscus, edit. Bonn, p.
200.--M.]

[Footnote 17: See the original conversation in Priscus, p. 64, 65.]

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. [18] 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 Maesians
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. [19] 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 Haemus. 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 Thermopylae, 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. [20] 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. [21]

[Footnote 18: Priscus, p. 331. His history contained a copious and
elegant account of the war, (Evagrius, l. i. c. 17;) but the extracts
which relate to the embassies are the only parts that have reached our
times. The original work was accessible, however, to the writers from
whom we borrow our imperfect knowledge, Jornandes, Theophanes, Count
Marcellinus, Prosper-Tyro, and the author of the Alexandrian, or
Paschal, Chronicle. M. de Buat (Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. vii.
c. xv.) has examined the cause, the circumstances, and the duration of
this war; and will not allow it to extend beyond the year 44.]

[Footnote 19: Procopius, de Edificiis, l. 4, c. 5. These fortresses
were afterwards restored, strengthened, and enlarged by the emperor
Justinian, but they were soon destroyed by the Abares, who succeeded to
the power and possessions of the Huns.]

[Footnote 20: Septuaginta civitates (says Prosper-Tyro) depredatione
vastatoe. The language of Count Marcellinus is still more forcible.
Pene totam Europam, invasis excisisque civitatibus atque castellis,
conrasit.]

[Footnote 21: Tillemont (Hist des Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 106, 107) has
paid great attention to this memorable earthquake; which was felt as far
from Constantinople as Antioch and Alexandria, and is celebrated by
all the ecclesiastical writers. In the hands of a popular preacher, an
earthquake is an engine of admirable effect.]

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,
[22] 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. [23]
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. [24] 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, [25] either the Tartar or the Hun might deserve the
epithet of the Scourge of God. [26]

[Footnote 22: He represented to the emperor of the Moguls that the four
provinces, (Petcheli, Chantong, Chansi, and Leaotong,)which he already
possessed, might annually produce, under a mild administration, 500,000
ounces of silver, 400,000 measures of rice, and 800,000 pieces of silk.
Gaubil, Hist. de la Dynastie des Mongous, p. 58, 59. Yelut chousay (such
was the name of the mandarin) was a wise and virtuous minister, who
saved his country, and civilized the conquerors. * Note: Compare the
life of this remarkable man, translated from the Chinese by M. Abel
Remusat. Nouveaux Melanges Asiatiques, t. ii. p. 64.--M]

[Footnote 23: Particular instances would be endless; but the curious
reader may consult the life of Gengiscan, by Petit de la Croix, the
Histoire des Mongous, and the fifteenth book of the History of the
Huns.]

[Footnote 24: At Maru, 1,300,000; at Herat, 1,600,000; at Neisabour,
1,747,000. D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 380, 381. I use the
orthography of D'Anville's maps. It must, however, be allowed, that
the Persians were disposed to exaggerate their losses and the Moguls to
magnify their exploits.]

[Footnote 25: Cherefeddin Ali, his servile panegyrist, would afford us
many horrid examples. In his camp before Delhi, Timour massacred 100,000
Indian prisoners, who had smiled when the army of their countrymen
appeared in sight, (Hist. de Timur Bec, tom. iii. p. 90.) The people of
Ispahan supplied 70,000 human skulls for the structure of several lofty
towers, (id. tom. i. p. 434.) A similar tax was levied on the revolt of
Bagdad, (tom. iii. p. 370;) and the exact account, which Cherefeddin
was not able to procure from the proper officers, is stated by another
historian (Ahmed Arabsiada, tom. ii. p. 175, vera Manger) at 90,000
heads.]

[Footnote 26: The ancients, Jornandes, Priscus, &c., are ignorant of
this epithet. The modern Hungarians have imagined, that it was applied,
by a hermit of Gaul, to Attila, who was pleased to insert it among the
titles of his royal dignity. Mascou, ix. 23, and Tillemont, Hist. des
Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 143.]




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. [27] 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. [28] 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. [29] 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. [30] The Huns might be provoked to insult the misery of their
slaves, over whom they exercised a despotic command; [31] 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. [32]

[Footnote 27: The missionaries of St. Chrysostom had converted great
numbers of the Scythians, who dwelt beyond the Danube in tents and
wagons. Theodoret, l. v. c. 31. Photius, p. 1517. The Mahometans, the
Nestorians, and the Latin Christians, thought themselves secure
of gaining the sons and grandsons of Zingis, who treated the rival
missionaries with impartial favor.]

[Footnote 28: The Germans, who exterminated Varus and his legions, had
been particularly offended with the Roman laws and lawyers. One of the
Barbarians, after the effectual precautions of cutting out the tongue of
an advocate, and sewing up his mouth, observed, with much satisfaction,
that the viper could no longer hiss. Florus, iv. 12.]

[Footnote 29: Priscus, p. 59. It should seem that the Huns preferred the
Gothic and Latin languages to their own; which was probably a harsh and
barren idiom.]

[Footnote 30: Philip de Comines, in his admirable picture of the last
moments of Lewis XI., (Memoires, l. vi. c. 12,) represents the insolence
of his physician, who, in five months, extorted 54,000 crowns, and a
rich bishopric, from the stern, avaricious tyrant.]

[Footnote 31: Priscus (p. 61) extols the equity of the Roman laws, which
protected the life of a slave. Occidere solent (says Tacitus of the
Germans) non disciplina et severitate, sed impetu et ira, ut inimicum,
nisi quod impune. De Moribus Germ. c. 25. The Heruli, who were the
subjects of Attila, claimed, and exercised, the power of life and death
over their slaves. See a remarkable instance in the second book of
Agathias]

[Footnote 32: See the whole conversation in Priscus, p. 59-62.]

The timid or selfish policy of the Western Romans had abandoned the
Eastern empire to the Huns. [33] 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 Novae, in the diocese of Thrace. The breadth was defined by the vague
computation of fifteen [3311] 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. [34] 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.
[35]

[Footnote 33: Nova iterum Orienti assurgit ruina... quum nulla ab
Cocidentalibus ferrentur auxilia. Prosper Tyro composed his Chronicle in
the West; and his observation implies a censure.]

[Footnote 3311: Five in the last edition of Priscus. Niebuhr, Byz. Hist.
p 147--M]

[Footnote 34: According to the description, or rather invective,
of Chrysostom, an auction of Byzantine luxury must have been very
productive. Every wealthy house possessed a semicircular table of massy
silver such as two men could scarcely lift, a vase of solid gold of the
weight of forty pounds, cups, dishes, of the same metal, &c.]

[Footnote 35: The articles of the treaty, expressed without much order
or precision, may be found in Priscus, (p. 34, 35, 36, 37, 53, &c.)
Count Marcellinus dispenses some comfort, by observing, 1. That Attila
himself solicited the peace and presents, which he had formerly refused;
and, 2dly, That, about the same time, the ambassadors of India presented
a fine large tame tiger to the emperor 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, [36] 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. [37]

[Footnote 36: Priscus, p. 35, 36. Among the hundred and eighty-two
forts, or castles, of Thrace, enumerated by Procopius, (de Edificiis,
l. iv. c. xi. tom. ii. p. 92, edit. Paris,) there is one of the name of
Esimontou, whose position is doubtfully marked, in the neighborhood of
Anchialus and the Euxine Sea. The name and walls of Azimuntium might
subsist till the reign of Justinian; but the race of its brave defenders
had been carefully extirpated by the jealousy of the Roman princes]

[Footnote 37: The peevish dispute of St. Jerom and St. Augustin, who
labored, by different expedients, to reconcile the seeming quarrel of
the two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, depends on the solution of
an important question, (Middleton's Works, vol. ii. p. 5-20,) which has
been frequently agitated by Catholic and Protestant divines, and even by
lawyers and philosophers of every age.]

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; [38] 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. [39] That Gallic adventurer, who was
recommended by Aetius 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, [40] 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, [41] 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.

[Footnote 38: Montesquieu (Considerations sur la Grandeur, &c. c. xix.)
has delineated, with a bold and easy pencil, some of the most striking
circumstances of the pride of Attila, and the disgrace of the Romans. He
deserves the praise of having read the Fragments of Priscus, which have
been too much disregarded.]

[Footnote 39: See Priscus, p. 69, 71, 72, &c. I would fain believe, that
this adventurer was afterwards crucified by the order of Attila, on a
suspicion of treasonable practices; but Priscus (p. 57) has too plainly
distinguished two persons of the name of Constantius, who, from the
similar events of their lives, might have been easily confounded.]

[Footnote 40: In the Persian treaty, concluded in the year 422, the wise
and eloquent Maximin had been the assessor of Ardaburius, (Socrates,
l. vii. c. 20.) When Marcian ascended the throne, the office of Great
Chamberlain was bestowed on Maximin, who is ranked, in the public edict,
among the four principal ministers of state, (Novell. ad Calc. Cod.
Theod. p. 31.) He executed a civil and military commission in the
Eastern provinces; and his death was lamented by the savages of
Aethiopia, whose incursions he had repressed. See Priscus, p. 40, 41.]

[Footnote 41: Priscus was a native of Panium in Thrace, and deserved,
by his eloquence, an honorable place among the sophists of the age.
His Byzantine history, which related to his own times, was comprised
in seven books. See Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 235, 236.
Notwithstanding the charitable judgment of the critics, I suspect that
Priscus was a Pagan. * Note: Niebuhr concurs in this opinion. Life of
Priscus in the new edition of the Byzantine historians.--M]

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 [4111] 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. [4112] 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 several
navigable 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. [42] 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.

[Footnote 4111: 70 stadia. Priscus, 173.--M.]

[Footnote 4112: He was forbidden to pitch his tents on an eminence
because Attila's were below on the plain. Ibid.--M.]

[Footnote 42: The Huns themselves still continued to despise the labors
of agriculture: they abused the privilege of a victorious nation; and
the Goths, their industrious subjects, who cultivated the earth, dreaded
their neighborhood, like that of so many ravenous wolves, (Priscus,
p. 45.) In the same manner the Sarts and Tadgics provide for their own
subsistence, and for that of the Usbec Tartars, their lazy and rapacious
sovereigns. See Genealogical History of the Tartars, p. 423 455, &c.]

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. [43] 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. [44] 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, [4411] 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. [45] 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.

[Footnote 43: It is evident that Priscus passed the Danube and the
Teyss, and that he did not reach the foot of the Carpathian hills.
Agria, Tokay, and Jazberin, are situated in the plains circumscribed
by this definition. M. de Buat (Histoire des Peuples, &c., tom. vii.
p. 461) has chosen Tokay; Otrokosci, (p. 180, apud Mascou, ix. 23,)
a learned Hungarian, has preferred Jazberin, a place about thirty-six
miles westward of Buda and the Danube. * Note: M. St. Martin considers
the narrative of Priscus, the only authority of M. de Buat and of
Gibbon, too vague to fix the position of Attila's camp. "It is worthy of
remark, that in the Hungarian traditions collected by Thwrocz, l. 2, c.
17, precisely on the left branch of the Danube, where Attila's residence
was situated, in the same parallel stands the present city of Buda, in
Hungarian Buduvur. It is for this reason that this city has retained
for a long time among the Germans of Hungary the name of Etzelnburgh or
Etzela-burgh, i. e., the city of Attila. The distance of Buda from the
place where Priscus crossed the Danube, on his way from Naissus, is
equal to that which he traversed to reach the residence of the king of
the Huns. I see no good reason for not acceding to the relations of the
Hungarian historians." St. Martin, vi. 191.--M]

[Footnote 44: The royal village of Attila may be compared to the city of
Karacorum, the residence of the successors of Zingis; which, though it
appears to have been a more stable habitation, did not equal the size or
splendor of the town and abbey of St. Denys, in the 13th century. (See
Rubruquis, in the Histoire Generale des Voyages, tom. vii p. 286.) The
camp of Aurengzebe, as it is so agreeably described by Bernier, (tom.
ii. p. 217-235,) blended the manners of Scythia with the magnificence
and luxury of Hindostan.]

[Footnote 4411: The name of this queen occurs three times in
Priscus, and always in a different form--Cerca, Creca, and Rheca. The
Scandinavian poets have preserved her memory under the name of Herkia.
St. Martin, vi. 192.--M.]

[Footnote 45: When the Moguls displayed the spoils of Asia, in the diet
of Toncat, the throne of Zingis was still covered with the original
black felt carpet, on which he had been seated, when he was raised to
the command of his warlike countrymen. See Vie de Gengiscan, v. c. 9.]

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,
[4511] 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. [4512] 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. [46] 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 buffcon [4611]
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. [47]

[Footnote 4511: Was this his own daughter, or the daughter of a person
named Escam? (Gibbon has written incorrectly Eslam, an unknown name.
The officer of Attila, called Eslas.) In either case the construction
is imperfect: a good Greek writer would have introduced an article to
determine the sense. Nor is it quite clear, whether Scythian usage is
adduced to excuse the polygamy, or a marriage, which would be considered
incestuous in other countries. The Latin version has carefully preserved
the ambiguity, filiam Escam uxorem. I am not inclined to construe it
'his own daughter' though I have too little confidence in the uniformity
of the grammatical idioms of the Byzantines (though Priscus is one of
the best) to express myself without hesitation.-M.]

[Footnote 4512: This passage is remarkable from the connection of the
name of Attila with that extraordinary cycle of poetry, which is found
in different forms in almost all the Teutonic languages.]

A Latin poem, de prima expeditione Attilae, Regis Hunnorum, in Gallias,
was published in the year 1780, by Fischer at Leipsic. It contains,
with the continuation, 1452 lines. It abounds in metrical faults, but is
occasionally not without some rude spirit and some copiousness of fancy
in the variation of the circumstances in the different combats of the
hero Walther, prince of Aquitania. It contains little which can be
supposed historical, and still less which is characteristic concerning
Attila. It relates to a first expedition of Attila into Europe which
cannot be traced in history, during which the kings of the Franks, of
the Burgundians, and of Aquitaine, submit themselves, and give hostages
to Attila: the king of the Franks, a personage who seems the same
with the Hagen of Teutonic romance; the king of Burgundy, his daughter
Heldgund; the king of Aquitaine, his son Walther. The main subject of
the poem is the escape of Walther and Heldgund from the camp of Attila,
and the combat between Walther and Gunthar, king of the Franks. with his
twelve peers, among whom is Hagen. Walther had been betrayed while he
passed through Worms, the city of the Frankish king. by paying for his
ferry over the Rhine with some strange fish, which he had caught during
his flight, and which were unknown in the waters of the Rhine. Gunthar
was desirous of plundering him of the treasure, which Walther had
carried off from the camp of Attila. The author of this poem is unknown,
nor can I, on the vague and rather doubtful allusion to Thule, as
Iceland, venture to assign its date. It was, evidently, recited in a
monastery, as appears by the first line; and no doubt composed there.
The faults of metre would point out a late date; and it may have been
formed upon some local tradition, as Walther, the hero, seems to have
turned monk.

This poem, however, in its character and its incidents, bears no
relation to the Teutonic cycle, of which the Nibelungen Lied is the most
complete form. In this, in the Heldenbuch, in some of the Danish Sagas.
in countess lays and ballads in all the dialects of Scandinavia, appears
King Etzel (Attila) in strife with the Burgundians and the Franks. With
these appears, by a poetic anachronism, Dietrich of Berne. (Theodoric of
Verona,) the celebrated Ostrogothic king; and many other very singular
coincidences of historic names, which appear in the poems. (See Lachman
Kritik der Sage in his volume of various readings to the Nibelungen;
Berlin, 1836, p. 336.)




Chapter XXXIV: Attila.--Part III.

I must acknowledge myself unable to form any satisfactory theory as
to the connection of these poems with the history of the time, or the
period, from which they may date their origin; notwithstanding the
laborious investigations and critical sagacity of the Schlegels, the
Grimms, of P. E. Muller and Lachman, and a whole host of German critics
and antiquaries; not to omit our own countryman, Mr. Herbert, whose
theory concerning Attila is certainly neither deficient in boldness nor
originality. I conceive the only way to obtain any thing like a clear
conception on this point would be what Lachman has begun, (see above,)
patiently to collect and compare the various forms which the traditions
have assumed, without any preconceived, either mythical or poetical,
theory, and, if possible, to discover the original basis of the whole
rich and fantastic legend. One point, which to me is strongly in favor
of the antiquity of this poetic cycle, is, that the manners are so
clearly anterior to chivalry, and to the influence exercised on the
poetic literature of Europe by the chivalrous poems and romances. I
think I find some traces of that influence in the Latin poem, though
strained through the imagination of a monk. The English reader will find
an amusing account of the German Nibelungen and Heldenbuch, and of
some of the Scandinavian Sagas, in the volume of Northern Antiquities
published by Weber, the friend of Sir Walter Scott. Scott himself
contributed a considerable, no doubt far the most valuable, part to the
work. [46] [4611] [47]

See also the various German editions of the Nibelungen, to which
Lachman, with true German perseverance, has compiled a thick volume of
various readings; the Heldenbuch, the old Danish poems by Grimm, the
Eddas, &c. Herbert's Attila, p. 510, et seq.--M.]

[Footnote 46: If we may believe Plutarch, (in Demetrio, tom. v. p. 24,)
it was the custom of the Scythians, when they indulged in the pleasures
of the table, to awaken their languid courage by the martial harmony of
twanging their bow-strings.]

[Footnote 4611: The Scythian was an idiot or lunatic; the Moor a regular
buffcon--M.]

[Footnote 47: The curious narrative of this embassy, which required few
observations, and was not susceptible of any collateral evidence, may be
found in Priscus, p. 49-70. But I have not confined myself to the same
order; and I had previously extracted the historical circumstances,
which were less intimately connected with the journey, and business, of
the Roman ambassadors.]

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, [48] 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 now review 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 he has 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. [49]

[Footnote 48: M. de Tillemont has very properly given the succession of
chamberlains, who reigned in the name of Theodosius. Chrysaphius was the
last, and, according to the unanimous evidence of history, the worst
of these favorites, (see Hist. des Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 117-119.
Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 438.) His partiality for his godfather the
heresiarch Eutyches, engaged him to persecute the orthodox party]

[Footnote 49: This secret conspiracy and its important consequences, may
be traced in the fragments of Priscus, p. 37, 38, 39, 54, 70, 71, 72.
The chronology of that historian is not fixed by any precise date; but
the series of negotiations between Attila and the Eastern empire must be
included within the three or four years which are terminated, A.D. 450.
by the death of Theodosius.]

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. [50] 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.
[51] 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. [52]

[Footnote 50: Theodorus the Reader, (see Vales. Hist. Eccles. tom. iii.
p. 563,) and the Paschal Chronicle, mention the fall, without specifying
the injury: but the consequence was so likely to happen, and so unlikely
to be invented, that we may safely give credit to Nicephorus Callistus,
a Greek of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 51: Pulcheriae nutu (says Count Marcellinus) sua cum avaritia
interemptus est. She abandoned the eunuch to the pious revenge of a
son, whose father had suffered at his instigation. Note: Might not the
execution of Chrysaphius have been a sacrifice to avert the anger of
Attila, whose assassination the eunuch had attempted to contrive?--M.]

[Footnote 52: de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 4. Evagrius, l. ii. c. 1.
Theophanes, p. 90, 91. Novell. ad Calcem. Cod. Theod. tom. vi. p. 30.
The praises which St. Leo and the Catholics have bestowed on Marcian,
are diligently transcribed by Baronius, as an encouragement for future
princes.]




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

     Invasion Of Gaul By Attila.--He Is Repulsed By Aetius And
     The Visigoths.--Attila Invades And Evacuates Italy.--The
     Deaths Of Attila, Aetius, 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. [1] 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, my lord,
and thy lord, commands thee to provide a palace for his immediate
reception." [2] 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 Aetius. [3]

[Footnote 1: See Priscus, p. 39, 72.]

[Footnote 2: The Alexandrian or Paschal Chronicle, which introduces this
haughty message, during the lifetime of Theodosius, may have anticipated
the date; but the dull annalist was incapable of inventing the original
and genuine style of Attila.]

[Footnote 3: The second book of the Histoire Critique de l'Etablissement
de la Monarchie Francoise tom. i. p. 189-424, throws great light on the
state of Gaul, when it was invaded by Attila; but the ingenious author,
the Abbe Dubos, too often bewilders himself in system and conjecture.]

After the death of his rival Boniface, Aetius 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, [4] from the implacable persecution
which urged him from one kingdom to another, till he miserably perished
in the service of the Vandals. The fortunate Aetius, 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 Aetius was born for the salvation
of the Roman republic; [5] 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. [411] "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; [412] 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 Aetius 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." [6] The Barbarians, who had
seated themselves in the Western provinces, were insensibly taught to
respect the faith and valor of the patrician Aetius. He soothed their
passions, consulted their prejudices, balanced their interests, and
checked their ambition. [611] 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.

[Footnote 4: Victor Vitensis (de Persecut. Vandal. l. i. 6, p. 8, edit.
Ruinart) calls him, acer consilio et strenuus in bello: but his courage,
when he became unfortunate, was censured as desperate rashness; and
Sebastian deserved, or obtained, the epithet of proeceps, (Sidon.
Apollinar Carmen ix. 181.) His adventures in Constantinople, in Sicily,
Gaul, Spain, and Africa, are faintly marked in the Chronicles of
Marcellinus and Idatius. In his distress he was always followed by a
numerous train; since he could ravage the Hellespont and Propontis, and
seize the city of Barcelona.]

[Footnote 5: Reipublicae Romanae singulariter natus, qui superbiam
Suevorum, Francorumque barbariem immensis caedibus servire Imperio
Romano coegisset. Jornandes de Rebus Geticis, c. 34, p. 660.]

[Footnote 411: Some valuable fragments of a poetical panegyric on Aetius
by Merobaudes, a Spaniard, have been recovered from a palimpsest MS. by
the sagacity and industry of Niebuhr. They have been reprinted in the
new edition of the Byzantine Historians. The poet speaks in glowing
terms of the long (annosa) peace enjoyed under the administration of
Aetius. The verses are very spirited. The poet was rewarded by a statue
publicly dedicated to his honor in Rome.

     Danuvii cum pace redit, Tanaimque furore
     Exuit, et nigro candentes aethere terras
     Marte suo caruisse jubet.  Dedit otia ferro
     Caucasus, et saevi condemnant praelia reges.
     Addidit hiberni famulantia foedera Rhenus
     Orbis......
     Lustrat Aremoricos jam mitior incola saltus;
     Perdidit et mores tellus, adsuetaque saevo
     Crimine quaesitas silvis celare rapinas,
     Discit inexpertis Cererem committere campis;
     Caesareoque diu manus obluctata labori
     Sustinet acceptas nostro sub consule leges;
     Et quamvis Geticis sulcum confundat aratris,
     Barbara vicinae refugit consortia gentis.
     --Merobaudes, p. 1]

[Footnote 412:--cum Scythicis succumberet ensibus orbis,

     Telaque Tarpeias premerent Arctoa secures,
     Hostilem fregit rabiem, pignus quesuperbi
     Foederis et mundi pretium fuit.  Hinc modo voti
     Rata fides, validis quod dux premat impiger armis
     Edomuit quos pace puer; bellumque repressit
     Ignarus quid bella forent.  Stupuere feroces
     In tenero jam membra Getae.  Rex ipse, verendum
     Miratus pueri decus et prodentia fatum
     Lumina, primaevas dederat gestare faretras,
     Laudabatque manus librantem et tela gerentem
     Oblitus quod noster erat Pro nescia regis
     Corda, feris quanto populis discrimine constet
     Quod Latium docet arma ducem.
     --Merobaudes, Panegyr. p. 15.--M.]

[Footnote 6: This portrait is drawn by Renetus Profuturus Frigeridus, a
contemporary historian, known only by some extracts, which are preserved
by Gregory of Tours, (l. ii. c. 8, in tom. ii. p. 163.) It was probably
the duty, or at least the interest, of Renatus, to magnify the virtues
of Aetius; but he would have shown more dexterity if he had not insisted
on his patient, forgiving disposition.]

[Footnote 611:

     Insessor Libyes, quamvis, fatalibus armis
     Ausus Elisaei solium rescindere regni,
     Milibus Arctois Tyrias compleverat arces,
     Nunc hostem exutus pactis proprioribus arsit

     Romanam vincire fidem, Latiosque parentes
     Adnumerare sib, sociamque intexere prolem.
    ---Merobaudes, p. 12.--M.]

From a principle of interest, as well as gratitude, Aetius 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 Aetius, 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: [7] and it is evident, from their conversation with Maximin
and Priscus, in the royal village, that the valor and prudence of Aetius
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; [8] 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. [9] Strangers to the emperor or the
republic, the Alani of Gaul was devoted to the ambition of Aetius, 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.

[Footnote 7: The embassy consisted of Count Romulus; of Promotus,
president of Noricum; and of Romanus, the military duke. They were
accompanied by Tatullus, an illustrious citizen of Petovio, in the same
province, and father of Orestes, who had married the daughter of Count
Romulus. See Priscus, p. 57, 65. Cassiodorus (Variar. i. 4) mentions
another embassy, which was executed by his father and Carpilio, the son
of Aetius; and, as Attila was no more, he could safely boast of their
manly, intrepid behavior in his presence.]

[Footnote 8: Deserta Valentinae urbis rura Alanis partienda traduntur.
Prosper. Tyronis Chron. in Historiens de France, tom. i. p. 639. A few
lines afterwards, Prosper observes, that lands in the ulterior Gaul were
assigned to the Alani. Without admitting the correction of Dubos, (tom.
i. p. 300,) the reasonable supposition of two colonies or garrisons of
Alani will confirm his arguments, and remove his objections.]

[Footnote 9: See Prosper. Tyro, p. 639. Sidonius (Panegyr. Avit. 246)
complains, in the name of Auvergne, his native country,

     Litorius Scythicos equites tunc forte subacto
     Celsus Aremorico, Geticum rapiebat in agmen
     Per terras, Averne, tuas, qui proxima quaedue
     Discursu, flammis, ferro, feritate, rapinis,
     Delebant; pacis fallentes nomen inane.

another poet, Paulinus of Perigord, confirms the complaint:--

     Nam socium vix ferre queas, qui durior hoste.
    ---See Dubos, tom. i. p. 330.]

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 Aetius. After the death of Wallia, the Gothic
sceptre devolved to Theodoric, the son of the great Alaric; [10] 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 Aetius; 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 Aetius, 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. [11] 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
Aetius 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. [12]
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
Aetius had not restored strength and discipline to the Romans. [13] 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. [14] 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 Aetius and Theodoric were prevented by the
invasion of Gaul. [15]

[Footnote 10: Theodoric II., the son of Theodoric I., declares to
Avitus his resolution of repairing, or expiating, the faults which his
grandfather had committed,--

Quae noster peccavit avus, quem fuscat id unum, Quod te, Roma, capit.

Sidon. Panegyric. Avit. 505.

This character, applicable only to the great Alaric, establishes the
genealogy of the Gothic kings, which has hitherto been unnoticed.]

[Footnote 11: The name of Sapaudia, the origin of Savoy, is first
mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus; and two military posts are
ascertained by the Notitia, within the limits of that province; a
cohort was stationed at Grenoble in Dauphine; and Ebredunum, or
Iverdun, sheltered a fleet of small vessels, which commanded the Lake of
Neufchatel. See Valesius, Notit. Galliarum, p. 503. D'Anville, Notice de
l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 284, 579.]

[Footnote 12: Salvian has attempted to explain the moral government of
the Deity; a task which may be readily performed by supposing that the
calamities of the wicked are judgments, and those of the righteous,
trials.]

[Footnote 13:

     --Capto terrarum damna patebant
     Litorio, in Rhodanum proprios producere fines,
     Thendoridae fixum; nec erat pugnare  necesse,
     Sed migrare Getis; rabidam trux asperat iram
     Victor; quod sensit Scythicum sub moenibus hostem
     Imputat, et nihil estgravius, si forsitan unquam
     Vincerecontingat, trepido.
     --Panegyr. Avit. 300, &c.

Sitionius then proceeds, according to the duty of a panegyrist, to
transfer the whole merit from Aetius to his minister Avitus.]

[Footnote 14: Theodoric II. revered, in the person of Avitus, the
character of his preceptor.

     Mihi Romula dudum
     Per te jura placent; parvumque ediscere jussit
     Ad tua verba pater, docili quo prisca Maronis
     Carmine molliret Scythicos mihi pagina mores.
    ---Sidon. Panegyr. Avit. 495 &c.]

[Footnote 15: Our authorities for the reign of Theodoric I. are,
Jornandes de Rebus Geticis, c. 34, 36, and the Chronicles of Idatius,
and the two Prospers, inserted in the historians of France, tom. i. p.
612-640. To these we may add Salvian de Gubernatione Dei, l. vii. p.
243, 244, 245, and the panegyric of Avitus, by Sidonius.]

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. [16] These princes were
elevated on a buckler, the symbol of military command; [17] 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. [18] 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. [19] Clodion, the
first of their long-haired kings, whose name and actions are mentioned
in authentic history, held his residence at Dispargum, [20] 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; [21] 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. [22] While Clodion lay encamped in the plains of
Artois, [23] 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 Aetius, 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
Aetius, 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. [24] 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. [25] 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, [26] 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 Aetius; 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.
[27]

[Footnote 16: Reges Crinitos se creavisse de prima, et ut ita dicam
nobiliori suorum familia, (Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 9, p. 166, of the
second volume of the Historians of France.) Gregory himself does not
mention the Merovingian name, which may be traced, however, to the
beginning of the seventh century, as the distinctive appellation of the
royal family, and even of the French monarchy. An ingenious critic has
deduced the Merovingians from the great Maroboduus; and he has clearly
proved, that the prince, who gave his name to the first race, was more
ancient than the father of Childeric. See Memoires de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 52-90, tom. xxx. p. 557-587.]

[Footnote 17: This German custom, which may be traced from Tacitus
to Gregory of Tours, was at length adopted by the emperors of
Constantinople. From a MS. of the tenth century, Montfaucon has
delineated the representation of a similar ceremony, which the ignorance
of the age had applied to King David. See Monumens de la Monarchie
Francoise, tom. i. Discours Preliminaire.]

[Footnote 18: Caesaries prolixa... crinium flagellis per terga dimissis,
&c. See the Preface to the third volume of the Historians of France,
and the Abbe Le Boeuf, (Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 47-79.) This peculiar
fashion of the Merovingians has been remarked by natives and strangers;
by Priscus, (tom. i. p. 608,) by Agathias, (tom. ii. p. 49,) and by
Gregory of Tours, (l. viii. 18, vi. 24, viii. 10, tom. ii. p. 196, 278,
316.)]

[Footnote 19: See an original picture of the figure, dress, arms,
and temper of the ancient Franks, in Sidonius Apollinaris, (Panegyr.
Majorian. 238-254;) and such pictures, though coarsely drawn, have a
real and intrinsic value. Father Daniel (History de la Milice Francoise,
tom. i. p. 2-7) has illustrated the description.]

[Footnote 20: Dubos, Hist. Critique, &c., tom. i. p. 271, 272. Some
geographers have placed Dispargum on the German side of the Rhine. See a
note of the Benedictine Editors, to the Historians of France, tom. ii p.
166.]

[Footnote 21: The Carbonarian wood was that part of the great forest of
the Ardennes which lay between the Escaut, or Scheldt, and the Meuse.
Vales. Notit. Gall. p. 126.]

[Footnote 22: Gregor. Turon. l. ii. c. 9, in tom. ii. p. 166, 167.
Fredegar. Epitom. c. 9, p. 395. Gesta Reg. Francor. c. 5, in tom. ii. p.
544. Vit St. Remig. ab Hincmar, in tom. iii. p. 373.]

[Footnote 23:

     --Francus qua Cloio patentes
     Atrebatum terras pervaserat.
     --Panegyr. Majorian 213

The precise spot was a town or village, called Vicus Helena; and both
the name and place are discovered by modern geographers at Lens See
Vales. Notit. Gall. p. 246. Longuerue, Description de la France tom. ii.
p. 88.]

[Footnote 24: See a vague account of the action in Sidonius. Panegyr.
Majorian 212-230. The French critics, impatient to establish their
monarchy in Gaul, have drawn a strong argument from the silence of
Sidonius, who dares not insinuate, that the vanquished Franks were
compelled to repass the Rhine. Dubos, tom. i. p. 322.]

[Footnote 25: Salvian (de Gubernat. Dei, l. vi.) has expressed, in vague
and declamatory language, the misfortunes of these three cities, which
are distinctly ascertained by the learned Mascou, Hist. of the Ancient
Germans, ix. 21.]

[Footnote 26: Priscus, in relating the contest, does not name the two
brothers; the second of whom he had seen at Rome, a beardless youth,
with long, flowing hair, (Historians of France, tom. i. p. 607, 608.)
The Benedictine Editors are inclined to believe, that they were the
sons of some unknown king of the Franks, who reigned on the banks of the
Neckar; but the arguments of M. de Foncemagne (Mem. de l'Academie, tom.
viii. p. 464) seem to prove that the succession of Clodion was disputed
by his two sons, and that the younger was Meroveus, the father of
Childeric. * Note: The relationship of Meroveus to Clodion is extremely
doubtful.--By some he is called an illegitimate son; by others merely
of his race. Tur ii. c. 9, in Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, i. 177. See
Mezeray.]

[Footnote 27: Under the Merovingian race, the throne was hereditary;
but all the sons of the deceased monarch were equally entitled to their
share of his treasures and territories. See the Dissertations of M.
de Foncemagne, in the sixth and eighth volumes of the Memoires de
l'Academie.]




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, [28] 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 crown Honoria 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. [29] 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. [30]

[Footnote 28: A medal is still extant, which exhibits the pleasing
countenance of Honoria, with the title of Augusta; and on the reverse,
the improper legend of Salus Reipublicoe round the monogram of Christ.
See Ducange, Famil. Byzantin. p. 67, 73.]

[Footnote 29: See Priscus, p, 39, 40. It might be fairly alleged, that
if females could succeed to the throne, Valentinian himself, who had
married the daughter and heiress of the younger Theodosius, would have
asserted her right to the Eastern empire.]

[Footnote 30: The adventures of Honoria are imperfectly related by
Jornandes, de Successione Regn. c. 97, and de Reb. Get. c. 42, p. 674;
and in the Chronicles of Prosper and Marcellinus; but they cannot be
made consistent, or probable, unless we separate, by an interval of time
and place, her intrigue with Eugenius, and her invitation of Attila.]

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, [31] 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. [32] 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. [33] The consternation of Gaul was universal;
and the various fortunes of its cities have been adorned by tradition
with martyrdoms and miracles. [34] 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, [35] 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
rampari, 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
Aetius and Theodoric, who pressed forwards to the relief of Orleans.

[Footnote 31: Exegeras mihi, ut promitterem tibi, Attilae bellum stylo
me posteris intimaturum.... coeperam scribere, sed operis arrepti fasce
perspecto, taeduit inchoasse. Sidon. Apoll. l. viii. epist. 15, p. 235]

[Footnote 32:

     Subito cum rupta tumultu
     Barbaries totas in te transfuderat Arctos,

     Gallia.  Pugnacem Rugum comitante Gelono,
     Gepida trux sequitur; Scyrum Burgundio cogit:

     Chunus, Bellonotus, Neurus, Basterna, Toringus,

     Bructerus, ulvosa vel quem Nicer abluit unda

Prorumpit Francus. Cecidit cito secta bipenni Hercynia in lintres, et
Rhenum texuit alno. Et jam terrificis diffuderat Attila turmis In campos
se, Belga, tuos. Panegyr. Avit.]

