e revenged his disappointment on the country through
which he passed; and, in the sack of Pollentia and Astorga, he showed
himself a faithless ally, as well as a cruel enemy. Whilst the king of
the Visigoths fought and vanquished in the name of Avitus, the reign
of Avitus had expired; and both the honor and the interest of Theodoric
were deeply wounded by the disgrace of a friend, whom he had seated on
the throne of the Western empire.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.--Part II.

The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the
emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the
consulship for the ensuing year. On the first day of January, his
son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, celebrated his praises in a panegyric
of six hundred verses; but this composition, though it was rewarded with
a brass statue, seems to contain a very moderate proportion, either
of genius or of truth. The poet, if we may degrade that sacred name,
exaggerates the merit of a sovereign and a father; and his prophecy of a
long and glorious reign was soon contradicted by the event. Avitus, at a
time when the Imperial dignity was reduced to a preeminence of toil and
danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury: age had not
extinguished his amorous inclinations; and he is accused of insulting,
with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he had
seduced or violated. But the Romans were not inclined either to excuse
his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several parts of the
empire became every day more alienated from each other; and the stranger
of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and contempt. The senate
asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor; and their
authority, which had been originally derived from the old constitution,
was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining monarchy. Yet
even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an unarmed senate,
if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps inflamed, by the
Count Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the Barbarian troops,
who formed the military defence of Italy. The daughter of Wallia, king
of the Visigoths, was the mother of Ricimer; but he was descended, on
the father's side, from the nation of the Suevi; his pride or patriotism
might be exasperated by the misfortunes of his countrymen; and he
obeyed, with reluctance, an emperor in whose el