g period of defeat and
disgrace, might claim the triumph of her Barbarian master. [137]

[Footnote 133: The consular Fasti may be found in Pagi or Muratori. The
consuls named by Odoacer, or perhaps by the Roman senate, appear to have
been acknowledged in the Eastern empire.]

[Footnote 134: Sidonius Apollinaris (l. i. epist. 9, p. 22, edit.
Sirmond) has compared the two leading senators of his time, (A.D. 468,)
Gennadius Avienus and Caecina Basilius. To the former he assigns the
specious, to the latter the solid, virtues of public and private life. A
Basilius junior, possibly his son, was consul in the year 480.]

[Footnote 135: Epiphanius interceded for the people of Pavia; and the
king first granted an indulgence of five years, and afterwards relieved
them from the oppression of Pelagius, the Praetorian praefect, (Ennodius
in Vit St. Epiphan., in Sirmond, Oper. tom. i. p. 1670-1672.)]

[Footnote 136: See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 483, No. 10-15. Sixteen
years afterwards the irregular proceedings of Basilius were condemned by
Pope Symmachus in a Roman synod.]

[Footnote 137: The wars of Odoacer are concisely mentioned by Paul the
Deacon, (de Gest. Langobard. l. i. c. 19, p. 757, edit. Grot.,) and
in the two Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Cuspinian. The life of St.
Severinus by Eugippius, which the count de Buat (Hist. des Peuples, &c.,
tom. viii. c. 1, 4, 8, 9) has diligently studied, illustrates the ruin
of Noricum and the Bavarian antiquities]

Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoacer, his kingdom
exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation. Since the age of
Tiberius, the decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy; and it was a
just subject of complaint, that the life of the Roman people depended
on the accidents of the winds and waves. [138] In the division and the
decline of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were
withdrawn; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished
with the means of subsistence; and the country was exhausted by the
irretrievable losses of war, famine, [139] and pestilence. St. Ambrose
has deplored the ruin of a populous district, which had been once
adorned with the flourishing cities of Bologna, Modena, Regium, and
Placentia. [140] Pope Gelasius was a subject of Odoacer; and he affirms,
with strong exaggeration, that in Aemilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent
provinces, the human species was almost extirpated. [141] The plebeians
of Rome, wh