the ports of Gallicia to the
Mediterranean was known and practised. The ships of Bracara, or Braga,
cautiously steered along the coast, without daring to lose themselves in
the Atlantic.]

[Footnote 23: This Suevic war is the most authentic part of the
Chronicle of Idatius, who, as bishop of Iria Flavia, was himself a
spectator and a sufferer. Jornandes (c. 44, p. 675, 676, 677) has
expatiated, with pleasure, on the Gothic victory.]

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.--Part II.

The pressing solicitations of the senate and people persuaded the
emperor Avitus to fix his residence at Rome, and to accept the
consulship for the ensuing year. On the first day of January, his
son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, celebrated his praises in a panegyric
of six hundred verses; but this composition, though it was rewarded with
a brass statue, [24] seems to contain a very moderate proportion, either
of genius or of truth. The poet, if we may degrade that sacred name,
exaggerates the merit of a sovereign and a father; and his prophecy of a
long and glorious reign was soon contradicted by the event. Avitus, at a
time when the Imperial dignity was reduced to a preeminence of toil and
danger, indulged himself in the pleasures of Italian luxury: age had not
extinguished his amorous inclinations; and he is accused of insulting,
with indiscreet and ungenerous raillery, the husbands whose wives he
had seduced or violated. [25] But the Romans were not inclined either
to excuse his faults or to acknowledge his virtues. The several parts
of the empire became every day more alienated from each other; and the
stranger of Gaul was the object of popular hatred and contempt. The
senate asserted their legitimate claim in the election of an emperor;
and their authority, which had been originally derived from the old
constitution, was again fortified by the actual weakness of a declining
monarchy. Yet even such a monarchy might have resisted the votes of an
unarmed senate, if their discontent had not been supported, or perhaps
inflamed, by the Count Ricimer, one of the principal commanders of the
Barbarian troops, who formed the military defence of Italy. The daughter
of Wallia, king of the Visigoths, was the mother of Ricimer; but he was
descended, on the father's side, from the nation of the Suevi; [26]
his pride or patriotism might be exasperated by the misfortunes of
his countrymen; and he obeyed, with reluctance, an empe