[Footnote 33: The most authentic and circumstantial account of this war
is contained in Jornandes, (de Reb. Geticis, c. 36-41, p. 662-672,) who
has sometimes abridged, and sometimes transcribed, the larger history
of Cassiodorus. Jornandes, a quotation which it would be superfluous to
repeat, may be corrected and illustrated by Gregory of Tours, l. ii. c.
5, 6, 7, and the Chronicles of Idatius, Isidore, and the two Prospers.
All the ancient testimonies are collected and inserted in the Historians
of France; but the reader should be cautioned against a supposed extract
from the Chronicle of Idatius, (among the fragments of Fredegarius, tom.
ii. p. 462,) which often contradicts the genuine text of the Gallician
bishop.]

[Footnote 34: The ancient legendaries deserve some regard, as they
are obliged to connect their fables with the real history of their own
times. See the lives of St. Lupus, St. Anianus, the bishops of Metz,
Ste. Genevieve, &c., in the Historians of France, tom. i. p. 644, 645,
649, tom. iii. p. 369.]

[Footnote 35: The scepticism of the count de Buat (Hist. des Peuples,
tom. vii. p. 539, 540) cannot be reconciled with any principles of
reason or criticism. Is not Gregory of Tours precise and positive in his
account of the destruction of Metz? At the distance of no more than a
hundred years, could he be ignorant, could the people be ignorant of
the fate of a city, the actual residence of his sovereigns, the kings of
Austrasia? The learned count, who seems to have undertaken the apology
of Attila and the Barbarians, appeals to the false Idatius, parcens
Germaniae et Galliae, and forgets that the true Idatius had explicitly
affirmed, plurimae civitates effractoe, among which he enumerates Metz.]

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. Aetius 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. [36] 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 Praetorian praefecture, 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 Aetius
and the Romans, he was ready to expose his life and kingdom for the
common safety of Gaul. [37] 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 Laeti, 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
Aetius and Theodoric, advanced, by rapid marches to relieve Orleans, and
to give battle to the innumerable host of Attila. [38]

[Footnote 36:

     Vix liquerat Alpes
     Aetius, tenue, et rarum sine milite ducens
     Robur, in auxiliis Geticum male credulus agmen
     Incassum propriis praesumens adfore castris.
    ---Panegyr. Avit. 328, &c.]

[Footnote 37: The policy of Attila, of Aetius, and of the Visigoths, is
imperfectly described in the Panegyric of Avitus, and the thirty-sixth
chapter of Jornandes. The poet and the historian were both biased
by personal or national prejudices. The former exalts the merit and
importance of Avitus; orbis, Avite, salus, &c.! The latter is anxious
to show the Goths in the most favorable light. Yet their agreement when
they are fairly interpreted, is a proof of their veracity.]

[Footnote 38: The review of the army of Aetius is made by Jornandes,
c. 36, p. 664, edit. Grot. tom. ii. p. 23, of the Historians of France,
with the notes of the Benedictine editor. The Loeti were a promiscuous
race of Barbarians, born or naturalized in Gaul; and the Riparii, or
Ripuarii, derived their name from their post on the three rivers,
the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Moselle; the Armoricans possessed the
independent cities between the Seine and the Loire. A colony of Saxons
had been planted in the diocese of Bayeux; the Burgundians were settled
in Savoy; and the Breones were a warlike tribe of Rhaetians, to the east
of the Lake of Constance.]

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. [39] 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 Chalons, 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 Gepidae, in which
fifteen thousand [40] Barbarians were slain, was a prelude to a
more general and decisive action. The Catalaunian fields [41] spread
themselves round Chalons, 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 champaign country. [42] 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 Aetius. 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. [43] 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
joys of 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 martia 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 Gepidae; 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. Aetius 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 Chalons; 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.

[Footnote 39: Aurelianensis urbis obsidio, oppugnatio, irruptio,
nec direptio, l. v. Sidon. Apollin. l. viii. Epist. 15, p. 246. The
preservation of Orleans might easily be turned into a miracle, obtained
and foretold by the holy bishop.]

[Footnote 40: The common editions read xcm but there is some authority
of manuscripts (and almost any authority is sufficient) for the more
reasonable number of xvm.]

[Footnote 41: Chalons, or Duro-Catalaunum, afterwards Catalauni, had
formerly made a part of the territory of Rheims from whence it is
distant only twenty-seven miles. See Vales, Notit. Gall. p. 136.
D'Anville, Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 212, 279.]

[Footnote 42: The name of Campania, or Champagne, is frequently
mentioned by Gregory of Tours; and that great province, of which
Rheims was the capital, obeyed the command of a duke. Vales. Notit. p.
120-123.]

[Footnote 43: I am sensible that these military orations are usually
composed by the historian; yet the old Ostrogoths, who had served under
Attila, might repeat his discourse to Cassiodorus; the ideas, and even
the expressions, have an original Scythian cast; and I doubt, whether an
Italian of the sixth century would have thought of the hujus certaminis
gaudia.]

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 Caesar, 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 Chalons 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. Cassiolorus, 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; [44] 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. [45]

[Footnote 44: The expressions of Jornandes, or rather of Cassiodorus,
are extremely strong. Bellum atrox, multiplex, immane, pertinax, cui
simile nulla usquam narrat antiquitas: ubi talia gesta referuntur, ut
nihil esset quod in vita sua conspicere potuisset egregius, qui hujus
miraculi privaretur aspectu. Dubos (Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 392,
393) attempts to reconcile the 162,000 of Jornandes with the 300,000 of
Idatius and Isidore, by supposing that the larger number included the
total destruction of the war, the effects of disease, the slaughter of
the unarmed people, &c.]

[Footnote 45: The count de Buat, (Hist. des Peuples, &c., tom. vii. p.
554-573,) still depending on the false, and again rejecting the true,
Idatius, has divided the defeat of Attila into two great battles; the
former near Orleans, the latter in Champagne: in the one, Theodoric was
slain in the other, he was revenged.]

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, Aetius 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 Chalons; 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 Aetius 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. [46] 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 Chalons: 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. [47]

[Footnote 46: Jornandes de Rebus Geticis, c. 41, p. 671. The policy of
Aetius, and the behavior of Torismond, are extremely natural; and
the patrician, according to Gregory of Tours, (l. ii. c. 7, p. 163,)
dismissed the prince of the Franks, by suggesting to him a similar
apprehension. The false Idatius ridiculously pretends, that Aetius
paid a clandestine nocturnal visit to the kings of the Huns and of the
Visigoths; from each of whom he obtained a bribe of ten thousand pieces
of gold, as the price of an undisturbed retreat.]

[Footnote 47: These cruelties, which are passionately deplored by
Theodoric, the son of Clovis, (Gregory of Tours, l. iii. c. 10, p. 190,)
suit the time and circumstances of the invasion of Attila. His residence
in Thuringia was long attested by popular tradition; and he is supposed
to have assembled a couroultai, or diet, in the territory of Eisenach.
See Mascou, ix. 30, who settles with nice accuracy the extent of ancient
Thuringia, and derives its name from the Gothic tribe of the Therungi]




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;
[48] 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.
[49] 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. [50] 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. [51] When
he took possession of the royal palace of Milan, he was surprised and
offended at the sight of a picture which represented the Caesars 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. [52] 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. [53]

[Footnote 48: Machinis constructis, omnibusque tormentorum generibus
adhibitis. Jornandes, c. 42, p. 673. In the thirteenth century, the
Moguls battered the cities of China with large engines, constructed by
the Mahometans or Christians in their service, which threw stones from
150 to 300 pounds weight. In the defence of their country, the Chinese
used gunpowder, and even bombs, above a hundred years before they
were known in Europe; yet even those celestial, or infernal, arms were
insufficient to protect a pusillanimous nation. See Gaubil. Hist. des
Mongous, p. 70, 71, 155, 157, &c.]

[Footnote 49: The same story is told by Jornandes, and by Procopius, (de
Bell Vandal. l. i. c. 4, p. 187, 188:) nor is it easy to decide which
is the original. But the Greek historian is guilty of an inexcusable
mistake, in placing the siege of Aquileia after the death of Aetius.]

[Footnote 50: Jornandes, about a hundred years afterwards, affirms,
that Aquileia was so completely ruined, ita ut vix ejus vestigia, ut
appareant, reliquerint. See Jornandes de Reb. Geticis, c. 42, p. 673.
Paul. Diacon. l. ii. c. 14, p. 785. Liutprand, Hist. l. iii. c. 2. The
name of Aquileia was sometimes applied to Forum Julii, (Cividad del
Friuli,) the more recent capital of the Venetian province. * Note:
Compare the curious Latin poems on the destruction of Aquileia,
published by M. Endlicher in his valuable catalogue of Latin Mss. in the
library of Vienna, p. 298, &c.

 Repleta quondam domibus sublimibus, ornatis mire, niveis, marmorels,
 Nune ferax frugum metiris funiculo ruricolarum.

The monkish poet has his consolation in Attila's sufferings in soul and
body.

 Vindictam tamen non evasit impius destructor tuus Attila sevissimus,
 Nunc igni simul gehennae et vermibus excruciatur--P. 290.--M.]

[Footnote 51: In describing this war of Attila, a war so famous, but so
imperfectly known, I have taken for my guides two learned Italians,
who considered the subject with some peculiar advantages; Sigonius,
de Imperio Occidentali, l. xiii. in his works, tom. i. p. 495-502; and
Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. iv. p. 229-236, 8vo. edition.]

[Footnote 52: This anecdote may be found under two different articles of
the miscellaneous compilation of Suidas.]

[Footnote 53:

     Leo respondit, humana, hoc pictum manu:
     Videres hominem dejectum, si pingere
     Leones scirent.
     --Appendix ad Phaedrum, Fab. xxv.

The lion in Phaedrus very foolishly appeals from pictures to the
amphitheatre; and I am glad to observe, that the native taste of La
Fontaine (l. iii. fable x.) has omitted this most lame and impotent
conclusion.]

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, [54] 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 Rhaetian 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. [55] 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. [56] 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, [57] which describes their condition about
seventy years afterwards, may be considered as the primitive monument
of the republic. [571] 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 Praetorian praefect, 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. [58]

[Footnote 54: Paul the Deacon (de Gestis Langobard. l. ii. c. 14,
p. 784) describes the provinces of Italy about the end of the eighth
century Venetia non solum in paucis insulis quas nunc Venetias dicimus,
constat; sed ejus terminus a Pannoniae finibus usque Adduam fluvium
protelatur. The history of that province till the age of Charlemagne
forms the first and most interesting part of the Verona (Illustrata, p.
1-388,) in which the marquis Scipio Maffei has shown himself equally
capable of enlarged views and minute disquisitions.]

[Footnote 55: This emigration is not attested by any contemporary
evidence; but the fact is proved by the event, and the circumstances
might be preserved by tradition. The citizens of Aquileia retired to the
Isle of Gradus, those of Padua to Rivus Altus, or Rialto, where the city
of Venice was afterwards built, &c.]

[Footnote 56: The topography and antiquities of the Venetian islands,
from Gradus to Clodia, or Chioggia, are accurately stated in the
Dissertatio Chorographica de Italia Medii Aevi. p. 151-155.]

[Footnote 57: Cassiodor. Variar. l. xii. epist. 24. Maffei (Verona
Illustrata, part i. p. 240-254) has translated and explained this
curious letter, in the spirit of a learned antiquarian and a faithful
subject, who considered Venice as the only legitimate offspring of the
Roman republic. He fixes the date of the epistle, and consequently the
praefecture, of Cassiodorus, A.D. 523; and the marquis's authority has
the more weight, as he prepared an edition of his works, and actually
published a dissertation on the true orthography of his name. See
Osservazioni Letterarie, tom. ii. p. 290-339.]

[Footnote 571: The learned count Figliasi has proved, in his memoirs
upon the Veneti (Memorie de' Veneti primi e secondi del conte Figliasi,
t. vi. Veneziai, 796,) that from the most remote period, this nation,
which occupied the country which has since been called the Venetian
States or Terra Firma, likewise inhabited the islands scattered upon
the coast, and that from thence arose the names of Venetia prima and
secunda, of which the first applied to the main land and the second
to the islands and lagunes. From the time of the Pelasgi and of the
Etrurians, the first Veneti, inhabiting a fertile and pleasant country,
devoted themselves to agriculture: the second, placed in the midst
of canals, at the mouth of several rivers, conveniently situated with
regard to the islands of Greece, as well as the fertile plains of Italy,
applied themselves to navigation and commerce. Both submitted to the
Romans a short time before the second Punic war; yet it was not till
after the victory of Marius over the Cimbri, that their country was
reduced to a Roman province. Under the emperors, Venetia Prima obtained
more than once, by its calamities, a place in history. * * But the
maritime province was occupied in salt works, fisheries, and commerce.
The Romans have considered the inhabitants of this part as beneath the
dignity of history, and have left them in obscurity. * * * They dwelt
there until the period when their islands afforded a retreat to their
ruined and fugitive compatriots. Sismondi. Hist. des Rep. Italiens,
v. i. p. 313.--G. ----Compare, on the origin of Venice, Daru, Hist. de
Venise, vol. i. c. l.--M.]

[Footnote 58: See, in the second volume of Amelot de la Houssaie,
Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise, a translation of the famous
Squittinio. This book, which has been exalted far above its merits, is
stained, in every line, with the disingenuous malevolence of party: but
the principal evidence, genuine and apocryphal, is brought together and
the reader will easily choose the fair medium.]

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, Aetius 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 Aetius, 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. [59] 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 [60] was admirably
qualified to conduct a negotiation either of public or private interest:
his colleague Trigetius had exercised the Praetorian praefecture of
Italy; and Leo, bishop of Rome, consented to expose his life for the
safety of his flock. The genius of Leo [61] 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, [62] and
trampled, with his Scythian cavalry, the farms of Catullus and Virgil.
[63] 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 idolence 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. [64] 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. [65] 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. [66]

[Footnote 59: Sirmond (Not. ad Sidon. Apollin. p. 19) has published a
curious passage from the Chronicle of Prosper. Attila, redintegratis
viribus, quas in Gallia amiserat, Italiam ingredi per Pannonias
intendit; nihil duce nostro Aetio secundum prioris belli opera
prospiciente, &c. He reproaches Aetius with neglecting to guard the
Alps, and with a design to abandon Italy; but this rash censure may at
least be counterbalanced by the favorable testimonies of Idatius and
Isidore.]

[Footnote 60: See the original portraits of Avienus and his rival
Basilius, delineated and contrasted in the epistles (i. 9. p. 22) of
Sidonius. He had studied the characters of the two chiefs of the senate;
but he attached himself to Basilius, as the more solid and disinterested
friend.]

[Footnote 61: The character and principles of Leo may be traced in
one hundred and forty-one original epistles, which illustrate the
ecclesiastical history of his long and busy pontificate, from A.D. 440
to 461. See Dupin, Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom. iii. part ii p.
120-165.]

[Footnote 62:

     Tardis ingens ubi flexibus errat
     Mincius, et tenera praetexit arundine ripas
   -------
     Anne lacus tantos, te Lari maxime, teque
     Fluctibus, et fremitu assurgens Benace marino.]

[Footnote 63: The marquis Maffei (Verona Illustrata, part i. p. 95,
129, 221, part ii. p. 2, 6) has illustrated with taste and learning this
interesting topography. He places the interview of Attila and St. Leo
near Ariolica, or Ardelica, now Peschiera, at the conflux of the lake
and river; ascertains the villa of Catullus, in the delightful peninsula
of Sirmio, and discovers the Andes of Virgil, in the village of Bandes,
precisely situate, qua se subducere colles incipiunt, where the Veronese
hills imperceptibly slope down into the plain of Mantua. * Note: Gibbon
has made a singular mistake: the Mincius flows out of the Bonacus
at Peschiera, not into it. The interview is likewise placed at Ponte
Molino. and at Governolo, at the conflux of the Mincio and the Gonzaga.
bishop of Mantua, erected a tablet in the year 1616, in the church of
the latter place, commemorative of the event. Descrizione di Verona a de
la sua provincia. C. 11, p. 126.--M.]

[Footnote 64: Si statim infesto agmine urbem petiissent, grande
discrimen esset: sed in Venetia quo fere tractu Italia mollissima est,
ipsa soli coelique clementia robur elanquit. Ad hoc panis usu carnisque
coctae, et dulcedine vini mitigatos, &c. This passage of Florus (iii.
3) is still more applicable to the Huns than to the Cimbri, and it may
serve as a commentary on the celestial plague, with which Idatius and
Isidore have afflicted the troops of Attila.]

[Footnote 65: The historian Priscus had positively mentioned the effect
which this example produced on the mind of Attila. Jornandes, c. 42, p.
673]

[Footnote 66: The picture of Raphael is in the Vatican; the basso (or
perhaps the alto) relievo of Algardi, on one of the altars of St. Peter,
(see Dubos, Reflexions sur la Poesie et sur la Peinture, tom. i. p. 519,
520.) Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 452, No. 57, 58) bravely sustains
the truth of the apparition; which is rejected, however, by the most
learned and pious Catholics.]

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. [67] 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. [68] 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. [69]

[Footnote 67: Attila, ut Priscus historicus refert, extinctionis suae
tempore, puellam Ildico nomine, decoram, valde, sibi matrimonium post
innumerabiles uxores... socians. Jornandes, c. 49, p. 683, 684.

He afterwards adds, (c. 50, p. 686,) Filii Attilae, quorum per licentiam
libidinis poene populus fuit. Polygamy has been established among the
Tartars of every age. The rank of plebeian wives is regulated only by
their personal charms; and the faded matron prepares, without a murmur,
the bed which is destined for her blooming rival. But in royal families,
the daughters of Khans communicate to their sons a prior right. See
Genealogical History, p. 406, 407, 408.]

[Footnote 68: The report of her guilt reached Constantinople, where
it obtained a very different name; and Marcellinus observes, that the
tyrant of Europe was slain in the night by the hand, and the knife, of
a woman Corneille, who has adapted the genuine account to his tragedy,
describes the irruption of blood in forty bombast lines, and Attila
exclaims, with ridiculous fury,

     S'il ne veut s'arreter, (his blood.)
    (Dit-il) on me payera ce qui m'en va couter.]

[Footnote 69: The curious circumstances of the death and funeral of
Attila are related by Jornandes, (c. 49, p. 683, 684, 685,) and were
probably transcribed from Priscus.]

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 Gepidae, 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 Gepidae, 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. [70] 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 Gepidae. 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. [71]

[Footnote 70: See Jornandes, de Rebus Geticis, c. 50, p. 685, 686, 687,
688. His distinction of the national arms is curious and important.
Nan ibi admirandum reor fuisse spectaculum, ubi cernere erat cunctis,
pugnantem Gothum ense furentem, Gepidam in vulnere suorum cuncta tela
frangentem, Suevum pede, Hunnum sagitta praesumere, Alanum gravi Herulum
levi, armatura, aciem instruere. I am not precisely informed of the
situation of the River Netad.]

[Footnote 71: Two modern historians have thrown much new light on the
ruin and division of the empire of Attila; M. de Buat, by his laborious
and minute diligence, (tom. viii. p. 3-31, 68-94,) and M. de Guignes,
by his extraordinary knowledge of the Chinese language and writers. See
Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 315-319.]

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 Aetius. 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; [711] and his
new favorite, the eunuch Heraclius, awakened the emperor from the supine
lethargy, which might be disguised, during the life of Placidia, [72] by
the excuse of filial piety. The fame of Aetius, 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. Aetius 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 Aetius, pierced with a hundred wounds,
fell dead in the royal presence. Boethius, the Praetorian praefect, 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 Aetius, 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." [73]

[Footnote 711: The praises awarded by Gibbon to the character of Aetius
have been animadverted upon with great severity. (See Mr. Herbert's
Attila. p. 321.) I am not aware that Gibbon has dissembled or palliated
any of the crimes or treasons of Aetius: but his position at the time
of his murder was certainly that of the preserver of the empire, the
conqueror of the most dangerous of the barbarians: it is by no means
clear that he was not "innocent" of any treasonable designs against
Valentinian. If the early acts of his life, the introduction of the Huns
into Italy, and of the Vandals into Africa, were among the proximate
causes of the ruin of the empire, his murder was the signal for its
almost immediate downfall.--M.]

[Footnote 72: Placidia died at Rome, November 27, A.D. 450. She was
buried at Ravenna, where her sepulchre, and even her corpse, seated in
a chair of cypress wood, were preserved for ages. The empress received
many compliments from the orthodox clergy; and St. Peter Chrysologus
assured her, that her zeal for the Trinity had been recompensed by an
august trinity of children. See Tillemont, Uist. Jer Emp. tom. vi. p.
240.]

[Footnote 73: Aetium Placidus mactavit semivir amens, is the expression
of Sidonius, (Panegyr. Avit. 359.) The poet knew the world, and was not
inclined to flatter a minister who had injured or disgraced Avitus and
Majorian, the successive heroes of his song.]

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 demeano
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 Aetius. 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, [74] 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.

[Footnote 74: With regard to the cause and circumstances of the deaths
of Aetius and Valentinian, our information is dark and imperfect.
Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 4, p. 186, 187, 188) is a fabulous
writer for the events which precede his own memory. His narrative must
therefore be supplied and corrected by five or six Chronicles, none of
which were composed in Rome or Italy; and which can only express, in
broken sentences, the popular rumors, as they were conveyed to Gaul,
Spain, Africa, Constantinople, or Alexandria.]

As early as the time of Cicero and Varro, it was the opinion of
the Roman augurs, that the twelve vultures which Romulus had seen,
represented the twelve centuries, assigned for the fatal period of his
city. [75] 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; [76] 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. [77] 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 indulgences that 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 Bagaudae; and the Imperial
ministers pursued with proscriptive laws, and ineffectual arms, the
rebels whom they had made. [78] 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.

[Footnote 75: This interpretation of Vettius, a celebrated augur, was
quoted by Varro, in the xviiith book of his Antiquities. Censorinus, de
Die Natali, c. 17, p. 90, 91, edit. Havercamp.]

[Footnote 76: According to Varro, the twelfth century would expire
A.D. 447, but the uncertainty of the true aera of Rome might allow some
latitude of anticipation or delay. The poets of the age, Claudian (de
Bell Getico, 265) and Sidonius, (in Panegyr. Avit. 357,) may be admitted
as fair witnesses of the popular opinion.

     Jam reputant annos, interceptoque volatu
     Vulturis, incidunt properatis saecula metis.
     .......
     Jam prope fata tui bissenas Vulturis alas
     Implebant; seis namque tuos, scis, Roma, labores.
     --See Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 340-346.]

[Footnote 77: The fifth book of Salvian is filled with pathetic
lamentations and vehement invectives. His immoderate freedom serves to
prove the weakness, as well as the corruption, of the Roman government.
His book was published after the loss of Africa, (A.D. 439,) and before
Attila's war, (A.D. 451.)]

[Footnote 78: The Bagaudae of Spain, who fought pitched battles with
the Roman troops, are repeatedly mentioned in the Chronicle of Idatius.
Salvian has described their distress and rebellion in very forcible
language. Itaque nomen civium Romanorum... nunc ultro repudiatur ac
fugitur, nec vile tamen sed etiam abominabile poene habetur... Et hinc
est ut etiam hi quid ad Barbaros non confugiunt, Barbari tamen
esse coguntur, scilicet ut est pars magna Hispanorum, et non minima
Gallorum.... De Bagaudis nunc mihi sermo est, qui per malos judices
et cruentos spoliati, afflicti, necati postquam jus Romanae libertatis
amiserant, etiam honorem Romani nominis perdiderunt.... Vocamus
rabelles, vocamus perditos quos esse compulimua criminosos. De Gubernat.
Dei, l. v. p. 158, 159.]




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 [1] was often
alleged as a rare example of human felicity. His birth was noble and
illustrious, since he descended from the Anician family; his dignity
was supported by an adequate patrimony in land and money; and these
advantages of fortune were accompanied with liberal arts and decent
manners, which adorn or imitate the inestimable gifts of genius and
virtue. The luxury of his palace and table was hospitable and elegant.
Whenever Maximus appeared in public, he was surrounded by a train of
grateful and obsequious clients; [2] and it is possible that among these
clients, he might deserve and possess some real friends. His merit was
rewarded by the favor of the prince and senate: he thrice exercised the
office of Praetorian praefect of Italy; he was twice invested with the
consulship, and he obtained the rank of patrician. These civil 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 quaestor Fulgentius; and when he looked back
with unavailing regret on the secure pleasures of his former life, the
emperor exclaimed, "O fortunate Damocles, [3] 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.

[Footnote 1: Sidonius Apollinaris composed the thirteenth epistle of
the second book, to refute the paradox of his friend Serranus, who
entertained a singular, though generous, enthusiasm for the deceased
emperor. This epistle, with some indulgence, may claim the praise of
an elegant composition; and it throws much light on the character of
Maximus.]

[Footnote 2: Clientum, praevia, pedisequa, circumfusa, populositas, is
the train which Sidonius himself (l. i. epist. 9) assigns to another
senator of rank]

[Footnote 3:

     Districtus ensis cui super impia
     Cervice pendet, non Siculoe dapes
     Dulcem elaborabunt saporem:
     Non avium citharaeque cantus
     Somnum reducent.
     --Horat. Carm. iii. 1.

Sidonius concludes his letter with the story of Damocles, which Cicero
(Tusculan. v. 20, 21) had so inimitably told.]

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. [4]
Whatever abilities Maximus might have shown in a subordinate station,
he was found incapable of administering an empire; and though he might
easily have been informed of the naval preparations which were made on
the opposite shores of Africa, he expected with supine indifference
the approach of the enemy, without adopting any measures of defence, of
negotiation, or of a timely retreat. When the Vandals disembarked at the
mouth of the 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. [5]

[Footnote 4: Notwithstanding the evidence of Procopius, Evagrius,
Idatius Marcellinus, &c., the learned Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom.
iv. p. 249) doubts the reality of this invitation, and observes, with
great truth, "Non si puo dir quanto sia facile il popolo a sognare e
spacciar voci false." But his argument, from the interval of time and
place, is extremely feeble. The figs which grew near Carthage were
produced to the senate of Rome on the third day.]

[Footnote 5:

     Infidoque tibi Burgundio ductu
     Extorquet trepidas mactandi principis iras.
    ---Sidon. in Panegyr. Avit. 442.

A remarkable line, which insinuates that Rome and Maximus were betrayed
by their Burgundian mercenaries.]

On the third day after the tumult, Genseric boldly advanced from the
port of Ostia to the gates of the defenceless city. Instead of a sally
of the Roman youth, there issued from the gates an unarmed and venerable
procession of the bishop at the head of his clergy. [6] The fearless
spirit of Leo, his authority and eloquence, again mitigated the
fierceness of a Barbarian conqueror; the king of the Vandals promised to
spare the unresisting multitude, to protect the buildings from fire,
and to exempt the captives from torture; and although such orders were
neither seriously given, nor strictly obeyed, the mediation of Leo was
glorious to himself, and in some degree beneficial to his country. But
Rome and its inhabitants were delivered to the licentiousness of
the Vandals and Moors, whose blind passions revenged the injuries of
Carthage. The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet
remained of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, was
diligently transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the
splendid relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited a
memorable example of the vicissitudes of human and divine things.

Since the abolition of Paganism, the Capitol had been violated and
abandoned; yet the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected,
and the curious roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands
of Genseric. [7] The holy instruments of the Jewish worship, [8] the
gold table, and the gold candlestick with seven branches, originally
framed according to the particular instructions of God himself,
and which were placed in the sanctuary of his temple, had been
ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people in the triumph of Titus.
They were afterwards deposited in the temple of Peace; and at the end of
four hundred years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred from Rome
to Carthage, by a Barbarian who derived his origin from the shores
of the Baltic. These ancient monuments might attract the notice of
curiosity, as well as of avarice. But the Christian churches, enriched
and adorned by the prevailing superstition of the times, afforded more
plentiful materials for sacrilege; and the pious liberality of Pope Leo,
who melted six silver vases, the gift of Constantine, each of 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. [9]
Many thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable
qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and
their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling Barbarians, who, in the
division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, and
the children from their parents. The charity of Deogratias, bishop of
Carthage, [10] was their only consolation and support. He generously
sold the gold and silver plate of the church to purchase the freedom of
some, to alleviate the slavery of others, and to assist the wants and
infirmities of a captive multitude, whose health was impaired by the
hardships which they had suffered in 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 Cannae; and judge between Hannibal and the
successor of St. Cyprian. [11]

* [Footnote 6: The apparant success of Pope Leo may be justified by
Prosper, and the Historia Miscellan.; but the improbable notion of
Baronius A.D. 455, (No. 13) that Genseric spared the three apostolical
churches, is not countenanced even by the doubtful testimony of the
Liber Pontificalis.]

[Footnote 7: The profusion of Catulus, the first who gilt the roof of
the Capitol, was not universally approved, (Plin. Hist. Natur. xxxiii.
18;) but it was far exceeded by the emperor's, and the external
gilding of the temple cost Domitian 12,000 talents, (2,400,000 L.) The
expressions of Claudian and Rutilius (luce metalli oemula.... fastigia
astris, and confunduntque vagos delubra micantia visus) manifestly
prove, that this splendid covering was not removed either by the
Christians or the Goths, (see Donatus, Roma Antiqua, l. ii. c. 6, p.
125.) It should seem that the roof of the Capitol was decorated with
gilt statues, and chariots drawn by four horses.]

[Footnote 8: The curious reader may consult the learned and accurate
treatise of Hadrian Reland, de Spoliis Templi Hierosolymitani in Arcu
Titiano Romae conspicuis, in 12mo. Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1716.]

[Footnote 9: The vessel which transported the relics of the Capitol was
the only one of the whole fleet that suffered shipwreck. If a bigoted
sophist, a Pagan bigot, had mentioned the accident, he might have
rejoiced that this cargo of sacrilege was lost in the sea.]

[Footnote 10: See Victor Vitensis, de Persecut. Vandal. l. i. c. 8, p.
11, 12, edit. Ruinart. Deogratius governed the church of Carthage only
three years. If he had not been privately buried, his corpse would have
been torn piecemeal by the mad devotion of the people.]

[Footnote 11: The general evidence for the death of Maximus, and the
sack of Rome by the Vandals, is comprised in Sidonius, (Panegyr. Avit.
441-450,) Procopius, (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 4, 5, p. 188, 189,
and l. ii. c. 9, p. 255,) Evagrius, (l. ii. c. 7,) Jornandes, (de
Reb. Geticis, c. 45, p. 677,) and the Chronicles of Idatius, Prosper,
Marcellinus, and Theophanes, under the proper year.]

The deaths of Aetius and Valentinian had relaxed the ties which held
the Barbarians of Gaul in peace and subordination. The sea-coast was
infested by the Saxons; the Alemanni and the Franks advanced from the
Rhine to the Seine; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate
more extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus relieved
himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of these distant cares;
he silenced the solicitations of his friends, listened to the voice of
fame, and promoted a stranger to the general command of the forces of
Gaul.

Avitus, [12] 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 Aetius, after executing the most important embassies,
was raised to the station of Praetorian praefect of Gaul. Either the
merit of Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was desirous of
repose, since he calmly retired to an estate, which he possessed in the
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 meodows. [13] In this retreat, where Avitus amused
his leisure with books, rural sports, the practice of husbandry, and
the society of his friends, [14] he received the Imperial diploma, which
constituted him master-general of the cavalry and infantry of Gaul. He
assumed the military command; the Barbarians suspended their fury; and
whatever means he might employ, whatever concessions he might be forced
to make, the people enjoyed the benefits of actual tranquillity. But
the fate of Gaul depended on the Visigoths; and the Roman general, less
attentive to his dignity than to the public interest, did not disdain to
visit 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; [15] and the Visigoths were easily persuaded to support his
claim by their irresistible suffrage. They loved the person of Avitus;
they respected his virtues; and they were not insensible of the
advantage, as well as 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.

[Footnote 12: The private life and elevation of Avitus must be deduced,
with becoming suspicion, from the panegyric pronounced by Sidonius
Apollinaris, his subject, and his son-in-law.]

[Footnote 13: After the example of the younger Pliny, Sidonius (l. ii.
c. 2) has labored the florid, prolix, and obscure description of his
villa, which bore the name, (Avitacum,) and had been the property of
Avitus. The precise situation is not ascertained. Consult, however, the
notes of Savaron and Sirmond.]

[Footnote 14: Sidonius (l. ii. epist. 9) has described the country life
of the Gallic nobles, in a visit which he made to his friends, whose
estates were in the neighborhood of Nismes. The morning hours were spent
in the sphoeristerium, or tennis-court; or in the library, which was
furnished with Latin authors, profane and religious; the former for the
men, the latter for the ladies. The table was twice served, at dinner
and supper, with hot meat (boiled and roast) and wine. During the
intermediate time, the company slept, took the air on horseback, and
need the warm bath.]

[Footnote 15: Seventy lines of panegyric (505-575) which describe the
importunity of Theodoric and of Gaul, struggling to overcome the
modest reluctance of Avitus, are blown away by three words of an honest
historian. Romanum ambisset Imperium, (Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 1l, in
tom. ii. p. 168.)]

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. [16] Such a crime
might not be incompatible with the virtues of a Barbarian; but
the manners of Theodoric were gentle and humane; and posterity may
contemplate without terror the original picture of a Gothic king, whom
Sidonius had intimately observed, in the hours of peace and of social
intercourse. In an epistle, dated from the court of Thoulouse, the
orator satisfies the curiosity of one of his friends, in the following
description: [17] "By the majesty of his appearance, Theodoric would
command the respect of those who are ignorant of his merit; and although
he is born a prince, his merit would dignify a private station. He is
of a middle stature, his body appears rather plump than fat, and in his
well-proportioned limbs agility is united with muscular strength. [18]
If you examine his countenance, you will distinguish a high forehead,
large shaggy eyebrows, an aquiline nose, thin lips, a regular set of
white teeth, and a fair complexion, that blushes more frequently from
modesty than from anger. The ordinary distribution of his time, as
far as it is exposed to the public view, may be concisely represented.
Before daybreak, he repairs, with a small train, to his domestic chapel,
where the service is performed by the Arian clergy; but those who
presume to interpret his secret sentiments, consider this assiduous
devotion as the effect of habit and policy. The rest of the morning is
employed in the administration of his kingdom. His chair is surrounded
by some military officers of decent aspect and 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. [19] The gold or silver plate is less remarkable
for its weight than for the brightness and curious workmanship: the
taste is gratified without the help of foreign and costly luxury; the
size and number of the cups of wine are regulated with a strict regard
to the laws of temperance; and the respectful silence that prevails, is
interrupted only by grave and instructive conversation. After dinner,
Theodoric sometimes indulges himself in a short slumber; and as soon as
he wakes, he calls for the dice and tables, encourages his friends to
forget the royal majesty, and is delighted when they freely express the
passions which are excited by the incidents of play. At this game, which
he loves as the image of war, he alternately displays his eagerness, his
skill, his patience, and his cheerful temper. If he loses, he laughs;
he is modest and silent if he wins. Yet, notwithstanding this seeming
indifference, his courtiers choose to solicit any favor in the moments
of victory; and I myself, in my applications to the king, have derived
some benefit from my losses. [20] About the ninth hour (three o'clock)
the tide of business again returns, and flows incessantly till after
sunset, when the signal of the royal supper dismisses the weary crowd of
suppliants and pleaders. At the supper, a more familiar repast, buffoons
and pantomimes are sometimes introduced, to divert, not to offend, the
company, by their ridiculous wit: but female singers, and the soft,
effeminate modes of music, are severely banished, and such martial tunes
as animate the soul to deeds of 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."

