46
THE DECLINE AND FALL
left one daughter, the offspring of his marriage with Placidia; and the family of the great Theodosius, transplanted from Spain to Constantinople, was propagated in the female line as far as the eighth generation.[1]
Julius Nepos and Glycerius, emperors of the West. A.D. 472-475 Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless Barbarians,[2] the election of a new colleague was seriously agitated in the council of Leo. The empress of Verina, studious to promote the greatness of her own family, had married one of her nieces to Julius Nepos, who succeeded his uncle Marcellinus in the sovereignty of Dalmatia, a more solid possession than the title which he was persuaded to accept, of Emperor of the West. But the measures of the Byzantine court were so languid and irresolute that many months elapsed after the death of Anthemius, and even of Olybrius, before their destined successor could shew himself, with a respectable force, to his Italian subjects. During that interval. Glycerius, an obscure soldier, [A.D. 473, March 5] was invested with the purple by his patron Gundobald; but the Burgundian prince was unable, or unwilling, to support his nomination by a civil war: the pursuits of domestic ambition recalled him beyond the Alps,[3] and his client was permitted to exchange the Roman sceptre for the bishopric of Salona. After extinguishing such a competitor, the emperor Nepos was acknowledged by the senate, by the Italians, and by the provincials of Gaul; his moral virtues and military talents were loudly celebrated; and those who derived any private benefit from his government announced, in prophetic strains, the restoration of the public felicity.[4] Their hopes (if such hopes had been entertained) were confounded within the term of a single year; and the treaty of peace, which ceded Auvergne to- ↑ See Ducange, Familiae Byzantinae, p. 74, 75. Areobindus, who appears to have married the niece of the emperor Justinian, was the eighth descendant of the elder Theodosius. [John of Antioch, fr. 209, states that Olybrius died at Rome of dropsy.]
- ↑ The last revolutions of the Western empire are faintly marked in Theophanes (p. 102), Jornandes (c. 45, p. 679), the Chronicle of Marcellinus, and the fragments of an anonymous writer, published by Valesius at the end of Ammianus (p. 716, 717). If Photius had not been so wretchedly concise, we should derive much information from the contemporary histories of Malchus and Candidus. See his Extracts, p. 172-179.
- ↑ See Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 28, in tom. ii. p. 175. Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. ii. p. 613. By the murder, or death, of his two brothers, Gundobald acquired the sole possession of the kingdom of Burgundy, whose ruin was hastened by their discord.
- ↑ Julius Nepos armis pariter summus Augustus ac moribus. Sidonius, l. v. ep. 16, p. 146. Nepos had given to Ecdicius the title of Patrician, which Anthemius had promised, decessoris Anthemii fidem absolvit [ib.]. See l. viii. ep. 7, p. 224. [A letter to his friend Audax, who was made præfect of Rome. Cp. Orelli, 1153; Salvo d.n. Iulio Nepote p(io) f(elice) Aug. Audax v. c. præfectus urbi fecit.]
