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prince, to avenge the death of the sovereign emperor. Genseric might care but little for the claims she seemed to lay upon him, but he was greedy as ever of plunder. The empire was more than ever disorganized; the favorable moment had come.

The fleets of the Vandals were in readiness, and an overwhelming force speedily entered the Tiber. The citizens were frantic with alarm, and attacked and stoned Maximus in their streets. Still the Vandals advanced. Once more Leo went forth with all the dignity of a great Christian prelate to intercede with the semi-Christian Genseric. The barbarian would not forego the anticipated plunder, but he promised that the lives of the Romans should be spared. The city was given up to pillage for fourteen days, and pillage meant blood and fire as well as booty. The Vandals heaped their vessels with ornaments of gold and silver, with the metal statues of the temples and the Forum, with the precious trophies suspended in the Capitol and the temple of Peace, from which receptacle they carried away the golden candlestick and other ornaments of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. They stripped the Capitol of one half of its gilded tiles. The most cherished monuments of the Jewish and the Pagan religions suffered alike, but a great part of these trophies were lost in a tempest. The golden candlestick reached the African capital, was recovered a century later, and lodged in Constantinople by Justinian, and by him replaced from superstitious motives in Jerusalem. From that time its history is lost. The spoilers wafted also to Carthage a horde of 60,000 captives; among them were the empress Eudoxia and the two daughters she had borne to Valentinian. Eudoxia was surrendered again at the request of the Eastern emperor Leo; but Genseric gave one of her children in marriage to his own son, and was proud, perhaps, thus to connect his dynasty with the imperial blood of an illustrious Roman.

The object of these latest conquerors had been simply booty, and they caused apparently little wanton havoc in the city. From Rome they descended upon Nola, Capua, and other places in the south, levying contributions as they went, and disappearing again in quest of fresh victims. Genseric abandoned Rome. He made no pretence of consolidating his conquests, or of appointing a ruler of the empire, which he still allowed to protract its nominal existence. The whole male race of Theodosius had disappeared from Roman territory. The Romans seem to have agreed to invite a distinguished noble of Gaul, named Avitus, to assume the diadem. He was a man of peace, a cultivator of arts and eloquence, a fit shadow to place upon the shadow of a throne. The army and their officers stood aloof. None among them seemed to covet the empty honor. The Senate decreed a brazen statue in the li

CHAP. LXXVII.

RICIMER AND MAJORIANUS.

653

brary of Trajan to the poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who declaimed be fore them in praise of the emperor, his father-in-law. But they appear to have been soon dissatisfied with the object of their favor, and engaged Ricimer, a Sueve, who held high rank in the army, to expel him from the city. Avitus returned quietly to his native Auvergne, his patrician palace, and his garden; but he soon fell by the hand of an assassin. The claims of the Senate to make a new appointment were either not advanced or were disregarded. The throne of the West was allowed to remain vacant for ten months, till in the spring of 457 Ricimer condescended to bestow it upon another Sueve, named Majorianus. This nominee was no man of straw. He had served under Aetius, and when accepted by the legions, he showed, perhaps to the surprise of his patron, that he was not incapable of command. He placed his various divisions under able captains; he led his troops with success himself against the Vandals, who still troubled the coast of Italy. He meditated an attack upon Genseric in his own province, and took the lead of a mingled host of Goths, Suevi, Huns, and Alans, which assembled in Gaul for that purpose. In the year 460 he crossed the Pyrenees and advanced towards Carthagena, where his fleet was ready to receive him. But Genseric was enabled to anticipate his arrival, and by the treachery of his personal enemies to surprise and destroy this armament in its harbor. Majorian was baffled and forced to retire. Ricimer had now become jealous of his authority. The Sueve effected a conspiracy against him, overpowered, and required him to relinquish the throne. Majorian died a few days afterwards, of course not without suspicion of poison. Besides his good qualities as a commander, this emperor is honorably distinguished for his zeal in legislation. He is said to have exerted himself to establish equal government among the various races in the provinces. He is noted also as a restorer of the edifices of the city, which had suffered greatly, in the decline of its wealth and population, from the dilapidation of its noblest monuments. Ricimer now placed on the throne a certain Severus, a trifling personage, who dangled the reins of government under his protection for some years. Meanwhile a party of the young men of Italy are reported to have urged a pretender named Marcellinus to call himself emperor. Indications are not wanting that this man was addicted at least to the old superstitions, and it is possible that he may have been the tool of the still lingering devotees of Paganism. Marcellinus got possession of Dalmatia, and held that province apparently undisturbed for a short period. On the death of Severus the West remained for two years without an acknowledged emperor. It was actually ruled by Ricimer, with the simpler title of patrician. Italy—

A.D. 461.

for to Italy alone the empire was now confined-called at last for a titular sovereign, and Ricimer was still awed by the grandeur of the imperial style, and forbore to climb himself to the seat of the Cæsars. He now appointed a personage of distinction named Anthemius, on the recommendation, it seems, of Marcianus, at that time emperor of the East, to whose daughter he was married. Anthemius was the son of a Procopius; the two Grecian names suggest that he was a Greek by origin. A Greek writer named Damascius speaks of him as a Pagan, and imputes to him the design of restoring the ancient cult. He received the support of Marcellinus and of the innovating party, who both in the East and the West murmured, perhaps, against the ascendency of the Christian Church. It is said that he was himself a descendant of the apostate Julian. A medal has been found bearing the head of Anthemius on the one side, and the figure of Hercules on the other. Such are the slight grounds on which the accession of this emperor has been represented as a final attempt of the Pagans. But the most that can be said for this asserted revival is that in the utter collapse of belief in the Olympian divinities there still no doubt survived a class of waverers who took refuge in philosophy from the perplexities of the creeds, and clung hopelessly to the idea that the oldest traditions were the safest. The time was ap

proaching when many even of professed Christians would lapse into similar laxity. The pretended philosophy of the fifth and sixth centuries was the last point of contrast between the old religion and the new.

