tious generals. The first tenant of that throne was
Avitus, a nobleman from Gaul, named by the influence of the Visigothic
king, Theodorich of Toulouse. He assumed the purple at Arles, on the 10th
July, 455. The Roman senate, which clung to its hereditary right to name
the princes, accepted him, not being able to help itself, on the 1st
January, 456; his son-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, delivered the
customary panegyric, and was rewarded with a bronze statue in the forum of
Trajan, which we thus know to have escaped injury from the raid of
Genseric. But at the bidding of Ricimer, who had become the most powerful
general, the senate deposed Avitus; he fled to his country Auvergne, and
was killed on the way in September, 456.

All power now lay in the hands of Ricimer. He was by his father a Sueve; by
his mother, grandson of Wallia, the Visigothic king at Toulouse. With him
began that domination of foreign soldiery which in twenty years destroyed
the western empire. Through his favour the senator Majorian was named
emperor in the spring of 457. The senate, the people, the army, and the
eastern emperor, Leo I., were united in hailing his election. He is
described as recalling by his many virtues the best Roman emperors. In his
letter to the senate, which he drew up after his election in Ravenna, men
thought they heard the voice of Trajan. An emperor who proposed to rule
according to the laws and tradition of the old time filled Rome with joy.
All his edicts compelled the people to admire his wisdom and goodness. One
of these most strictly forbade the employment of the materials from older
buildings, an unhappy custom which had already begun, for, says the special
historian of the city, the time had already come when Rome, destroying
itself, was made use of as a great chalk-pit and marble quarry;[9] and for
such it served the Romans themselves for more than a thousand years. They
were the true barbarians who destroyed their city.

But Majorian was unable to prevent the ruin either of city or of state. He
had made great exertions to punish Genseric by reconquering Africa. They
were not successful; Ricimer compelled him to resign on the 2nd of August,
461, and five days afterwards he died by a death of which is only known
that it was violent. A man, says Procopius, upright to his subjects,
terrible to his enemies, who surpassed in every virtue all those who before
him had reigned over the Romans.

Three months after Majoria