mus, six _lustra_ or periods of five years each, by which
the Romans were wont to number their time, it brings us precisely to the
year 476, in which the Roman Empire was finally extinguished by
Odoacer."

An attempt to assassinate Attila, made, or supposed to have been made,
at the instigation of Theodoric the Younger, the emperor of
Constantinople, drew the Hunnish armies, in 445, upon the Eastern
Empire, and delayed for a time the destined blow against Rome. Probably
a more important cause of delay was the revolt of some of the Hunnish
tribes to the north of the Black Sea against Attila, which broke out
about this period, and is cursorily mentioned by the Byzantine writers.
Attila quelled this revolt, and having thus consolidated his power, and
having punished the presumption of the Eastern Roman Emperor by fearful
ravages of his fairest provinces, Attila, in 450 A.D., prepared to set
his vast forces in motion for the conquest of Western Europe. He sought
unsuccessfully by diplomatic intrigues to detach the king of the
Visigoths from his alliance with Rome, and he resolved first to crush
the power of Theodoric, and then to advance with overwhelming power to
trample out the last sparks of the doomed Roman Empire.

A strange invitation from a Roman princess gave him a pretext for the
war, and threw an air of chivalric enterprise over his invasion.
Honoria, sister of Valentinian III, the emperor of the West, had sent to
Attila to offer him her hand and her supposed right to share in the
imperial power. This had been discovered by the Romans, and Honoria had
been forthwith closely imprisoned. Attila now pretended to take up arms
in behalf of his self-promised bride, and proclaimed that he was about
to march to Rome to redress Honoria's wrongs. Ambition and spite against
her brother must have been the sole motives that led the lady to woo the
royal Hun; for Attila's face and person had all the natural ugliness of
his race, and the description given of him by a Byzantine ambassador
must have been well known in the imperial courts. Herbert has well
versified the portrait drawn by Priscus of the great enemy of both
Byzantium and Rome:

"Terrific was his semblance, in no mould
Of beautiful proportion cast; his limbs
Nothing exalted, but with sinews braced
Of Chalybean temper, agile, lithe,
And swifter than the roe; his ample chest
Was overbrow'd by a gigantic head,
With eyes keen, deeply sunk,