tit. ix. p. 47.) The law of Majorian,
which punished obstinate widows, was soon afterwards repealed by his
successor Severus, (Novell. Sever. tit. i. p. 37.)]

While the emperor Majorian assiduously labored to restore the happiness
and virtue of the Romans, he encountered the arms of Genseric, from his
character and situation their most formidable enemy. A fleet of Vandals
and Moors landed at the mouth of the Liris, or Garigliano; but the
Imperial troops surprised and attacked the disorderly Barbarians, who
were encumbered with the spoils of Campania; they were chased with
slaughter to their ships, and their leader, the king's brother-in-law,
was found in the number of the slain. [45] Such vigilance might announce
the character of the new reign; but the strictest vigilance, and the
most numerous forces, were insufficient to protect the long-extended
coast of Italy from the depredations of a naval war. The public opinion
had imposed a nobler and more arduous task on the genius of Majorian.
Rome expected from him alone the restitution of Africa; and the design,
which he formed, of attacking the Vandals in their new settlements, was
the result of bold and judicious policy. If the intrepid emperor could
have infused his own spirit into the youth of Italy; if he could have
revived in the field of Mars, the manly exercises in which he had always
surpassed his equals; he might have marched against Genseric at the
head of a Roman army. Such a reformation of national manners might be
embraced by the rising generation; but it is the misfortune of those
princes who laboriously sustain a declining monarchy, that, to obtain
some immediate advantage, or to avert some impending danger, they are
forced to countenance, and even to multiply, the most pernicious abuses.
Majorian, like the weakest of his predecessors, was reduced to the
disgraceful expedient of substituting Barbarian auxiliaries in the place
of his unwarlike subjects: and his superior abilities could only be
displayed in the vigor and dexterity with which he wielded a dangerous
instrument, so apt to recoil on the hand that used it. Besides the
confederates, who were already engaged in the service of the empire, the
fame of his liberality and valor attracted the nations of the Danube,
the Borysthenes, and perhaps of the Tanais. Many thousands of the
bravest subjects of Attila, the Gepidae, the Ostrogoths, the Rugians,
the Burgundians, the Suevi, the Alani, assembled in the p