ave been connected by a personal and military friendship, which
they afterwards confirmed by mutual gifts, frequent embassies, and the
education of Carpilio, the son of Aetius, in the camp of Attila. By
the specious professions of gratitude and voluntary attachment, the
patrician might disguise his apprehensions of the Scythian conqueror,
who pressed the two empires with his innumerable armies. His demands
were obeyed or eluded. When he claimed the spoils of a vanquished city,
some vases of gold, which had been fraudulently embezzled, the civil and
military governors of Noricum were immediately despatched to satisfy his
complaints: [7] and it is evident, from their conversation with Maximin
and Priscus, in the royal village, that the valor and prudence of Aetius
had not saved the Western Romans from the common ignominy of tribute.
Yet his dexterous policy prolonged the advantages of a salutary peace;
and a numerous army of Huns and Alani, whom he had attached to his
person, was employed in the defence of Gaul. Two colonies of these
Barbarians were judiciously fixed in the territories of Valens and
Orleans; [8] and their active cavalry secured the important passages
of the Rhone and of the Loire. These savage allies were not indeed less
formidable to the subjects than to the enemies of Rome. Their original
settlement was enforced with the licentious violence of conquest;
and the province through which they marched was exposed to all the
calamities of a hostile invasion. [9] Strangers to the emperor or the
republic, the Alani of Gaul was devoted to the ambition of Aetius, and
though he might suspect, that, in a contest with Attila himself, they
would revolt to the standard of their national king, the patrician
labored to restrain, rather than to excite, their zeal and resentment
against the Goths, the Burgundians, and the Franks.

[Footnote 7: The embassy consisted of Count Romulus; of Promotus,
president of Noricum; and of Romanus, the military duke. They were
accompanied by Tatullus, an illustrious citizen of Petovio, in the same
province, and father of Orestes, who had married the daughter of Count
Romulus. See Priscus, p. 57, 65. Cassiodorus (Variar. i. 4) mentions
another embassy, which was executed by his father and Carpilio, the son
of Aetius; and, as Attila was no more, he could safely boast of their
manly, intrepid behavior in his presence.]

[Footnote 8: Deserta Valentinae urbis rura Alanis partienda traduntur.