Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/497

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 475 coffins, of gold, of silver, and of iron, and privately buried in the night : the spoils of nations were thrown into his grave ; the captives who had opened the ground were inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns, who had indulged such excessive grief, feasted, with dissolute and intemperate mirth, about the recent sepulchre of their king. It was reported at Constantinople that on the fortunate night in which he expired Marcian be- held in a dream the bow of Attila broken asunder ; and the report may be allowed to prove how seldom the image of that formidable Barbarian was absent from the mind of a Roman emperor."^ The revolution which subverted the empire of the Huns Destruction of established the feme of Attila, whose genius alone had sus- tained the huge and disjointed fabric. After his death, the boldest chieftains aspired to the rank of kings ; the most powerful kings refused to acknowledge a superior ; and the numerous sons, whom so many various mothers bore to the deceased monarch, divided and disputed, like a private inherit- ance, the sovereign command of the nations of Germany and Scythia. The bold Ardaric felt and represented the disgrace of this servile partition ; and his subjects, the warlike Gepidae, with the Ostrogoths, under the conduct of three valiant brothers, encouraged their allies to vindicate the rights of free- dom and royalty. In a bloody and decisive conflict on the banks of the river Netad, in Pannonia, the lance of the Gepidae, [Nedao] the sword of the Goths, the arrows of the Huns, the Suevic in- fantry, the light arms of the Heruli, and the heavy weapons of the Alani, encountered or supported each other, and the victory of Ardaric was accompanied with the slaughter of thirty thousand of his enemies. Ellac, the eldest son of Attila, lost his life and crown in the memorable battle of Netad : his early valour had raised him to the throne of the Acatzires, a Scythian people, whom he subdued ; and his fether, who loved the superior merit, would have envied the death, of Ellac."^ His brother ''o The curious circumstances of the death and funeral of Attila are related by Jornandes (c. 49, p. 683, 684, 685), and were probably [those of the death, con- fessedly] transcribed from Priscus. '1 See Jornandes, de Rebus Geticis, c. 50, p. 685, 686, 687, 688. His distinc- tion of the national arms is curious and important. Nam ibi admirandum reor fuissc spectaculum, ubi cernere erat cunctis pugnantem Gothum ense furentem, Gepidam in vulnere suorum cunctatela frangentem, Suevum pede Hunnum sagitta praesumere, Alanum gravi, Herulum levi, armatura aciem instruere. I am not precisely informed of the situation of the river Netad. [The best Mss. give the name Nedao (see Mommsen's Jordanis, c. 150). It has not been identified.]