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 laboured 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 valour; 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 armour into the sea, disdainfully rejected the esteem and pity of Genso, the son of Genseric, who pressed him to accept honourable 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 [Aug., A.D. 468] 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.[1] After the failure of this great expedition, Genseric again became the tyrant of the sea: the coasts of Italy, Greece and Asia were again exposed to his revenge and avarice; Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his obedience; he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and, before A.D. 477 he died, in the fulness of years and of glory, he beheld the final extinction of the empire of the West.[2]
Conquests of the Visigoths in Spain and Gaul. A.D. 462-477 During his long and active reign, the African monarch had studiously cultivated the friendship of the Barbarians of Europe,- ↑ Damascius in Vit. Isidor. apud Phot. p. 1048 [342]. It will appear, by comparing the three short chronicles of the times, that Marcellinus had fought near Carthage and was killed in Sicily. [The date of his death is given in Anon. Cusp.]
- ↑ 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 [i. 613, ed. Bonn]), and Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 50, 51 [c. 1]). Montesquieu (Considérations sur la Grandeur, &c., c. xx. tom. iii. p. 497) has made a judicious observation on the failure of these great naval armaments.