A.D. 472.

Anthemius sought to strengthen his position by a second marriage with the daughter of Ricimer. But this union afforded him no protection. The jealousy of the Sueve was aroused; and though the Eastern emperor still lent his aid, Anthemius was urable to make head against the new horde of barbarians which Ricimer invited to cross the Alps. In 472 the enemy appeared before the gates of Rome. The city was pressed with famine. Gilimer, a Vandal with a command in Gaul, hastened to its succor, but the invaders had already made themselves masters of the transtiberine quarter. A battle, however, ensued. Gilimer was defeated and slain. On July 11 Rome was captured for the third time. It was again given up to pillage, but there are no accounts of conflagration and destruction. Anthemius was put to death, and replaced by Olybrius, the noble to whom Genseric had given the second daughter of the empress Eudoxia. The maker of so many emperors might congratulate himself on restoring the throne he so much revered to the dynasty of Theodosius. Genseric died himself in the following month, and Olybrius followed bim-both, however, by natural deaths-before the end of the year.

CHAP. LXXVII. AUGUSTULUS; ODOACER; THE END.

655

Ricimer's soldiers, under the command of his nephew, Gundobald, now placed the diadem on the head of Glycerius. Glycerius was forced to resign in 474 in favor of Julius Nepos, a man who bore at least a genuine Roman appellation, and he was suffered to live in exile at Salona, where he became bishop, by an indulgence which was now sometimes allowed to political rivals. Nepos was constrained to abdicate in the following year, and found repose in the same quiet spot, among the gardens of Diocletian.

This last revolution was effected like those which had preceded it. Orestes, a Pannonian, but of Roman origin, had resorted with other men of distinction, amid the troubles of the times, to the court of Attila. He had returned with wealth and reputation, and had obtained on the death of Ricimer the title of patrician, which ranked next to the imperial dignity, and was equivalent to regent of the empire. Such was the ascendency which in after-times the Franks conferred upon the Mayor of the Palace. This chief was impatient of the sovereignty of Nepos. Orestes constrained him to descend from the throne at Ravenna; but still following the policy of Ricimer and other regents before him, he abstained from assuming the purple himself, while he went through the farce of bestowing it upon his own son, a child of six years. This child, with whom the Western Empire was destined to perish, bore by some freak of fortune the name of Romulus, to which was added that of Augustus under its diminutive form Augustulus. Orestes had found it easy to seize and transfer the phantom of an empire, but he could not shake off the substantial demands of Odoacer, a barbarian of uncertain origin, the chief of a combined force from various German peoples, with which he pretended to defend the tottering throne. This man demanded his price, no less than the assignment to his myrmidons of one third of the lands of Italy. The demand was angrily refused; but Odoacer knew his own strength, and called upon the tribes of the North to cross the Alps. Barbarians of many uncouth names, Rugians, Herulians, and Turcilingians, flocked to the standard of so liberal a leader. Orestes had sent envoys to gain the support of the Eastern emperor; he had made peace with the king of the Vandals. But he could offer no effectual resistance to the invaders. He sought refuge within the walls of Patavium; but the place was easily stormed, and he was delivered to the executioner. The reign of Augustulus was at an end in August, 476, just a year after its commencement. Paulus, a brother of Orestes, was likewise put to death, but the tender years of the infant emperor were spared, and he found a last tranquil retreat in the delicious villa of Lucullus, on the coast of Surrentum.

And this was the end. Odoacer disdained to make an emper

or.

Yet neither did he assume the title in his own person. He was content to style himself king; but king in those days was a national, not a territorial title, and a captain of banditti could claim no nation as his subjects. The Empire of the West had ceased to be. The successors of the Cæsars who still ruled in Constantinople, and whose rule endured a thousand more years, affected to regard it as lapsed to their own crown; but they seldom attempted to secure it, and never but for a moment held it even by the skirt. Rome continued to be governed by her native bishops, or by a series of barbarian kings; and more than three centuries elapsed before her empire was nominally revived by the great German prince who reigned at Aachen.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

History of the City of Rome.-1. Period of the kings and the Republic.-The Palatine Hill and Roma Quadrata.-The Aventine and other hills.-The Capitoline or Tarpeian.—The Arx and the Temple of Jupiter.—Etruscan structures and walls of Servius.-The valleys and streets of the city. The Triumphal and Sacred Way.-The Forum Romanum.-The Velabrum.— The dwellings of the people; their temples, theatres, and other public buildings. The aqueducts.-The Capitol in the time of the Republic.

OUR review of the history of Rome commenced with a glance at the site of the city about which the affairs of a vast dominion were for many ages to revolve. Now that we have brought our

narrative to a close we will revert once more to the cradle of the Roman people, and survey the growth of the city itself, which has been so often lost to our eyes while they were directed to a wider theatre, and to affairs of more engrossing interest. Some oc

casional repetition will perhaps be pardoned in an attempt to bring under one view many particulars which have already come under notice each in its proper place. The Palatine Hill, the original abode of the Romans, lay, indeed, imbedded in the slopes around it, like a child in its cradle. The seven hills over which the growing city soon spread were also secure in the strength of their position. Very remarkable it is that, constantly at war, and exposed to the attacks of states and confederations often much more powerful than their own, the Romans were only twice compelled to open their gates to a foreign assailant till the last hour of their decrepitude had struck. It was, further, the observation of Cicero that Rome was admirably adapted for habitation, from the healthiness of its actual situation, though in the midst of an

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