his life at the Robber-Council of Ephesus, where St. Flavian, bishop
of Constantinople, was beaten to death by the party of Dioscorus, and who
carried to St. Leo a faithful report of that Council's acts. At the same
time the Lucanian Libius Severus succeeded to the throne. All that is known
of him is that he was an inglorious creature of Ricimer, and prolonged a
government without record until the autumn of 465, when his maker got tired
of him. He disappeared, and Ricimer ruled alone for nearly two years. Yet
he did not venture to end the empire with a stroke of violence, or change
the title of Patricius, bestowed upon him by the eastern emperor, for that
of king. In this death-struggle of the realm the senate showed courage. The
Roman fathers in their corporate capacity served as a last bond of the
State as it was falling to pieces; and Sidonius Apollinaris said of them
that they might rank as princes with the bearer of the purple, only, he
adds significantly, if we put out of question the armed force.[10] The
protection of the eastern emperor, Leo I., helped them in this resistance
to Ricimer. The national party in Rome itself called on the Greek emperor
for support. The utter dissolution of the western empire, when German
tribes, Burgundians, Franks, Visigoths, and Vandals, had taken permanent
possession of its provinces outside of Italy, while the violated dignity of
Rome sank daily into greater impotence, now made Byzantium come forth as
the true head of the empire. The better among the eastern Caesars
acknowledged the duty of maintaining it one and indivisible. They treated
sinking Italy as one of their provinces, and prevented the Germans from
asserting lordship over it.

At length, after more than a year's vacancy of the throne, Ricimer was
obliged not only to let the senate treat with the Eastern emperor, Leo I.,
but to accept from Leo the choice of a Greek. Anthemius, one of the chief
senators at Byzantium, who had married the late emperor Marcian's daughter,
was sent with solemn pomp to Rome, and on the 12th April, 467, he accepted
the imperial dignity in the presence of senate, people, and army, three
miles outside the gates. Ricimer also condescended to accept his daughter
as his bride, and we have an account of the wedding from that same Sidonius
Apollinaris who a few years before had delivered the panegyric upon the
accession of his own father-in-law, Avitus, afterwards deposed and killed
by Ricimer; moreov