[Footnote 16: Isidore, archbishop of Seville, who was himself of the
blood royal of the Goths, acknowledges, and almost justifies, (Hist.
Goth. p. 718,) the crime which their slave Jornandes had basely
dissembled, (c 43, p. 673.)]

[Footnote 17: This elaborate description (l. i. ep. ii. p. 2-7) was
dictated by some political motive. It was designed for the public eye,
and had been shown by the friends of Sidonius, before it was inserted in
the collection of his epistles. The first book was published separately.
See Tillemont, Memoires Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 264.]

[Footnote 18: I have suppressed, in this portrait of Theodoric, several
minute circumstances, and technical phrases, which could be tolerable,
or indeed intelligible, to those only who, like the contemporaries of
Sidonius, had frequented the markets where naked slaves were exposed to
male, (Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 404.)]

[Footnote 19: Videas ibi elegantiam Graecam, abundantiam Gallicanam;
celeritatem Italam; publicam pompam, privatam diligentiam, regiam
disciplinam.]

[Footnote 20: Tunc etiam ego aliquid obsecraturus feliciter vincor,
et mihi tabula perit ut causa salvetur. Sidonius of Auvergne was not
a subject of Theodoric; but he might be compelled to solicit either
justice or favor at the court of Thoulouse.]

When the king of the Visigoths encouraged Avitus to assume the purple,
he offered his person and his forces, as a faithful soldier of the
republic. [21] The exploits of Theodoric soon convinced the world that
he had not degenerated from the warlike virtues of his ancestors. After
the establishment of the Goths in Aquitain, and the passage of the
Vandals into Africa, the Suevi, who had fixed their kingdom in Gallicia,
aspired to the conquest of Spain, and threatened to extinguish the
feeble remains of the Roman dominion. The provincials of Carthagena and
Tarragona, afflicted by 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. [22] His entrance was not polluted with blood; and the Goths
respected the chastity of their female captives, more especially of the
consecrated virgins: but the greatest part of the clergy and people were
made slaves, and even the churches and altars were confounded in the
universal pillage. The unfortunate king of the Suevi had escaped to one
of the ports of the ocean; but the obstinacy of the winds opposed his
flight: he was delivered to his implacable rival; and Rechiarius, who
neither desired nor expected mercy, received, with manly constancy,
the death which he would probably have inflicted. After this bloody
sacrifice to policy or resentment, Theodoric carried his victorious arms
as far as Merida, the principal town of Lusitania, without meeting any
resistance, except from the miraculous powers of St. Eulalia; but he was
stopped in the full career of success, and recalled from Spain before he
could provide for the security of his conquests. In his retreat towards
the Pyrenees, he revenged his disappointment on the country through
which he passed; and, in the sack of 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. [23]

[Footnote 21: Theodoric himself had given a solemn and voluntary promise
of fidelity, which was understood both in Gaul and Spain.

     Romae sum, te duce, Amicus,
     Principe te, Miles.
     Sidon. Panegyr. Avit. 511.]

[Footnote 22: Quaeque sinu pelagi jactat se Bracara dives. Auson. de
Claris Urbibus, p. 245. ----From the design of the king of the Suevi,
it is evident that the navigation from the ports of Gallicia to the
Mediterranean was known and practised. The ships of Bracara, or Braga,
cautiously steered along the coast, without daring to lose themselves in
the Atlantic.]

[Footnote 23: This Suevic war is the most authentic part of the
Chronicle of Idatius, who, as bishop of Iria Flavia, was himself a
spectator and a sufferer. Jornandes (c. 44, p. 675, 676, 677) has
expatiated, with pleasure, on the Gothic victory.]




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, [24] seems to contain a very moderate proportion, either
of genius or of truth. The poet, if we may degrade that sacred name,
exaggerates the merit of a sovereign and a father; and his prophecy of a
long and glorious reign was soon contradicted by the event. Avitus, at a
time when the Imperial dignity was reduced to a 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. [25] But the Romans were not inclined either
to excuse his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several parts
of the empire became every day more alienated from each other; and the
stranger of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and contempt. The
senate asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor;
and their authority, which had been originally derived from the old
constitution, was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining
monarchy. Yet even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an
unarmed senate, if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps
inflamed, by 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; [26]
his pride or patriotism might be exasperated by the misfortunes of
his countrymen; and he obeyed, with reluctance, an emperor in whose
elevation he had not been consulted. His faithful and important services
against the common enemy rendered him still more formidable; [27] and,
after destroying on the coast of Corsica a fleet of Vandals, which
consisted of sixty galleys, Ricimer returned in triumph with the
appellation of the Deliverer of Italy. He chose that moment to signify
to Avitus, that his reign was at an end; and the feeble emperor, at
a distance from his Gothic allies, was compelled, after a short and
unavailing struggle to abdicate the purple. By the clemency, however,
or the contempt, of Ricimer, [28] he was permitted to descend from the
throne to the more desirable station of bishop of Placentia: but the
resentment of the senate was still unsatisfied; and their inflexible
severity pronounced the sentence of his death He fled towards the Alps,
with the humble hope, not of arming the Visigoths in his cause, but of
securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of Julian, one of
the tutelar saints of Auvergne. [29] Disease, or the hand of the
executioner, arrested him on the road; yet his remains were decently
transported to Brivas, or Brioude, in his native province, and he
reposed at the feet of his holy patron. [30] Avitus left only one
daughter, the wife of Sidonius Apollinaris, who inherited the patrimony
of his father-in-law; lamenting, at the same time, the disappointment
of his public and private expectations. His resentment prompted him to
join, or at least to countenance, the measures of a rebellious faction
in Gaul; and the poet had contracted some guilt, which it was incumbent
on him to expiate, by a new tribute of flattery to the succeeding
emperor. [31]

[Footnote 24: In one of the porticos or galleries belonging to Trajan's
library, among the statues of famous writers and orators. Sidon. Apoll.
l. ix. epist, 16, p. 284. Carm. viii. p. 350.]

[Footnote 25: Luxuriose agere volens a senatoribus projectus est, is the
concise expression of Gregory of Tours, (l. ii. c. xi. in tom. ii. p.
168.) An old Chronicle (in tom. ii. p. 649) mentions an indecent jest of
Avitus, which seems more applicable to Rome than to Treves.]

[Footnote 26: Sidonius (Panegyr. Anthem. 302, &c.) praises the royal
birth of Ricimer, the lawful heir, as he chooses to insinuate, both of
the Gothic and Suevic kingdoms.]

[Footnote 27: See the Chronicle of Idatius. Jornandes (c. xliv. p. 676)
styles him, with some truth, virum egregium, et pene tune in Italia ad
ex ercitum singularem.]

[Footnote 28: Parcens innocentiae Aviti, is the compassionate, but
contemptuous, language of Victor Tunnunensis, (in Chron. apud Scaliger
Euseb.) In another place, he calls him, vir totius simplicitatis. This
commendation is more humble, but it is more solid and sincere, than the
praises of Sidonius]

[Footnote 29: He suffered, as it is supposed, in the persecution of
Diocletian, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. v. p. 279, 696.) Gregory of
Tours, his peculiar votary, has dedicated to the glory of Julian the
Martyr an entire book, (de Gloria Martyrum, l. ii. in Max. Bibliot.
Patrum, tom. xi. p. 861-871,) in which he relates about fifty foolish
miracles performed by his relics.]

[Footnote 30: Gregory of Tours (l. ii. c. xi. p. 168) is concise, but
correct, in the reign of his countryman. The words of Idatius, "cadet
imperio, caret et vita," seem to imply, that the death of Avitus was
violent; but it must have been secret, since Evagrius (l. ii. c. 7)
could suppose, that he died of the plaque.]

[Footnote 31: After a modest appeal to the examples of his brethren,
Virgil and Horace, Sidonius honestly confesses the debt, and promises
payment.

     Sic mihi diverso nuper sub Marte cadenti
     Jussisti placido Victor ut essem animo.
     Serviat ergo tibi servati lingua poetae,
     Atque meae vitae laus tua sit pretium.
     --Sidon. Apoll. Carm. iv. p. 308

See Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 448, &c.]

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, all
his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans." [32] Such a testimony
may justify at least the panegyric of S donius; and we may acquiesce
in the assurance, that, although the obsequious orator would have
flattered, with equal zeal, the most worthless of princes, the
extraordinary merit of his object confined him, on this occasion, within
the bounds of truth. [33] Majorian derived his name from his maternal
grandfather, who, in the reign of the great Theodosius, had commanded
the troops of the Illyrian frontier. He gave his daughter in marriage
to the father of Majorian, a respectable officer, who administered the
revenues of Gaul with skill and integrity; and generously preferred the
friendship of Aetius to the tempting 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
Aetius, contributed to his success, shared, and sometimes eclipsed, his
glory, and at last excited the jealousy of the patrician, or rather
of his wife, who forced him to retire from the service. [34] Majorian,
after the death of Aetius, was recalled and promoted; and his intimate
connection with Count Ricimer was the immediate step by which he
ascended the throne of the Western empire. During the vacancy that
succeeded the abdication of Avitus, the ambitious Barbarian, whose birth
excluded him from the Imperial dignity, governed Italy with the title
of Patrician; resigned to his friend the conspicuous station of
master-general of the cavalry and infantry; and, after an interval of
some months, consented to the unanimous wish of the Romans, whose favor
Majorian had solicited by a recent victory over the Alemanni. [35]
He was invested with the purple at Ravenna: and the epistle which
he addressed to the senate, will best describe his situation and his
sentiments. "Your election, Conscript Fathers! and the ordinance of the
most valiant army, have made me your emperor. [36] May the propitious
Deity direct and prosper the counsels and events of my administration,
to your advantage and to the public welfare! For my own part, I did
not aspire, I have submitted to reign; nor should I have discharged
the obligations of a citizen if I had refused, with base and selfish
ingratitude, to support the weight of those 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,
[37] which, as a subject, I have always condemned, and, as a prince,
will severely punish. Our own vigilance, and that of our father, the
patrician Ricimer, shall regulate all military affairs, and provide
for the safety of the Roman world, which we have saved from foreign and
domestic enemies. [38] You now understand the maxims of my government;
you may confide in the faithful love and sincere assurances of a prince
who has formerly been the companion of your life and dangers; who still
glories in the name of senator, and who is anxious that you should
never repent 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. [39]

[Footnote 32: The words of Procopius deserve to be transcribed (de Bell.
Vandal. l. i. c. 7, p. 194;) a concise but comprehensive definition of
royal virtue.]

[Footnote 33: The Panegyric was pronounced at Lyons before the end of
the year 458, while the emperor was still consul. It has more art than
genius, and more labor than art. The ornaments are false and trivial;
the expression is feeble and prolix; and Sidonius wants the skill to
exhibit the principal figure in a strong and distinct light. The private
life of Majorian occupies about two hundred lines, 107-305.]

[Footnote 34: She pressed his immediate death, and was scarcely
satisfied with his disgrace. It should seem that Aetius, like Belisarius
and Marlborough, was governed by his wife; whose fervent piety, though
it might work miracles, (Gregor. Turon. l. ii. c. 7, p. 162,) was not
incompatible with base and sanguinary counsels.]

[Footnote 35: The Alemanni had passed the Rhaetian Alps, and were
defeated in the Campi Canini, or Valley of Bellinzone, through which
the Tesin flows, in its descent from Mount Adula to the Lago Maggiore,
(Cluver Italia Antiq. tom. i. p. 100, 101.) This boasted victory over
nine hundred Barbarians (Panegyr. Majorian. 373, &c.) betrays the
extreme weakness of Italy.]

[Footnote 36: Imperatorem me factum, P.C. electionis vestrae arbitrio,
et fortissimi exercitus ordinatione agnoscite, (Novell. Majorian. tit.
iii. p. 34, ad Calcem. Cod. Theodos.) Sidonius proclaims the unanimous
voice of the empire:--

     Postquam ordine vobis
     Ordo omnis regnum dederat; plebs, curia, nules,
    ---Et collega simul. 386.

This language is ancient and constitutional; and we may observe, that
the clergy were not yet considered as a distinct order of the state.]

[Footnote 37: Either dilationes, or delationes would afford a tolerable
reading, but there is much more sense and spirit in the latter, to which
I have therefore given the preference.]

[Footnote 38: Ab externo hoste et a domestica clade liberavimus: by the
latter, Majorian must understand the tyranny of Avitus; whose death he
consequently avowed as a meritorious act. On this occasion, Sidonius
is fearful and obscure; he describes the twelve Caesars, the nations of
Africa, &c., that he may escape the dangerous name of Avitus (805-369.)]

[Footnote 39: See the whole edict or epistle of Majorian to the senate,
(Novell. tit. iv. p. 34.) Yet the expression, regnum nostrum, bears
some taint of the age, and does not mix kindly with the word respublica,
which he frequently repeats.]

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. [40] His regulations concerning the finances
manifestly tended to remove, or at least to mitigate, the most
intolerable grievances. I. From the first hour of his reign, he was
solicitous (I translate his own words) to relieve the weary fortunes of
the provincials, oppressed by the accumulated weight of indictions and
superindictions. [41] With this view he granted 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
Praetorian praefects. 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. [42]
III. "The municipal corporations, (says the emperor,) the lesser
senates, (so antiquity has justly styled them,) deserve to be considered
as the heart of the cities, and the sinews of the republic. And yet
so low are they now reduced, by the injustice of magistrates and the
venality of collectors, that many of their members, renouncing their
dignity and their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure
exile." He urges, and even compels, their return to their respective
cities; but he removes the grievance which had forced them to desert
the exercise of their municipal functions. They are directed, under
the authority of the provincial magistrates, to resume their office
of levying the tribute; but, instead of being made responsible for the
whole sum assessed on their district, they are only required to produce
a regular account of the payments which they have actually received, and
of the defaulters who are still indebted to the public. IV. But Majorian
was not ignorant that these corporate bodies were too much inclined to
retaliate the injustice and oppression which they had suffered; and
he therefore revives the useful office of the defenders of cities. He
exhorts the people to elect, in a full and free assembly, some man of
discretion and integrity, who would dare to assert their privileges, to
represent their grievances, to protect the poor from the tyranny of the
rich, and to inform the emperor of the abuses that were committed under
the sanction of his name and authority.

[Footnote 40: See the laws of Majorian (they are only nine in number,
but very long, and various) at the end of the Theodosian Code, Novell.
l. iv. p. 32-37. Godefroy has not given any commentary on these
additional pieces.]

[Footnote 41: Fessas provincialium varia atque multiplici tributorum
exactione fortunas, et extraordinariis fiscalium solutionum oneribus
attritas, &c. Novell. Majorian. tit. iv. p. 34.]

[Footnote 42: The learned Greaves (vol. i. p. 329, 330, 331) has found,
by a diligent inquiry, that aurei of the Antonines weighed one hundred
and eighteen, and those of the fifth century only sixty-eight, English
grains. Majorian gives currency to all gold coin, excepting only the
Gallic solidus, from its deficiency, not in the weight, but in the
standard.] 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. [43] 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. [44]

[Footnote 43: The whole edict (Novell. Majorian. tit. vi. p. 35) is
curious. "Antiquarum aedium dissipatur speciosa constructio; et ut
aliquid reparetur, magna diruuntur. Hinc jam occasio nascitur, ut etiam
unusquisque privatum aedificium construens, per gratiam judicum.....
praesumere de publicis locis necessaria, et transferre non dubitet"
&c. With equal zeal, but with less power, Petrarch, in the fourteenth
century, repeated the same complaints. (Vie de Petrarque, tom. i. p.
326, 327.) If I prosecute this history, I shall not be unmindful of the
decline and fall of the city of Rome; an interesting object to which any
plan was originally confined.]

[Footnote 44: The emperor chides the lenity of Rogatian, consular of
Tuscany in a style of acrimonious reproof, which sounds almost like
personal resentment, (Novell. tit. ix. p. 47.) The law of Majorian,
which punished obstinate widows, was soon afterwards repealed by his
successor Severus, (Novell. Sever. tit. i. p. 37.)]

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. [45] Such vigilance might announce
the character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance, and the
most numerous forces, were insufficient to protect the long-extended
coast of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion
had imposed a nobler and more arduous task on the genius of Majorian.
Rome expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design,
which he formed, of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements, was
the result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could
have infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy; if he could have
revived in the field of Mars, the manly exercises in which he had always
surpassed his equals; he might have marched against Genseric at the
head of a Roman army. Such a reformation of national manners might be
embraced by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune of those
princes who laboriously sustain a declining monarchy, that, to obtain
some immediate advantage, or to avert some impending danger, they are
forced to countenance, and even to multiply, the most pernicious abuses.
Majorian, like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the
disgraceful expedient of substituting Barbarian auxiliaries in the place
of his unwarlike subjects: and his superior abilities could only be
displayed in the 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 Gepidae, the Ostrogoths, the Rugians,
the Burgundians, the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the plains of
Liguria; and their formidable strength was balanced by their mutual
animosities. [46] They passed the Alps in a severe winter. The emperor
led the way, on foot, and in complete 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;
[47] and the independent Bagaudae, who had escaped, or resisted, the
oppression, of former reigns, were disposed to confide in the virtues
of Majorian. His camp was filled with Barbarian allies; his throne was
supported by the zeal of an affectionate people; but the emperor had
foreseen, that it was impossible, without a maritime power, to achieve
the conquest of Africa. In the first Punic war, the republic had exerted
such incredible diligence, that, within sixty days after the first
stroke of the axe had been given in the forest, a fleet of one hundred
and sixty galleys proudly rode at anchor in the sea. [48] Under
circumstances much less 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.
[49] The intrepid countenance of Majorian animated his troops with a
confidence of victory; and, if we might credit the historian Procopius,
his courage sometimes hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious
to explore, with his own eyes, the state of the Vandals, he ventured,
after disguising the 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. [50]

[Footnote 45: Sidon. Panegyr. Majorian, 385-440.]

[Footnote 46: The review of the army, and passage of the Alps, contain
the most tolerable passages of the Panegyric, (470-552.) M. de Buat
(Hist. des Peuples, &c., tom. viii. p. 49-55) is a more satisfactory
commentator, than either Savaron or Sirmond.]

[Footnote 47: It is the just and forcible distinction of Priscus,
(Excerpt. Legat. p. 42,) in a short fragment, which throws much light
on the history of Majorian. Jornandes has suppressed the defeat and
alliance of the Visigoths, which were solemnly proclaimed in Gallicia;
and are marked in the Chronicle of Idatius.]

[Footnote 48: Florus, l. ii. c. 2. He amuses himself with the poetical
fancy, that the trees had been transformed into ships; and indeed the
whole transaction, as it is related in the first book of Polybius,
deviates too much from the probable course of human events.]

[Footnote 49:

     Iterea duplici texis dum littore classem
     Inferno superoque mari, cadit omnis in aequor
     Sylva tibi, &c.
    ---Sidon. Panegyr. Majorian, 441-461.

The number of ships, which Priscus fixed at 300, is magnified, by
an indefinite comparison with the fleets of Agamemnon, Xerxes, and
Augustus.]

[Footnote 50: Procopius de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 8, p. 194. When
Genseric conducted his unknown guest into the arsenal of Carthage, the
arms clashed of their own accord. Majorian had tinged his yellow locks
with a black color.]




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; [51] he
suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an
Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure, which he executed, of reducing
Mauritania into a desert, [52] could not defeat the operations of the
Roman emperor, who was at liberty to land his troops on any part of the
African coast. But Genseric was saved from impending and inevitable ruin
by the treachery of some powerful subjects, envious, or apprehensive,
of their master's success. Guided by their secret intelligence, he
surprised the unguarded fleet in the Bay of Carthagena: many of the
ships were sunk, or taken, or burnt; and the preparations of three years
were destroyed in a single day. [53] After this event, the 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; [54] and the humble tomb, which
covered his remains, was consecrated by the respect and gratitude of
succeeding generations. [55] The private character of Majorian inspired
love and respect. Malicious calumny and satire excited his indignation,
or, if he himself were the object, his contempt; but he protected the
freedom of wit, and, in the hours which the emperor gave to the familiar
society of his friends, he could indulge his taste for pleasantry,
without degrading the majesty of his rank. [56]

[Footnote 51:

     Spoliisque potitus
     Immensis, robux luxu jam perdidit omne,
     Quo valuit dum pauper erat.
     --Panegyr. Majorian, 330.

He afterwards applies to Genseric, unjustly, as it should seem, the
vices of his subjects.]

[Footnote 52: He burnt the villages, and poisoned the springs, (Priscus,
p. 42.) Dubos (Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 475) observes, that the
magazines which the Moors buried in the earth might escape his
destructive search. Two or three hundred pits are sometimes dug in the
same place; and each pit contains at least four hundred bushels of corn
Shaw's Travels, p. 139.]

[Footnote 53: Idatius, who was safe in Gallicia from the power of
Recimer boldly and honestly declares, Vandali per proditeres admoniti,
&c: i. e. dissembles, however, the name of the traitor.]

[Footnote 54: Procop. de Bell. Vandal. l. i. i. c. 8, p. 194. The
testimony of Idatius is fair and impartial: "Majorianum de Galliis Romam
redeuntem, et Romano imperio vel nomini res necessarias ordinantem;
Richimer livore percitus, et invidorum consilio fultus, fraude
interficit circumventum." Some read Suevorum, and I am unwilling to
efface either of the words, as they express the different accomplices
who united in the conspiracy against Majorian.]

[Footnote 55: See the Epigrams of Ennodius, No. cxxxv. inter Sirmond.
Opera, tom. i. p. 1903. It is flat and obscure; but Ennodius was made
bishop of Pavia fifty years after the death of Majorian, and his praise
deserves credit and regard.]

[Footnote 56: Sidonius gives a tedious account (l. i. epist. xi. p.
25-31) of a supper at Arles, to which he was invited by Majorian, a
short time before his death. He had no intention of praising a deceased
emperor: but a casual disinterested remark, "Subrisit Augustus; ut erat,
auctoritate servata, cum se communioni dedisset, joci plenus," outweighs
the six hundred lines of his venal panegyric.]

It was not, perhaps, without some regret, that Ricimer sacrificed his
friend to the interest of his ambition: but he resolved, in a second
choice, to avoid the imprudent preference of superior virtue and merit.
At his command, the obsequious senate of Rome bestowed the Imperial
title on Libius Severus, who ascended the throne of the West without
emerging from the obscurity of a private condition. History has scarcely
deigned to notice his birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.
Severus expired, as soon as his life became inconvenient to his patron;
[57] and it would be useless to discriminate his nominal reign in the
vacant interval of six years, between the death of Majorian and the
elevation of Anthemius. During that period, the government was in the
hands of Ricimer alone; and, although the modest Barbarian disclaimed
the name of king, he accumulated treasures, formed a separate army,
negotiated private alliances, and ruled Italy with the same independent
and despotic authority, which was afterwards exercised by Odoacer and
Theodoric. But his dominions were bounded by the Alps; and two Roman
generals, Marcellinus and Aegidius, maintained their allegiance to the
republic, by rejecting, with disdain, the phantom which he styled an
emperor. Marcellinus still adhered to the old religion; and the devout
Pagans, who secretly disobeyed the laws of the church and state,
applauded his profound skill in the science of divination. But he
possessed the more valuable qualifications of learning, virtue, and
courage; [58] the study of the Latin literature had improved his
taste; and his military talents had recommended him to the esteem and
confidence of the great Aetius, in whose ruin he was involved. By a
timely flight, Marcellinus escaped the rage of Valentinian, and boldly
asserted his liberty amidst the convulsions of the Western empire. His
voluntary, or reluctant, submission to the authority of Majorian,
was rewarded by the government of Sicily, and the command of an army,
stationed in that island to oppose, or to attack, the Vandals; but his
Barbarian mercenaries, after the emperor's death, were tempted to revolt
by the artful liberality of Ricimer. At the head of a band of faithful
followers, the intrepid Marcellinus occupied the province of Dalmatia,
assumed the title of patrician of the West, secured the love of his
subjects by a mild and equitable reign, built a fleet which claimed the
dominion of the Adriatic, and alternately alarmed the coasts of Italy
and of Africa. [59] Aegidius, the master-general of Gaul, who equalled,
or at least who imitated, the heroes of ancient Rome, [60] proclaimed
his immortal resentment against the assassins of his beloved master. A
brave and numerous army was attached to his standard: and, though he was
prevented by the arts of Ricimer, and the arms of the Visigoths, from
marching to the gates of Rome, he maintained his independent sovereignty
beyond the Alps, and rendered the name of Aegidius, respectable both
in peace and war. The Franks, who had punished with exile the youthful
follies of Childeric, elected the Roman general for their king: his
vanity, rather than his ambition, was gratified by that singular 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
Aegidius ended only with his life, and the suspicions of poison and
secret violence, which derived some countenance from the character of
Ricimer, were eagerly entertained by the passionate credulity of the
Gauls. [61]

[Footnote 57: Sidonius (Panegyr. Anthem. 317) dismisses him to
heaven:--Auxerat Augustus naturae lege Severus--Divorum numerum. And an
old list of the emperors, composed about the time of Justinian, praises
his piety, and fixes his residence at Rome, (Sirmond. Not. ad Sidon. p.
111, 112.)]

[Footnote 58: Tillemont, who is always scandalized by the virtues of
infidels, attributes this advantageous portrait of Marcellinus (which
Suidas has preserved) to the partial zeal of some Pagan historian,
(Hist. des Empereurs. tom. vi. p. 330.)]

[Footnote 59: Procopius de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 6, p. 191. In various
circumstances of the life of Marcellinus, it is not easy to reconcile
the Greek historian with the Latin Chronicles of the times.]

[Footnote 60: I must apply to Aegidius the praises which Sidonius
(Panegyr Majorian, 553) bestows on a nameless master-general, who
commanded the rear-guard of Majorian. Idatius, from public report,
commends his Christian piety; and Priscus mentions (p. 42) his military
virtues.]

[Footnote 61: Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 12, in tom. ii. p. 168. The Pere
Daniel, whose ideas were superficial and modern, has started some
objections against the story of Childeric, (Hist. de France, tom.
i. Preface Historique, p. lxxvii., &c.:) but they have been fairly
satisfied by Dubos, (Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 460-510,) and by two
authors who disputed the prize of the Academy of Soissons, (p. 131-177,
310-339.) With regard to the term of Childeric's exile, it is necessary
either to prolong the life of Aegidius beyond the date assigned by
the Chronicle of Idatius or to correct the text of Gregory, by reading
quarto anno, instead of octavo.]

The kingdom of Italy, a name to which the Western empire was gradually
reduced, was afflicted, under the reign of Ricimer, by the incessant
depredations of the Vandal pirates. [62] In the spring of each year,
they equipped a formidable navy in the port of Carthage; and Genseric
himself, though in a very advanced age, still commanded in person the
most important expeditions. His designs were concealed with impenetrable
secrecy, till the moment that he hoisted sail. When he was asked, by
his pilot, what course he should steer, "Leave the determination to
the winds, (replied the Barbarian, with pious arrogance;) they will
transport us to the guilty coast, whose inhabitants have provoked the
divine justice;" but if Genseric himself deigned to issue more precise
orders, he judged the most wealthy to be the most criminal. The Vandals
repeatedly visited the coasts of Spain, Liguria, Tuscany, Campania,
Lucania, Bruttium, Apulia, Calabria, Venetia, Dalmatia, Epirus, Greece,
and Sicily: they were tempted to subdue the Island of Sardinia, so
advantageously placed in the centre of the Mediterranean; and their arms
spread desolation, or terror, from the columns of Hercules to the mouth
of the Nile. As they were more ambitious of spoil than of glory, they
seldom attacked any fortified cities, or engaged any regular troops in
the open field. But the celerity of their motions enabled them, almost
at the same time, to threaten and to attack the most distant objects,
which attracted their desires; and as they always embarked a sufficient
number of horses, they had no sooner landed, than they swept the
dismayed country with a body of light cavalry. Yet, notwithstanding the
example of their king, the native Vandals and Alani insensibly declined
this toilsome and perilous warfare; the hardy generation of the first
conquerors was almost extinguished, and their sons, who were born in
Africa, enjoyed the delicious baths and gardens which had been acquired
by the 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.

[Footnote 62: The naval war of Genseric is described by Priscus,
(Excerpta Legation. p. 42,) Procopius, (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 5, p.
189, 190, and c. 22, p. 228,) Victor Vitensis, (de Persecut. Vandal. l.
i. c. 17, and Ruinart, p. 467-481,) and in three panegyrics of Sidonius,
whose chronological order is absurdly transposed in the editions both
of Savaron and Sirmond. (Avit. Carm. vii. 441-451. Majorian. Carm. v.
327-350, 385-440. Anthem. Carm. ii. 348-386) In one passage the poet
seems inspired by his subject, and expresses a strong idea by a lively
image:--

     Hinc Vandalus hostis
     Urget; et in nostrum numerosa classe quotannis
     Militat excidium; conversoque ordine Fati
     Torrida Caucaseos infert mihi Byrsa furoree]

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. [63] It is not the purpose of the present
chapter, or even of the present volume, to continue the distinct series
of the Byzantine history; but a concise view of the reign and character
of the emperor Leo, may explain the last efforts that were attempted to
save the falling empire of the West. [64]

[Footnote 63: The poet himself is compelled to acknowledge the distress
of Ricimer:--

     Praeterea invictus Ricimer, quem publica fata
     Respiciunt, proprio solas vix Marte repellit
     Piratam per rura vagum.

Italy addresses her complaint to the Tyber, and Rome, at the
solicitation of the river god, transports herself to Constantinople,
renounces her ancient claims, and implores the friendship of Aurora,
the goddess of the East. This fabulous machinery, which the genius of
Claudian had used and abused, is the constant and miserable resource of
the muse of Sidonius.]

[Footnote 64: The original authors of the reigns of Marcian, Leo, and
Zeno, are reduced to some imperfect fragments, whose deficiencies must
be supplied from the more recent compilations of Theophanes, Zonaras,
and Cedrenus.]

Since the death of the younger Theodosius, the domestic
repose of Constantinople had never been interrupted by war or faction.
Pulcheria had bestowed her hand, and the sceptre of the East, on the
modest virtue of Marcian: he gratefully reverenced her august rank and
virgin chastity; and, after her death, he gave his people the example of
the religious worship that was due to the memory of the Imperial saint.
[65] Attentive to the prosperity of his own dominions, Marcian seemed
to behold, with indifference, the misfortunes of Rome; and the obstinate
refusal of a brave and active prince, to draw his sword against the
Vandals, was ascribed to a secret promise, which had formerly been
exacted from him when he was a captive in the power of Genseric. [66]
The death of Marcian, after a reign of seven years, would have exposed
the East to the danger of a popular election; if the superior weight of
a single family had not been able to incline the balance in 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. [67] During three generations, the armies of the East
were successively commanded by his father, by himself, and by his son
Ardaburius; his Barbarian guards formed a military force that overawed
the palace and the capital; and the liberal distribution of his immense
treasures rendered Aspar as popular as he was powerful. He recommended
the obscure name of Leo of Thrace, a military tribune, and the principal
steward of his household. His nomination was unanimously ratified by the
senate; and the servant of Aspar received the Imperial crown from the
hands of the patriarch or bishop, who was permitted to express, by this
unusual ceremony, the suffrage of the Deity. [68] This emperor, the
first of the name of Leo, has been distinguished by the title of the
Great; from a succession of princes, who gradually fixed in the opinion
of the Greeks a very humble standard of heroic, or at least of royal,
perfection. Yet the temperate firmness with which Leo resisted the
oppression of his benefactor, showed that he was conscious of his duty
and of his prerogative. Aspar was astonished to find that his influence
could no longer appoint a praefect of Constantinople: he presumed to
reproach his sovereign with a breach of promise, and insolently shaking
his purple, "It is not proper, (said he,) that the man who is invested
with this garment, should be guilty of lying." "Nor is it proper,
(replied Leo,) that a prince should be compelled to resign his own
judgment, and the public interest, to the will of a subject."[69] After
this extraordinary scene, it was impossible that the reconciliation of
the emperor and the patrician could be sincere; or, at least, that it
could be solid and permanent. An army of Isaurians [70] was secretly
levied, and introduced into Constantinople; and while Leo undermined the
authority, and prepared the disgrace, of the family of Aspar, his
mild and cautious 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.

[Footnote 65: St. Pulcheria died A.D. 453, four years before her nominal
husband; and her festival is celebrated on the 10th of September by
the modern Greeks: she bequeathed an immense patrimony to pious, or, at
least, to ecclesiastical, uses. See Tillemont, Memoires Eccles. tom. xv
p. 181-184.]

[Footnote 66: See Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 4, p. 185.]

[Footnote 67: From this disability of Aspar to ascend the throne, it may
be inferred that the stain of Heresy was perpetual and indelible, while
that of Barbarism disappeared in the second generation.]

[Footnote 68: Theophanes, p. 95. This appears to be the first origin
of a ceremony, which all the Christian princes of the world have since
adopted and from which the clergy have deduced the most formidable
consequences.]

[Footnote 69: Cedrenus, (p. 345, 346,) who was conversant with the
writers of better days, has preserved the remarkable words of Aspar.]

[Footnote 70: The power of the Isaurians agitated the Eastern empire in
the two succeeding reigns of Zeno and Anastasius; but it ended in
the destruction of those Barbarians, who maintained their fierce
independences about two hundred and thirty years.]

The virtues of Anthemius have perhaps been magnified, since the Imperial
descent, which he could only deduce from the usurper Procopius, has been
swelled into a line of emperors. [71] But the merit of his immediate
parents, their 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 praefect, who protected, with so much ability and success,
the infant reign of Theodosius. The grandson of the praefect was raised
above the condition of a private subject, by his marriage with Euphemia,
the daughter of the emperor Marcian. This splendid alliance, which might
supersede the necessity of merit, hastened the promotion of Anthemius to
the successive dignities of count, of master-general, of consul, and
of patrician; and his merit or fortune claimed the 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. [72] The emperor of the West marched from
Constantinople, attended by several counts of high distinction, and a
body of guards almost equal to the strength and numbers of a regular
army: he entered Rome in triumph, and the choice of Leo was confirmed
by the senate, the people, and the Barbarian confederates of Italy. [73]
The solemn inauguration of Anthemius was followed by the nuptials of
his daughter and the patrician Ricimer; a fortunate event, which was
considered as the firmest security of the union and happiness of the
state. The wealth of two empires was ostentatiously displayed; and many
senators completed their ruin, by an expensive effort to disguise their
poverty. All serious business was suspended during this festival; the
courts of justice were shut; the streets of Rome, the theatres, the
places of public and private resort, resounded with 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.
[74] The calends of January were now approaching, and the venal poet,
who had loved Avitus, and esteemed Majorian, was persuaded by his
friends to celebrate, in heroic verse, the merit, the felicity, the
second consulship, and the future triumphs, of the emperor Anthemius.
Sidonius pronounced, with assurance and success, a panegyric which is
still extant; and whatever might be the imperfections, either of the
subject or of the composition, the welcome flatterer was immediately
rewarded with the praefecture of Rome; a dignity which placed him among
the illustrious personages of the empire, till he wisely preferred the
more respectable character of a bishop and a saint. [75]

[Footnote 71:

     Tali tu civis ab urbe
     Procopio genitore micas; cui prisca propago
     Augustis venit a proavis.

