sappeared; and the son of Orestes, a youth
recommended only by his beauty, would be the least entitled to the
notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction
of the Roman empire in the West, did not leave a memorable era in the
history of mankind. The patrician Orestes had married the daughter
of Count _Romulus_, of Petovio in Noricum: the name of _Augustus_,
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. 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 six thousand pieces of gold, and assigned the castle of Lucullus,
in Campania, for the place of his exile or retirement. 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. 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.
The villa of Marius was purchased, within a few years, by Lucullus, and
the price had increased from two thousand five hundred, to more
than fourscore thousand, pounds sterling. It was adorned by the new
proprietor with Grecian arts and Asiatic treasures; and the houses
and gardens of Lucullus obtained a distinguished rank in the list of
Imperial palaces. When the Vandals became formidable to the sea-coast,
the Lucullan villa, on the promontory of Misenum, gradually assumed the
strength and appellation of a strong castle, the obscure retreat of
the last emperor of the West. About twenty years after that great
revolution, it was converted into a church and monastery, to receive
the bones of St. Severinus. They securely reposed, amidst the broken
trophies of Cimbric and Armenian victories, till the beginning of the