t it is a fiction which would not have been imagined, unless in the
life of a hero. [50]

[Footnote 45: Sidon. Panegyr. Majorian, 385-440.]

[Footnote 46: The review of the army, and passage of the Alps, contain
the most tolerable passages of the Panegyric, (470-552.) M. de Buat
(Hist. des Peuples, &c., tom. viii. p. 49-55) is a more satisfactory
commentator, than either Savaron or Sirmond.]

[Footnote 47: It is the just and forcible distinction of Priscus,
(Excerpt. Legat. p. 42,) in a short fragment, which throws much light
on the history of Majorian. Jornandes has suppressed the defeat and
alliance of the Visigoths, which were solemnly proclaimed in Gallicia;
and are marked in the Chronicle of Idatius.]

[Footnote 48: Florus, l. ii. c. 2. He amuses himself with the poetical
fancy, that the trees had been transformed into ships; and indeed the
whole transaction, as it is related in the first book of Polybius,
deviates too much from the probable course of human events.]

[Footnote 49:

Iterea duplici texis dum littore classem
Inferno superoque mari, cadit omnis in aequor
Sylva tibi, &c.
---Sidon. Panegyr. Majorian, 441-461.

The number of ships, which Priscus fixed at 300, is magnified, by
an indefinite comparison with the fleets of Agamemnon, Xerxes, and
Augustus.]

[Footnote 50: Procopius de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 8, p. 194. When
Genseric conducted his unknown guest into the arsenal of Carthage, the
arms clashed of their own accord. Majorian had tinged his yellow locks
with a black color.]

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

Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was sufficiently
acquainted with the genius and designs of his adversary. He practiced
his customary arts of fraud and delay, but he practiced them without
success. His applications for peace became each hour more submissive,
and perhaps more sincere; but the inflexible Majorian had adopted the
ancient maxim, that Rome could not be safe, as long as Carthage existed
in a hostile state. The king of the Vandals distrusted the valor of his
native subjects, who were enervated by the luxury of the South; [51] he
suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an
Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure, which he executed, of reducing
Mauritania into a desert, [52] could not defeat the operations of the
Roman emperor, who was at liberty to land his troops on any pa