. Actuated by a far different spirit, Basiliscus,
whose station was the most remote from danger, disgracefully fled in the
beginning of the engagement, returned to Constantinople with the loss of
more than half of his fleet and army, and sheltered his guilty head
in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, till his sister, by her tears and
entreaties, could obtain his pardon from the indignant emperor.
Heraclius effected his retreat through the desert; Marcellinus retired
to Sicily, where he was assassinated, perhaps at the instigation
of Ricimer, by one of his own captains; and the king of the Vandals
expressed his surprise and satisfaction, that the Romans themselves
should remove from the world his most formidable antagonists. [89] After
the failure of this great expedition, [891] Genseric again became the
tyrant of the sea: the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Asia, were again
exposed to his revenge and avarice; Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his
obedience; he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and before
he died, in the fulness of years and of glory, he beheld the final
extinction of the empire of the West. [90]

[Footnote 87: This promontory is forty miles from Carthage, (Procop. l.
i. c. 6, p. 192,) and twenty leagues from Sicily, (Shaw's Travels, p.
89.) Scipio landed farther in the bay, at the fair promontory; see the
animated description of Livy, xxix. 26, 27.]

[Footnote 88: Theophanes (p. 100) affirms that many ships of the Vandals
were sunk. The assertion of Jornandes, (de Successione Regn.,) that
Basiliscus attacked Carthage, must be understood in a very qualified
sense]

[Footnote 89: Damascius in Vit. Isidor. apud Phot. p. 1048. It will
appear, by comparing the three short chronicles of the times, that
Marcellinus had fought near Carthage, and was killed in Sicily.]

[Footnote 891: According to Lydus, Leo, distracted by this and
the other calamities of his reign, particularly a dreadful fire at
Constantinople, abandoned the palace, like another Orestes, and was
preparing to quit Constantinople forever l iii. c. 44, p. 230.--M.]

[Footnote 90: For the African war, see Procopius, de Bell. (Vandal. l.
i. c. 6, p. 191, 192, 193,) Theophanes, (p. 99, 100, 101,) Cedrenus,
(p. 349, 350,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 50, 51.) Montesquieu
(Considerations sur la Grandeur, &c., c. xx. tom. iii. p. 497) has made
a judicious observation on the failure of these great naval armaments.]

During his long and activ