The poet (Sidon. Panegyr. Anthem. 67-306) then proceeds to relate the
private life and fortunes of the future emperor, with which he must have
been imperfectly acquainted.]

[Footnote 72: Sidonius discovers, with tolerable ingenuity, that this
disappointment added new lustre to the virtues of Anthemius, (210, &c.,)
who declined one sceptre, and reluctantly accepted another, (22, &c.)]

[Footnote 73: The poet again celebrates the unanimity of all orders of
the state, (15-22;) and the Chronicle of Idatius mentions the forces
which attended his march.]

[Footnote 74: Interveni autem nuptiis Patricii Ricimeris, cui filia
perennis Augusti in spem publicae securitatis copulabator. The journey
of Sidonius from Lyons, and the festival of Rome, are described with
some spirit. L. i. epist. 5, p. 9-13, epist. 9, p. 21.]

[Footnote 75: Sidonius (l. i. epist. 9, p. 23, 24) very fairly states
his motive, his labor, and his reward. "Hic ipse Panegyricus, si non
judicium, certa eventum, boni operis, accepit." He was made bishop of
Clermont, A.D. 471. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 750.]

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. [76]
Yet some suspicious appearances are found to sully the theological fame
of Anthemius. From the conversation of Philotheus, a Macedonian sectary,
he had imbibed the spirit of religious toleration; and the Heretics
of Rome would have assembled with impunity, if the bold and vehement
censure which Pope Hilary pronounced in the church of St. Peter, had not
obliged him to abjure the unpopular indulgence. [77] Even the Pagans,
a feeble and obscure remnant, conceived some vain hopes, from the
indifference, or partiality, of Anthemius; and his singular friendship
for the philosopher Severus, whom he promoted to the consulship, was
ascribed to a secret project, of reviving the ancient worship of the
gods. [78] These idols were crumbled into dust: and the mythology which
had once been the creed of nations, was so universally disbelieved, that
it might be employed without scandal, or at least without suspicion,
by Christian poets. [79] Yet the vestiges of superstition were not
absolutely obliterated, and the festival of the Lupercalia, whose origin
had preceded the foundation of Rome, was still celebrated under the
reign of Anthemius. The savage and simple rites were expressive of an
early state of society before the invention of arts and agriculture. The
rustic deities who presided over the toils and pleasures of the pastoral
life, Pan, Faunus, and their train of satyrs, were such as the fancy of
shepherds might create, sportive, petulant, and lascivious; whose power
was limited, and whose malice was inoffensive. A goat was the offering
the best adapted to their character and attributes; the flesh of the
victim was roasted on willow spits; and the riotous youths, who crowded
to the feast, ran naked about the fields, with leather thongs in their
hands, communicating, as it was supposed, the blessing of fecundity to
the women whom they touched. [80] The altar of Pan was erected, perhaps
by Evander the Arcadian, in a dark recess in the side of the 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. [81] After the conversion of the Imperial city,
the Christians still continued, in the month of February, the annual
celebration of the Lupercalia; to which they ascribed a secret and
mysterious influence on the genial powers of the animal and vegetable
world.

The bishops of Rome were solicitous to abolish a profane custom,
so repugnant to the spirit of Christianity; but their zeal was not
supported by the authority of the civil magistrate: the inveterate abuse
subsisted till the end of the fifth century, and Pope Gelasius, who
purified the capital from the last stain of idolatry, appeased by a
formal apology, the murmurs of the senate and people. [82]

[Footnote 76: The palace of Anthemius stood on the banks of the
Propontis. In the ninth century, Alexius, the son-in-law of the emperor
Theophilus, obtained permission to purchase the ground; and ended his
days in a monastery which he founded on that delightful spot. Ducange
Constantinopolis Christiana, p. 117, 152.]

[Footnote 77: Papa Hilarius... apud beatum Petrum Apostolum, palam ne
id fieret, clara voce constrinxit, in tantum ut non ea facienda cum
interpositione juramenti idem promitteret Imperator. Gelasius Epistol ad
Andronicum, apud Baron. A.D. 467, No. 3. The cardinal observes, with
some complacency, that it was much easier to plant heresies at
Constantinople, than at Rome.]

[Footnote 78: Damascius, in the life of the philosopher Isidore, apud
Photium, p. 1049. Damascius, who lived under Justinian, composed another
work, consisting of 570 praeternatural stories of souls, daemons,
apparitions, the dotage of Platonic Paganism.]

[Footnote 79: In the poetical works of Sidonius, which he afterwards
condemned, (l. ix. epist. 16, p. 285,) the fabulous deities are the
principal actors. If Jerom was scourged by the angels for only reading
Virgil, the bishop of Clermont, for such a vile imitation, deserved an
additional whipping from the Muses.]

[Footnote 80: Ovid (Fast. l. ii. 267-452) has given an amusing
description of the follies of antiquity, which still inspired so much
respect, that a grave magistrate, running naked through the streets, was
not an object of astonishment or laughter.]

[Footnote 81: See Dionys. Halicarn. l. i. p. 25, 65, edit. Hudson. The
Roman antiquaries Donatus (l. ii. c. 18, p. 173, 174) and Nardini (p.
386, 387) have labored to ascertain the true situation of the Lupercal.]

[Footnote 82: Baronius published, from the MSS. of the Vatican, this
epistle of Pope Gelasius, (A.D. 496, No. 28-45,) which is entitled
Adversus Andromachum Senatorem, caeterosque Romanos, qui Lupercalia
secundum morem pristinum colenda constituebant. Gelasius always supposes
that his adversaries are nominal Christians, and, that he may not yield
to them in absurd prejudice, he imputes to this harmless festival all
the calamities of the age.]




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. [83]
The situation, and perhaps the character, of Leo, dissuaded him from
exposing his person to the toils and dangers of an African war. But the
powers of the Eastern empire were strenuously exerted to deliver Italy
and the Mediterranean from the Vandals; and Genseric, who had so long
oppressed both the land and sea, was threatened from every side with a
formidable invasion. The campaign was opened by a bold and successful
enterprise of the praefect Heraclius. [84] The troops of Egypt, Thebais,
and Libya, were embarked, under 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, [85] 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 Praetorian praefects. But the cities were reduced to
extreme poverty; and the diligent calculation of fines and forfeitures,
as a valuable object of the revenue, does not suggest the idea of a just
or merciful administration. The whole expense, by whatsoever means
it was defrayed, of the African campaign, amounted to the sum of one
hundred and thirty thousand pounds of gold, about five millions two
hundred thousand pounds sterling, at a time when the value of money
appears, from the comparative price of corn, to have been somewhat
higher than in the present age. [86] The fleet that sailed from
Constantinople to Carthage, consisted of eleven hundred and thirteen
ships, and the number of soldiers and mariners exceeded one hundred
thousand men. Basiliscus, the brother of the empress 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.

[Footnote 83: Itaque nos quibus totius mundi regimen commisit superna
provisio.... Pius et triumphator semper Augustus filius noster
Anthemius, licet Divina Majestas et nostra creatio pietati ejus plenam
Imperii commiserit potestatem, &c..... Such is the dignified style of
Leo, whom Anthemius respectfully names, Dominus et Pater meus Princeps
sacratissimus Leo. See Novell. Anthem. tit. ii. iii. p. 38, ad calcem
Cod. Theod.]

[Footnote 84: The expedition of Heraclius is clouded with difficulties,
(Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 640,) and it requires
some dexterity to use the circumstances afforded by Theophanes, without
injury to the more respectable evidence of Procopius.]

[Footnote 85: The march of Cato from Berenice, in the province of
Cyrene, was much longer than that of Heraclius from Tripoli. He passed
the deep sandy desert in thirty days, and it was found necessary to
provide, besides the ordinary supplies, a great number of skins filled
with water, and several Psylli, who were supposed to possess the art of
sucking the wounds which had been made by the serpents of their native
country. See Plutarch in Caton. Uticens. tom. iv. p. 275. Straben
Geograph. l. xxii. p. 1193.]

[Footnote 86: The principal sum is clearly expressed by Procopius, (de
Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 6, p. 191;) the smaller constituent parts,
which Tillemont, (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 396) has laboriously
collected from the Byzantine writers, are less certain, and less
important. The historian Malchus laments the public misery, (Excerpt.
ex Suida in Corp. Hist. Byzant. p. 58;) but he is surely unjust, when
he charges Leo with hoarding the treasures which he extorted from the
people. * Note: Compare likewise the newly-discovered work of Lydus, de
Magistratibus, ed. Hase, Paris, 1812, (and in the new collection of the
Byzantines,) l. iii. c. 43. Lydus states the expenditure at 65,000
lbs. of gold, 700,000 of silver. But Lydus exaggerates the fleet to the
incredible number of 10,000 long ships, (Liburnae,) and the troops to
400,000 men. Lydus describes this fatal measure, of which he charges the
blame on Basiliscus, as the shipwreck of the state. From that time all
the revenues of the empire were anticipated; and the finances fell into
inextricable confusion.--M.] 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. [87] The army of Heraclius,
and the fleet of Marcellinus, either joined or seconded the Imperial
lieutenant; and the Vandals who opposed his progress by sea or land,
were successively vanquished. [88] If Basiliscus had seized the moment
of consternation, and boldly advanced to the capital, Carthage must have
surrendered, and the kingdom of the Vandals was extinguished. Genseric
beheld the danger with firmness, and eluded it with his veteran
dexterity. He protested, in the most respectful language, that he
was ready to submit his person, and his dominions, to the will of the
emperor; but he requested a truce of five days to regulate the terms
of his submission; and it was universally believed, that his secret
liberality contributed to the success of this public negotiation.
Instead of obstinately refusing whatever indulgence his enemy so
earnestly solicited, the guilty, or the credulous, Basiliscus consented
to the fatal truce; and his imprudent security seemed to proclaim, that
he already considered himself as the conqueror of Africa. During this
short interval, the wind became 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. [89] After
the failure of this great expedition, [891] Genseric again became the
tyrant of the sea: the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Asia, were again
exposed to his revenge and avarice; Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his
obedience; he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and before
he died, in the fulness of years and of glory, he beheld the final
extinction of the empire of the West. [90]

[Footnote 87: This promontory is forty miles from Carthage, (Procop. l.
i. c. 6, p. 192,) and twenty leagues from Sicily, (Shaw's Travels, p.
89.) Scipio landed farther in the bay, at the fair promontory; see the
animated description of Livy, xxix. 26, 27.]

[Footnote 88: Theophanes (p. 100) affirms that many ships of the Vandals
were sunk. The assertion of Jornandes, (de Successione Regn.,) that
Basiliscus attacked Carthage, must be understood in a very qualified
sense]

[Footnote 89: Damascius in Vit. Isidor. apud Phot. p. 1048. It will
appear, by comparing the three short chronicles of the times, that
Marcellinus had fought near Carthage, and was killed in Sicily.]

[Footnote 891: According to Lydus, Leo, distracted by this and
the other calamities of his reign, particularly a dreadful fire at
Constantinople, abandoned the palace, like another Orestes, and was
preparing to quit Constantinople forever l iii. c. 44, p. 230.--M.]

[Footnote 90: For the African war, see Procopius, de Bell. (Vandal. l.
i. c. 6, p. 191, 192, 193,) Theophanes, (p. 99, 100, 101,) Cedrenus,
(p. 349, 350,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 50, 51.) Montesquieu
(Considerations sur la Grandeur, &c., c. xx. tom. iii. p. 497) has made
a judicious observation on the failure of these great naval armaments.]

During his long and active reign, the African monarch had studiously
cultivated the friendship of the Barbarians of Europe, whose arms he
might employ in a seasonable and effectual diversion against the two
empires. After the death of Attila, he renewed his alliance with the
Visigoths of Gaul; and the sons of the elder Theodoric, who successively
reigned over that warlike nation, were easily persuaded, by the sense
of interest, to forget the cruel affront which Genseric had inflicted on
their sister. [91] The death of the emperor Majorian delivered Theodoric
the Second from the restraint of fear, and perhaps of 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 Aegidius, his rival; but the
active count, by the defence of Arles, and the victory of Orleans, saved
Gaul, and checked, during his lifetime, the progress of the Visigoths.
Their ambition was soon rekindled; and the design of extinguishing the
Roman empire in Spain and Gaul was conceived, and almost completed,
in the reign of Euric, who assassinated his brother Theodoric, and
displayed, with a more savage temper, superior abilities, both in peace
and war. He passed the Pyrenees at the head of a numerous army, subdued
the cities of Saragossa and Pampeluna, vanquished in battle the martial
nobles of the Tarragonese province, carried his victorious arms into
the heart of Lusitania, and permitted the Suevi to hold the kingdom of
Gallicia under the Gothic monarchy of Spain. [92] The efforts of Euric
were not less vigorous, or less successful, in Gaul; and throughout the
country that extends from the Pyrenees to the Rhone and the Loire,
Berry and Auvergne were the only cities, or dioceses, which refused to
acknowledge him as their master. [93] In the defence of Clermont, their
principal town, the inhabitants of Auvergne sustained, with inflexible
resolution, the miseries of war, pestilence, and famine; and the
Visigoths, relinquishing the fruitless siege, suspended the hopes of
that important conquest. The youth of the province were animated by the
heroic, and almost incredible, valor of Ecdicius, the son of the emperor
Avitus, [94] who made a desperate sally with only eighteen horsemen,
boldly attacked the Gothic army, and, after maintaining a flying
skirmish, retired safe and victorious within the walls of Clermont. His
charity was equal to his courage: in a time of extreme scarcity, four
thousand poor were fed at his expense; and his private influence levied
an army of Burgundians for the deliverance of Auvergne. From his virtues
alone the faithful citizens of Gaul derived any hopes of safety or
freedom; and even such virtues were insufficient to avert the impending
ruin of their country, since they were anxious to learn, from his
authority and example, whether they should prefer the alternative of
exile or servitude. [95] The public confidence was lost; the resources
of the state were exhausted; and the Gauls had too much reason to
believe, that Anthemius, who reigned in Italy, was incapable of
protecting his distressed subjects beyond the Alps. The feeble emperor
could only procure for their defence the service of twelve thousand
British auxiliaries. Riothamus, one of the independent kings, or
chieftains, of the island, was persuaded to transport his troops to the
continent of Gaul: he sailed up the Loire, and established his quarters
in Berry, where the people complained of these oppressive allies, till
they were destroyed or dispersed by the arms of the Visigoths. [96]

[Footnote 91: Jornandes is our best guide through the reigns of
Theodoric II. and Euric, (de Rebus Geticis, c. 44, 45, 46, 47, p.
675-681.) Idatius ends too soon, and Isidore is too sparing of the
information which he might have given on the affairs of Spain. The
events that relate to Gaul are laboriously illustrated in the third book
of the Abbe Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 424-620.]

[Footnote 92: See Mariana, Hist. Hispan. tom. i. l. v. c. 5. p. 162.]

[Footnote 93: An imperfect, but original, picture of Gaul, more
especially of Auvergne, is shown by Sidonius; who, as a senator,
and afterwards as a bishop, was deeply interested in the fate of his
country. See l. v. epist. 1, 5, 9, &c.]

[Footnote 94: Sidonius, l. iii. epist. 3, p. 65-68. Greg. Turon. l. ii.
c. 24, in tom. ii. p. 174. Jornandes, c. 45, p. 675. Perhaps Ecdicius
was only the son-in-law of Avitus, his wife's son by another husband.]

[Footnote 95: Si nullae a republica vires, nulla praesidia; si nullae,
quantum rumor est, Anthemii principis opes; statuit, te auctore,
nobilitas, seu patriaca dimittere seu capillos, (Sidon. l. ii. epist.
1, p. 33.) The last words Sirmond, (Not. p. 25) may likewise denote the
clerical tonsure, which was indeed the choice of Sidonius himself.]

[Footnote 96: The history of these Britons may be traced in Jornandes,
(c. 45, p. 678,) Sidonius, (l. iii. epistol. 9, p. 73, 74,) and Gregory
of Tours, (l. ii. c. 18, in tom. ii. p. 170.) Sidonius (who styles these
mercenary troops argutos, armatos, tumultuosos, virtute numero, contul
ernio, contumaces) addresses their general in a tone of friendship and
familiarity.] One of the last acts of jurisdiction, which the Roman
senate exercised over their subjects of Gaul, was the trial and
condemnation of Arvandus, the Praetorian praefect. Sidonius, who
rejoices that he lived under a reign in which he might pity and assist
a state criminal, has expressed, with tenderness and freedom, the faults
of his indiscreet and unfortunate friend. [97] From the perils which he
had escaped, Arvandus imbibed confidence rather than wisdom; and such
was the various, though uniform, imprudence of his behavior, that his
prosperity must appear much more surprising than his downfall. The
second praefecture, which he obtained within the term of five years,
abolished the merit and popularity of his preceding administration. His
easy temper was corrupted by flattery, and exasperated by opposition; he
was forced to satisfy his importunate creditors with the spoils of the
province; his capricious insolence offended the nobles of Gaul, and he
sunk under the weight of the public hatred. The mandate of his disgrace
summoned him to justify his conduct before the senate; and he passed
the Sea of Tuscany with a favorable wind, the presage, as he vainly
imagined, of his future fortunes. A decent respect was still observed
for the Proefectorian rank; and on his arrival at Rome, Arvandus was
committed to the hospitality, rather than to the custody, of Flavius
Asellus, the count of the sacred largesses, who resided in the Capitol.
[98] He was eagerly pursued by his accusers, the four deputies of Gaul,
who were all distinguished by their birth, their dignities, or their
eloquence. In the name of a great province, and according to the forms
of Roman jurisprudence, they instituted a civil and criminal
action, requiring such restitution as might compensate the losses of
individuals, and such punishment as might satisfy the justice of the
state. Their charges of corrupt oppression were numerous and weighty;
but they placed their secret dependence on a letter which they had
intercepted, and which they could prove, by the evidence of his
secretary, to have been dictated by Arvandus himself. The author of this
letter seemed to dissuade the king of the Goths from a peace with the
Greek emperor: he suggested the attack of the Britons on the Loire;
and he recommended a division of Gaul, according to the law of nations,
between the Visigoths and the Burgundians. [99] These pernicious
schemes, which a friend could only palliate by the reproaches of vanity
and indiscretion, were susceptible of a treasonable interpretation; and
the deputies had artfully resolved not to produce their most formidable
weapons till the decisive moment of the contest. But their intentions
were discovered by the zeal of Sidonius. He immediately apprised the
unsuspecting criminal of his danger; and sincerely lamented, without any
mixture of anger, the haughty presumption of Arvandus, who rejected, and
even resented, the salutary advice of his friends. Ignorant of his real
situation, Arvandus showed himself in the Capitol in the white robe of
a candidate, accepted indiscriminate salutations and offers of service,
examined the shops of the merchants, the silks and gems, sometimes with
the indifference of a spectator, and sometimes with the attention of a
purchaser; and complained of the times, of the senate, of the prince,
and of the delays of justice. His complaints were soon removed. An early
day was fixed for his trial; and Arvandus appeared, with his accusers,
before a numerous assembly of the Roman senate. The mournful garb
which they affected, excited the compassion of the judges, who were
scandalized by the gay and splendid dress of their adversary: and when
the praefect Arvandus, with the first of the Gallic deputies, were
directed to take their places on the senatorial benches, the same
contrast of pride and modesty was observed in their 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 praefect to the obscure condition of a plebeian, and
ignominiously dragged by servile hands to the public prison. After a
fortnight's adjournment, the senate was again convened to pronounce
the sentence of his death; but while he expected, in the Island of
Aesculapius, the expiration of the thirty days allowed by an ancient
law to the vilest malefactors, [100] his friends interposed, the
emperor Anthemius relented, and the praefect of Gaul obtained the milder
punishment of exile and confiscation. The faults of Arvandus might
deserve compassion; but the impunity of Seronatus accused the justice
of the republic, till he was condemned and executed, on the complaint
of the people of Auvergne. That flagitious minister, the Catiline of
his age and country, held a secret correspondence with the Visigoths,
to betray the province which he oppressed: his industry was continually
exercised in the discovery of new taxes and obsolete offences; and his
extravagant vices would have inspired contempt, if they had not excited
fear and abhorrence. [101]

[Footnote 97: See Sidonius, l. i. epist. 7, p. 15-20, with Sirmond's
notes. This letter does honor to his heart, as well as to his
understanding. The prose of Sidonius, however vitiated by a false and
affected taste, is much superior to his insipid verses.]

[Footnote 98: When the Capitol ceased to be a temple, it was
appropriated to the use of the civil magistrate; and it is still the
residence of the Roman senator. The jewellers, &c., might be allowed to
expose then precious wares in the porticos.]

[Footnote 99: Haec ad regem Gothorum, charta videbatur emitti, pacem cum
Graeco Imperatore dissuadens, Britannos super Ligerim sitos impugnari
oportere, demonstrans, cum Burgundionibus jure gentium Gallias dividi
debere confirmans.]

[Footnote 100: Senatusconsultum Tiberianum, (Sirmond Not. p. 17;) but
that law allowed only ten days between the sentence and execution; the
remaining twenty were added in the reign of Theodosius.]

[Footnote 101: Catilina seculi nostri. Sidonius, l. ii. epist. 1, p.
33; l. v. epist 13, p. 143; l. vii. epist. vii. p. 185. He execrates
the crimes, and applauds the punishment, of Seronatus, perhaps with
the indignation of a virtuous citizen, perhaps with the resentment of a
personal enemy.]

Such criminals were not beyond the reach of justice; but whatever might
be the guilt of Ricimer, that powerful Barbarian was able to contend
or to negotiate with the prince, whose alliance he had condescended to
accept. The peaceful and prosperous reign which Anthemius had promised
to the West, was soon clouded by misfortune and discord. Ricimer,
apprehensive, or impatient, of a superior, retired from Rome, and fixed
his residence at Milan; an advantageous situation either to invite or
to repel the warlike tribes that were seated between the Alps and the
Danube. [102] Italy was gradually divided into two independent and
hostile kingdoms; and the nobles of Liguria, who trembled at the near
approach of a civil war, fell prostrate at the feet of the patrician,
and conjured him to spare their unhappy country. "For my own part,"
replied Ricimer, in a tone of insolent moderation, "I am still inclined
to embrace the friendship of the Galatian; [103] but who will undertake
to appease his anger, or to mitigate the pride, which always rises
in proportion to our submission?" They informed him, that Epiphanius,
bishop of Pavia, [104] united the wisdom of the serpent with the
innocence of the dove; and appeared confident, that the eloquence of
such an ambassador must prevail against the strongest opposition,
either of interest or passion. Their recommendation was approved; and
Epiphanius, assuming the benevolent office of mediation, proceeded
without delay to Rome, where he was received with the 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, [105] of which the sincerity and continuance
might be reasonably suspected. The clemency of the emperor was extorted
from his weakness; and Ricimer suspended his ambitious designs till he
had secretly prepared the engines with which he resolved to subvert the
throne of Anthemius. The mask of peace and moderation was then thrown
aside. The army of Ricimer was fortified by a numerous 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.

[Footnote 102: Ricimer, under the reign of Anthemius, defeated and slew
in battle Beorgor, king of the Alani, (Jornandes, c. 45, p. 678.) His
sister had married the king of the Burgundians, and he maintained an
intimate connection with the Suevic colony established in Pannonia and
Noricum.]

[Footnote 103: Galatam concitatum. Sirmond (in his notes to Ennodius)
applies this appellation to Anthemius himself. The emperor was probably
born in the province of Galatia, whose inhabitants, the Gallo-Grecians,
were supposed to unite the vices of a savage and a corrupted people.]

[Footnote 104: Epiphanius was thirty years bishop of Pavia, (A.D.
467-497;) see Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 788. His name and
actions would have been unknown to posterity, if Ennodius, one of
his successors, had not written his life; (Sirmond, Opera tom. i. p.
1647-1692;) in which he represents him as one of the greatest characters
of the age]

[Footnote 105: Ennodius (p. 1659-1664) has related this embassy of
Epiphanius; and his narrative, verbose and turgid as it must appear,
illustrates some curious passages in the fall of the Western empire.]

The senator Olybrius, of the Anician family, might esteem himself the
lawful heir of the Western empire. He had married Placidia, the younger
daughter of Valentinian, after she was restored by Genseric; who still
detained her sister Eudoxia, as the wife, or rather as the captive,
of his son. The king of the Vandals supported, by threats and
solicitations, the fair pretensions of his Roman ally; and assigned, as
one of the motives of the war, the refusal of the senate and people to
acknowledge their lawful prince, and the unworthy preference which they
had given to a stranger. [106] The friendship of the public enemy might
render Olybrius still more unpopular to the Italians; but when Ricimer
meditated the ruin of the emperor Anthemius, he tempted, with the
offer of a diadem, the candidate who could justify his rebellion by an
illustrious name and a royal alliance. The husband of Placidia, who,
like most of his ancestors, had been invested with the consular dignity,
might have continued to enjoy a secure and splendid fortune in the
peaceful residence of Constantinople; nor does he appear to have been
tormented by such a genius as cannot be amused or occupied, unless
by the administration of an empire. Yet Olybrius yielded to the
importunities of his friends, perhaps of his wife; rashly plunged
into the dangers and calamities of a civil war; and, with the secret
connivance of the emperor Leo, accepted the Italian purple, which was
bestowed, and resumed, at the capricious will of a Barbarian. He landed
without obstacle (for Genseric was master of the sea) either at Ravenna,
or the port of Ostia, and immediately proceeded to the camp of Ricimer,
where he was received as the sovereign of the Western world. [107]

[Footnote 106: Priscus, Excerpt. Legation p. 74. Procopius de Bell.
Vandel l. i. c. 6, p. 191. Eudoxia and her daughter were restored after
the death of Majorian. Perhaps the consulship of Olybrius (A.D. 464) was
bestowed as a nuptial present.]

[Footnote 107: The hostile appearance of Olybrius is fixed
(notwithstanding the opinion of Pagi) by the duration of his reign. The
secret connivance of Leo is acknowledged by Theophanes and the Paschal
Chronicle. We are ignorant of his motives; but in this obscure period,
our ignorance extends to the most public and important facts.]

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;
[108] and it may be conjectured, that an assembly of seceding senators
imitated, in the choice of Olybrius, the forms of a legal election.
But the body of the senate and people firmly adhered to the cause of
Anthemius; and the more effectual support of a Gothic army enabled him
to prolong his reign, and the public distress, by a resistance of three
months, which produced the concomitant evils of famine and pestilence.
At length Ricimer made a furious assault on the bridge of Hadrian, or
St. Angelo; and the narrow pass was defended with equal 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. [109] The unfortunate Anthemius was dragged from his
concealment, and inhumanly massacred by the command of his son-in-law;
who thus added a third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number of
his victims. The soldiers, who united the rage of factious citizens with
the savage manners of Barbarians, were indulged, without control, in
the 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. [110] Forty days after this
calamitous event, the subject, not of glory, but of guilt, Italy was
delivered, by a painful disease, from the tyrant Ricimer, who bequeathed
the command of his army to his nephew Gundobald, one of the princes of
the Burgundians. In the same year all the principal actors in this great
revolution were removed from the stage; and the whole reign of Olybrius,
whose death does not betray any symptoms of violence, is included within
the term of seven months. He left one daughter, the 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. [111]

[Footnote 108: Of the fourteen regions, or quarters, into which Rome was
divided by Augustus, only one, the Janiculum, lay on the Tuscan side
of the Tyber. But, in the fifth century, the Vatican suburb formed a
considerable city; and in the ecclesiastical distribution, which had
been recently made by Simplicius, the reigning pope, two of the seven
regions, or parishes of Rome, depended on the church of St. Peter. See
Nardini Roma Antica, p. 67. It would require a tedious dissertation
to mark the circumstances, in which I am inclined to depart from the
topography of that learned Roman.]

[Footnote 109: Nuper Anthemii et Ricimeris civili furore subversa est.
Gelasius in Epist. ad Andromach. apud Baron. A.D. 496, No. 42, Sigonius
(tom. i. l. xiv. de Occidentali Imperio, p. 542, 543,) and Muratori
(Annali d'Italia, tom. iv. p. 308, 309,) with the aid of a less
imperfect Ms. of the Historia Miscella., have illustrated this dark and
bloody transaction.]

[Footnote 110: Such had been the saeva ac deformis urbe tota facies,
when Rome was assaulted and stormed by the troops of Vespasian, (see
Tacit. Hist. iii. 82, 83;) and every cause of mischief had since
acquired much additional energy. The revolution of ages may bring round
the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to
describe them.]

[Footnote 111: See Ducange, Familiae Byzantin. p. 74, 75. Areobindus,
who appears to have married the niece of the emperor Justinian, was the
eighth descendant of the elder Theodosius.]



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

Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless Barbarians,
[112] the election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the
council of Leo. The empress Verina, studious to promote the greatness
of her own family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who
succeeded his uncle Marcellinus in the sovereignty of Dalmatia, a more
solid possession than the title which he was persuaded to accept, of
Emperor of the West. But the measures of the Byzantine court were so
languid and irresolute, that many months elapsed after the death of
Anthemius, and even of Olybrius, before their destined successor could
show himself, with a respectable force, to his Italian subjects. During
that interval, Glycerius, an obscure soldier, was invested with the
purple by his patron 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, [113] and his client
was permitted to exchange the Roman sceptre for the bishopric of
Salona. After extinguishing such a competitor, the emperor Nepos was
acknowledged by the senate, by the Italians, and by the provincials of
Gaul; his moral virtues, and military talents, were loudly celebrated;
and those who derived any private benefit from his government,
announced, in prophetic strains, the restoration of the public felicity.
[114] Their hopes (if such hopes had been entertained) were confounded
within the term of a single year, and the treaty of peace, which ceded
Auvergue 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; [115] but his repose
was soon invaded by a furious sedition of the Barbarian confederates,
who, under the command of Orestes, their general, were in full march
from Rome to Ravenna. Nepos trembled at their approach; and, instead of
placing a just confidence in the strength of Ravenna, he hastily escaped
to his ships, and retired to his Dalmatian principality, on the opposite
coast of the 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. [116]

[Footnote 112: The last revolutions of the Western empire are faintly
marked in Theophanes, (p. 102,) Jornandes, (c. 45, p. 679,) the
Chronicle of Marcellinus, and the Fragments of an anonymous writer,
published by Valesius at the end of Ammianus, (p. 716, 717.) If Photius
had not been so wretchedly concise, we should derive much information
from the contemporary histories of Malchus and Candidus. See his
Extracts, p. 172-179.]

[Footnote 113: See Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 28, in tom. ii. p. 175.
Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 613. By the murder or death of his
two brothers, Gundobald acquired the sole possession of the kingdom of
Burgundy, whose ruin was hastened by their discord.]

[Footnote 114: Julius Nepos armis pariter summus Augustus ac moribus.
Sidonius, l. v. ep. 16, p. 146. Nepos had given to Ecdicius the title
of Patrician, which Anthemius had promised, decessoris Anthemii fidem
absolvit. See l. viii. ep. 7, p. 224.]

[Footnote 115: Epiphanius was sent ambassador from Nepos to the
Visigoths, for the purpose of ascertaining the fines Imperii Italici,
(Ennodius in Sirmond, tom. i. p. 1665-1669.) His pathetic discourse
concealed the disgraceful secret which soon excited the just and bitter
complaints of the bishop of Clermont.]

[Footnote 116: Malchus, apud Phot. p. 172. Ennod. Epigram. lxxxii. in
Sirmond. Oper. tom. i. p. 1879. Some doubt may, however, be raised on
the identity of the emperor and the archbishop.]

The nations who had asserted their independence after the death of
Attila, were established, by the right of possession or conquest, in
the boundless countries to the north of the Danube; or in the Roman
provinces between the river and the Alps. But the bravest of their youth
enlisted in the army of confederates, who formed the defence and the
terror of Italy; [117] and in this promiscuous multitude, the names
of the Heruli, the Scyrri, the Alani, the Turcilingi, and the Rugians,
appear to have predominated. The example of these warriors was imitated
by Orestes, [118] the son of Tatullus, and the father of the last Roman
emperor of the West. Orestes, who has been already mentioned in this
History, had never deserted his country. His birth and fortunes rendered
him one of the most illustrious subjects of Pannonia. When that province
was ceded to the Huns, he entered into the service of Attila, his lawful
sovereign, obtained the office of his secretary, and was repeatedly sent
ambassador to Constantinople, to represent the person, and signify the
commands, of the imperious monarch. The death of that conqueror restored
him to his freedom; and Orestes might 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 third part of the lands of Italy should be immediately divided
among them. Orestes, with a spirit, which, in another situation, might
be entitled to our esteem, chose rather to encounter the rage of an
armed multitude, than to subscribe the ruin of an innocent people. He
rejected the audacious demand; and his refusal was 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. [119]
His brother Paul was slain in an action near Ravenna; and the helpless
Augustulus, who could no longer command the respect, was reduced to
implore the clemency, of Odoacer.

[Footnote 117: Our knowledge of these mercenaries, who subverted the
Western empire, is derived from Procopius, (de Bell. Gothico, l. i. c.
i. p. 308.) The popular opinion, and the recent historians, represent
Odoacer in the false light of a stranger, and a king, who invaded Italy
with an army of foreigners, his native subjects.]

[Footnote 118: Orestes, qui eo tempore quando Attila ad Italiam venit,
se illi unxit, ejus notarius factus fuerat. Anonym. Vales. p. 716. He
is mistaken in the date; but we may credit his assertion, that the
secretary of Attila was the father of Augustulus]

[Footnote 119: See Ennodius, (in Vit. Epiphan. Sirmond, tom. i. p. 1669,
1670.) He adds weight to the narrative of Procopius, though we may doubt
whether the devil actually contrived the siege of Pavia, to distress the
bishop and his flock.]

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. [1191] 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. [120] Their gallant
leader, who did not survive this national calamity, left two sons, Onulf
and Odoacer, to struggle with adversity, and to maintain as they might,
by rapine or service, the faithful followers of their exile. Onulf
directed his steps towards Constantinople, where he sullied, by the
assassination of a generous benefactor, the fame which he had acquired
in arms. His brother Odoacer led a wandering life among the Barbarians
of Noricum, with a mind and a fortune suited to the most desperate
adventures; and when he had fixed his choice, he piously visited the
cell of Severinus, the popular saint of the country, to solicit his
approbation and blessing. The lowness of the door would not admit the
lofty stature of Odoacer: he was obliged to stoop; but in that humble
attitude the saint could discern the symptoms of his future greatness;
and addressing him in a prophetic tone, "Pursue" (said he) "your design;
proceed to Italy; you will soon cast away this coarse garment of skins;
and your wealth will be adequate to the liberality of your mind." [121]
The Barbarian, whose daring spirit accepted and ratified the prediction,
was admitted into the service of the Western empire, and soon obtained
an 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. [122] Their
military acclamations saluted him with the title of king; but he
abstained, during his whole reign, from the use of the purple and
diadem, [123] lest he should offend those princes, whose subjects, by
their accidental mixture, had formed the victorious army, which time and
policy might insensibly unite into a great nation.

