plies to Genseric, unjustly, as it should seem, the
vices of his subjects.]

[Footnote 52: He burnt the villages, and poisoned the springs, (Priscus,
p. 42.) Dubos (Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 475) observes, that the
magazines which the Moors buried in the earth might escape his
destructive search. Two or three hundred pits are sometimes dug in the
same place; and each pit contains at least four hundred bushels of corn
Shaw's Travels, p. 139.]

[Footnote 53: Idatius, who was safe in Gallicia from the power of
Recimer boldly and honestly declares, Vandali per proditeres admoniti,
&c: i. e. dissembles, however, the name of the traitor.]

[Footnote 54: Procop. de Bell. Vandal. l. i. i. c. 8, p. 194. The
testimony of Idatius is fair and impartial: "Majorianum de Galliis Romam
redeuntem, et Romano imperio vel nomini res necessarias ordinantem;
Richimer livore percitus, et invidorum consilio fultus, fraude
interficit circumventum." Some read Suevorum, and I am unwilling to
efface either of the words, as they express the different accomplices
who united in the conspiracy against Majorian.]

[Footnote 55: See the Epigrams of Ennodius, No. cxxxv. inter Sirmond.
Opera, tom. i. p. 1903. It is flat and obscure; but Ennodius was made
bishop of Pavia fifty years after the death of Majorian, and his praise
deserves credit and regard.]

[Footnote 56: Sidonius gives a tedious account (l. i. epist. xi. p.
25-31) of a supper at Arles, to which he was invited by Majorian, a
short time before his death. He had no intention of praising a deceased
emperor: but a casual disinterested remark, "Subrisit Augustus; ut erat,
auctoritate servata, cum se communioni dedisset, joci plenus," outweighs
the six hundred lines of his venal panegyric.]

It was not, perhaps, without some regret, that Ricimer sacrificed his
friend to the interest of his ambition: but he resolved, in a second
choice, to avoid the imprudent preference of superior virtue and merit.
At his command, the obsequious senate of Rome bestowed the Imperial
title on Libius Severus, who ascended the throne of the West without
emerging from the obscurity of a private condition. History has scarcely
deigned to notice his birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.
Severus expired, as soon as his life became inconvenient to his patron;
[57] and it would be useless to discriminate his nominal reign in the
vacant interval of six years, between the death of Majorian and the
elevatio