d voluntary attachment, the
patrician might disguise his apprehensions of the Scythian conqueror,
who pressed the two empires with his innumerable armies. His demands
were obeyed or eluded. When he claimed the spoils of a vanquished city,
some vases of gold, which had been fraudulently embezzled, the civil and
military governors of Noricum were immediately despatched to satisfy his
complaints: and it is evident, from their conversation with Maximin and
Priscus, in the royal village, that the valor and prudence of AEtius had
not saved the Western Romans from the common ignominy of tribute. Yet
his dexterous policy prolonged the advantages of a salutary peace; and a
numerous army of Huns and Alani, whom he had attached to his person, was
employed in the defence of Gaul. Two colonies of these Barbarians were
judiciously fixed in the territories of Valens and Orleans; and their
active cavalry secured the important passages of the Rhone and of
the Loire. These savage allies were not indeed less formidable to the
subjects than to the enemies of Rome. Their original settlement was
enforced with the licentious violence of conquest; and the province
through which they marched was exposed to all the calamities of a
hostile invasion. Strangers to the emperor or the republic, the Alani of
Gaul was devoted to the ambition of AEtius, and though he might suspect,
that, in a contest with Attila himself, they would revolt to the
standard of their national king, the patrician labored to restrain,
rather than to excite, their zeal and resentment against the Goths, the
Burgundians, and the Franks.

The kingdom established by the Visigoths in the southern provinces of
Gaul, had gradually acquired strength and maturity; and the conduct
of those ambitious Barbarians, either in peace or war, engaged the
perpetual vigilance of AEtius. After the death of Wallia, the Gothic
sceptre devolved to Theodoric, the son of the great Alaric; and his
prosperous reign of more than thirty years, over a turbulent people, may
be allowed to prove, that his prudence was supported by uncommon vigor,
both of mind and body. Impatient of his narrow limits, Theodoric aspired
to the possession of Arles, the wealthy seat of government and commerce;
but the city was saved by the timely approach of AEtius; and the
Gothic king, who had raised the siege with some loss and disgrace, was
persuaded, for an adequate subsidy, to divert the martial valor of his
subjects in a Spa