[Footnote 1191: Manso observes that the evidence which identifies
Edecon, the father of Odoacer, with the colleague of Orestes, is not
conclusive. Geschichte des Ost-Gothischen Reiches, p. 32. But St. Martin
inclines to agree with Gibbon, note, vi. 75.--M.]

[Footnote 120: Jornandes, c. 53, 54, p. 692-695. M. de Buat (Hist. des
Peuples de l'Europe, tom. viii. p. 221-228) has clearly explained the
origin and adventures of Odoacer. I am almost inclined to believe that
he was the same who pillaged Angers, and commanded a fleet of Saxon
pirates on the ocean. Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 18, in tom. ii. p. 170.
8 Note: According to St. Martin there is no foundation for this
conjecture, vii 5--M.]

[Footnote 121: Vade ad Italiam, vade vilissimis nunc pellibus coopertis:
sed multis cito plurima largiturus. Anonym. Vales. p. 717. He quotes the
life of St. Severinus, which is extant, and contains much unknown and
valuable history; it was composed by his disciple Eugippius (A.D. 511)
thirty years after his death. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p.
168-181.]

[Footnote 122: Theophanes, who calls him a Goth, affirms, that he was
educated, aursed in Italy, (p. 102;) and as this strong expression will
not bear a literal interpretation, it must be explained by long service
in the Imperial guards.]

[Footnote 123: Nomen regis Odoacer assumpsit, cum tamen neque purpura
nee regalibus uteretur insignibus. Cassiodor. in Chron. A.D. 476. He
seems to have assumed the abstract title of a king, without applying it
to any particular nation or country. 8 Note: Manso observes that Odoacer
never called himself king of Italy, assume the purple, and no coins are
extant with his name. Gescnichte Osi Goth. Reiches, p. 36--M.]

Royalty was familiar to the Barbarians, and the submissive people of
Italy was prepared to obey, without a murmur, the authority which he
should condescend to exercise as the vicegerent of the emperor of the
West. But Odoacer had resolved to abolish that useless and expensive
office; and such is the weight of antique prejudice, that it required
some boldness and penetration to discover the extreme facility of the
enterprise. The unfortunate Augustulus was made the instrument of his
own disgrace: he signified his resignation to the senate; and that
assembly, in their last act of obedience to a Roman prince, still
affected the spirit of freedom, and the forms of the constitution. An
epistle was addressed, by their unanimous decree, to the emperor Zeno,
the son-in-law and successor of Leo; who had lately been restored, after
a short rebellion, to the Byzantine throne. They solemnly "disclaim
the necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the Imperial
succession in Italy; since, in their opinion, the majesty of a sole
monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect, at the same time, both
the East and the West. In their own name, and in the name of the people,
they consent that the seat of universal empire shall be transferred from
Rome to Constantinople; and they basely renounce the right of choosing
their master, the only vestige that yet remained of the authority which
had given laws to the world. The republic (they repeat that name without
a blush) might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of
Odoacer; and they humbly request, that the emperor would invest him with
the title of Patrician, and the administration of the diocese of Italy."
The deputies of the senate were received at Constantinople with some
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 patrician Odoacer; and he
gratefully accepted the Imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the
throne and palace, which the Barbarian was not unwilling to remove from
the sight of the people. [124]

[Footnote 124: Malchus, whose loss excites our regret, has preserved
(in Excerpt. Legat. p. 93) this extraordinary embassy from the senate to
Zeno. The anonymous fragment, (p. 717,) and the extract from Candidus,
(apud Phot. p. 176,) are likewise of some use.]

In the space of twenty years since the death of Valentinian, nine
emperors had successively disappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth
recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the
notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction
of the Roman empire in the West, did not leave a memorable era in the
history of mankind. [125] The patrician Orestes had married the
daughter of Count Romulus, of Petovio in Noricum: the name of Augustus,
notwithstanding the jealousy of power, was known at Aquileia as a
familiar surname; and the appellations of the two great founders, of
the city and of the monarchy, were thus strangely united in the last
of their successors. [126] The son 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. [127] As soon as the
Romans breathed from the toils of the Punic war, they were attracted by
the beauties and the pleasures of Campania; and the country-house of
the elder Scipio at Liternum exhibited a lasting model of their rustic
simplicity. [128] The delicious shores of the Bay of Naples were crowded
with villas; and Sylla applauded the masterly skill of his rival, who
had seated himself on the lofty promontory of Misenum, that commands, on
every side, the sea and land, as far as the boundaries of the horizon.
[129] The villa of Marius was purchased, within a few years, by
Lucullus, and the price had increased from two thousand five hundred, to
more than fourscore thousand, pounds sterling. [130] It was adorned
by the new proprietor with Grecian arts and Asiatic treasures; and the
houses and gardens of Lucullus obtained a distinguished rank in the list
of Imperial palaces. [131] When the Vandals became formidable to the
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
the broken trophies of Cimbric and Armenian victories,till the beginning
of the tenth century; when the fortifications, which might afford a
dangerous shelter to the Saracens, were demolished by the people of
Naples. [132]

[Footnote 125: The precise year in which the Western empire was
extinguished, is not positively ascertained. The vulgar era of A.D. 476
appears to have the sanction of authentic chronicles. But the two dates
assigned by Jornandes (c. 46, p. 680) would delay that great event to
the year 479; and though M. de Buat has overlooked his evidence, he
produces (tom. viii. p. 261-288) many collateral circumstances in
support of the same opinion.]

[Footnote 126: See his medals in Ducange, (Fam. Byzantin. p. 81,)
Priscus, (Excerpt. Legat. p. 56,) Maffei, (Osservazioni Letterarie,
tom. ii p. 314.) We may allege a famous and similar case. The meanest
subjects of the Roman empire assumed the illustrious name of Patricius,
which, by the conversion of Ireland has been communicated to a whole
nation.]

[Footnote 127: Ingrediens autem Ravennam deposuit Augustulum de regno,
cujus infantiam misertus concessit ei sanguinem; et quia pulcher
erat, tamen donavit ei reditum sex millia solidos, et misit eum intra
Campaniam cum parentibus suis libere vivere. Anonym. Vales. p. 716.
Jornandes says, (c 46, p. 680,) in Lucullano Campaniae castello exilii
poena damnavit.]

[Footnote 128: See the eloquent Declamation of Seneca, (Epist. lxxxvi.)
The philosopher might have recollected, that all luxury is relative;
and that the elder Scipio, whose manners were polished by study
and conversation, was himself accused of that vice by his ruder
contemporaries, (Livy, xxix. 19.)]

[Footnote 129: Sylla, in the language of a soldier, praised his peritia
castrametandi, (Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 7.) Phaedrus, who makes its
shady walks (loeta viridia) the scene of an insipid fable, (ii. 5,) has
thus described the situation:--

     Caesar Tiberius quum petens Neapolim,
     In Misenensem villam venissit suam;
     Quae monte summo posita Luculli manu
     Prospectat Siculum et prospicit Tuscum mare.]

[Footnote 130: From seven myriads and a half to two hundred and fifty
myriads of drachmae. Yet even in the possession of Marius, it was
a luxurious retirement. The Romans derided his indolence; they soon
bewailed his activity. See Plutarch, in Mario, tom. ii. p. 524.]

[Footnote 131: Lucullus had other villa of equal, though various,
magnificence, at Baiae, Naples, Tusculum, &c., He boasted that he
changed his climate with the storks and cranes. Plutarch, in Lucull.
tom. iii. p. 193.]

[Footnote 132: Severinus died in Noricum, A.D. 482. Six years
afterwards, his body, which scattered miracles as it passed, was
transported by his disciples into Italy. The devotion of a Neapolitan
lady invited the saint to the Lucullan villa, in the place of
Augustulus, who was probably no more. See Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D.
496, No. 50, 51) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xvi. p. 178-181,)
from the original life by Eugippius. The narrative of the last migration
of Severinus to Naples is likewise an authentic piece.]

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; [133]
and the list is adorned by the respectable name of Basilius, whose
virtues claimed the friendship and grateful applause of Sidonius, his
client. [134] The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the
civil administration of Italy was still exercised by the Praetorian
praefect and his subordinate officers. Odoacer devolved on the Roman
magistrates the odious and oppressive task of collecting the public
revenue; but he reserved for himself the merit of seasonable and
popular indulgence. [135] Like the rest of the Barbarians, he had
been instructed in the Arian heresy; but he revered the monastic and
episcopal characters; and the silence of the Catholics attest the
toleration which they enjoyed. The peace of the city required the
interposition of his praefect Basilius in the choice of a Roman pontiff:
the decree which restrained the clergy from alienating their lands was
ultimately designed for the benefit of the people, whose devotions would
have been taxed to repair the dilapidations of the church. [136] Italy
was protected by the arms of its conqueror; and its frontiers were
respected by the Barbarians of Gaul and Germany, who had so long
insulted the feeble race of Theodosius. Odoacer passed the 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. [137]

[Footnote 133: The consular Fasti may be found in Pagi or Muratori. The
consuls named by Odoacer, or perhaps by the Roman senate, appear to have
been acknowledged in the Eastern empire.]

[Footnote 134: Sidonius Apollinaris (l. i. epist. 9, p. 22, edit.
Sirmond) has compared the two leading senators of his time, (A.D. 468,)
Gennadius Avienus and Caecina Basilius. To the former he assigns the
specious, to the latter the solid, virtues of public and private life. A
Basilius junior, possibly his son, was consul in the year 480.]

[Footnote 135: Epiphanius interceded for the people of Pavia; and the
king first granted an indulgence of five years, and afterwards relieved
them from the oppression of Pelagius, the Praetorian praefect, (Ennodius
in Vit St. Epiphan., in Sirmond, Oper. tom. i. p. 1670-1672.)]

[Footnote 136: See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 483, No. 10-15. Sixteen
years afterwards the irregular proceedings of Basilius were condemned by
Pope Symmachus in a Roman synod.]

[Footnote 137: The wars of Odoacer are concisely mentioned by Paul the
Deacon, (de Gest. Langobard. l. i. c. 19, p. 757, edit. Grot.,) and
in the two Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Cuspinian. The life of St.
Severinus by Eugippius, which the count de Buat (Hist. des Peuples, &c.,
tom. viii. c. 1, 4, 8, 9) has diligently studied, illustrates the ruin
of Noricum and the Bavarian antiquities]

Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoacer, his kingdom
exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation. Since the age of
Tiberius, the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a
just subject of complaint, that the life of the Roman people depended
on the accidents of the winds and waves. [138] In the division and the
decline of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were
withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished
with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the
irretrievable losses of war, famine, [139] and pestilence. St. Ambrose
has deplored the ruin of a populous district, which had been once
adorned with the flourishing cities of Bologna, Modena, Regium, and
Placentia. [140] Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer; and he affirms,
with strong exaggeration, that in Aemilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent
provinces, the human species was almost extirpated. [141] The 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. [1411] One third of
those ample estates, to which the ruin of Italy is originally imputed,
[142] was extorted for the use of the conquerors. Injuries were
aggravated by insults; the sense of actual sufferings was 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.
[143] The distress of Italy [1431] was mitigated by the prudence
and humanity of Odoacer, who had bound himself, as the price of
his elevation, to satisfy the demands of a licentious and turbulent
multitude. The kings of the Barbarians were frequently resisted,
deposed, or murdered, by their native subjects, and the various bands
of Italian mercenaries, who associated under the standard of an elective
general, claimed a larger privilege of freedom and rapine. A monarchy
destitute of national union, and hereditary right, hastened to its
dissolution. After a reign of fourteen years, Odoacer was oppressed by
the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths; a hero alike
excellent in the arts of war and of government, who restored an age
of peace and prosperity, and whose name still excites and deserves the
attention of mankind.

[Footnote 138: Tacit. Annal. iii. 53. The Recherches sur
l'Administration des Terres chez les Romains (p. 351-361) clearly state
the progress of internal decay.]

[Footnote 139: A famine, which afflicted Italy at the time of the
irruption of Odoacer, king of the Heruli, is eloquently described, in
prose and verse, by a French poet, (Les Mois, tom. ii. p. 174, 205,
edit. in 12 mo.) I am ignorant from whence he derives his information;
but I am well assured that he relates some facts incompatible with the
truth of history]

[Footnote 140: See the xxxixth epistle of St. Ambrose, as it is quoted
by Muratori, sopra le Antichita Italiane, tom. i. Dissert. xxi. p. 354.]

[Footnote 141: Aemilia, Tuscia, ceteraeque provinciae in quibus hominum
propenullus exsistit. Gelasius, Epist. ad Andromachum, ap. Baronium,
Annal. Eccles. A.D. 496, No. 36.]

[Footnote 1411: Denina supposes that the Barbarians were compelled
by necessity to turn their attention to agriculture. Italy, either
imperfectly cultivated, or not at all, by the indolent or ruined
proprietors, not only could not furnish the imposts, on which the pay of
the soldiery depended, but not even a certain supply of the necessaries
of life. The neighboring countries were now occupied by warlike nations;
the supplies of corn from Africa were cut off; foreign commerce nearly
destroyed; they could not look for supplies beyond the limits of Italy,
throughout which the agriculture had been long in a state of progressive
but rapid depression. (Denina, Rev. d'Italia t. v. c. i.)--M.]

[Footnote 142: Verumque confitentibus, latifundia perdidere Italiam.
Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 7.]

[Footnote 143: Such are the topics of consolation, or rather of
patience, which Cicero (ad Familiares, lib. ix. Epist. 17) suggests to
his friend Papirius Paetus, under the military despotism of Caesar.
The argument, however, of "vivere pulcherrimum duxi," is more forcibly
addressed to a Roman philosopher, who possessed the free alternative of
life or death]

[Footnote 1431: Compare, on the desolation and change of property in
Italy, Manno des Ost-Gothischen Reiches, Part ii. p. 73, et seq.--M.]




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; [1] and, II. The conversion of the
northern Barbarians.

[Footnote 1: The origin of the monastic institution has been laboriously
discussed by Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 1119-1426)
and Helyot, (Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 1-66.) These
authors are very learned, and tolerably honest, and their difference
of opinion shows the subject in its full extent. Yet the cautious
Protestant, who distrusts any popish guides, may consult the seventh
book of Bingham's Christian Antiquities.]

I. Prosperity and peace introduced the distinction of the vulgar and
the Ascetic Christians. [2] 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, [3] [311] 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, [4] 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; [5] 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. [6]

[Footnote 2: See Euseb. Demonstrat. Evangel., (l. i. p. 20, 21, edit.
Graec. Rob. Stephani, Paris, 1545.) In his Ecclesiastical History,
published twelve years after the Demonstration, Eusebius (l. ii. c. 17)
asserts the Christianity of the Therapeutae; but he appears ignorant
that a similar institution was actually revived in Egypt.]

[Footnote 3: Cassian (Collat. xviii. 5.) claims this origin for the
institution of the Coenobites, which gradually decayed till it was
restored by Antony and his disciples.]

[Footnote 311: It has before been shown that the first Christian
community was not strictly coenobitic. See vol. ii.--M.]

[Footnote 4: These are the expressive words of Sozomen, who copiously
and agreeably describes (l. i. c. 12, 13, 14) the origin and progress
of this monkish philosophy, (see Suicer. Thesau, Eccles., tom. ii.
p. 1441.) Some modern writers, Lipsius (tom. iv. p. 448. Manuduct. ad
Philosoph. Stoic. iii. 13) and La Mothe le Vayer, (tom. ix. de la
Vertu des Payens, p. 228-262,) have compared the Carmelites to the
Pythagoreans, and the Cynics to the Capucins.]

[Footnote 5: The Carmelites derive their pedigree, in regular
succession, from the prophet Elijah, (see the Theses of Beziers, A.D.
1682, in Bayle's Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, Oeuvres,
tom. i. p. 82, &c., and the prolix irony of the Ordres Monastiques,
an anonymous work, tom. i. p. 1-433, Berlin, 1751.) Rome, and the
inquisition of Spain, silenced the profane criticism of the Jesuits of
Flanders, (Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Monastiques, tom. i. p. 282-300,)
and the statue of Elijah, the Carmelite, has been erected in the church
of St. Peter, (Voyages du P. Labat tom. iii. p. 87.)]

[Footnote 6: Plin. Hist. Natur. v. 15. Gens sola, et in toto orbe
praeter ceteras mira, sine ulla femina, omni venere abdicata, sine
pecunia, socia palmarum. Ita per seculorum millia (incredibile dictu)
gens aeterna est in qua nemo nascitur. Tam foecunda illis aliorum vitae
poenitentia est. He places them just beyond the noxious influence of the
lake, and names Engaddi and Massada as the nearest towns. The Laura, and
monastery of St. Sabas, could not be far distant from this place. See
Reland. Palestin., tom. i. p. 295; tom. ii. p. 763, 874, 880, 890.]

Egypt, the fruitful parent of superstition, afforded the first example
of the monastic life. Antony, [7] an illiterate [8] youth of the lower
parts of Thebais, distributed his patrimony, [9] deserted his family
and native home, and executed his monastic penance 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. [10] 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. [11] In the Upper Thebais, the vacant island of Tabenne, [12]
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 angelic rule of discipline. [13]
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. [14] 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; [15]
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.

[Footnote 7: See Athanas. Op. tom. ii. p. 450-505, and the Vit. Patrum,
p. 26-74, with Rosweyde's Annotations. The former is the Greek original
the latter, a very ancient Latin version by Evagrius, the friend of St.
Jerom.]

[Footnote 8: Athanas. tom. ii. in Vit. St. Anton. p. 452; and the
assertion of his total ignorance has been received by many of the
ancients and moderns. But Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. vii. p. 666)
shows, by some probable arguments, that Antony could read and write in
the Coptic, his native tongue; and that he was only a stranger to the
Greek letters. The philosopher Synesius (p. 51) acknowledges that the
natural genius of Antony did not require the aid of learning.]

[Footnote 9: Aruroe autem erant ei trecentae uberes, et valde optimae,
(Vit. Patr. l. v. p. 36.) If the Arura be a square measure, of a hundred
Egyptian cubits, (Rosweyde, Onomasticon ad Vit. Patrum, p. 1014, 1015,)
and the Egyptian cubit of all ages be equal to twenty-two English
inches, (Greaves, vol. i. p. 233,) the arura will consist of about three
quarters of an English acre.]

[Footnote 10: The description of the monastery is given by Jerom (tom.
i. p. 248, 249, in Vit. Hilarion) and the P. Sicard, (Missions du Levant
tom. v. p. 122-200.) Their accounts cannot always be reconciled the
father painted from his fancy, and the Jesuit from his experience.]

[Footnote 11: Jerom, tom. i. p. 146, ad Eustochium. Hist. Lausiac. c. 7,
in Vit. Patrum, p. 712. The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p.
29-79) visited and has described this desert, which now contains four
monasteries, and twenty or thirty monks. See D'Anville, Description de
l'Egypte, p. 74.]

[Footnote 12: Tabenne is a small island in the Nile, in the diocese of
Tentyra or Dendera, between the modern town of Girge and the ruins of
ancient Thebes, (D'Anville, p. 194.) M. de Tillemont doubts whether it
was an isle; but I may conclude, from his own facts, that the primitive
name was afterwards transferred to the great monastery of Bau or Pabau,
(Mem. Eccles. tom. vii. p. 678, 688.)]

[Footnote 13: See in the Codex Regularum (published by Lucas Holstenius,
Rome, 1661) a preface of St. Jerom to his Latin version of the Rule of
Pachomius, tom. i. p. 61.]

[Footnote 14: Rufin. c. 5, in Vit. Patrum, p. 459. He calls it civitas
ampla ralde et populosa, and reckons twelve churches. Strabo (l.
xvii. p. 1166) and Ammianus (xxii. 16) have made honorable mention
of Oxyrinchus, whose inhabitants adored a small fish in a magnificent
temple.]

[Footnote 15: Quanti populi habentur in urbibus, tantae paene habentur
in desertis multitudines monachorum. Rufin. c. 7, in Vit. Patrum, p.
461. He congratulates the fortunate change.]

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 six vestals was eclipsed by the frequent
monasteries, which were seated on the ruins of ancient temples, and in
the midst of the Roman forum. [16] Inflamed by the example of Antony, a
Syrian youth, whose name was Hilarion, [17] 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 [18] 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 Caesarea, 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, [19] 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. [20] 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 Aethiopia.
[21] The monastery of Banchor, [22] in Flintshire, which contained above
two thousand brethren, dispersed a numerous colony among the Barbarians
of Ireland; [23] 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. [24]

[Footnote 16: The introduction of the monastic life into Rome and Italy
is occasionally mentioned by Jerom, tom. i. p. 119, 120, 199.]

[Footnote 17: See the Life of Hilarion, by St. Jerom, (tom. i. p. 241,
252.) The stories of Paul, Hilarion, and Malchus, by the same author,
are admirably told: and the only defect of these pleasing compositions
is the want of truth and common sense.]

[Footnote 18: His original retreat was in a small village on the banks
of the Iris, not far from Neo-Caesarea. The ten or twelve years of
his monastic life were disturbed by long and frequent avocations. Some
critics have disputed the authenticity of his Ascetic rules; but the
external evidence is weighty, and they can only prove that it is the
work of a real or affected enthusiast. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles tom.
ix. p. 636-644. Helyot, Hist. des Ordres Monastiques tom. i. p. 175-181]

[Footnote 19: See his Life, and the three Dialogues by Sulpicius
Severus, who asserts (Dialog. i. 16) that the booksellers of Rome were
delighted with the quick and ready sale of his popular work.]

[Footnote 20: When Hilarion sailed from Paraetonium to Cape Pachynus,
he offered to pay his passage with a book of the Gospels. Posthumian,
a Gallic monk, who had visited Egypt, found a merchant ship bound from
Alexandria to Marseilles, and performed the voyage in thirty days,
(Sulp. Sever. Dialog. i. 1.) Athanasius, who addressed his Life of St.
Antony to the foreign monks, was obliged to hasten the composition, that
it might be ready for the sailing of the fleets, (tom. ii. p. 451.)]

[Footnote 21: See Jerom, (tom. i. p. 126,) Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient.
tom. iv. p. 92, p. 857-919, and Geddes, Church History of Aethiopia,
p. 29-31. The Abyssinian monks adhere very strictly to the primitive
institution.]

[Footnote 22: Camden's Britannia, vol. i. p. 666, 667.]

[Footnote 23: All that learning can extract from the rubbish of the
dark ages is copiously stated by Archbishop Usher in his Britannicarum
Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, cap. xvi. p. 425-503.]

[Footnote 24: This small, though not barren, spot, Iona, Hy, or
Columbkill, only two miles in length, aud one mile in breadth, has been
distinguished, 1. By the monastery of St. Columba, founded A.D. 566;
whose abbot exercised an extraordinary jurisdiction over the bishops
of Caledonia; 2. By a classic library, which afforded some hopes of
an entire Livy; and, 3. By the tombs of sixty kings, Scots, Irish, and
Norwegians, who reposed in holy ground. See Usher (p. 311, 360-370) and
Buchanan, (Rer. Scot. l. ii. p. 15, edit. Ruddiman.)]

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.
[25] 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. [26] 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; [27] 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; [28] and the profane
title of mother-in-law of God [29] 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, [30] 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. [31] 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. [32]

[Footnote 25: Chrysostom (in the first tome of the Benedictine edition)
has consecrated three books to the praise and defence of the monastic
life. He is encouraged, by the example of the ark, to presume that
none but the elect (the monks) can possibly be saved (l. i. p. 55, 56.)
Elsewhere, indeed, he becomes more merciful, (l. iii. p. 83, 84,) and
allows different degrees of glory, like the sun, moon, and stars. In
his lively comparison of a king and a monk, (l. iii. p. 116-121,) he
supposes (what is hardly fair) that the king will be more sparingly
rewarded, and more rigorously punished.]

[Footnote 26: Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise tom. i. p. 1426-1469)
and Mabillon, (Oeuvres Posthumes, tom. ii. p. 115-158.) The monks were
gradually adopted as a part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.]

[Footnote 27: Dr. Middleton (vol. i. p. 110) liberally censures the
conduct and writings of Chrysostom, one of the most eloquent and
successful advocates for the monastic life.]

[Footnote 28: Jerom's devout ladies form a very considerable portion
of his works: the particular treatise, which he styles the Epitaph of
Paula, (tom. i. p. 169-192,) is an elaborate and extravagant panegyric.
The exordium is ridiculously turgid: "If all the members of my body were
changed into tongues, and if all my limbs resounded with a human voice,
yet should I be incapable," &c.]

[Footnote 29: Socrus Dei esse coepisti, (Jerom, tom. i. p. 140, ad
Eustochium.) Rufinus, (in Hieronym. Op. tom. iv. p. 223,) who was justly
scandalized, asks his adversary, from what Pagan poet he had stolen an
expression so impious and absurd.]

[Footnote 30: Nunc autem veniunt plerumque ad hanc professionem
servitutis Dei, et ex conditione servili, vel etiam liberati, vel
propter hoc a Dominis liberati sive liberandi; et ex vita rusticana et
ex opificum exercitatione, et plebeio labore. Augustin, de Oper. Monach.
c. 22, ap. Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 1094. The
Egyptian, who blamed Arsenius, owned that he led a more comfortable life
as a monk than as a shepherd. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p.
679.]

[Footnote 31: A Dominican friar, (Voyages du P. Labat, tom. i. p. 10,)
who lodged at Cadiz in a convent of his brethren, soon understood that
their repose was never interrupted by nocturnal devotion; "quoiqu'on ne
laisse pas de sonner pour l'edification du peuple."]

[Footnote 32: See a very sensible preface of Lucas Holstenius to the
Codex Regularum. The emperors attempted to support the obligation of
public and private duties; but the feeble dikes were swept away by
the torrent of superstition; and Justinian surpassed the most sanguine
wishes of the monks, (Thomassin, tom. i. p. 1782-1799, and Bingham,
l. vii. c. iii. p. 253.) Note: The emperor Valens, in particular,
promulgates a law contra ignavise quosdam sectatores, qui desertis
civitatum muneribus, captant solitudines secreta, et specie religionis
cum coetibus monachorum congregantur. Cad. Theod l. xii. tit. i. leg.
63.--G.]

The monastic profession of the ancients [33] 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. [34] 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. [35] The actions of a monk, his words, and even his
thoughts, were determined by an inflexible rule, [36] 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. [37] 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. [38] 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. [39]

[Footnote 33: The monastic institutions, particularly those of Egypt,
about the year 400, are described by four curious and devout travellers;
Rufinus, (Vit. Patrum, l. ii. iii. p. 424-536,) Posthumian, (Sulp.
Sever. Dialog. i.) Palladius, (Hist. Lausiac. in Vit. Patrum, p.
709-863,) and Cassian, (see in tom. vii. Bibliothec. Max. Patrum,
his four first books of Institutes, and the twenty-four Collations or
Conferences.)]

[Footnote 34: The example of Malchus, (Jerom, tom. i. p. 256,) and
the design of Cassian and his friend, (Collation. xxiv. 1,) are
incontestable proofs of their freedom; which is elegantly described by
Erasmus in his Life of St. Jerom. See Chardon, Hist. des Sacremens, tom.
vi. p. 279-300.]

[Footnote 35: See the Laws of Justinian, (Novel. cxxiii. No. 42,) and of
Lewis the Pious, (in the Historians of France, tom vi. p. 427,) and the
actual jurisprudence of France, in Denissart, (Decisions, &c., tom. iv.
p. 855,) &c.]

[Footnote 36: The ancient Codex Regularum, collected by Benedict
Anianinus, the reformer of the monks in the beginning of the ninth
century, and published in the seventeenth, by Lucas Holstenius, contains
thirty different rules for men and women. Of these, seven were composed
in Egypt, one in the East, one in Cappadocia, one in Italy, one in
Africa, four in Spain, eight in Gaul, or France, and one in England.]

[Footnote 37: The rule of Columbanus, so prevalent in the West, inflicts
one hundred lashes for very slight offences, (Cod. Reg. part ii. p.
174.) Before the time of Charlemagne, the abbots indulged themselves
in mutilating their monks, or putting out their eyes; a punishment much
less cruel than the tremendous vade in pace (the subterraneous dungeon
or sepulchre) which was afterwards invented. See an admirable discourse
of the learned Mabillon, (Oeuvres Posthumes, tom. ii. p. 321-336,) who,
on this occasion, seems to be inspired by the genius of humanity. For
such an effort, I can forgive his defence of the holy tear of Vendeme
(p. 361-399.)]

[Footnote 38: Sulp. Sever. Dialog. i. 12, 13, p. 532, &c. Cassian.
Institut. l. iv. c. 26, 27. "Praecipua ibi virtus et prima est
obedientia." Among the Verba seniorum, (in Vit. Patrum, l. v. p. 617,)
the fourteenth libel or discourse is on the subject of obedience; and
the Jesuit Rosweyde, who published that huge volume for the use of
convents, has collected all the scattered passages in his two copious
indexes.]

[Footnote 39: Dr. Jortin (Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. iv. p.
161) has observed the scandalous valor of the Cappadocian monks, which
was exemplified in the banishment of Chrysostom.] Superstition has often
framed and consecrated the fantastic garments of the monks: [40]
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. [41] 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. [42] 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. [43] [431] 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.

[Footnote 40: Cassian has simply, though copiously, described the
monastic habit of Egypt, (Institut. l. i.,) to which Sozomen (l. iii. c.
14) attributes such allegorical meaning and virtue.]

[Footnote 41: Regul. Benedict. No. 55, in Cod. Regul. part ii. p. 51.]

[Footnote 42: See the rule of Ferreolus, bishop of Usez, (No. 31, in
Cod. Regul part ii. p. 136,) and of Isidore, bishop of Seville, (No. 13,
in Cod. Regul part ii. p. 214.)]

[Footnote 43: Some partial indulgences were granted for the hands
and feet "Totum autem corpus nemo unguet nisi causa infirmitatis, nec
lavabitur aqua nudo corpore, nisi languor perspicuus sit," (Regul.
Pachom xcii. part i. p. 78.)]

[Footnote 431: Athanasius (Vit. Ant. c. 47) boasts of Antony's holy
horror of clear water, by which his feet were uncontaminated except
under dire necessity--M.]




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. [44] 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. [45] The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were
satisfied with their daily pittance, [46] of twelve ounces of bread, or
rather biscuit, [47] 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. [48] 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. [49] 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.

[Footnote 44: St. Jerom, in strong, but indiscreet, language, expresses
the most important use of fasting and abstinence: "Non quod Deus
universitatis Creator et Dominus, intestinorum nostrorum rugitu, et
inanitate ventris, pulmonisque ardore delectetur, sed quod aliter
pudicitia tuta esse non possit." (Op. tom. i. p. 32, ad Eustochium.) See
the twelfth and twenty-second Collations of Cassian, de Castitate and de
Illusionibus Nocturnis.]

[Footnote 45: Edacitas in Graecis gula est, in Gallis natura, (Dialog.
i. c. 4 p. 521.) Cassian fairly owns, that the perfect model of
abstinence cannot be imitated in Gaul, on account of the aerum
temperies, and the qualitas nostrae fragilitatis, (Institut. iv. 11.)
Among the Western rules, that of Columbanus is the most austere; he
had been educated amidst the poverty of Ireland, as rigid, perhaps, and
inflexible as the abstemious virtue of Egypt. The rule of Isidore of
Seville is the mildest; on holidays he allows the use of flesh.]

[Footnote 46: "Those who drink only water, and have no nutritious
liquor, ought, at least, to have a pound and a half (twenty-four ounces)
of bread every day." State of Prisons, p. 40, by Mr. Howard.]

[Footnote 47: See Cassian. Collat. l. ii. 19-21. The small loaves,
or biscuit, of six ounces each, had obtained the name of Paximacia,
(Rosweyde, Onomasticon, p. 1045.) Pachomius, however, allowed his monks
some latitude in the quantity of their food; but he made them work in
proportion as they ate, (Pallad. in Hist. Lausiac. c. 38, 39, in Vit.
Patrum, l. viii. p. 736, 737.)]

[Footnote 48: See the banquet to which Cassian (Collation viii. 1) was
invited by Serenus, an Egyptian abbot.]

[Footnote 49: See the Rule of St. Benedict, No. 39, 40, (in Cod. Reg.
part ii. p. 41, 42.) Licet legamus vinum omnino monachorum non esse,
sed quia nostris temporibus id monachis persuaderi non potest; he allows
them a Roman hemina, a measure which may be ascertained from Arbuthnot's
Tables.] 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. [50] 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. [51] 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. [52] 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.

[Footnote 50: Such expressions as my book, my cloak, my shoes, (Cassian
Institut. l. iv. c. 13,) were not less severely prohibited among the
Western monks, (Cod. Regul. part ii. p. 174, 235, 288;) and the rule
of Columbanus punished them with six lashes. The ironical author of the
Ordres Monastiques, who laughs at the foolish nicety of modern convents,
seems ignorant that the ancients were equally absurd.]

[Footnote 51: Two great masters of ecclesiastical science, the P.
Thomassin, (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 1090-1139,) and the
P. Mabillon, (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 116-155,) have seriously
examined the manual labor of the monks, which the former considers as a
merit and the latter as a duty.]

[Footnote 52: Mabillon (Etudes Monastiques, tom. i. p. 47-55) has
collected many curious facts to justify the literary labors of his
predecessors, both in the East and West. Books were copied in the
ancient monasteries of Egypt, (Cassian. Institut. l. iv. c. 12,) and
by the disciples of St. Martin, (Sulp. Sever. in Vit. Martin. c. 7,
p. 473.) Cassiodorus has allowed an ample scope for the studies of the
monks; and we shall not be scandalized, if their pens sometimes wandered
from Chrysostom and Augustin to Homer and Virgil.] 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. [53] 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. [54] 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. [55] 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, [56] and scandalously abused the riches which had
been acquired by the austere virtues of their founders. [57] 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.

[Footnote 53: Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 118,
145, 146, 171-179) has examined the revolution of the civil, canon, and
common law. Modern France confirms the death which monks have inflicted
on themselves, and justly deprives them of all right of inheritance.]

[Footnote 54: See Jerom, (tom. i. p. 176, 183.) The monk Pambo made a
sublime answer to Melania, who wished to specify the value of her
gift: "Do you offer it to me, or to God? If to God, He who suspends
the mountain in a balance, need not be informed of the weight of your
plate." (Pallad. Hist. Lausiac. c. 10, in the Vit. Patrum, l. viii. p.
715.)]

[Footnote 55: Zosim. l. v. p. 325. Yet the wealth of the Eastern monks
was far surpassed by the princely greatness of the Benedictines.]

[Footnote 56: The sixth general council (the Quinisext in Trullo, Canon
xlvii in Beveridge, tom. i. p. 213) restrains women from passing the
night in a male, or men in a female, monastery. The seventh general
council (the second Nicene, Canon xx. in Beveridge, tom. i. p. 325)
prohibits the erection of double or promiscuous monasteries of both
sexes; but it appears from Balsamon, that the prohibition was not
effectual. On the irregular pleasures and expenses of the clergy and
monks, see Thomassin, tom. iii. p. 1334-1368.]

[Footnote 57: I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a
Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand
crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a
sovereign prince."--I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.]

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. [58] 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. [59] 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.

[Footnote 58: Pior, an Egyptian monk, allowed his sister to see him;
but he shut his eyes during the whole visit. See Vit. Patrum, l. iii. p.
504. Many such examples might be added.]

