evation he had not been
consulted. His faithful and important services against the common enemy
rendered him still more formidable; and, after destroying on the coast
of Corsica a fleet of Vandals, which consisted of sixty galleys, Ricimer
returned in triumph with the appellation of the Deliverer of Italy. He
chose that moment to signify to Avitus, that his reign was at an end;
and the feeble emperor, at a distance from his Gothic allies, was
compelled, after a short and unavailing struggle to abdicate the purple.
By the clemency, however, or the contempt, of Ricimer, he was permitted
to descend from the throne to the more desirable station of bishop of
Placentia: but the resentment of the senate was still unsatisfied; and
their inflexible severity pronounced the sentence of his death He fled
towards the Alps, with the humble hope, not of arming the Visigoths in
his cause, but of securing his person and treasures in the sanctuary of
Julian, one of the tutelar saints of Auvergne. Disease, or the hand of
the executioner, arrested him on the road; yet his remains were decently
transported to Brivas, or Brioude, in his native province, and he
reposed at the feet of his holy patron. Avitus left only one daughter,
the wife of Sidonius Apollinaris, who inherited the patrimony of his
father-in-law; lamenting, at the same time, the disappointment of his
public and private expectations. His resentment prompted him to join, or
at least to countenance, the measures of a rebellious faction in Gaul;
and the poet had contracted some guilt, which it was incumbent on him to
expiate, by a new tribute of flattery to the succeeding emperor.

The successor of Avitus presents the welcome discovery of a great and
heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to
vindicate the honor of the human species. The emperor Majorian has
deserved the praises of his contemporaries, and of posterity; and
these praises may be strongly expressed in the words of a judicious and
disinterested historian: "That he was gentle to his subjects; that he
was terrible to his enemies; and that he excelled, in every virtue,
_all_ his predecessors who had reigned over the Romans." Such a
testimony may justify at least the panegyric of Sidonius; and we may
acquiesce in the assurance, that, although the obsequious orator would
have flattered, with equal zeal, the most worthless of princes, the
extraordinary merit of his object confined him, on this occasi