solation to which she was doomed. Denied legitimate love, she abandoned
herself to an illicit relationship with one of the domestic officers of
the palace, the fact of which was soon revealed by her pregnancy. She
was exiled by her mother to Constantinople, where she spent several
years in close restraint and great unhappiness. Attila the Hun was at
that time the particular barbarian who was harassing the Empire; and
suddenly he announced that he had received the betrothal of the princess
Honoria, and that he claimed her as his bride. Then her astonished
relatives learned that she really had been in correspondence with
Attila, and had besought him to claim her in marriage. It is probable
that a spirit of mischief actuated Honoria in this; for no educated
woman could in reality desire to be joined in marriage with the Hun,
unless it were from motives very different from love. The king had at
first disdained her advances, and was willing to act upon them only when
it suited the policy dictated by his ambition. But Placidia steadfastly
refused to countenance her daughter's procedure; and Honoria, being
first married to a man of mean extraction, in order that the question of
her matrimonial disposal might never again be a source of trouble, was
shut up in a close prison for the rest of her days. It is not unlikely
that her misfortunes arose rather from her position than her character.
That her life with Attila, had she attained her object, would have
proved more desirable than perpetual imprisonment is difficult to
believe. His respect for woman may be estimated from the fact that he
was a polygamist, and also from the fact that he watched his soldiers
amuse themselves with the awful death agonies of two hundred maidens,
whom they tore limb from limb with wild horses and crushed under the
wheels of heavy wagons.

Placidia died in the year 450. She was buried at Ravenna; and, with some
ambiguity of meaning, it is said that there her corpse, seated in a
chair of cypress wood, was preserved for ages. Her son perished by the
avenging hand of a senator whose wife he had perfidiously violated. He
was the last emperor of the house of Theodosius; and his mother was the
last woman, with a name in history, who was worthy of mention in the
records of the perishing Western Empire.

With the death of Placidia, we arrive at the end of a cycle in the
evolution of the human race. It was contemporaneous with the terminus of
ancient Aryan c