Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/414

 394 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAPTER XXXIII Death of Hoiioriu.s — I'alentiuian III. Emperor of the West — Ad- ministration of his Mother Placidia — Actius and Bonijacc — Conquest of Africa bi/ the J^indals Lastyears DuRiNG a loiig and (lisgracefiil reign of twenty-eight years, noixotiv£.°^ Honoriiis, emperor of the West, was separated from the friend- A^<^ii ship of his brother, and afterwards of his nephew, who reigned over the East ; and Constantinople beheld, with apparent indif- ference and secret joy, the calamities of Rome. The strange adventures of Placidia ^ gradually renewed and cemented the alliance of the two empires. The daughter of the great Theo- dosius had been the captive and the queen of the Goths ; she lost an affectionate husband ; she was dragged in chains by his insulting assassin ; she tasted the pleasure of revenge, and was exchanged, in the treaty of peace, for six hundred thousand measures of wheat. After her return from Spain to Italy, Placidia experienced a new persecution in the bosom of her family. She was averse to a marriage which had been stipulated without her consent ; and the brave Constantius, as a noble reward for the tyrants whom he had vanquished, received, from the hand of Honorius himself, the struggling and reluctant hand of the widow of Adolphus. But her resistance ended with the [AD. 317] ceremony of the nuptials ; nor did Placidia refuse to become the mother of Honoria and 'alentinian the Third, or to assume and exercise an absolute dominion over the mind of her grateful husband. The generous soldier, whose time had hitherto been divided between social pleasure and military service, was taught new lessons of avarice and ambition ; he extorted the title of Augustus ; and the servant of Honorius was associated to the empire of the West. The death of Constantius, in the seventh [AD 321] month of his reign, instead of diminishing, seemed to increase, the power of Placidia ; and the indecent familiarity - of her 1 See p. 334-348- 2 Ta a-uvexri Kara. (TTojia (J)iA.ij(ia-a, is the expression of Olympiodorus (apud Photium, p. 197 [fr. 40]), who means, perhaps, to describe the same caresses which