ir hopes (if such hopes had been entertained) were confounded
within the term of a single year, and the treaty of peace, which ceded
Auvergue to the Visigoths, is the only event of his short and inglorious
reign. The most faithful subjects of Gaul were sacrificed, by the
Italian emperor, to the hope of domestic security; [115] but his repose
was soon invaded by a furious sedition of the Barbarian confederates,
who, under the command of Orestes, their general, were in full march
from Rome to Ravenna. Nepos trembled at their approach; and, instead of
placing a just confidence in the strength of Ravenna, he hastily escaped
to his ships, and retired to his Dalmatian principality, on the opposite
coast of the Adriatic. By this shameful abdication, he protracted his
life about five years, in a very ambiguous state, between an emperor
and an exile, till he was assassinated at Salona by the ungrateful
Glycerius, who was translated, perhaps as the reward of his crime, to
the archbishopric of Milan. [116]

[Footnote 112: The last revolutions of the Western empire are faintly
marked in Theophanes, (p. 102,) Jornandes, (c. 45, p. 679,) the
Chronicle of Marcellinus, and the Fragments of an anonymous writer,
published by Valesius at the end of Ammianus, (p. 716, 717.) If Photius
had not been so wretchedly concise, we should derive much information
from the contemporary histories of Malchus and Candidus. See his
Extracts, p. 172-179.]

[Footnote 113: See Greg. Turon. l. ii. c. 28, in tom. ii. p. 175.
Dubos, Hist. Critique, tom. i. p. 613. By the murder or death of his
two brothers, Gundobald acquired the sole possession of the kingdom of
Burgundy, whose ruin was hastened by their discord.]

[Footnote 114: Julius Nepos armis pariter summus Augustus ac moribus.
Sidonius, l. v. ep. 16, p. 146. Nepos had given to Ecdicius the title
of Patrician, which Anthemius had promised, decessoris Anthemii fidem
absolvit. See l. viii. ep. 7, p. 224.]

[Footnote 115: Epiphanius was sent ambassador from Nepos to the
Visigoths, for the purpose of ascertaining the fines Imperii Italici,
(Ennodius in Sirmond, tom. i. p. 1665-1669.) His pathetic discourse
concealed the disgraceful secret which soon excited the just and bitter
complaints of the bishop of Clermont.]

[Footnote 116: Malchus, apud Phot. p. 172. Ennod. Epigram. lxxxii. in
Sirmond. Oper. tom. i. p. 1879. Some doubt may, however, be raised on
the identity of the emperor and the archbishop.]