e landed
without obstacle (for Genseric was master of the sea) either at Ravenna,
or the port of Ostia, and immediately proceeded to the camp of Ricimer,
where he was received as the sovereign of the Western world.

The patrician, who had extended his posts from the Anio to the Melvian
bridge, already possessed two quarters of Rome, the Vatican and the
Janiculum, which are separated by the Tyber from the rest of the
city; and it may be conjectured, that an assembly of seceding senators
imitated, in the choice of Olybrius, the forms of a legal election.
But the body of the senate and people firmly adhered to the cause of
Anthemius; and the more effectual support of a Gothic army enabled him
to prolong his reign, and the public distress, by a resistance of three
months, which produced the concomitant evils of famine and pestilence.
At length Ricimer made a furious assault on the bridge of Hadrian, or
St. Angelo; and the narrow pass was defended with equal valor by the
Goths, till the death of Gilimer, their leader. The victorious troops,
breaking down every barrier, rushed with irresistible violence into
the heart of the city, and Rome (if we may use the language of a
contemporary pope) was subverted by the civil fury of Anthemius and
Ricimer. The unfortunate Anthemius was dragged from his concealment, and
inhumanly massacred by the command of his son-in-law; who thus added a
third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number of his victims. The
soldiers, who united the rage of factious citizens with the savage
manners of Barbarians, were indulged, without control, in the license
of rapine and murder: the crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were
unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the indiscriminate pillage;
and the face of the city exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty
and dissolute intemperance. Forty days after this calamitous event, the
subject, not of glory, but of guilt, Italy was delivered, by a painful
disease, from the tyrant Ricimer, who bequeathed the command of his army
to his nephew Gundobald, one of the princes of the Burgundians. In the
same year all the principal actors in this great revolution were removed
from the stage; and the whole reign of Olybrius, whose death does not
betray any symptoms of violence, is included within the term of seven
months. He left one daughter, the offspring of his marriage with
Placidia; and the family of the great Theodosius, transplanted from
Spain to Const