ged it in the breast of a general who
had saved his empire: his courtiers and eunuchs ambitiously struggled
to imitate their master; and Aetius, pierced with a hundred wounds,
fell dead in the royal presence. Boethius, the Praetorian praefect, was
killed at the same moment, and before the event could be divulged, the
principal friends of the patrician were summoned to the palace, and
separately murdered. The horrid deed, palliated by the specious names
of justice and necessity, was immediately communicated by the emperor
to his soldiers, his subjects, and his allies. The nations, who were
strangers or enemies to Aetius, generously deplored the unworthy fate of
a hero: the Barbarians, who had been attached to his service, dissembled
their grief and resentment: and the public contempt, which had been so
long entertained for Valentinian, was at once converted into deep and
universal abhorrence. Such sentiments seldom pervade the walls of a
palace; yet the emperor was confounded by the honest reply of a Roman,
whose approbation he had not disdained to solicit. "I am ignorant, sir,
of your motives or provocations; I only know, that you have acted like a
man who cuts off his right hand with his left." [73]

[Footnote 711: The praises awarded by Gibbon to the character of Aetius
have been animadverted upon with great severity. (See Mr. Herbert's
Attila. p. 321.) I am not aware that Gibbon has dissembled or palliated
any of the crimes or treasons of Aetius: but his position at the time
of his murder was certainly that of the preserver of the empire, the
conqueror of the most dangerous of the barbarians: it is by no means
clear that he was not "innocent" of any treasonable designs against
Valentinian. If the early acts of his life, the introduction of the Huns
into Italy, and of the Vandals into Africa, were among the proximate
causes of the ruin of the empire, his murder was the signal for its
almost immediate downfall.--M.]

[Footnote 72: Placidia died at Rome, November 27, A.D. 450. She was
buried at Ravenna, where her sepulchre, and even her corpse, seated in
a chair of cypress wood, were preserved for ages. The empress received
many compliments from the orthodox clergy; and St. Peter Chrysologus
assured her, that her zeal for the Trinity had been recompensed by an
august trinity of children. See Tillemont, Uist. Jer Emp. tom. vi. p.
240.]

[Footnote 73: Aetium Placidus mactavit semivir amens, is the expression
of Sidoniu