h
might have inspired them with the idea of a free republic; and the
government of the Eastern empire was fortunately assumed by the praefect
Anthemius, [65] who obtained, by his superior abilities, a lasting
ascendant over the minds of his equals. The safety of the young emperor
proved the merit and integrity of Anthemius; and his prudent firmness
sustained the force and reputation of an infant reign. Uldin, with a
formidable host of Barbarians, was encamped in the heart of Thrace; he
proudly rejected all terms of accommodation; and, pointing to the rising
sun, declared to the Roman ambassadors, that the course of that planet
should alone terminate the conquest of the Huns. But the desertion
of his confederates, who were privately convinced of the justice and
liberality of the Imperial ministers, obliged Uldin to repass the
Danube: the tribe of the Scyrri, which composed his rear-guard,
was almost extirpated; and many thousand captives were dispersed to
cultivate, with servile labor, the fields of Asia. [66] In the midst of
the public triumph, Constantinople was protected by a strong enclosure
of new and more extensive walls; the same vigilant care was applied
to restore the fortifications of the Illyrian cities; and a plan was
judiciously conceived, which, in the space of seven years, would have
secured the command of the Danube, by establishing on that river a
perpetual fleet of two hundred and fifty armed vessels. [67]

[Footnote 65: Socrates, l. vii. c. l. Anthemius was the grandson of
Philip, one of the ministers of Constantius, and the grandfather of the
emperor Anthemius. After his return from the Persian embassy, he was
appointed consul and Praetorian praefect of the East, in the year 405
and held the praefecture about ten years. See his honors and praises in
Godefroy, Cod. Theod. tom. vi. p. 350. Tillemont, Hist. des Emptom. vi.
p. 1. &c.]

[Footnote 66: Sozomen, l. ix. c. 5. He saw some Scyrri at work near
Mount Olympus, in Bithynia, and cherished the vain hope that those
captives were the last of the nation.]

[Footnote 67: Cod. Theod. l. vii. tit. xvi. l. xv. tit. i. leg. 49.]

But the Romans had so long been accustomed to the authority of a
monarch, that the first, even among the females, of the Imperial family,
who displayed any courage or capacity, was permitted to ascend the
vacant throne of Theodosius. His sister Pulcheria, [68] who was only two
years older than himself, received, at the age of six