[Footnote 59: The 7th, 8th, 29th, 30th, 31st, 34th, 57th, 60th, 86th,
and 95th articles of the Rule of Pachomius, impose most intolerable laws
of silence and mortification.]

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. [60] 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. [61] In this
comfortless state, superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched
votaries. [62] 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. [63] 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. [64]

[Footnote 60: The diurnal and nocturnal prayers of the monks are
copiously discussed by Cassian, in the third and fourth books of his
Institutions; and he constantly prefers the liturgy, which an angel had
dictated to the monasteries of Tebennoe.]

[Footnote 61: Cassian, from his own experience, describes the acedia,
or listlessness of mind and body, to which a monk was exposed, when he
sighed to find himself alone. Saepiusque egreditur et ingreditur
cellam, et Solem velut ad occasum tardius properantem crebrius intuetur,
(Institut. x. l.)]

[Footnote 62: The temptations and sufferings of Stagirius were
communicated by that unfortunate youth to his friend St. Chrysostom. See
Middleton's Works, vol. i. p. 107-110. Something similar introduces the
life of every saint; and the famous Inigo, or Ignatius, the founder of
the Jesuits, (vide d'Inigo de Guiposcoa, tom. i. p. 29-38,) may serve as
a memorable example.]

[Footnote 63: Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiastique, tom. vii. p. 46. I have
read somewhere, in the Vitae Patrum, but I cannot recover the place
that several, I believe many, of the monks, who did not reveal their
temptations to the abbot, became guilty of suicide.]

[Footnote 64: See the seventh and eighth Collations of Cassian, who
gravely examines, why the demons were grown less active and numerous
since the time of St. Antony. Rosweyde's copious index to the Vitae
Patrum will point out a variety of infernal scenes. The devils were most
formidable in a female shape.]

The monks were divided into two classes: the Coenobites, who lived under
a common and regular discipline; and the Anachorets, who indulged their
unsocial, independent fanaticism. [65] 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, [66] a distant circle of solitary
cells; and the extravagant penance of Hermits was stimulated by applause
and emulation. [67] 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. [68] 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. [69] 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.

[Footnote 65: For the distinction of the Coenobites and the Hermits,
especially in Egypt, see Jerom, (tom. i. p. 45, ad Rusticum,) the first
Dialogue of Sulpicius Severus, Rufinus, (c. 22, in Vit. Patrum, l. ii.
p. 478,) Palladius, (c. 7, 69, in Vit. Patrum, l. viii. p. 712, 758,)
and, above all, the eighteenth and nineteenth Collations of Cassian.
These writers, who compare the common and solitary life, reveal the
abuse and danger of the latter.]

[Footnote 66: Suicer. Thesaur. Ecclesiast. tom. ii. p. 205, 218.
Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 1501, 1502) gives a good
account of these cells. When Gerasimus founded his monastery in the
wilderness of Jordan, it was accompanied by a Laura of seventy cells.]

[Footnote 67: Theodoret, in a large volume, (the Philotheus in Vit.
Patrum, l. ix. p. 793-863,) has collected the lives and miracles of
thirty Anachorets. Evagrius (l. i. c. 12) more briefly celebrates the
monks and hermits of Palestine.]

[Footnote 68: Sozomen, l. vi. c. 33. The great St. Ephrem composed a
panegyric on these or grazing monks, (Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. viii.
p. 292.)]

[Footnote 69: The P. Sicard (Missions du Levant, tom. ii. p. 217-233)
examined the caverns of the Lower Thebais with wonder and devotion.
The inscriptions are in the old Syriac character, which was used by the
Christians of Abyssinia.]

Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon
Stylites [70] have been immortalized by the singular invention of an
aerial 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. [71] 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 [72] might shorten, but it could not
disturb, this celestial life; 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 distinguiseed 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.

[Footnote 70: See Theodoret (in Vit. Patrum, l. ix. p. 848-854,) Antony,
(in Vit. Patrum, l. i. p. 170-177,) Cosmas, (in Asseman. Bibliot.
Oriental tom. i. p. 239-253,) Evagrius, (l. i. c. 13, 14,) and
Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 347-392.)]

[Footnote 71: The narrow circumference of two cubits, or three feet,
which Evagrius assigns for the summit of the column is inconsistent with
reason, with facts, and with the rules of architecture. The people who
saw it from below might be easily deceived.]

[Footnote 72: I must not conceal a piece of ancient scandal concerning
the origin of this ulcer. It has been reported that the Devil, assuming
an angelic form, invited him to ascend, like Elijah, into a fiery
chariot. The saint too hastily raised his foot, and Satan seized the
moment of inflicting this chastisement on his vanity.]

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 [73] 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.

[Footnote 73: I know not how to select or specify the miracles contained
in the Vitae Patrum of Rosweyde, as the number very much exceeds the
thousand pages of that voluminous work. An elegant specimen may be found
in the dialogues of Sulpicius Severus, and his Life of St. Martin. He
reveres the monks of Egypt; yet he insults them with the remark, that
they never raised the dead; whereas the bishop of Tours had restored
three dead men to life.] 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, [74] 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; [741] four of which he invented, to express the peculiar sounds
that were unknown to the Greek and Latin pronunciation. [75] 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 Moses was applied to this
spiritual guide, who conducted his people through the deep waters of
the Danube to the Land of Promise. [76] The devout shepherds, who were
attached to his person, and tractable to his voice, acquiesced in
their settlement, at the foot of the Maesian 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. [77]

[Footnote 74: On the subject of Ulphilas, and the conversion of the
Goths, see Sozomen, l. vi. c. 37. Socrates, l. iv. c. 33. Theodoret, l.
iv. c. 37. Philostorg. l. ii. c. 5. The heresy of Philostorgius appears
to have given him superior means of information.]

[Footnote 741: This is the Moeso-Gothic alphabet of which many of the
letters are evidently formed from the Greek and Roman. M. St. Martin,
however contends, that it is impossible but that some written alphabet
must have been known long before among the Goths. He supposes that
their former letters were those inscribed on the runes, which, being
inseparably connected with the old idolatrous superstitions, were
proscribed by the Christian missionaries. Everywhere the runes, so
common among all the German tribes, disappear after the propagation of
Christianity. S. Martin iv. p. 97, 98.--M.]

[Footnote 75: A mutilated copy of the four Gospels, in the Gothic
version, was published A.D. 1665, and is esteemed the most ancient
monument of the Teutonic language, though Wetstein attempts, by some
frivolous conjectures, to deprive Ulphilas of the honor of the work. Two
of the four additional letters express the W, and our own Th. See Simon,
Hist. Critique du Nouveau Testament, tom ii. p. 219-223. Mill. Prolegom
p. 151, edit. Kuster. Wetstein, Prolegom. tom. i. p. 114. * Note: The
Codex Argenteus, found in the sixteenth century at Wenden, near Cologne,
and now preserved at Upsal, contains almost the entire four Gospels.
The best edition is that of J. Christ. Zahn, Weissenfels, 1805. In 1762
Knettel discovered and published from a Palimpsest MS. four chapters of
the Epistle to the Romans: they were reprinted at Upsal, 1763. M. Mai
has since that time discovered further fragments, and other remains
of Moeso-Gothic literature, from a Palimpsest at Milan. See Ulphilae
partium inedi arum in Ambrosianis Palimpsestis ab Ang. Maio repertarum
specimen Milan. Ito. 1819.--M.]

[Footnote 76: Philostorgius erroneously places this passage under the
reign of Constantine; but I am much inclined to believe that it preceded
the great emigration.]

[Footnote 77: We are obliged to Jornandes (de Reb. Get. c. 51, p. 688)
for a short and lively picture of these lesser Goths. Gothi minores,
populus immensus, cum suo Pontifice ipsoque primate Wulfila. The
last words, if they are not mere tautology, imply some temporal
jurisdiction.]

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. [78] 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. [79]

[Footnote 78: At non ita Gothi non ita Vandali; malis licet doctoribus
instituti meliores tamen etiam in hac parte quam nostri. Salvian, de
Gubern, Dei, l. vii. p. 243.]

[Footnote 79: Mosheim has slightly sketched the progress of Christianity
in the North, from the fourth to the fourteenth century. The subject
would afford materials for an ecclesiastical and even philosophical,
history]




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. [80]
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 [81] 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. [82]

[Footnote 80: To such a cause has Socrates (l. vii. c. 30) ascribed the
conversion of the Burgundians, whose Christian piety is celebrated by
Orosius, (l. vii. c. 19.)]

[Footnote 81: See an original and curious epistle from Daniel, the first
bishop of Winchester, (Beda, Hist. Eccles. Anglorum, l. v. c. 18, p.
203, edit Smith,) to St. Boniface, who preached the gospel among the
savages of Hesse and Thuringia. Epistol. Bonifacii, lxvii., in the
Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. xiii. p. 93]

[Footnote 82: The sword of Charlemagne added weight to the argument; but
when Daniel wrote this epistle, (A.D. 723,) the Mahometans, who reigned
from India to Spain, might have retorted it against the Christians.]

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 Son was not
equal, or consubstantial to the Father; [83] communicated these errors
to the clergy and people; and infected the Barbaric world with a heresy,
[84] 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, [85] 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 Barbarian
was 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, [86] 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. [87] The pulpit, that safe and sacred organ of
sedition, resounded with the names of Pharaoh and Holofernes; [88] 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.

[Footnote 83: The opinions of Ulphilas and the Goths inclined to
semi-Arianism, since they would not say that the Son was a creature,
though they held communion with those who maintained that heresy. Their
apostle represented the whole controversy as a question of trifling
moment, which had been raised by the passions of the clergy. Theodoret
l. iv. c. 37.]

[Footnote 84: The Arianism of the Goths has been imputed to the emperor
Valens: "Itaque justo Dei judicio ipsi eum vivum incenderunt, qui
propter eum etiam mortui, vitio erroris arsuri sunt." Orosius, l. vii.
c. 33, p. 554. This cruel sentence is confirmed by Tillemont, (Mem.
Eccles. tom. vi. p. 604-610,) who coolly observes, "un seul homme
entraina dans l'enfer un nombre infini de Septentrionaux, &c." Salvian
(de Gubern. Dei, l. v p. 150, 151) pities and excuses their involuntary
error.]

[Footnote 85: Orosius affirms, in the year 416, (l. vii. c. 41, p. 580,)
that the Churches of Christ (of the Catholics) were filled with Huns,
Suevi, Vandals, Burgundians.]

[Footnote 86: Radbod, king of the Frisons, was so much scandalized by
this rash declaration of a missionary, that he drew back his foot after
he had entered the baptismal font. See Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. ix p.
167.]

[Footnote 87: The epistles of Sidonius, bishop of Clermont, under the
Visigotha, and of Avitus, bishop of Vienna, under the Burgundians,
explain sometimes in dark hints, the general dispositions of the
Catholics. The history of Clovis and Theodoric will suggest some
particular facts]

[Footnote 88: Genseric confessed the resemblance, by the severity with
which he punished such indiscreet allusions. Victor Vitensis, l. 7, p.
10.]

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. [89] 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. [90]

[Footnote 89: Such are the contemporary complaints of Sidonius, bishop
of Clermont (l. vii. c. 6, p. 182, &c., edit. Sirmond.) Gregory of Tours
who quotes this Epistle, (l. ii. c. 25, in tom. ii. p. 174,) extorts an
unwarrantable assertion, that of the nine vacancies in Aquitain, some
had been produced by episcopal martyrdoms]

[Footnote 90: The original monuments of the Vandal persecution are
preserved in the five books of the history of Victor Vitensis, (de
Persecutione Vandalica,) a bishop who was exiled by Hunneric; in the
life of St. Fulgentius, who was distinguished in the persecution of
Thrasimund (in Biblioth. Max. Patrum, tom. ix. p. 4-16;) and in the
first book of the Vandalic War, by the impartial Procopius, (c. 7, 8,
p. 196, 197, 198, 199.) Dom Ruinart, the last editor of Victor, has
illustrated the whole subject with a copious and learned apparatus of
notes and supplement (Paris, 1694.)] 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, [91] 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 laudable
severity of Hunneric himself, who burnt or banished great numbers
of Manichaeans; [92] 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. [93] II. The practice of a conference,
which the Catholics had so frequently used to insult and punish their
obstinate antagonists, was retorted against themselves. [94] 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. [95] 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. [96] 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, [97] and the plenty of Sardinia was
overbalanced by the unwholesome quality of the air. [98] 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. [99] 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. [100] 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. [101]
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. [102] 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 [103] and a proconsul [104] 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. [105] 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. [106] 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 [107] 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, [108] 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. [109] 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. [110] 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 transmarine correspondence. This engagement,
consistent, as it should seem, with their moral and religious duties,
was refused by the more sagacious members [111] 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.

[Footnote 91: Victor, iv. 2, p. 65. Hunneric refuses the name of
Catholics to the Homoousians. He describes, as the veri Divinae
Majestatis cultores, his own party, who professed the faith, confirmed
by more than a thousand bishops, in the synods of Rimini and Seleucia.]

[Footnote 92: Victor, ii, 1, p. 21, 22: Laudabilior... videbatur. In
the Mss which omit this word, the passage is unintelligible. See Ruinart
Not. p. 164.]

[Footnote 93: Victor, ii. p. 22, 23. The clergy of Carthage called these
conditions periculosoe; and they seem, indeed, to have been proposed as
a snare to entrap the Catholic bishops.]

[Footnote 94: See the narrative of this conference, and the treatment of
the bishops, in Victor, ii. 13-18, p. 35-42 and the whole fourth book p.
63-171. The third book, p. 42-62, is entirely filled by their apology or
confession of faith.]

[Footnote 95: See the list of the African bishops, in Victor, p.
117-140, and Ruinart's notes, p. 215-397. The schismatic name of Donatus
frequently occurs, and they appear to have adopted (like our fanatics
of the last age) the pious appellations of Deodatus, Deogratias,
Quidvultdeus, Habetdeum, &c. Note: These names appear to have been
introduced by the Donatists.--M.]

[Footnote 96: Fulgent. Vit. c. 16-29. Thrasimund affected the praise
of moderation and learning; and Fulgentius addressed three books of
controversy to the Arian tyrant, whom he styles piissime Rex. Biblioth.
Maxim. Patrum, tom. ix. p. 41. Only sixty bishops are mentioned as
exiles in the life of Fulgentius; they are increased to one hundred and
twenty by Victor Tunnunensis and Isidore; but the number of two hundred
and twenty is specified in the Historia Miscella, and a short authentic
chronicle of the times. See Ruinart, p. 570, 571.]

[Footnote 97: See the base and insipid epigrams of the Stoic, who could
not support exile with more fortitude than Ovid. Corsica might not
produce corn, wine, or oil; but it could not be destitute of grass,
water, and even fire.]

[Footnote 98: Si ob gravitatem coeli interissent vile damnum. Tacit.
Annal. ii. 85. In this application, Thrasimund would have adopted the
reading of some critics, utile damnum.]

[Footnote 99: See these preludes of a general persecution, in Victor,
ii. 3, 4, 7 and the two edicts of Hunneric, l. ii. p. 35, l. iv. p. 64.]

[Footnote 100: See Procopius de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 7, p. 197, 198.
A Moorish prince endeavored to propitiate the God of the Christians, by
his diligence to erase the marks of the Vandal sacrilege.]

[Footnote 101: See this story in Victor. ii. 8-12, p. 30-34. Victor
describes the distress of these confessors as an eye-witness.]

[Footnote 102: See the fifth book of Victor. His passionate complaints
are confirmed by the sober testimony of Procopius, and the public
declaration of the emperor Justinian. Cod. l. i. tit. xxvii.]

[Footnote 103: Victor, ii. 18, p. 41.]

[Footnote 104: Victor, v. 4, p. 74, 75. His name was Victorianus, and
he was a wealthy citizen of Adrumetum, who enjoyed the confidence of the
king; by whose favor he had obtained the office, or at least the title,
of proconsul of Africa.]

[Footnote 105: Victor, i. 6, p. 8, 9. After relating the firm resistance
and dexterous reply of Count Sebastian, he adds, quare alio generis
argumento postea bellicosum virum eccidit.]

[Footnote 106: Victor, v. 12, 13. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. vi. p.
609.]

[Footnote 107: Primate was more properly the title of the bishop of
Carthage; but the name of patriarch was given by the sects and nations
to their principal ecclesiastic. See Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise,
tom. i. p. 155, 158.]

[Footnote 108: The patriarch Cyrila himself publicly declared, that he
did not understand Latin (Victor, ii. 18, p. 42:) Nescio Latine; and he
might converse with tolerable ease, without being capable of disputing
or preaching in that language. His Vandal clergy were still more
ignorant; and small confidence could be placed in the Africans who had
conformed.]

[Footnote 109: Victor, ii. 1, 2, p. 22.]

[Footnote 110: Victor, v. 7, p. 77. He appeals to the ambassador
himself, whose name was Uranius.]

[Footnote 111: Astutiores, Victor, iv. 4, p. 70. He plainly intimates
that their quotation of the gospel "Non jurabitis in toto," was only
meant to elude the obligation of an inconvenient oath. The forty-six
bishops who refused were banished to Corsica; the three hundred and two
who swore were distributed through the provinces of Africa.]




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

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 [112] 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; [113]
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. [114] Even the Scriptures themselves were profaned
by their rash and sacrilegious hands. The memorable text, which asserts
the unity of the three who bear witness in heaven, [115] is condemned
by the universal silence of the orthodox fathers, ancient versions,
and authentic manuscripts. [116] It was first alleged by the Catholic
bishops whom Hunneric summoned to the conference of Carthage. [117] 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. [118] After the invention of
printing, [119] the editors of the Greek Testament yielded to their own
prejudices, or those of the times; [120] 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.

[Footnote 112: Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspae, in the Byzacene province,
was of a senatorial family, and had received a liberal education. He
could repeat all Homer and Menander before he was allowed to study Latin
his native tongue, (Vit. Fulgent. c. l.) Many African bishops might
understand Greek, and many Greek theologians were translated into
Latin.]

[Footnote 113: Compare the two prefaces to the Dialogue of Vigilius of
Thapsus, (p. 118, 119, edit. Chiflet.) He might amuse his learned
reader with an innocent fiction; but the subject was too grave, and the
Africans were too ignorant.]

[Footnote 114: The P. Quesnel started this opinion, which has been
favorably received. But the three following truths, however surprising
they may seem, are now universally acknowledged, (Gerard Vossius, tom.
vi. p. 516-522. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. viii. p. 667-671.) 1. St.
Athanasius is not the author of the creed which is so frequently read in
our churches. 2. It does not appear to have existed within a century
after his death. 3. It was originally composed in the Latin tongue, and,
consequently in the Western provinces. Gennadius patriarch of
Constantinople, was so much amazed by this extraordinary composition,
that he frankly pronounced it to be the work of a drunken man. Petav.
Dogmat. Theologica, tom. ii. l. vii. c. 8, p. 687.]

[Footnote 115: 1 John, v. 7. See Simon, Hist. Critique du Nouveau
Testament, part i. c. xviii. p. 203-218; and part ii. c. ix. p. 99-121;
and the elaborate Prolegomena and Annotations of Dr. Mill and Wetstein
to their editions of the Greek Testament. In 1689, the papist Simon
strove to be free; in 1707, the Protestant Mill wished to be a slave;
in 1751, the Armenian Wetstein used the liberty of his times, and of his
sect. * Note: This controversy has continued to be agitated, but with
declining interest even in the more religious part of the community; and
may now be considered to have terminated in an almost general
acquiescence of the learned to the conclusions of Porson in his Letters
to Travis. See the pamphlets of the late Bishop of Salisbury and of
Crito Cantabrigiensis, Dr. Turton of Cambridge.--M.]

[Footnote 116: Of all the Mss. now extant, above fourscore in number,
some of which are more than 1200 years old, (Wetstein ad loc.) The
orthodox copies of the Vatican, of the Complutensian editors, of Robert
Stephens, are become invisible; and the two Mss. of Dublin and Berlin
are unworthy to form an exception. See Emlyn's Works, vol. ii. p
227-255, 269-299; and M. de Missy's four ingenious letters, in tom.
viii. and ix. of the Journal Britannique.]

[Footnote 117: Or, more properly, by the four bishops who composed and
published the profession of faith in the name of their brethren. They
styled this text, luce clarius, (Victor Vitensis de Persecut. Vandal.
l. iii. c. 11, p. 54.) It is quoted soon afterwards by the African
polemics, Vigilius and Fulgentius.]

[Footnote 118: In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Bibles were
corrected by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, and by Nicholas,
cardinal and librarian of the Roman church, secundum orthodoxam fidem,
(Wetstein, Prolegom. p. 84, 85.) Notwithstanding these corrections, the
passage is still wanting in twenty-five Latin Mss., (Wetstein ad loc.,)
the oldest and the fairest; two qualities seldom united, except in
manuscripts.]

[Footnote 119: The art which the Germans had invented was applied in
Italy to the profane writers of Rome and Greece. The original Greek of
the New Testament was published about the same time (A.D. 1514, 1516,
1520,) by the industry of Erasmus, and the munificence of Cardinal
Ximenes. The Complutensian Polyglot cost the cardinal 50,000 ducats.
See Mattaire, Annal. Typograph. tom. ii. p. 2-8, 125-133; and Wetstein,
Prolegomena, p. 116-127.]

[Footnote 120: The three witnesses have been established in our Greek
Testaments by the prudence of Erasmus; the honest bigotry of the
Complutensian editors; the typographical fraud, or error, of Robert
Stephens, in the placing a crotchet; and the deliberate falsehood, or
strange misapprehension, of Theodore Beza.]

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
one preternatural event, which will edify the devout, and surprise the
incredulous. Tipasa, [121] a maritime colony of Mauritania, sixteen
miles to the east of Caesarea, had been distinguished, in every age, by
the orthodox zeal of its inhabitants. They had braved the fury of the
Donatists; [122] 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. [123] "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. Aeneas 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." [124] The testimony of Aeneas 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. [125] 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.

[Footnote 121: Plin. Hist. Natural. v. 1. Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 15.
Cellanius, Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii. part ii. p. 127. This Tipasa (which
must not be confounded with another in Numidia) was a town of some note
since Vespasian endowed it with the right of Latium.]

[Footnote 122: Optatus Milevitanus de Schism. Donatist. l. ii. p. 38.]

[Footnote 123: Victor Vitensis, v. 6, p. 76. Ruinart, p. 483-487.]

[Footnote 124: Aeneas Gazaeus in Theophrasto, in Biblioth. Patrum, tom.
viii. p. 664, 665. He was a Christian, and composed this Dialogue (the
Theophrastus) on the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of
the body; besides twenty-five Epistles, still extant. See Cave, (Hist.
Litteraria, p. 297,) and Fabricius, (Biblioth. Graec. tom. i. p. 422.)]

[Footnote 125: Justinian. Codex. l. i. tit. xxvii. Marcellin. in Chron.
p. 45, in Thesaur. Temporum Scaliger. Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i.
c. 7. p. 196. Gregor. Magnus, Dialog. iii. 32. None of these witnesses
have specified the number of the confessors, which is fixed at sixty in
an old menology, (apud Ruinart. p. 486.) Two of them lost their speech
by fornication; but the miracle is enhanced by the singular instance of
a boy who had never spoken before his tongue was cut out. ]

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 [126] 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 second baptism. His
eldest son Hermenegild, who was invested by his father with the royal
diadem, and the fair principality of Boetica, 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. [127] 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. [128] 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 Le ander, 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. [129]
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.

[Footnote 126: See the two general historians of Spain, Mariana (Hist.
de Rebus Hispaniae, tom. i. l. v. c. 12-15, p. 182-194) and Ferreras,
(French translation, tom. ii. p. 206-247.) Mariana almost forgets that
he is a Jesuit, to assume the style and spirit of a Roman classic.
Ferreras, an industrious compiler, reviews his facts, and rectifies his
chronology.]

[Footnote 127: Goisvintha successively married two kings of the
Visigoths: Athanigild, to whom she bore Brunechild, the mother of
Ingundis; and Leovigild, whose two sons, Hermenegild and Recared, were
the issue of a former marriage.]

[Footnote 128: Iracundiae furore succensa, adprehensam per comam capitis
puellam in terram conlidit, et diu calcibus verberatam, ac sanguins
cruentatam, jussit exspoliari, et piscinae immergi. Greg. Turon. l. v.
c. 39. in tom. ii. p. 255. Gregory is one of our best originals for this
portion of history.]

[Footnote 129: The Catholics who admitted the baptism of heretics
repeated the rite, or, as it was afterwards styled, the sacrament,
of confirmation, to which they ascribed many mystic and marvellous
prerogatives both visible and invisible. See Chardon. Hist. des
Sacremens, tom. 1. p. 405-552.] 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 Earth had 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 Boetica, [130] which were spontaneously
replenished every year, on the vigil of Easter; [131] and the miraculous
shrine of St. Martin of Tours, which had already converted the Suevic
prince and people of Gallicia. [132] 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.
[133] 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.
[134]

[Footnote 130: Osset, or Julia Constantia, was opposite to Seville, on
the northern side of the Boetis, (Plin. Hist. Natur. iii. 3:) and the
authentic reference of Gregory of Tours (Hist. Francor. l. vi. c. 43, p.
288) deserves more credit than the name of Lusitania, (de Gloria Martyr.
c. 24,) which has been eagerly embraced by the vain and superstitious
Portuguese, (Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. ii. p. 166.)]

[Footnote 131: This miracle was skilfully performed. An Arian king
sealed the doors, and dug a deep trench round the church, without being
able to intercept the Easter supply of baptismal water.]

[Footnote 132: Ferreras (tom. ii. p. 168-175, A.D. 550) has illustrated
the difficulties which regard the time and circumstances of the
conversion of the Suevi. They had been recently united by Leovigild to
the Gothic monarchy of Spain.]

[Footnote 133: This addition to the Nicene, or rather the
Constantinopolitan creed, was first made in the eighth council of
Toledo, A.D. 653; but it was expressive of the popular doctrine, (Gerard
Vossius, tom. vi. p. 527, de tribus Symbolis.)]

[Footnote 134: See Gregor. Magn. l. vii. epist. 126, apud Baronium,
Annal. Eccles. A.D. 559, No. 25, 26.]

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. [135]

[Footnote 135: Paul Warnefrid (de Gestis Langobard. l. iv. c. 44, p.
153, edit Grot.) allows that Arianism still prevailed under the reign of
Rotharis, (A.D. 636-652.) The pious deacon does not attempt to mark the
precise era of the national conversion, which was accomplished, however,
before the end of the seventh century.]

The first missionaries who preached the gospel to the Barbarians,
appealed to the evidence of reason, and claimed the benefit of
toleration. [136] 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. [137] 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. [138] 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. [139] 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: that the
sacraments should not be forcibly imposed; but that the 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. [140]

[Footnote 136: Quorum fidei et conversioni ita congratulatus esse rex
perhibetur, ut nullum tamen cogeret ad Christianismum.... Didiceret enim
a doctoribus auctoribusque suae salutis, servitium Christi voluntarium
non coactitium esse debere. Bedae Hist. Ecclesiastic. l. i. c. 26, p.
62, edit. Smith.]

[Footnote 137: See the Historians of France, tom. iv. p. 114;
and Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxonicae, p. 11, 31. Siquis sacrificium
immolaverit praeter Deo soli morte moriatur.]

[Footnote 138: The Jews pretend that they were introduced into Spain
by the fleets of Solomon, and the arms of Nebuchadnezzar; that Hadrian
transported forty thousand families of the tribe of Judah, and ten
thousand of the tribe of Benjamin, &c. Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom.
vii. c. 9, p. 240-256.]

[Footnote 139: Isidore, at that time archbishop of Seville, mentions,
disapproves and congratulates, the zeal of Sisebut (Chron. Goth. p.
728.) Barosins (A.D. 614, No. 41) assigns the number of the evidence of
Almoin, (l. iv. c. 22;) but the evidence is weak, and I have not been
able to verify the quotation, (Historians of France, tom. iii. p. 127.)]

[Footnote 140: Basnage (tom. viii. c. 13, p. 388-400) faithfully
represents the state of the Jews; but he might have added from the
canons of the Spanish councils, and the laws of the Visigoths, many
curious circumstances, essential to his subject, though they are foreign
to mine. * Note: Compare Milman, Hist. of Jews iii. 256--M]

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 Manichaeans, 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, [1] 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. [2] "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."
[3] 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 Caesar, 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. [4]

[Footnote 1: In this chapter I shall draw my quotations from the Recueil
des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, Paris, 1738-1767, in
eleven volumes in folio. By the labor of Dom Bouquet, and the other
Benedictines, all the original testimonies, as far as A.D. 1060, are
disposed in chronological order, and illustrated with learned notes.
Such a national work, which will be continued to the year 1500, might
provoke our emulation.]

[Footnote 2: Tacit. Hist. iv. 73, 74, in tom. i. p. 445. To abridge
Tacitus would indeed be presumptuous; but I may select the general ideas
which he applies to the present state and future revelations of Gaul.]

[Footnote 3: Eadem semper causa Germanis transcendendi in Gallias
libido atque avaritiae et mutandae sedis amor; ut relictis paludibus
et solitudinibus, suis, fecundissimum hoc solum vosque ipsos
possiderent.... Nam pulsis Romanis quid aliud quam bella omnium inter se
gentium exsistent?]

[Footnote 4: Sidonius Apollinaris ridicules, with affected wit and
pleasantry, the hardships of his situation, (Carm. xii. in tom. i. p.
811.)]

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: [5] 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 coerulean 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. [6] 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 [7] an
ambitious and valiant youth.

[Footnote 5: See Procopius de Bell. Gothico, l. i. c. 12, in tom. ii.
p. 81. The character of Grotius inclines me to believe, that he has not
substituted the Rhine for the Rhone (Hist. Gothorum, p. 175) without the
authority of some Ms.]

[Footnote 6: Sidonius, l. viii. epist. 3, 9, in tom. i. p. 800.
Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 47 p. 680) justifies, in some measure,
this portrait of the Gothic hero.]

[Footnote 7: I use the familiar appellation of Clovis, from the Latin
Chlodovechus, or Chlodovoeus. But the Ch expresses only the German
aspiration, and the true name is not different from Lewis, (Mem. de
'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 68.)]

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. [8] 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; [10] 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; [11] but he imitated the example of
Caesar, 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. [12] 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. [13] 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.

[Footnote 8: Greg. l. ii. c. 12, in tom. i. p. 168. Basina speaks the
language of nature; the Franks, who had seen her in their youth, might
converse with Gregory in their old age; and the bishop of Tours could
not wish to defame the mother of the first Christian king.]

[Footnote 9: The Abbe Dubos (Hist. Critique de l'Etablissement de la
Monarchie Francoise dans les Gaules, tom. i. p. 630-650) has the merit
of defining the primitive kingdom of Clovis, and of ascertaining the
genuine number of his subjects.]

[Footnote 10: Ecclesiam incultam ac negligentia civium Paganorum
praetermis sam, veprium densitate oppletam, &c. Vit. St. Vedasti, in
tom. iii. p. 372. This description supposes that Arras was possessed by
the Pagans many years before the baptism of Clovis.]

[Footnote 11: Gregory of Tours (l v. c. i. tom. ii. p. 232) contrasts
the poverty of Clovis with the wealth of his grandsons. Yet Remigius
(in tom. iv. p. 52) mentions his paternas opes, as sufficient for the
redemption of captives.]

[Footnote 12: See Gregory, (l. ii. c. 27, 37, in tom. ii. p. 175, 181,
182.) The famous story of the vase of Soissons explains both the power
and the character of Clovis. As a point of controversy, it has been
strangely tortured by Boulainvilliers Dubos, and the other political
antiquarians.]

[Footnote 13: The duke of Nivernois, a noble statesman, who has managed
weighty and delicate negotiations, ingeniously illustrates (Mem. de
l'Acad. des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 147-184) the political system of
Clovis.]

The first exploit of Clovis was the defeat of Syagrius, the son of
Aegidius; 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: [14] 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. [15] 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.
[16] 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 [17] of battle. In the time of Caesar 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.
[18] 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 [19]
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 [20] which Clovis subdued in the tenth year of his reign.

[Footnote 14: M. Biet (in a Dissertation which deserved the prize of the
Academy of Soissons, p. 178-226,) has accurately defined the nature and
extent of the kingdom of Syagrius and his father; but he too readily
allows the slight evidence of Dubos (tom. ii. p. 54-57) to deprive him
of Beauvais and Amiens.]

[Footnote 15: I may observe that Fredegarius, in his epitome of Gregory
of Tours, (tom. ii. p. 398,) has prudently substituted the name of
Patricius for the incredible title of Rex Romanorum.]

[Footnote 16: Sidonius, (l. v. Epist. 5, in tom. i. p. 794,) who styles
him the Solon, the Amphion, of the Barbarians, addresses this imaginary
king in the tone of friendship and equality. From such offices of
arbitration, the crafty Dejoces had raised himself to the throne of the
Medes, (Herodot. l. i. c. 96-100.)]

[Footnote 17: Campum sibi praeparari jussit. M. Biet (p. 226-251) has
diligently ascertained this field of battle, at Nogent, a Benedictine
abbey, about ten miles to the north of Soissons. The ground was marked
by a circle of Pagan sepulchres; and Clovis bestowed the adjacent lands
of Leully and Coucy on the church of Rheims.]

[Footnote 18: See Caesar. Comment. de Bell. Gallic. ii. 4, in tom. i.
p. 220, and the Notitiae, tom. i. p. 126. The three Fabricae of Soissons
were, Seutaria, Balistaria, and Clinabaria. The last supplied the
complete armor of the heavy cuirassiers.]

[Footnote 19: The epithet must be confined to the circumstances; and
history cannot justify the French prejudice of Gregory, (l. ii. c. 27,
in tom. ii. p. 175,) ut Gothorum pavere mos est.]

[Footnote 20: Dubos has satisfied me (tom. i. p. 277-286) that Gregory
of Tours, his transcribers, or his readers, have repeatedly confounded
the German kingdom of Thuringia, beyond the Rhine, and the Gallic city
of Tongria, on the Meuse, which was more anciently the country of the
Eburones, and more recently the diocese of Liege.]

The name of the Alemanni has been absurdly derived from their imaginary
settlement on the banks of the Leman Lake. [21] That fortunate district,
from the lake to the Avenche, and Mount Jura, was occupied by the
Burgundians. [22] 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. [23] 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. [24]

[Footnote 21: Populi habitantes juxta Lemannum lacum, Alemanni dicuntur.
Servius, ad Virgil. Georgic. iv. 278. Don Bouquet (tom. i. p. 817) has
only alleged the more recent and corrupt text of Isidore of Seville.]

[Footnote 22: Gregory of Tours sends St. Lupicinus inter illa Jurensis
deserti secreta, quae, inter Burgundiam Alamanniamque sita, Aventicae
adja cent civitati, in tom. i. p. 648. M. de Watteville (Hist. de la
Confederation Helvetique, tom. i. p. 9, 10) has accurately defined
the Helvetian limits of the Duchy of Alemannia, and the Transjurane
Burgundy. They were commensurate with the dioceses of Constance
and Avenche, or Lausanne, and are still discriminated, in modern
Switzerland, by the use of the German, or French, language.]

