The patrician Orestes had married the daughter of Count Romulus, of Petovio, in Noricum; the name of Augualus, notwithstanding the jealousy of power, was known at Aquileia as a familiar surname; and the appellations of the two great founders, of the city and of the monarchy, were thus strangely united in the last of their successors.[1] The son of Orestes assumed and disgraced the names of Romulus Augustus; but the first was corrupted into Momyllus, by the Greeks, and the second has been changed by the Latins into the contemptible diminutive Augustulus. The life of this inoffensive youth was spared by the generous clemency of Odoacer; who dismissed him, with his whole family, from the Imperial palace, fixed his annual allowance at [£3600] six thousand pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of Lucullus, in Campania, for the place of his exile or retirement.[2] As soon as the Romans breathed from the toils of the Punic war, they were attracted by the beauties and the pleasures of Campania; and the country house of the elder Scipio at Liternum exhibited a lasting model of their rustic simplicity.[3] The delicious shores of the bay of Naples were crowded with villas; and Sylla applauded the masterly skill of his rival, who had seated himself on the lofty promontory of Misenum, that commands, on every side, the sea and land, as far as the boundaries of the horizon.[4] The villa of Marius was purchased,
- ↑ See his medals in Ducange (Fam. Byzantin. p. 81), [see Eckhel, Doct. Num., 8, p. 203], Priscus (Excerpt. Legat. p. 56 [F.H.G., 4, p. 84]), Maffei (Osservazioni Letterarie, tom. ii. p. 314). We may allege a famous and similar case. The meanest subjects of the Roman empire assumed the illustrious name of Patricius, which, by the conversion of Ireland, has been communicated to a whole nation.
- ↑ Ingrediens autem Ravennam deposuit Augustulum de regno, cujus infantiam misertus concessit ei sanguinem; et quia pulcher erat, tamen donavit ei reditum sex millia solidos, et misit eum intra Campaniam cum parentibus suis libere vivere. Anonym. Vales. p. 716 [8, § 38]. Jornandes says (c. 46, p. 680) in Lucullano Campaniæ castello exilii pœna damnavit.
- ↑ See the eloquent Declamation of Seneca (epist. lxxxvi.). The philosopher might have recollected that all luxury is relative; and that the elder Scipio, whose manners were polished by study and conversation, was himself accused of that vice by his ruder contemporaries (Livy, xxix. 19).
- ↑ Sylla, in the language of a soldier, praised his peritia castrametandi (Plin.
Hist. Natur. xviii. 7). Phædrus, who makes its shady walks (læta viridia) the
scene of an insipid fable (ii. 5), has thus described the situation:—
Cæsar Tiberius quum petens Neapolim
In Misenensem villam venisset suam;
Quæ monte summo posita Luculli manu
Prospectat Siculum et prospicit [leg. despicit] Tuscum mare.
authentic chronicles. But the two dates assigned by Jornandes (c. 46, p. 680) would delay that great event to the year 479; and, though M. de Buat has overlooked his evidence, he produces (tom. viii. p. 261-288) many collateral circumstances in support of the same opinion. [There is no doubt about the date, A. D. 476.]
