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 OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 457 patrimony. His predecessors, the ancient Tanjous, had often addressed, in the same hostile and peremptory manner, the daughters of China ; and the pretensions of Attila were not less offensive to the majesty of Rome. A firm, but temperate, refusal was communicated to his ambassadors. The right of female succession, though it might derive a specious argument from the recent examples of Placidia and Pulcheria, was strenuously denied ; and the indissoluble engagements of Honoria were opposed to the claims of her Scythian lover. ^9 On the discovery of her connexion with the king of the Huns, the guilty princess had been sent away, as an object of horror, from Constantinople to Italy ; her life was spared ; but the ceremony of her marriage was performed with some obscure and nominal husband, before she was immured in a perpetual prison, to bewail those crimes and misfortunes which Honoria might have escaped, had she not been born the daughter of an emperor.^" A native of Gaul and a contemporary, the learned and Attua in- eloquent Sidonius, who was afterwards bishop of Clermont, had and besieges made a promise to one of his friends that he would compose a a.d. 451 regular history of the war of Attila. If the modesty of Sidonius had not discouraged him from the prosecution of this interesting work,^^ the historian would have related, with the simplicity of truth, those memorable events to which the poet, in vague and doubtful metaphors, has concisely alluded.^- The kings 29 See Priscus, p. 39, 40 [fr. 15, 16]). It might be fairly alleged that, if females could succeed to the throne, Valentinian himself, who had married the daughter and heiress of the younger Theodosius, would have asserted her right to the eastern empire. ^"The adventures of Honoria are imperfectly related by Jornandes, de Successione Regn. c. 97, and de Reb. Get. c. 42, p. 674, and in the Chronicles of Prosper and Marcellinus ; but they cannot be made consistent, or probable, unless we separate, by an interval of time and place, her intrigue with Eugenius and her invitation of Attila. 31 Exegeras mihi, ut promitterem tibi Attilse bellum stylo me posteris intimaturum. . . cceperam scribere, sed operis arrepti fasce perspecto tseduit inchoasse. Sidon. Apoll. 1. viii. epist. 15, p. 246. •*'- Subito cum rupta tumultu Barbaries totas in te transfuderat arctos, Gallia. Pugnacem Rugum comitante Gelono Gepida irux sequitur ; Scyruni Burgundio cogit : Chunus, Bellonotus, Neurus, Bastarna, Toi-ingj/s, Bructerus, ulvosa vel quem Nicer alluit unda Prorumpit Francus. Cecidit cito secta bipenni Hercynia in lintres, et Rhenum texuit alno. Et jam terrificis diffuderat Attila turmis In campos se, Belga, tuos. Panegyr. Avit. 319, &c. [The Bellonoti are unknown. Cp. Valer. Flaccus, vi. 160: Balloniti.~