[Footnote 23: See Guilliman de Rebus Helveticis, l i. c. 3, p. 11, 12.
Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa, the castle of Hapsburgh, the
abbey of Konigsfield, and the town of Bruck, have successively risen.
The philosophic traveller may compare the monuments of Roman conquest of
feudal or Austrian tyranny, of monkish superstition, and of industrious
freedom. If he be truly a philosopher, he will applaud the merit and
happiness of his own times.]

[Footnote 24: Gregory of Tours, (l. ii. 30, 37, in tom. ii. p. 176,
177, 182,) the Gesta Francorum, (in tom. ii. p. 551,) and the epistle
of Theodoric, (Cassiodor. Variar. l. ii. c. 41, in tom. iv. p. 4,)
represent the defeat of the Alemanni. Some of their tribes settled in
Rhaetia, under the protection of Theodoric; whose successors ceded the
colony and their country to the grandson of Clovis. The state of the
Alemanni under the Merovingian kings may be seen in Mascou (Hist. of the
Ancient Germans, xi. 8, &c. Annotation xxxvi.) and Guilliman, (de Reb.
Helvet. l. ii. c. 10-12, p. 72-80.)]

Till the thirtieth year of his age, Clovis continued to worship the
gods of his ancestors. [25] 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 [26] 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 [27] Remigius, [28] 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. [29] 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. [30] 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." [31] 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 all the princes of the Merovingian race. [32] 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, [33] 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. [34]

[Footnote 25: Clotilda, or rather Gregory, supposes that Clovis
worshipped the gods of Greece and Rome. The fact is incredible, and the
mistake only shows how completely, in less than a century, the national
religion of the Franks had been abolished and even forgotten]

[Footnote 26: Gregory of Tours relates the marriage and conversion of
Clovis, (l. ii. c. 28-31, in tom. ii. p. 175-178.) Even Fredegarius,
or the nameless Epitomizer, (in tom. ii. p. 398-400,) the author of the
Gesta Francorum, (in tom. ii. p. 548-552,) and Aimoin himself, (l. i.
c. 13, in tom. iii. p. 37-40,) may be heard without disdain. Tradition
might long preserve some curious circumstances of these important
transactions.]

[Footnote 27: A traveller, who returned from Rheims to Auvergne, had
stolen a copy of his declamations from the secretary or bookseller
of the modest archbishop, (Sidonius Apollinar. l. ix. epist. 7.) Four
epistles of Remigius, which are still extant, (in tom. iv. p. 51, 52,
53,) do not correspond with the splendid praise of Sidonius.]

[Footnote 28: Hincmar, one of the successors of Remigius, (A.D. 845-882,)
had composed his life, (in tom. iii. p. 373-380.) The authority of
ancient MSS. of the church of Rheims might inspire some confidence,
which is destroyed, however, by the selfish and audacious fictions of
Hincmar. It is remarkable enough, that Remigius, who was consecrated
at the age of twenty-two, (A.D. 457,) filled the episcopal chair
seventy-four years, (Pagi Critica, in Baron tom. ii. p. 384, 572.)]

[Footnote 29: A phial (the Sainte Ampoulle of holy, or rather celestial,
oil,) was brought down by a white dove, for the baptism of Clovis; and
it is still used and renewed, in the coronation of the kings of France.
Hincmar (he aspired to the primacy of Gaul) is the first author of
this fable, (in tom. iii. p. 377,) whose slight foundations the Abbe de
Vertot (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. ii. p. 619-633)
has undermined, with profound respect and consummate dexterity.]

[Footnote 30: Mitis depone colla, Sicamber: adora quod incendisti,
incende quod adorasti. Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 31, in tom. ii. p. 177.]

[Footnote 31: Si ego ibidem cum Francis meis fuissem, injurias
ejus vindicassem. This rash expression, which Gregory has prudently
concealed, is celebrated by Fredegarius, (Epitom. c. 21, in tom. ii. p.
400,) Ai moin, (l. i. c. 16, in tom. iii. p. 40,) and the Chroniques de
St. Denys, (l. i. c. 20, in tom. iii. p. 171,) as an admirable effusion
of Christian zeal.]

[Footnote 32: Gregory, (l. ii. c. 40-43, in tom. ii. p. 183-185,) after
coolly relating the repeated crimes, and affected remorse, of Clovis,
concludes, perhaps undesignedly, with a lesson, which ambition will never
hear. "His ita transactis obiit."]

[Footnote 33: After the Gothic victory, Clovis made rich offerings to
St. Martin of Tours. He wished to redeem his war-horse by the gift of
one hundred pieces of gold, but the enchanted steed could not remove
from the stable till the price of his redemption had been doubled. This
miracle provoked the king to exclaim, Vere B. Martinus est bonus in
auxilio, sed carus in negotio. (Gesta Francorum, in tom. ii. p. 554,
555.)]

[Footnote 34: See the epistle from Pope Anastasius to the royal convert,
(in Com. iv. p. 50, 51.) Avitus, bishop of Vienna, addressed Clovis on
the same subject, (p. 49;) and many of the Latin bishops would assure
him of their joy and attachment.]

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 Armorican republic 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 [35] 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. His savage 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. [36]

[Footnote 35: Instead of an unknown people, who now appear on the text
of Procopious, Hadrian de Valois has restored the proper name of
the easy correction has been almost universally approved. Yet an
unprejudiced reader would naturally suppose, that Procopius means
to describe a tribe of Germans in the alliance of Rome; and not a
confederacy of Gallic cities, which had revolted from the empire. *
Note: Compare Hallam's Europe during the Middle Ages, vol i. p. 2, Daru,
Hist. de Bretagne vol. i. p. 129--M.]

[Footnote 36: This important digression of Procopius (de Bell. Gothic.
l. i. c. 12, in tom. ii. p. 29-36) illustrates the origin of the French
monarchy. Yet I must observe, 1. That the Greek historian betrays
an inexcusable ignorance of the geography of the West. 2. That these
treaties and privileges, which should leave some lasting traces, are
totally invisible in Gregory of Tours, the Salic laws, &c.]

The kingdom of the Burgundians, which was defined by the course of two
Gallic rivers, the Saone and the Rhone, extended from the forest of
Vosges to the Alps and the sea of Marscilles. [37] 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; [38] 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. [39]

[Footnote 37: Regnum circa Rhodanum aut Ararim cum provincia Massiliensi
retinebant. Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 32, in tom. ii. p. 178. The province
of Marseilles, as far as the Durance, was afterwards ceded to the
Ostrogoths; and the signatures of twenty-five bishops are supposed to
represent the kingdom of Burgundy, A.D. 519. (Concil. Epaon, in tom. iv.
p. 104, 105.) Yet I would except Vindonissa. The bishop, who lived under
the Pagan Alemanni, would naturally resort to the synods of the next
Christian kingdom. Mascou (in his four first annotations) has explained
many circumstances relative to the Burgundian monarchy.]

[Footnote 38: Mascou, (Hist. of the Germans, xi. 10,) who very
reasonably distracts the testimony of Gregory of Tours, has produced
a passage from Avitus (epist. v.) to prove that Gundobald affected to
deplore the tragic event, which his subjects affected to applaud.]

[Footnote 39: See the original conference, (in tom. iv. p. 99-102.)
Avitus, the principal actor, and probably the secretary of the meeting,
was bishop of Vienna. A short account of his person and works may be
fouud in Dupin, (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom. v. p. 5-10.)]




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: [40] 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, [41] 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. [42]

[Footnote 40: Gregory of Tours (l. iii. c. 19, in tom. ii. p. 197)
indulges his genius, or rather describes some more eloquent writer, in
the description of Dijon; a castle, which already deserved the title of
a city. It depended on the bishops of Langres till the twelfth century,
and afterwards became the capital of the dukes of Burgundy Longuerue
Description de la France, part i. p. 280.]

[Footnote 41: The Epitomizer of Gregory of Tours (in tom. ii. p. 401)
has supplied this number of Franks; but he rashly supposes that they
were cut in pieces by Gundobald. The prudent Burgundian spared
the soldiers of Clovis, and sent these captives to the king of the
Visigoths, who settled them in the territory of Thoulouse.]

[Footnote 42: In this Burgundian war I have followed Gregory of Tours,
(l. ii. c. 32, 33, in tom. ii. p. 178, 179,) whose narrative appears
so incompatible with that of Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. i. c. 12, in
tom. ii. p. 31, 32,) that some critics have supposed two different wars.
The Abbe Dubos (Hist. Critique, &c., tom. ii. p. 126-162) has distinctly
represented the causes and the events.]

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; [43]
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 Thebaean legion. [44] 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. [45]

[Footnote 43: See his life or legend, (in tom. iii. p. 402.) A martyr!
how strangely has that word been distorted from its original sense of a
common witness. St. Sigismond was remarkable for the cure of fevers]

[Footnote 44: Before the end of the fifth century, the church of St.
Maurice, and his Thebaean legion, had rendered Agaunum a place of devout
pilgrimage. A promiscuous community of both sexes had introduced some
deeds of darkness, which were abolished (A.D. 515) by the regular
monastery of Sigismond. Within fifty years, his angels of light made
a nocturnal sally to murder their bishop, and his clergy. See in the
Bibliotheque Raisonnee (tom. xxxvi. p. 435-438) the curious remarks of a
learned librarian of Geneva.]

[Footnote 45: Marius, bishop of Avenche, (Chron. in tom. ii. p. 15,) has
marked the authentic dates, and Gregory of Tours (l. iii. c. 5, 6, in
tom. ii. p. 188, 189) has expressed the principal facts, of the life of
Sigismond, and the conquest of Burgundy. Procopius (in tom. ii. p.
34) and Agathias (in tom. ii. p. 49) show their remote and imperfect
knowledge.]

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." [46] 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, [47] 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, [48] 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; [49] a select band of valiant and robust
slaves attended their masters to the field; [50] 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.

[Footnote 46: Gregory of Tours (l. ii. c. 37, in tom. ii. p. 181)
inserts the short but persuasive speech of Clovis. Valde moleste fero,
quod hi Ariani partem teneant Galliarum, (the author of the Gesta
Francorum, in tom. ii. p. 553, adds the precious epithet of optimam,)
camus cum Dei adjutorio, et, superatis eis, redigamus terram in ditionem
nostram.]

[Footnote 47: Tunc rex projecit a se in directum Bipennem suam quod est
Francisca, &c. (Gesta Franc. in tom. ii. p. 554.) The form and use of
this weapon are clearly described by Procopius, (in tom. ii. p. 37.)
Examples of its national appellation in Latin and French may be found in
the Glossary of Ducange, and the large Dictionnaire de Trevoux.]

[Footnote 48: It is singular enough that some important and authentic
facts should be found in a Life of Quintianus, composed in rhyme in the
old Patois of Rouergue, (Dubos, Hist. Critique, &c., tom. ii. p. 179.)]

[Footnote 49: Quamvis fortitudini vestrae confidentiam tribuat
parentum ves trorum innumerabilis multitudo; quamvis Attilam potentem
reminiscamini Visigotharum viribus inclinatum; tamen quia populorum
ferocia corda longa pace mollescunt, cavete subito in alean aleam
mittere, quos constat tantis temporibus exercitia non habere. Such
was the salutary, but fruitless, advice of peace of reason, and of
Theodoric, (Cassiodor. l. iii. ep. 2.)]

[Footnote 50: Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xv. c. 14) mentions and
approves the law of the Visigoths, (l. ix. tit. 2, in tom. iv. p. 425,)
which obliged all masters to arm, and send, or lead, into the field a
tenth of their slaves.]

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. [51] 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. [52]

[Footnote 51: This mode of divination, by accepting as an omen the first
sacred words, which in particular circumstances should be presented to
the eye or ear, was derived from the Pagans; and the Psalter, or Bible,
was substituted to the poems of Homer and Virgil. From the fourth to
the fourteenth century, these sortes sanctorum, as they are styled,
were repeatedly condemned by the decrees of councils, and repeatedly
practised by kings, bishops, and saints. See a curious dissertation of
the Abbe du Resnel, in the Memoires de l'Academie, tom. xix. p. 287-310]

[Footnote 52: After correcting the text, or excusing the mistake, of
Procopius, who places the defeat of Alaric near Carcassone, we may
conclude, from the evidence of Gregory, Fortunatus, and the author of
the Gesta Francorum, that the battle was fought in campo Vocladensi, on
the banks of the Clain, about ten miles to the south of Poitiers. Clovis
overtook and attacked the Visigoths near Vivonne, and the victory
was decided near a village still named Champagne St. Hilaire. See the
Dissertations of the Abbe le Boeuf, tom. i. p. 304-331.]

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 Angouleme. 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. [53] 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; [54] restored the honors of the Catholic church;
fixed in Aquitain a colony of Franks; [55] 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 Rhone to
the Pyrenees; but the ample province of Aquitain, from those mountains
to the Loire, was indissolubly united to the kingdom of France. [56]

[Footnote 53: Angouleme is in the road from Poitiers to Bordeaux; and
although Gregory delays the siege, I can more readily believe that he
confounded the order of history, than that Clovis neglected the rules of
war.]

[Footnote 54: Pyrenaeos montes usque Perpinianum subjecit, is the
expression of Rorico, which betrays his recent date; since Perpignan
did not exist before the tenth century, (Marca Hispanica, p. 458.) This
florid and fabulous writer (perhaps a monk of Amiens--see the Abbe
le Boeuf, Mem. de l'Academie, tom. xvii. p. 228-245) relates, in
the allegorical character of a shepherd, the general history of his
countrymen the Franks; but his narrative ends with the death of Clovis.]

[Footnote 55: The author of the Gesta Francorum positively affirms, that
Clovis fixed a body of Franks in the Saintonge and Bourdelois: and he
is not injudiciously followed by Rorico, electos milites, atque
fortissimos, cum parvulis, atque mulieribus. Yet it should seem
that they soon mingled with the Romans of Aquitain, till Charlemagne
introduced a more numerous and powerful colony, (Dubos, Hist. Critique,
tom. ii. p. 215.)]

[Footnote 56: In the composition of the Gothic war, I have used the
following materials, with due regard to their unequal value. Four
epistles from Theodoric, king of Italy, (Cassiodor l. iii. epist. 1-4.
in tom. iv p. 3-5;) Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. i. c 12, in tom. ii.
p. 32, 33;) Gregory of Tours, (l. ii. c. 35, 36, 37, in tom. ii. p.
181-183;) Jornandes, (de Reb. Geticis, c. 58, in tom. ii. p. 28;)
Fortunatas, (in Vit. St. Hilarii, in tom. iii. p. 380;) Isidore, (in
Chron. Goth. in tom. ii. p. 702;) the Epitome of Gregory of Tours, (in
tom. ii. p. 401;) the author of the Gesta Francorum, (in tom. ii. p.
553-555;) the Fragments of Fredegarius, (in tom. ii. p. 463;) Aimoin,
(l. i. c. 20, in tom. iii. p. 41, 42,) and Rorico, (l. iv. in tom. iii.
p. 14-19.)]

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. [57] 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 Consul and 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.

[Footnote 57: The Fasti of Italy would naturally reject a consul,
the enemy of their sovereign; but any ingenious hypothesis that might
explain the silence of Constantinople and Egypt, (the Chronicle of
Marcellinus, and the Paschal,) is overturned by the similar silence
of Marius, bishop of Avenche, who composed his Fasti in the kingdom
of Burgundy. If the evidence of Gregory of Tours were less weighty
and positive, (l. ii. c. 38, in tom. ii. p. 183,) I could believe
that Clovis, like Odoacer, received the lasting title and honors of
Patrician, (Pagi Critica, tom. ii. p. 474, 492.)]

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 Praetorian
praefect, and of Marseilles, enriched by the advantages of trade
and navigation. [58] 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. [59] 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 gold coin,
impressed with their name and image, obtained a legal currency in the
empire. [60] 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. [61] 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 Rhaetia 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. [62]

[Footnote 58: Under the Merovingian kings, Marseilles still imported
from the East paper, wine, oil, linen, silk, precious stones, spices,
&c. The Gauls, or Franks, traded to Syria, and the Syrians were
established in Gaul. See M. de Guignes, Mem. de l'Academie, tom. xxxvii.
p. 471-475.]

[Footnote 59: This strong declaration of Procopius (de Bell. Gothic.
l. iii. cap. 33, in tom. ii. p. 41) would almost suffice to justify the
Abbe Dubos.]

[Footnote 60: The Franks, who probably used the mints of Treves, Lyons,
and Arles, imitated the coinage of the Roman emperors of seventy-two
solidi, or pieces, to the pound of gold. But as the Franks established
only a decuple proportion of gold and silver, ten shillings will be
a sufficient valuation of their solidus of gold. It was the common
standard of the Barbaric fines, and contained forty denarii, or silver
three pences. Twelve of these denarii made a solidus, or shilling, the
twentieth part of the ponderal and numeral livre, or pound of silver,
which has been so strangely reduced in modern France. See La Blanc,
Traite Historique des Monnoyes de France, p. 36-43, &c.]

[Footnote 61: Agathias, in tom. ii. p. 47. Gregory of Tours exhibits a
very different picture. Perhaps it would not be easy, within the same
historical space, to find more vice and less virtue. We are continually
shocked by the union of savage and corrupt manners.]

[Footnote 62: M. de Foncemagne has traced, in a correct and elegant
dissertation, (Mem. de l'Academie, tom. viii. p. 505-528,) the extent
and limits of the French monarchy.]

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. [63] 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. [64]

[Footnote 63: The Abbe Dubos (Histoire Critique, tom. i. p. 29-36) has
truly and agreeably represented the slow progress of these studies; and
he observes, that Gregory of Tours was only once printed before the
year 1560. According to the complaint of Heineccius, (Opera, tom. iii.
Sylloge, iii. p. 248, &c.,) Germany received with indifference and
contempt the codes of Barbaric laws, which were published by Heroldus,
Lindenbrogius, &c. At present those laws, (as far as they relate to
Gaul,) the history of Gregory of Tours, and all the monuments of the
Merovingian race, appear in a pure and perfect state, in the first four
volumes of the Historians of France.]

[Footnote 64: In the space of [about] thirty years (1728-1765) this
interesting subject has been agitated by the free spirit of the count
de Boulainvilliers, (Memoires Historiques sur l'Etat de la France,
particularly tom. i. p. 15-49;) the learned ingenuity of the Abbe Dubos,
(Histoire Critique de l'Etablissement de la Monarchie Francoise dans les
Gaules, 2 vols. in 4to;) the comprehensive genius of the president de
Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, particularly l. xxviii. xxx. xxxi.;) and
the good sense and diligence of the Abbe de Mably, (Observations sur
l'Histoire de France, 2 vols. 12mo.)] 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. [65] Before
the election of the Merovingian kings, the most powerful tribe, or
nation, of the Franks, appointed four venerable chieftains to compose
the Salic laws; [66] 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 Ripuarians were transcribed and published; and
Charlemagne himself, the legislator of his age and country, had
accurately studied the two national laws, which still prevailed among
the Franks. [67] The same care was extended to their vassals; and the
rude institutions of the Alemanni and Bavarians were diligently compiled
and ratified by the supreme authority of the Merovingian kings. The
Visigoths and 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. [68] 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 [681] 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; [69] nor were the
Romans excluded from the common benefits of this legal toleration. [70]
The children embraced the law of 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. [71]

[Footnote 65: I have derived much instruction from two learned works
of Heineccius, the History, and the Elements, of the Germanic law. In a
judicious preface to the Elements, he considers, and tries to excuse the
defects of that barbarous jurisprudence.]

[Footnote 66: Latin appears to have been the original language of
the Salic law. It was probably composed in the beginning of the fifth
century, before the era (A.D. 421) of the real or fabulous Pharamond.
The preface mentions the four cantons which produced the four
legislators; and many provinces, Franconia, Saxony, Hanover, Brabant,
&c., have claimed them as their own. See an excellent Dissertation of
Heinecties de Lege Salica, tom. iii. Sylloge iii. p. 247-267. * Note:
The relative antiquity of the two copies of the Salic law has been
contested with great learning and ingenuity. The work of M. Wiarda,
History and Explanation of the Salic Law, Bremen, 1808, asserts that
what is called the Lex Antiqua, or Vetustior in which many German words
are mingled with the Latin, has no claim to superior antiquity, and may
be suspected to be more modern. M. Wiarda has been opposed by M. Fuer
bach, who maintains the higher age of the "ancient" Code, which has been
greatly corrupted by the transcribers. See Guizot, Cours de l'Histoire
Moderne, vol. i. sect. 9: and the preface to the useful republication of
five of the different texts of the Salic law, with that of the Ripuarian
in parallel columns. By E. A. I. Laspeyres, Halle, 1833.--M.]

[Footnote 67: Eginhard, in Vit. Caroli Magni, c. 29, in tom. v. p. 100.
By these two laws, most critics understand the Salic and the Ripuarian.
The former extended from the Carbonarian forest to the Loire, (tom.
iv. p. 151,) and the latter might be obeyed from the same forest to the
Rhine, (tom. iv. p. 222.)]

[Footnote 68: Consult the ancient and modern prefaces of the several
codes, in the fourth volume of the Historians of France. The original
prologue to the Salic law expresses (though in a foreign dialect) the
genuine spirit of the Franks more forcibly than the ten books of Gregory
of Tours.]

[Footnote 69: The Ripuarian law declares, and defines, this indulgence
in favor of the plaintiff, (tit. xxxi. in tom. iv. p. 240;) and the same
toleration is understood, or expressed, in all the codes, except that
of the Visigoths of Spain. Tanta diversitas legum (says Agobard in the
ninth century) quanta non solum in regionibus, aut civitatibus, sed
etiam in multis domibus habetur. Nam plerumque contingit ut simul eant
aut sedeant quinque homines, et nullus eorum communem legem cum altero
habeat, (in tom. vi. p. 356.) He foolishly proposes to introduce a
uniformity of law, as well as of faith. * Note: It is the object of
the important work of M. Savigny, Geschichte des Romisches Rechts in
Mittelalter, to show the perpetuity of the Roman law from the 5th to the
12th century.--M.]

[Footnote 681: The most complete collection of these codes is in the
"Barbarorum leges antiquae," by P. Canciani, 5 vols. folio, Venice,
1781-9.--M.]

[Footnote 70: Inter Romanos negotia causarum Romanis legibus praecipimus
terminari. Such are the words of a general constitution promulgated by
Clotaire, the son of Clovis, the sole monarch of the Franks (in tom. iv.
p. 116) about the year 560.]

[Footnote 71: This liberty of choice has been aptly deduced (Esprit
des Loix, l. xxviii. 2) from the constitution of Lothaire I. (Leg.
Langobard. l. ii. tit. lvii. in Codex Lindenbrog. p. 664;) though the
example is too recent and partial. From a various reading in the Salic
law, (tit. xliv. not. xlv.) the Abbe de Mably (tom. i. p. 290-293) has
conjectured, that, at first, a Barbarian only, and afterwards any man,
(consequently a Roman,) might live according to the law of the Franks.
I am sorry to offend this ingenious conjecture by observing, that
the stricter sense (Barbarum) is expressed in the reformed copy of
Charlemagne; which is confirmed by the Royal and Wolfenbuttle MSS. The
looser interpretation (hominem) is authorized only by the MS. of Fulda,
from from whence Heroldus published his edition. See the four original
texts of the Salic law in tom. iv. p. 147, 173, 196, 220. * Note: Gibbon
appears to have doubted the evidence on which this "liberty of choice"
rested. His doubts have been confirmed by the researches of M. Savigny,
who has not only confuted but traced with convincing sagacity the origin
and progress of this error. As a general principle, though liable to
some exceptions, each lived according to his native law. Romische Recht.
vol. i. p. 123-138--M. * Note: This constitution of Lothaire at first
related only to the duchy of Rome; it afterwards found its way into the
Lombard code. Savigny. p. 138.--M.]




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. [72] 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. [73] 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, [74] 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. [75] 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. [76]

[Footnote 72: In the heroic times of Greece, the guilt of murder was
expiated by a pecuniary satisfaction to the family of the deceased,
(Feithius Antiquitat. Homeric. l. ii. c. 8.) Heineccius, in his preface
to the Elements of Germanic Law, favorably suggests, that at Rome and
Athens homicide was only punished with exile. It is true: but exile was
a capital punishment for a citizen of Rome or Athens.]

[Footnote 73: This proportion is fixed by the Salic (tit. xliv. in tom.
iv. p. 147) and the Ripuarian (tit. vii. xi. xxxvi. in tom. iv. p. 237,
241) laws: but the latter does not distinguish any difference of Romans.
Yet the orders of the clergy are placed above the Franks themselves, and
the Burgundians and Alemanni between the Franks and the Romans.]

[Footnote 74: The Antrustiones, qui in truste Dominica sunt, leudi,
fideles, undoubtedly represent the first order of Franks; but it is
a question whether their rank was personal or hereditary. The Abbe de
Mably (tom. i. p. 334-347) is not displeased to mortify the pride
of birth (Esprit, l. xxx. c. 25) by dating the origin of the French
nobility from the reign Clotaire II. (A.D. 615.)]

[Footnote 75: See the Burgundian laws, (tit. ii. in tom. iv. p. 257,)
the code of the Visigoths, (l. vi. tit. v. in tom. p. 384,) and
the constitution of Childebert, not of Paris, but most evidently of
Austrasia, (in tom. iv. p. 112.) Their premature severity was sometimes
rash, and excessive. Childebert condemned not only murderers but
robbers; quomodo sine lege involavit, sine lege moriatur; and even
the negligent judge was involved in the same sentence. The Visigoths
abandoned an unsuccessful surgeon to the family of his deceased patient,
ut quod de eo facere voluerint habeant potestatem, (l. xi. tit. i. in
tom. iv. p. 435.)]

[Footnote 76: See, in the sixth volume of the works of Heineccius, the
Elementa Juris Germanici, l. ii. p. 2, No. 261, 262, 280-283. Yet some
vestiges of these pecuniary compositions for murder have been traced in
Germany as late as the sixteenth century.]

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 Praefect; and the same officer assumed, within his
district, the command of the troops, and the administration of justice.
[77] 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 compurgators was 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. [78] 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. [79]

[Footnote 77: The whole subject of the Germanic judges, and their
jurisdiction, is copiously treated by Heineccius, (Element. Jur. Germ.
l. iii. No. 1-72.) I cannot find any proof that, under the Merovingian
race, the scabini, or assessors, were chosen by the people. * Note: The
question of the scabini is treated at considerable length by Savigny. He
questions the existence of the scabini anterior to Charlemagne. Before
this time the decision was by an open court of the freemen, the boni
Romische Recht, vol. i. p. 195. et seq.--M.]

[Footnote 78: Gregor. Turon. l. viii. c. 9, in tom. ii. p. 316.
Montesquieu observes, (Esprit des Loix. l. xxviii. c. 13,) that the
Salic law did not admit these negative proofs so universally established
in the Barbaric codes. Yet this obscure concubine (Fredegundis,) who
became the wife of the grandson of Clovis, must have followed the Salic
law.]

[Footnote 79: Muratori, in the Antiquities of Italy, has given two
Dissertations (xxxvii. xxxix.) on the judgments of God. It was expected
that fire would not burn the innocent; and that the pure element of
water would not allow the guilty to sink into its bosom.]

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. [80] 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; [81] 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 [82]
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, [83] 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. [84]

[Footnote 80: Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 17) has
condescended to explain and excuse "la maniere de penser de nos peres,"
on the subject of judicial combats. He follows this strange institution
from the age of Gundobald to that of St. Lewis; and the philosopher is
some times lost in the legal antiquarian.]

[Footnote 81: In a memorable duel at Aix-la-Chapelle, (A.D. 820,) before
the emperor Lewis the Pious, his biographer observes, secundum legem
propriam, utpote quia uterque Gothus erat, equestri pugna est, (Vit.
Lud. Pii, c. 33, in tom. vi. p. 103.) Ermoldus Nigellus, (l. iii.
543-628, in tom. vi. p. 48-50,) who describes the duel, admires the ars
nova of fighting on horseback, which was unknown to the Franks.]

[Footnote 82: In his original edict, published at Lyons, (A.D. 501,)
establishes and justifies the use of judicial combat, (Les Burgund. tit.
xlv. in tom. ii. p. 267, 268.) Three hundred years afterwards, Agobard,
bishop of Lyons, solicited Lewis the Pious to abolish the law of an
Arian tyrant, (in tom. vi. p. 356-358.) He relates the conversation of
Gundobald and Avitus.]

[Footnote 83: "Accidit, (says Agobard,) ut non solum valentes viribus,
sed etiam infirmi et senes lacessantur ad pugnam, etiam pro vilissimis
rebus. Quibus foralibus certaminibus contingunt homicidia injusta; et
crudeles ac perversi eventus judiciorum." Like a prudent rhetorician, he
suppresses the legal privilege of hiring champions.]

[Footnote 84: Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, xxviii. c. 14,) who
understands why the judicial combat was admitted by the Burgundians,
Ripuarians, Alemanni, Bavarians, Lombards, Thuringians, Frisons, and
Saxons, is satisfied (and Agobard seems to countenance the assertion)
that it was not allowed by the Salic law. Yet the same custom, at least
in case of treason, is mentioned by Ermoldus, Nigellus (l. iii. 543, in
tom. vi. p. 48,) and the anonymous biographer of Lewis the Pious, (c.
46, in tom. vi. p. 112,) as the "mos antiquus Francorum, more Francis
solito," &c., expressions too general to exclude the noblest of their
tribes.]

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. [85] At the distance
of five hundred years, the Visigoths and Burgundians, who revenged the
defeat of Ariovistus, usurped the same unequal proportion of two thirds
of 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. [86] The silence of ancient and authentic
testimony has encouraged an opinion, that the rapine of the Franks was
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. [861] 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. [87]

[Footnote 85: Caesar de Bell. Gall. l. i. c. 31, in tom. i. p. 213.]

[Footnote 86: The obscure hints of a division of lands occasionally
scattered in the laws of the Burgundians, (tit. liv. No. 1, 2, in tom.
iv. p. 271, 272,) and Visigoths, (l. x. tit. i. No. 8, 9, 16, in
tom. iv. p. 428, 429, 430,) are skillfully explained by the president
Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxx. c. 7, 8, 9.) I shall only add,
that among the Goths, the division seems to have been ascertained by the
judgment of the neighborhood, that the Barbarians frequently usurped the
remaining third; and that the Romans might recover their right, unless
they were barred by a prescription of fifty years.]

[Footnote 861: Sismondi (Hist des Francais, vol. i. p. 197) observes,
they were not a conquering people, who had emigrated with their
families, like the Goths or Burgundians. The women, the children, the
old, had not followed Clovis: they remained in their ancient possessions
on the Waal and the Rhine. The adventurers alone had formed the invading
force, and they always considered themselves as an army, not as a
colony. Hence their laws retained no traces of the partition of the
Roman properties. It is curious to observe the recoil from the national
vanity of the French historians of the last century. M. Sismondi
compares the position of the Franks with regard to the conquered people
with that of the Dey of Algiers and his corsair troops to the peaceful
inhabitants of that province: M. Thierry (Lettres sur l'Histoire de
France, p. 117) with that of the Turks towards the Raias or Phanariotes,
the mass of the Greeks.--M.]

[Footnote 87: It is singular enough that the president de Montesquieu
(Esprit des Loix, l. xxx. c. 7) and the Abbe de Mably (Observations, tom
i. p. 21, 22) agree in this strange supposition of arbitrary and private
rapine. The Count de Boulainvilliers (Etat de la France, tom. i. p.
22, 23) shows a strong understanding through a cloud of ignorance and
prejudice. Note: Sismondi supposes that the Barbarians, if a farm were
conveniently situated, would show no great respect for the laws of
property; but in general there would have been vacant land enough for
the lots assigned to old or worn-out warriors, (Hist. des Francais, vol.
i. p. 196.)--M.]

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. [88] 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. [881] But this dependent tenure was
gradually abolished [89] 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. [90]
Besides these royal and beneficiary estates, a large proportion had been
assigned, in the division of Gaul, of allodial and Salic lands: they
were exempt from tribute, and the Salic lands were equally shared among
the male descendants of the Franks. [91]

[Footnote 88: See the rustic edict, or rather code, of Charlemagne,
which contains seventy distinct and minute regulations of that great
monarch (in tom. v. p. 652-657.) He requires an account of the horns and
skins of the goats, allows his fish to be sold, and carefully directs,
that the larger villas (Capitaneoe) shall maintain one hundred hens and
thirty geese; and the smaller (Mansionales) fifty hens and twelve geese.
Mabillon (de Re Diplomatica) has investigated the names, the number, and
the situation of the Merovingian villas.]

[Footnote 881: The resumption of benefices at the pleasure of the
sovereign, (the general theory down to his time,) is ably contested by
Mr. Hallam; "for this resumption some delinquency must be imputed to the
vassal." Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 162. The reader will be interested by
the singular analogies with the beneficial and feudal system of Europe
in a remote part of the world, indicated by Col. Tod in his splendid
work on Raja'sthan, vol. ii p. 129, &c.--M.]

[Footnote 89: From a passage of the Burgundian law (tit. i. No. 4, in
tom. iv. p. 257) it is evident, that a deserving son might expect to
hold the lands which his father had received from the royal bounty of
Gundobald. The Burgundians would firmly maintain their privilege, and
their example might encourage the Beneficiaries of France.]

[Footnote 90: The revolutions of the benefices and fiefs are clearly
fixed by the Abbe de Mably. His accurate distinction of times gives him
a merit to which even Montesquieu is a stranger.]

[Footnote 91: See the Salic law, (tit. lxii. in tom. iv. p. 156.) The
origin and nature of these Salic lands, which, in times of ignorance,
were perfectly understood, now perplex our most learned and sagacious
critics. * Note: No solution seems more probable, than that the ancient
lawgivers of the Salic Franks prohibited females from inheriting
the lands assigned to the nation, upon its conquest of Gaul, both
in compliance with their ancient usages, and in order to secure the
military service of every proprietor. But lands subsequently acquired
by purchase or other means, though equally bound to the public defence,
were relieved from the severity of this rule, and presumed not to belong
to the class of Sallic. Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 145. Compare
Sismondi, vol. i. p. 196.--M.]

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, [92] 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,
[93] were severely restrained by the German conquerors, whose amusement,
or rather passion, was the exercise of hunting. The vague dominion which
Man has 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; [94] 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. [95]

[Footnote 92: Many of the two hundred and six miracles of St. Martin
(Greg Turon. in Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. xi. p. 896-932) were
repeatedly performed to punish sacrilege. Audite haec omnes (exclaims
the bishop of Tours) protestatem habentes, after relating, how some
horses ran mad, that had been turned into a sacred meadow.]

[Footnote 93: Heinec. Element. Jur. German. l. ii. p. 1, No. 8.]

[Footnote 94: Jonas, bishop of Orleans, (A.D. 821-826. Cave, Hist.
Litteraria, p. 443,) censures the legal tyranny of the nobles. Pro
feris, quas cura hominum non aluit, sed Deus in commune mortalibus ad
utendum concessit, pauperes a potentioribus spoliantur, flagellantur,
ergastulis detruduntur, et multa alia patiuntur. Hoc enim qui faciunt,
lege mundi se facere juste posse contendant. De Institutione Laicorum,
l. ii. c. 23, apud Thomassin, Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p.
1348.]

