empress and
her son emperor by the gift and the army of Theodosius II.

The agony of imperial Rome lasted twenty-one years. Valentinian III. was
reigning in 455: in the March of that year he was murdered, and succeeded
by Maximus, who was murdered in June; then by Avitus in July, who was
murdered in October, 456. Majorianus followed in 457, and reigned till
August, 461: he was followed by Libius Severus in November, who lasted four
years, till November, 465. After an interregnum of eighteen months, in
which Ricimer practically ruled, Anthemius was brought from Byzantium in
April, 467, and continued till July, 472; but Anicius Olybrius again was
brought from Byzantium, reigned for a few months in 472, and died of the
plague in October. In 473, Glycerius was put up for emperor; in 474, he
gave place to Nepos, the third brought from Byzantium. In 475, Romulus
Augustus appears, to disappear in 476, and end his life in retirement at
the Villa of Lucullus by Naples, once the seat of Rome's most luxurious
senator.

Eighty years had now passed since the death of Theodosius. In the course of
these years the realm which he had saved from dissolution after the defeat
and death of Valens near Adrianople, and had preserved during fifteen years
by wisdom in council and valour in war, and still more by his piety, when
once his protecting hand and ruling mind were withdrawn, fell to pieces in
the West, and was scarcely saved in the East. Let us take the last five
years of St. Leo, which follow on the raid of Genseric, in order to
complete the sketch just given of Rome's political state, by showing the
condition of the great provinces which belonged to Leo's special
patriarchate. I have before noticed how it was in the interval between the
retirement of Attila from Rome at the prayer of St. Leo and the seizure of
Rome by Genseric at the solicitation of the miserable empress Eudoxia, when
St. Leo could save only the lives of his people, that he confirmed the
Fourth Ecumenical Council. Not only was he entreated to do this by the
emperor Marcian: the Council itself solicited the confirmation of its acts,
which for that purpose were laid before him, while it made the most
specific confession of his authority as the one person on earth entrusted
by the Lord with His vineyard. From the particular time and the
circumstances under which these events took place, one may infer a special
intention of the Divine Providence. This was that the whole