14
THE DECLINE AND FALL
[A.D. 456] and important services against the common enemy rendered him still more formidable;[1] 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, [Sept., Oct.] was compelled, after a short and unavailing struggle, to abdicate the purple. By the clemency, however, or the contempt, of Ricimer,[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] Avitus left only[5] [Papianilla] 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
- ↑ See the Chronicle of Idatius. Jornandes (c. 44, p. 676) styles him, with some truth, virum egregium, et pene tunc in Italiâ ad exercitum singularem.
- ↑ Parcens innocentiæ 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. [Some further details as to the fall of Avitus are derived from John of Antioch (Müller, F. H. G. 4, fr. 202, — a "Constantinian" fragment; see Appendix 1). The Roman populace blamed him for a famine, which broke out in the city; he was compelled to disband his Visigothic bodyguard; to pay whom, having no money, he stripped public edifices of their copper.]
- ↑ He suffered, as it is supposed, in the persecution of Diocletian (Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. tom. v. p. 279, 696). Gregory of Tours, his peculiar votary, has dedicated to the glory of Julian the Martyr an entire book (de Gloriâ Martyrum, l. ii. in Max. Bibliot. Patrum, tom. xi. p. 861-871), in which he relates about fifty foolish miracles performed by his relics.
- ↑ Gregory of Tours (l. ii. c. xi. p. 168) is concise, but correct, in the reign of his countryman. The words of Idatius, "caret imperio, caret et vitâ," 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 plague.
- ↑ [He had also a son Ecdicius, who subsequently distinguished himself in the defence of Auvergne in A.D. 474.]