[Footnote 95: On a mere suspicion, Chundo, a chamberlain of Gontram,
king of Burgundy, was stoned to death, (Greg. Turon. l. x. c. 10, in
tom. ii. p. 369.) John of Salisbury (Policrat. l. i. c. 4) asserts the
rights of nature, and exposes the cruel practice of the twelfth century.
See Heineccius, Elem. Jur. Germ. l. ii. p. 1, No. 51-57.]

According to the maxims of ancient war, the conqueror became the
lawful master of the enemy whom he had subdued and spared: [96] 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. [97] 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. [98] 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. [99] 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 national distinction,
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.

[Footnote 96: The custom of enslaving prisoners of war was totally
extinguished in the thirteenth century, by the prevailing influence of
Christianity; but it might be proved, from frequent passages of Gregory
of Tours, &c., that it was practised, without censure, under the
Merovingian race; and even Grotius himself, (de Jure Belli et Pacis
l. iii. c. 7,) as well as his commentator Barbeyrac, have labored to
reconcile it with the laws of nature and reason.]

[Footnote 97: The state, professions, &c., of the German, Italian, and
Gallic slaves, during the middle ages, are explained by Heineccius,
(Element Jur. Germ. l. i. No. 28-47,) Muratori, (Dissertat. xiv. xv.,)
Ducange, (Gloss. sub voce Servi,) and the Abbe de Mably, (Observations,
tom. ii. p. 3, &c., p. 237, &c.) Note: Compare Hallam, vol. i. p.
216.--M.]

[Footnote 98: Gregory of Tours (l. vi. c. 45, in tom. ii. p. 289)
relates a memorable example, in which Chilperic only abused the private
rights of a master. Many families which belonged to his domus fiscales
in the neighborhood of Paris, were forcibly sent away into Spain.]

[Footnote 99: Licentiam habeatis mihi qualemcunque volueritis
disciplinam ponere; vel venumdare, aut quod vobis placuerit de me
facere Marculf. Formul. l. ii. 28, in tom. iv. p. 497. The Formula of
Lindenbrogius, (p. 559,) and that of Anjou, (p. 565,) are to the same
effect Gregory of Tours (l. vii. c. 45, in tom. ii. p. 311) speak of
many person who sold themselves for bread, in a great famine.]

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 Caesar himself, which he had lost when he was repulsed
before the walls of Gergovia. [100] As the common offspring of Troy,
they claimed a fraternal alliance with the Romans; [101] 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. [102] 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. [103] 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, reenforced by the fiercest Barbarians of
Germany, [104] 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 [105] 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 Baroarians 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. [106]

[Footnote 100: When Caesar saw it, he laughed, (Plutarch. in Caesar. in
tom. i. p. 409:) yet he relates his unsuccessful siege of Gergovia with
less frankness than we might expect from a great man to whom victory was
familiar. He acknowledges, however, that in one attack he lost forty-six
centurions and seven hundred men, (de Bell. Gallico, l. vi. c. 44-53, in
tom. i. p. 270-272.)]

[Footnote 101: Audebant se quondam fatres Latio dicere, et sanguine ab
Iliaco populos computare, (Sidon. Apollinar. l. vii. epist. 7, in tom
i. p. 799.) I am not informed of the degrees and circumstances of this
fabulous pedigree.]

[Footnote 102: Either the first, or second, partition among the sons of
Clovis, had given Berry to Childebert, (Greg. Turon. l. iii. c. 12,
in tom. ii. p. 192.) Velim (said he) Arvernam Lemanem, quae tanta
jocunditatis gratia refulgere dicitur, oculis cernere, (l. iii. c. p.
191.) The face of the country was concealed by a thick fog, when the
king of Paris made his entry into Clermen.]

[Footnote 103: For the description of Auvergne, see Sidonius, (l. iv.
epist. 21, in tom. i. p. 703,) with the notes of Savaron and Sirmond,
(p. 279, and 51, of their respective editions.) Boulainvilliers, (Etat
de la France, tom. ii. p. 242-268,) and the Abbe de la Longuerue,
(Description de la France, part i. p. 132-139.)]

[Footnote 104; Furorem gentium, quae de ulteriore Rheni amnis parte
venerant, superare non poterat, (Greg. Turon. l. iv. c. 50, in tom. ii.
229.) was the excuse of another king of Austrasia (A.D. 574) for the
ravages which his troops committed in the neighborhood of Paris.]

[Footnote 105: From the name and situation, the Benedictine editors
of Gregory of Tours (in tom. ii. p. 192) have fixed this fortress at
a place named Castel Merliac, two miles from Mauriac, in the Upper
Auvergne. In this description, I translate infra as if I read intra; the
two are perpetually confounded by Gregory, or his transcribed and the
sense must always decide.]

[Footnote 106: See these revolutions, and wars, of Auvergne, in Gregory
of Tours, (l. ii. c. 37, in tom. ii. p. 183, and l. iii. c. 9, 12, 13,
p. 191, 192, de Miraculis St. Julian. c. 13, in tom. ii. p. 466.) He
frequently betrays his extraordinary attention to his native country.]




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, [107] 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. [108] 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; [109] 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 [110] 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. [111]

[Footnote 107: The story of Attalus is related by Gregory of Tours, (l.
iii. c. 16, tom. ii. p. 193-195.) His editor, the P. Ruinart, confounds
this Attalus, who was a youth (puer) in the year 532, with a friend of
Silonius of the same name, who was count of Autun, fifty or sixty years
before. Such an error, which cannot be imputed to ignorance, is excused,
in some degree, by its own magnitude.]

[Footnote 108: This Gregory, the great grandfather of Gregory of Tours,
(in tom. ii. p. 197, 490,) lived ninety-two years; of which he passed
forty as count of Autun, and thirty-two as bishop of Langres. According
to the poet Fortunatus, he displayed equal merit in these different
stations. Nobilis antiqua decurrens prole parentum, Nobilior gestis,
nunc super astra manet. Arbiter ante ferox, dein pius ipse sacerdos,
Quos domuit judex, fovit amore patris.]

[Footnote 109: As M. de Valois, and the P. Ruinart, are determined to
change the Mosella of the text into Mosa, it becomes me to acquiesce in
the alteration. Yet, after some examination of the topography. I could
defend the common reading.]

[Footnote 110: The parents of Gregory (Gregorius Florentius Georgius)
were of noble extraction, (natalibus... illustres,) and they possessed
large estates (latifundia) both in Auvergne and Burgundy. He was born in
the year 539, was consecrated bishop of Tours in 573, and died in 593
or 595, soon after he had terminated his history. See his life by
Odo, abbot of Clugny, (in tom. ii. p. 129-135,) and a new Life in the
Memoires de l'Academie, &c., tom. xxvi. p. 598-637.]

[Footnote 111: Decedente atque immo potius pereunte ab urbibus
Gallicanis liberalium cultura literarum, &c., (in praefat. in tom. ii.
p. 137,) is the complaint of Gregory himself, which he fully verifies by
his own work. His style is equally devoid of elegance and simplicity. In
a conspicuous station, he still remained a stranger to his own age and
country; and in a prolific work (the five last books contain ten years)
he has omitted almost every thing that posterity desires to learn. I
have tediously acquired, by a painful perusal, the right of pronouncing
this unfavorable sentence] 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 universal edict 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; [112] 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
[113] 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, [114] 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. [115] 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. [116] 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. [117] The Romans communicated to their conquerors
the use of the Christian religion and Latin language; [118] 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.

[Footnote 112: The Abbe de Mably (tom. p. i. 247-267) has diligently
confirmed this opinion of the President de Montesquieu, (Esprit des
Loix, l. xxx. c. 13.)]

[Footnote 113: See Dubos, Hist. Critique de la Monarchie Francoise, tom.
ii. l. vi. c. 9, 10. The French antiquarians establish as a principle,
that the Romans and Barbarians may be distinguished by their names.
Their names undoubtedly form a reasonable presumption; yet in reading
Gregory of Tours, I have observed Gondulphus, of Senatorian, or
Roman, extraction, (l. vi. c. 11, in tom. ii. p. 273,) and Claudius, a
Barbarian, (l. vii. c. 29, p. 303.)]

[Footnote 114: Eunius Mummolus is repeatedly mentioned by Gregory of
Tours, from the fourth (c. 42, p. 224) to the seventh (c. 40, p. 310)
book. The computation by talents is singular enough; but if Gregory
attached any meaning to that obsolete word, the treasures of Mummolus
must have exceeded 100,000 L. sterling.]

[Footnote 115: See Fleury, Discours iii. sur l'Histoire Ecclesiastique.]

[Footnote 116: The bishop of Tours himself has recorded the complaint of
Chilperic, the grandson of Clovis. Ecce pauper remansit Fiscus noster;
ecce divitiae nostrae ad ecclesias sunt translatae; nulli penitus nisi
soli Episcopi regnant, (l. vi. c. 46, in tom. ii. p. 291.)]

[Footnote 117: See the Ripuarian Code, (tit. xxxvi in tom. iv. p. 241.)
The Salic law does not provide for the safety of the clergy; and we
might suppose, on the behalf of the more civilized tribe, that they
had not foreseen such an impious act as the murder of a priest. Yet
Praetextatus, archbishop of Rouen, was assassinated by the order of
Queen Fredegundis before the altar, (Greg. Turon. l. viii. c. 31, in
tom. ii. p. 326.)]

[Footnote 118: M. Bonamy (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.
xxiv. p. 582-670) has ascertained the Lingua Romana Rustica, which,
through the medium of the Romance, has gradually been polished into the
actual form of the French language. Under the Carlovingian race, the
kings and nobles of France still understood the dialect of their German
ancestors.]

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
Caesars: 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, [119] 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. [120] 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." [121] 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. [1211]

[Footnote 119: Ce beau systeme a ete trouve dans les bois. Montesquieu,
Esprit des Loix, l. xi. c. 6.]

[Footnote 120: See the Abbe de Mably. Observations, &c., tom. i. p.
34-56. It should seem that the institution of national assemblies, which
are with the French nation, has never been congenial to its temper.]

[Footnote 121: Gregory of Tours (l. viii. c. 30, in tom. ii. p. 325,
326) relates, with much indifference, the crimes, the reproof, and the
apology. Nullus Regem metuit, nullus Ducem, nullus Comitem reveretur;
et si fortassis alicui ista displicent, et ea, pro longaevitate vitae
vestrae, emendare conatur, statim seditio in populo, statim tumultus
exoritur, et in tantum unusquisque contra seniorem saeva intentione
grassatur, ut vix se credat evadere, si tandem silere nequiverit.]

[Footnote 1211: This remarkable passage was published in 1779--M.]

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. [122] The Goths of Spain were
separated from the rest of mankind by the lofty ridge of the Pyrenaean
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.

[Footnote 122: Spain, in these dark ages, has been peculiarly
unfortunate. The Franks had a Gregory of Tours; the Saxons, or Angles,
a Bede; the Lombards, a Paul Warnefrid, &c. But the history of the
Visigoths is contained in the short and imperfect Chronicles of Isidore
of Seville and John of Biclar] 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. [123] 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. [124]

[Footnote 123: Such are the complaints of St. Boniface, the apostle of
Germany, and the reformer of Gaul, (in tom. iv. p. 94.) The fourscore
years, which he deplores, of license and corruption, would seem to
insinuate that the Barbarians were admitted into the clergy about the
year 660.]

[Footnote 124: The acts of the councils of Toledo are still the most
authentic records of the church and constitution of Spain. The following
passages are particularly important, (iii. 17, 18; iv. 75; v. 2, 3, 4,
5, 8; vi. 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18; vii. 1; xiii. 2 3 6.) I have found
Mascou (Hist. of the Ancient Germans, xv. 29, and Annotations, xxvi.
and xxxiii.) and Ferreras (Hist. Generale de l'Espagne, tom. ii.) very
useful and accurate guides.]

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. [125]

[Footnote 125: The Code of the Visigoths, regularly divided into twelve
books, has been correctly published by Dom Bouquet, (in tom. iv. p.
273-460.) It has been treated by the President de Montesquieu (Esprit
des Loix, l. xxviii. c. 1) with excessive severity. I dislike the style;
I detest the superstition; but I shall presume to think, that the
civil jurisprudence displays a more civilized and enlightened state of
society, than that of the Burgundians, or even of the Lombards.]

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 Praefecture 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, [126] 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. [127] 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.

[Footnote 126: See Gildas de Excidio Britanniae, c. 11-25, p. 4-9, edit.
Gale. Nennius, Hist. Britonum, c. 28, 35-65, p. 105-115, edit. Gale.
Bede, Hist. Ecclesiast. Gentis Angloruml. i. c. 12-16, p. 49-53. c. 22,
p. 58, edit. Smith. Chron. Saxonicum, p. 11-23, &c., edit. Gibson. The
Anglo-Saxon laws were published by Wilkins, London, 1731, in folio; and
the Leges Wallicae, by Wotton and Clarke, London, 1730, in folio.]

[Footnote 127: The laborious Mr. Carte, and the ingenious Mr. Whitaker,
are the two modern writers to whom I am principally indebted. The
particular historian of Manchester embraces, under that obscure title,
a subject almost as extensive as the general history of England. * Note:
Add the Anglo-Saxon History of Mr. S. Turner; and Sir F. Palgrave Sketch
of the "Early History of England."--M.]

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 [128] 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
those Barbarians, 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. [129]

[Footnote 128: This invitation, which may derive some countenance from
the loose expressions of Gildas and Bede, is framed into a regular story
by Witikind, a Saxon monk of the tenth century, (see Cousin, Hist. de
l'Empire d'Occident, tom. ii. p. 356.) Rapin, and even Hume, have too
freely used this suspicious evidence, without regarding the precise and
probable testimony of Tennius: Iterea venerunt tres Chinlae a exilio
pulsoe, in quibus erant Hors et Hengist.]

[Footnote 129: Nennius imputes to the Saxons the murder of three hundred
British chiefs; a crime not unsuitable to their savage manners. But we
are not obliged to believe (see Jeffrey of Monmouth, l. viii. c.
9-12) that Stonehenge is their monument, which the giants had formerly
transported from Africa to Ireland, and which was removed to Britain by
the order of Ambrosius, and the art of Merlin. * Note: Sir f. Palgrave
(Hist. of England, p. 36) is inclined to resolve the whole of these
stories, as Niebuhr the older Roman history, into poetry. To the editor
they appeared, in early youth, so essentially poetic, as to justify the
rash attempt to embody them in an Epic Poem, called Samor, commenced
at Eton, and finished before he had arrived at the maturer taste of
manhood.--M.]

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. [130] 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, [1301]
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. [131]

[Footnote 130: All these tribes are expressly enumerated by Bede, (l.
i. c. 15, p. 52, l. v. c. 9, p. 190;) and though I have considered Mr.
Whitaker's remarks, (Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 538-543,) I do not
perceive the absurdity of supposing that the Frisians, &c., were mingled
with the Anglo-Saxons.]

[Footnote 1301: This term (the Heptarchy) must be rejected because an
idea is conveyed thereby which is substantially wrong. At no one period
were there ever seven kingdoms independent of each other. Palgrave, vol.
i. p. 46. Mr. Sharon Turner has the merit of having first confuted
the popular notion on this subject. Anglo-Saxon History, vol. i. p.
302.--M.]

[Footnote 131: Bede has enumerated seven kings, two Saxons, a Jute, and
four Angles, who successively acquired in the heptarchy an indefinite
supremacy of power and renown. But their reign was the effect, not of
law, but of conquest; and he observes, in similar terms, that one of
them subdued the Isles of Man and Anglesey; and that another imposed a
tribute on the Scots and Picts. (Hist. Eccles. l. ii. c. 5, p. 83.)]

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
[132] 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. [133] 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.

[Footnote 132: See Gildas de Excidio Britanniae, c. i. p. l. edit.
Gale.]

[Footnote 133: Mr. Whitaker (Hist. of Manchester, vol. ii. p. 503, 516)
has smartly exposed this glaring absurdity, which had passed unnoticed
by the general historians, as they were hastening to more interesting
and important events]

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, [134] 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 shord
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.

[Footnote 134: At Beran-birig, or Barbury-castle, near Marlborough. The
Saxon chronicle assigns the name and date. Camden (Britannia, vol. i.
p. 128) ascertains the place; and Henry of Huntingdon (Scriptores
pest Bedam, p. 314) relates the circumstances of this battle. They are
probable and characteristic; and the historians of the twelfth century
might consult some materials that no longer exist.] 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; [135] and a
band of fugitives acquired a settlement in Gaul, by their own valor,
or the liberality of the Merovingian kings. [136] 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. [137]

[Footnote 135: Cornwall was finally subdued by Athelstan, (A.D.
927-941,) who planted an English colony at Exeter, and confined the
Britons beyond the River Tamar. See William of Malmsbury, l. ii., in
the Scriptores post Bedam, p. 50. The spirit of the Cornish knights
was degraded by servitude: and it should seem, from the Romance of Sir
Tristram, that their cowardice was almost proverbial.]

[Footnote 136: The establishment of the Britons in Gaul is proved in
the sixth century, by Procopius, Gregory of Tours, the second council
of Tours, (A.D. 567,) and the least suspicious of their chronicles and
lives of saints. The subscription of a bishop of the Britons to
the first council of Tours, (A.D. 461, or rather 481,) the army of
Riothamus, and the loose declamation of Gildas, (alii transmarinas
petebant regiones, c. 25, p. 8,) may countenance an emigration as early
as the middle of the fifth century. Beyond that era, the Britons of
Armorica can be found only in romance; and I am surprised that Mr.
Whitaker (Genuine History of the Britons, p. 214-221) should so
faithfully transcribe the gross ignorance of Carte, whose venial errors
he has so rigorously chastised.]

[Footnote 137: The antiquities of Bretagne, which have been the subject
even of political controversy, are illustrated by Hadrian Valesius,
(Notitia Galliarum, sub voce Britannia Cismarina, p. 98-100.) M.
D'Anville, (Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, Corisopiti, Curiosolites,
Osismii, Vorganium, p. 248, 258, 508, 720, and Etats de l'Europe, p.
76-80,) Longuerue, (Description de la France, tom. i. p. 84-94,) and the
Abbe de Vertot, (Hist. Critique de l'Etablissement des Bretons dans
les Gaules, 2 vols. in 12 mo., Paris, 1720.) I may assume the merit
of examining the original evidence which they have produced. * Note:
Compare Gallet, Memoires sur la Bretagne, and Daru, Histoire de
Bretagne. These authors appear to me to establish the point of the
independence of Bretagne at the time that the insular Britons took
refuge in their country, and that the greater part landed as fugitives
rather than as conquerors. I observe that M. Lappenberg (Geschichte von
England, vol. i. p. 56) supposes the settlement of a military colony
formed of British soldiers, (Milites limitanei, laeti,) during the
usurpation of Maximus, (381, 388,) who gave their name and peculiar
civilization to Bretagne. M. Lappenberg expresses his surprise that
Gibbon here rejects the authority which he follows elsewhere.--M.]




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; [138] his modesty was equal to his valor, and
his valor, till the last fatal action, [139] was crowned with splendid
success. But every British name is effaced by the illustrious name of
Arthur, [140] 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 Aeneid; and the
royal ancestors of Arthur derived their origin from Troy, and claimed
their alliance with the Caesars. 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 existence of
Arthur. [141]

[Footnote 138: Bede, who in his chronicle (p. 28) places Ambrosius under
the reign of Zeno, (A.D. 474-491,) observes, that his parents had been
"purpura induti;" which he explains, in his ecclesiastical history,
by "regium nomen et insigne ferentibus," (l. i. c. 16, p. 53.) The
expression of Nennius (c. 44, p. 110, edit. Gale) is still more
singular, "Unus de consulibus gentis Romanicae est pater meus."]

[Footnote 139: By the unanimous, though doubtful, conjecture of our
antiquarians, Ambrosius is confounded with Natanleod, who (A.D. 508)
lost his own life, and five thousand of his subjects, in a battle
against Cerdic, the West Saxon, (Chron. Saxon. p. 17, 18.)]

[Footnote 140: As I am a stranger to the Welsh bards, Myrdhin, Llomarch,
and Taliessin, my faith in the existence and exploits of Arthur
principally rests on the simple and circumstantial testimony of Nennius.
(Hist. Brit. c. 62, 63, p. 114.) Mr. Whitaker, (Hist. of Manchester,
vol. ii. p. 31-71) had framed an interesting, and even probable,
narrative of the wars of Arthur: though it is impossible to allow the
reality of the round table. * Note: I presume that Gibbon means Llywarch
Hen, or the Aged.--The Elegies of this Welsh prince and bard have been
published by Mr. Owen; to whose works and in the Myvyrian Archaeology,
slumbers much curious information on the subject of Welsh tradition and
poetry. But the Welsh antiquarians have never obtained a hearing from
the public; they have had no Macpherson to compensate for his corruption
of their poetic legends by forcing them into popularity.--See also Mr.
Sharon Turner's Essay on the Welsh Bards.--M.]

[Footnote 141: The progress of romance, and the state of learning, in
the middle ages, are illustrated by Mr. Thomas Warton, with the taste of
a poet, and the minute diligence of an antiquarian. I have derived much
instruction from the two learned dissertations prefixed to the first
volume of his History of English Poetry. * Note: These valuable
dissertations should not now be read without the notes and preliminary
essay of the late editor, Mr. Price, which, in point of taste and
fulness of information, are worthy of accompanying and completing
those of Warton.--M.] 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, [142] in
the ruins of Anderida; [143] 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; [144]
but those illiterate Pagans preserved and established the use of their
national dialect. [145] Almost every name, conspicuous either in the
church or state, reveals its Teutonic origin; [146] and the geography
of England was 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.

[Footnote 142: Hoc anno (490) Aella et Cissa obsederunt
Andredes-Ceaster; et interfecerunt omnes qui id incoluerunt; adeo ut ne
unus Brito ibi superstes fuerit, (Chron. Saxon. p. 15;) an expression
more dreadful in its simplicity, than all the vague and tedious
lamentations of the British Jeremiah.]

[Footnote 143: Andredes-Ceaster, or Anderida, is placed by Camden
(Britannia, vol. i. p. 258) at Newenden, in the marshy grounds of Kent,
which might be formerly covered by the sea, and on the edge of the great
forest (Anderida) which overspread so large a portion of Hampshire and
Sussex.]

[Footnote 144: Dr. Johnson affirms, that few English words are of
British extraction. Mr. Whitaker, who understands the British language,
has discovered more than three thousand, and actually produces a long
and various catalogue, (vol. ii. p. 235-329.) It is possible, indeed,
that many of these words may have been imported from the Latin or Saxon
into the native idiom of Britain. * Note: Dr. Prichard's very curious
researches, which connect the Celtic, as well as the Teutonic languages
with the Indo-European class, make it still more difficult to decide
between the Celtic or Teutonic origin of English words.--See Prichard on
the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations Oxford, 1831.--M.]

[Footnote 145: In the beginning of the seventh century, the Franks and
the Anglo-Saxons mutually understood each other's language, which was
derived from the same Teutonic root, (Bede, l. i. c. 25, p. 60.)]

[Footnote 146: After the first generation of Italian, or Scottish,
missionaries, the dignities of the church were filled with Saxon
proselytes.]

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 said
to have obeyed the summons of Hengist; [147] the entire emigation of the
Angles was attested, in the age of Bede, by the solitude of their native
country; [148] 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; [149]
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. [150] 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, [151] accepted from his
royal convert the gift of the Vpeninsula 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; [152] yet the special exemptions which were granted to national
slaves, [153] 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. [154] 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. [155]

[Footnote 147: Carte's History of England, vol. i. p. 195. He quotes the
British historians; but I much fear, that Jeffrey of Monmouth (l. vi. c.
15) is his only witness.]

[Footnote 148: Bede, Hist. Ecclesiast. l. i. c. 15, p. 52. The fact is
probable, and well attested: yet such was the loose intermixture of
the German tribes, that we find, in a subsequent period, the law of the
Angli and Warini of Germany, (Lindenbrog. Codex, p. 479-486.)]

[Footnote 149: See Dr. Henry's useful and laborious History of Great
Britain, vol. ii. p. 388.]

[Footnote 150: Quicquid (says John of Tinemouth) inter Tynam et Tesam
fluvios extitit, sola eremi vastitudo tunc temporis fuit, et idcirco
nullius ditioni servivit, eo quod sola indomitorum et sylvestrium
animalium spelunca et habitatio fuit, (apud Carte, vol. i. p. 195.) From
bishop Nicholson (English Historical Library, p. 65, 98) I understand
that fair copies of John of Tinemouth's ample collections are preserved
in the libraries of Oxford, Lambeth, &c.]

[Footnote 151: See the mission of Wilfrid, &c., in Bede, Hist. Eccles.
l. iv. c. 13, 16, p. 155, 156, 159.]

[Footnote 152: From the concurrent testimony of Bede (l. ii. c. 1, p.
78) and William of Malmsbury, (l. iii. p. 102,) it appears, that
the Anglo-Saxons, from the first to the last age, persisted in this
unnatural practice. Their youths were publicly sold in the market of
Rome.]

[Footnote 153: According to the laws of Ina, they could not be lawfully
sold beyond the seas.]

[Footnote 154: The life of a Wallus, or Cambricus, homo, who possessed a
hyde of land, is fixed at 120 shillings, by the same laws (of Ina, tit.
xxxii. in Leg. Anglo-Saxon. p. 20) which allowed 200 shillings for a
free Saxon, 1200 for a Thane, (see likewise Leg. Anglo-Saxon. p. 71.)
We may observe, that these legislators, the West Saxons and Mercians,
continued their British conquests after they became Christians. The laws
of the four kings of Kent do not condescend to notice the existence of
any subject Britons.]

[Footnote 155: See Carte's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 278.]

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. [156]
Christianity was still professed in the mountains of Wales; but the rude
schismatics, in the form of the clerical tonsure, and in the day of 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. [157] 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. [158] Their
disposition was rash and choleric; they were bold in action and in
speech; [159] 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. [160]

[Footnote 156: At the conclusion of his history, (A.D. 731,) Bede
describes the ecclesiastical state of the island, and censures the
implacable, though impotent, hatred of the Britons against the English
nation, and the Catholic church, (l. v. c. 23, p. 219.)]

[Footnote 157: Mr. Pennant's Tour in Wales (p. 426-449) has furnished me
with a curious and interesting account of the Welsh bards. In the year
1568, a session was held at Caerwys by the special command of Queen
Elizabeth, and regular degrees in vocal and instrumental music were
conferred on fifty-five minstrels. The prize (a silver harp) was
adjudged by the Mostyn family.]

[Footnote 158: Regio longe lateque diffusa, milite, magis quam credibile
sit, referta. Partibus equidem in illis miles unus quinquaginta generat,
sortitus more barbaro denas aut amplius uxores. This reproach of William
of Poitiers (in the Historians of France, tom. xi. p. 88) is disclaimed
by the Benedictine editors.]

[Footnote 159: Giraldus Cambrensis confines this gift of bold and ready
eloquence to the Romans, the French, and the Britons. The malicious
Welshman insinuates that the English taciturnity might possibly be the
effect of their servitude under the Normans.]

[Footnote 160: The picture of Welsh and Armorican manners is drawn
from Giraldus, (Descript. Cambriae, c. 6-15, inter Script. Camden. p.
886-891,) and the authors quoted by the Abbe de Vertot, (Hist. Critique
tom. ii. p. 259-266.)]

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
Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Caesar,
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 [161] 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. [162]
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. [163] 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 world was seldom
connected, either in peace or war, with the nations of the Continent.
[164]

[Footnote 161: See Procopius de Bell. Gothic. l. iv. c. 20, p. 620-625.
The Greek historian is himself so confounded by the wonders which he
relates, that he weakly attempts to distinguish the islands of
Britia and Britain, which he has identified by so many inseparable
circumstances.]

[Footnote 162: Theodebert, grandson of Clovis, and king of Austrasia,
was the most powerful and warlike prince of the age; and this remarkable
adventure may be placed between the years 534 and 547, the extreme
terms of his reign. His sister Theudechildis retired to Sens, where
she founded monasteries, and distributed alms, (see the notes of the
Benedictine editors, in tom. ii. p. 216.) If we may credit the praises
of Fortunatus, (l. vi. carm. 5, in tom. ii. p. 507,) Radiger was
deprived of a most valuable wife.]

[Footnote 163: Perhaps she was the sister of one of the princes or
chiefs of the Angles, who landed in 527, and the following years,
between the Humber and the Thames, and gradually founded the kingdoms of
East Anglia and Mercia. The English writers are ignorant of her name and
existence: but Procopius may have suggested to Mr. Rowe the character
and situation of Rodogune in the tragedy of the Royal Convert.]

[Footnote 164: In the copious history of Gregory of Tours, we cannot
find any traces of hostile or friendly intercourse between France and
England except in the marriage of the daughter of Caribert, king of
Paris, quam regis cujusdam in Cantia filius matrimonio copulavit, (l.
ix. c. 28, in tom. ii. p. 348.) The bishop of Tours ended his history
and his life almost immediately before the conversion of Kent.]

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 Greek
emperors 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. [1000] 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. [2000] 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. [3000] 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 reenforced 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, [4000] 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 iron monarchy of Rome. [5000]

[Footnote 1000: Such are the figurative expressions of Plutarch, (Opera,
tom. ii. p. 318, edit. Wechel,) to whom, on the faith of his son
Lamprias, (Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. iii. p. 341,) I shall boldly
impute the malicious declamation. The same opinions had prevailed among
the Greeks two hundred and fifty years before Plutarch; and to confute
them is the professed intention of Polybius, (Hist. l. i. p. 90, edit.
Gronov. Amstel. 1670.)]

[Footnote 2000: See the inestimable remains of the sixth book of Polybius,
and many other parts of his general history, particularly a digression
in the seventeenth book, in which he compares the phalanx and the
legion.]

[Footnote 3000: Sallust, de Bell. Jugurthin. c. 4. Such were the generous
professions of P. Scipio and Q. Maximus. The Latin historian had read
and most probably transcribes, Polybius, their contemporary and friend.]

[Footnote 4000: While Carthage was in flames, Scipio repeated two lines
of the Iliad, which express the destruction of Troy, acknowledging to
Polybius, his friend and preceptor, (Polyb. in Excerpt. de Virtut. et
Vit. tom. ii. p. 1455-1465,) that while he recollected the vicissitudes
of human affairs, he inwardly applied them to the future calamities of
Rome, (Appian. in Libycis, p. 136, edit. Toll.)]

[Footnote 5000: See Daniel, ii. 31-40. "And the fourth kingdom shall be
strong as iron; forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all
things." The remainder of the prophecy (the mixture of iron and clay)
was accomplished, according to St. Jerom, in his own time. Sicut enim
in principio nihil Romano Imperio fortius et durius, ita in fine rerum
nihil imbecillius; quum et in bellis civilibus et adversus diversas
nationes, aliarum gentium barbararum auxilio indigemus, (Opera, tom. v.
p. 572.)]

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 why the 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 future life 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. [511] 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.

[Footnote 511: It might be a curious speculation, how far the purer
morals of the genuine and more active Christians may have compensated,
in the population of the Roman empire, for the secession of such numbers
into inactive and unproductive celibacy.--M.]

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 philosmay
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 their turn 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. [6000] Yet this apparent
security should not tempt us to forget, that new enemies, and unknown
dangers, may possibly arise 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.

[Footnote 6000: The French and English editors of the Genealogical History
of the Tartars have subjoined a curious, though imperfect, description,
of their present state. We might question the independence of the
Calmucks, or Eluths, since they have been recently vanquished by
the Chinese, who, in the year 1759, subdued the Lesser Bucharia, and
advanced into the country of Badakshan, near the source of the Oxus,
(Memoires sur les Chinois, tom. i. p. 325-400.) But these conquests
are precarious, nor will I venture to insure the safety of the Chinese
empire.]

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. [7000] 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. [8000]

[Footnote 7000: The prudent reader will determine how far this general
proposition is weakened by the revolt of the Isaurians, the independence
of Britain and Armorica, the Moorish tribes, or the Bagaudae of Gaul and
Spain, (vol. i. p. 328, vol. iii. p. 315, vol. iii. p. 372, 480.)]

[Footnote 8000: America now contains about six millions of European blood
and descent; and their numbers, at least in the North, are continually
increasing. Whatever may be the changes of their political situation,
they must preserve the manners of Europe; and we may reflect with some
pleasure, that the English language will probably be diffused ever an
immense and populous continent.]

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;
[9000] 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
irruptions 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.

[Footnote 9000: On avoit fait venir (for the siege of Turin) 140 pieces
de canon; et il est a remarquer que chaque gros canon monte revient
a environ ecus: il y avoit 100,000 boulets; 106,000 cartouches d'une
facon, et 300,000 d'une autre; 21,000 bombes; 27,700 grenades, 15,000
sacs a terre, 30,000 instruments pour la pionnage; 1,200,000 livres de
poudre. Ajoutez a ces munitions, le plomb, le fer, et le fer-blanc, les
cordages, tout ce qui sert aux mineurs, le souphre, le salpetre, les
outils de toute espece. Il est certain que les frais de tous ces
preparatifs de destruction suffiroient pour fonder et pour faire fleurir
la plus aombreuse colonie. Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. xx. in his
Works. tom. xi. p. 391.]

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. [1001] 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 [1101] 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 single mind; 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 many individuals 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 [1201] 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,
[1301] still continued annually to mow the harvests of Italy; and the
human feasts of the Laestrigons [1401] have never been renewed on the
coast of Campania.

[Footnote 1001: It would be an easy, though tedious, task, to produce the
authorities of poets, philosophers, and historians. I shall therefore
content myself with appealing to the decisive and authentic testimony of
Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. i. p. 11, 12, l. iii. p. 184, &c., edit.
Wesseling.) The Icthyophagi, who in his time wandered along the shores
of the Red Sea, can only be compared to the natives of New Holland,
(Dampier's Voyages, vol. i. p. 464-469.) Fancy, or perhaps reason, may
still suppose an extreme and absolute state of nature far below the
level of these savages, who had acquired some arts and instruments.]

[Footnote 1101: See the learned and rational work of the president Goguet,
de l'Origine des Loix, des Arts, et des Sciences. He traces from facts,
or conjectures, (tom. i. p. 147-337, edit. 12mo.,) the first and most
difficult steps of human invention.]

[Footnote 1201: It is certain, however strange, that many nations
have been ignorant of the use of fire. Even the ingenious natives of
Otaheite, who are destitute of metals, have not invented any earthen
vessels capable of sustaining the action of fire, and of communicating
the heat to the liquids which they contain.]

[Footnote 1301: Plutarch. Quaest. Rom. in tom. ii. p. 275. Macrob.
Saturnal. l. i. c. 8, p. 152, edit. London. The arrival of Saturn (of
his religious worship) in a ship, may indicate, that the savage coast of
Latium was first discovered and civilized by the Phoenicians.]

[Footnote 1401: In the ninth and tenth books of the Odyssey, Homer has
embellished the tales of fearful and credulous sailors, who transformed
the cannibals of Italy and Sicily into monstrous giants.]

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. [1501]

[Footnote 1501: The merit of discovery has too often been stained with
avarice, cruelty, and fanaticism; and the intercourse of nations
has produced the communication of disease and prejudice. A singular
exception is due to the virtue of our own times and country. The five
great voyages, successively undertaken by the command of his present
Majesty, were inspired by the pure and generous love of science and of
mankind. The same prince, adapting his benefactions to the different
stages of society, has founded his school of painting in his capital;
and has introduced into the islands of the South Sea the vegetables and
animals most useful to human life.]







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