ower Danube, had been living, as wild men and
mercenaries live, recklessly from hand to mouth, drinking and gambling
till their families were in want. They send to the Amal. 'While thou
art revelling at Roman banquets, we are starving--come back ere we are
ruined.'

They were jealous, too, of the success of Odoacer and his mercenaries. He
was growing now to be a great power; styling himself 'King of nations
{109},' giving away to the Visigoths the Narbonnaise, the last remnant of
the Western Empire; collecting round him learned Romans like Symmachus,
Boethius, and Cassiodorus; respecting the Catholic clergy; and seemingly
doing his best to govern well. His mercenaries, however, would not be
governed. Under their violence and oppression agriculture and population
were both failing; till Pope Gelasius speaks of 'AEmilia, Tuscia,
ceteraeque provinciae in quibus nullus prope hominum existit.'

Meanwhile there seems to have been a deep hatred on the part of the Goths
to Odoacer and his mercenaries. Dr. Sheppard thinks that they despised
him himself as a man of low birth. But his father AEdecon had been chief
of the Turklings, and was most probably of royal blood. It is very
unlikely, indeed, that so large a number of Teutons would have followed
any man who had not Odin's blood in his veins. Was there a stain on
Odoacer from his early connexion with Attila? Or was the hatred against
his men more than himself, contempt especially of the low-caste
Herules,--a question of race, springing out of those miserable
tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons always divided and weak? Be that as
it may, Odoacer had done a deed which raised this hatred to open fury. He
had gone over the Alps into Rugiland (then Noricum, and the neighbourhood
of Vienna) and utterly destroyed those of the Rugier who had not gone
into Italy under his banner. They had plundered, it is said, the cell of
his old friend St. Severinus, as soon as the saint died, of the garments
laid up for the poor, and a silver cup, and the sacred vessels of the
mass. Be that as it may, Odoacer utterly exterminated them, and carried
their king Feletheus, or Fava, back to Italy, with Gisa his 'noxious
wife;' and with them many Roman Christians, and (seemingly) the body of
St. Severinus himself. But this had been a small thing, if he had not
advised himself to have a regular Roman triumph, with Fava, the captive
king, walking beside his chariot; and afterwards, in the app