42
THE DECLINE AND FALL
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.[1]
Discord of Anthemius and Ricimer. A.D. 471 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.[2] 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;[3] 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 [Ticinum] Pavia,[4] united the wisdom of the serpent with the- ↑ Catilina seculi nostri. Sidonius, l. ii. epist. 1, p. 33; l. v. epist. 13, p. 143; l. vii. epist. 7, 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.
- ↑ 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 connexion with the Suevic colony established in Pannonia and Noricum.
- ↑ Galatam concitatum. Sirmond (in his notes to Ennodius) applies this application 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.
- ↑ Epiphanius was thirty years bishop of Pavia (A.D. 467-497; see Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés. 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 [cp. App. 1]), in which he presents him as one of the greatest characters of the age.
