Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/91

 The emperor's ambassadors had talked pompously and absurdly about the power and the wealth of their master, the poor inoffensive stripling then shut up in his palace under his sister's tutelage. But the stronghold of Nisibis remained in the enemy's possession, and the conclusion of a long war left nothing but a small district of Armenia to the Roman emperor.

His long reign, indeed, which lasted till 450, was anything but glorious. Its last years witnessed a signal humiliation. We have seen that at the beginning of his reign the Huns withdrew from the neighbourhood of Constantinople to the northern bank of the Danube. But in 441 the "scourge of God," the terrible Attila, brought them back into the southern provinces of the empire, and again unhappy Thrace, up to the very fortifications of the capital, was at their mercy. The cities of Illyria which Anthemius had fortified, among them the strong position of Singidunum, now Belgrade, could not resist the barbarian. The armies of the empire were thrice discomfited by him in the plains of Bulgaria. Amid these woful calamities, in which seventy cities are said to have perished, the emperor took his ease, and life in Constantinople seems to have undergone no change. But the citizens must have been fearfully panic-stricken by the great earthquake in 447, which shattered their walls into a ruin and threw down fifty-eight of the towers. The city may have been still defensible, but we can hardly doubt that in the last extremity it could have been held even against Attila. As it was, however, a peace was concluded, which gave the conqueror the