Encyclopaedia Americana: a popular dictionary of arts, sciences, literature, history, politics and biography, brought down to the present time : including a copious collection of original articles in American biography : on the basis of the seventh edition of the German Conversations-Lexicon (Volume 13).

Date:: 1830-33

Credit: Encyclopaedia Americana: a popular dictionary of arts, sciences, literature, history, politics and biography, brought down to the present time : including a copious collection of original articles in American biography : on the basis of the seventh edition of the German Conversations-Lexicon (Volume 13). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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named a new emperor, the prefect Atta- ins, and took him with him to Ravenna in 409. Honorius was on the point of throwing himself into the arms of his cousin, the young emperor Theodosius, at Constantinople, when he saw his throne saved by the fidelity and wisdom of his general Heraclian in Africa, by the fideli- ty of his body-guard, secured by lar- gesses, and by the imprudent measures of Attains. Alaric himself deposed Atta- ins, and sent the ensigns of his dignity to Ravenna, But Sams, the general of Ho- norius, attacked Alaric, killed many of his followers, and declared him an enemy of the empire, and unworthy of the alliance of his emperor. He therefore returned to Rome, which he took in the night of the 24th of August, 410, one of the gates having been opened to him by the treach- ery of slaves in the town. The old capi- tal of the world was pillaged, and in part burned. The treasures of the inhabitants, including many valuable works of Ro- man or Grecian art, became the prey of the barbarians. The churches and their treasures remained inviolate, by the special order of Alaric. This took place 1163 years after the building of the city by Romulus. Alaric now left Rome, and pillaged the south of Italy, where he died in 410. Adolphus, his successor, left Italy in two years, laden with the booty of Rome and of the southern provinces, after having received in marriage Pla- cidia, the sister of Honorius. He went, in 412, to Gaul and to Spain, where he founded the kingdom of the Visigoths. Italy now breathed more freely. Rome arose proudly from its ashes; and the empire might perhaps have acquired new vigor, but for the weakness of its ruler, who lived eleven years after the departure of Adolphus. Gaul, indeed, was brought again under his power by the valor of the Roman general Constantius, who con- quered Constantine,andobtained in recom- pense the hand of the widow of Adolphus, who had shortly before been murdered, and a share in the imperial power with Ho- norius. But Gaul, as well as Spain, was incessantly torn by domestic strife. Brit- ain and Africa were lost, and the most unhappy discord reigned at Ravenna, where Placidia, a second time a widow, after the death of Augustus Constantius, was seeking to retain her power, when Honorius died, on the 24th August, 423, in the twenty-eighth year of his reign. Pla- cidia carried the news to Constantinople, whither she had fled with her children, on account of the troubles at Ravenna. VOL. XIII. 1'-^ Under the protection of her nephew, Theodosius II, the young emperor of the East, the son of Placidia and Constan- tius, a child of but six years, was pro- claimed emperor of the West, with the title of Valentinian III. Placidia was de- clared regent, and maintained her power as such during twenty-five years, in which the Western empire was continually brought nearer to its fall. Under Valen- tinian, the Vandal kingdom was founded in Roman Africa, by Genseric, king of the Vandals, in 428. The Western em- pire experienced a further loss in the ces- sion of the western part of Illyria to the emperor of the East, by which Placidia obtained in marriage for her son, Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius and Athenais, in 437, and likewise indemnified the court of Byzantium for the expenses of a war against John, who had been private secre- tary of Honorius, and, after his death, had sought to obtain possession of the throne. Attila, king of the Huns, an ally of Gen- seric, now demanded the hand of Honoria, sister of Valentinian, with her inheritance. From Constantinople,wliithcr she had been banished on account of her too great in- timacy with her chamberlain Eugenius, she had offered to the king of the Huns her i)erson and her claims upon Italy. A refusal immediately caused a war, which Attila began with an attack upon Gaul, and which ended witli a great battle in the Catalaunian plains (near Chalons), in 450, when the Roman general Aetius, to- gether with Theodoric, kingof the Goths, defeated the army of Attila, and might, perhaps, have entirely destroyed his pow- er, if the political consideration of pre- serving in the Huns a counterpoise against the ])oweiful Goths, had not induced Aetius to retreat, and to separate from his ally. Thereupon Attila, to make good his claims upon the princess Honoria and her inheritance, broke into Italy, in 451, where he destroyed Aquileia, Padua, Vi- cenza, Verona and Bergamo. He had plundered Milan and Pavia, when Valen- tinian made proposals of peace by an em- bassy sent from Rome. The eloquence of the bishop of Rome, Leo I, who was at the head of the deputation, and the impression which his representations pro- duced on Attila, induced him to refrain from the pillage of Rome, for a sum equal in value to the inheritance of Honoria. The beautiful Ildico made Attila forget Honoria, who, by imprisonment for life, atoned for her desire to become queen of the Huns. After the death of Attila, in 453, Valentinian might have ruled happi-

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