Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/498

 476 THE DECLINE AND FALL Dengisich with an army of Huns, still formidable in their flight and ruin, maintained his ground above fifteen years on the banks of the Danube. The palace of Attila, with the old country of Dacia, from the Carpathian hills to the Euxine, be- came the seat of a new power, which was erected by Ardaric, [vindobona] king of the (jepidse. The Pannonian conquests, from Vienna to Sirmium, were occupied by the Ostrogoths ; and the settle- ments of the tribes, who had so bravely asserted their native freedom, were irregularly distributed, according to the measure of their respective strength. Surrounded and oppressed by the multitude of his fother's slaves, the kingdom of Dengisich was confined to the circle of his waggons; his desperate courage urged him to invade the Eastern empire ; he fell in battle ; and his head, ignominiously exposed in the Hippodrome, exhibited a grateful spectacle to the people of Constantinople. Attila had fondly or superstitiously believed that Irnac, the youngest of his sons, was destined to perpetuate the glories of his race. The character of that prince, who attempted to moderate the rash- ness of his brother Dengisich, was more suitable to the declining condition of the Huns, and Irnac, with his subject hordes, re- tired into the heart of the Lesser Scythia. They were soon overwhelmed by a torrent of new Barbarians, who followed the same road which their own ancestors had formerly discovered. The Geuiigeii, or Avares, whose residence is assigned by the Greek writers to the shores of the ocean, impelled the adjacent tribes ; till at length the Igours of the North, issuing from the cold Siberian regions, which produce the most valuable furs, spread themselves over the desert, as far as the Borysthenes and Caspian gates ; and finally extinguished the empire of the Huns.'- Such an event might contribute to the safety of the Eastern empire, under the reign of a prince who conciliated the friend- ship, without forfeiting the esteem, of the Barbarians. But the emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute 'alentinian, who had reached his thirty-fiftli year without attaining the age of reason or courage, abused this apparent security, to undermine the foundations of his own throne by the murder of the patrician Aetius. From the instinct of a base and jealous mind, he hated the man who was universally celebrated as the terror of the [Dobrndza] Valentlnlan murders the patrician Aetius, A.D. 454 "•' Two modern historians have thrown much new Hglit on the ruin and division of the empire of Attila : M. de Buat, by his laborious and minute diligence (torn, viii. p. 3-31, 68-94), and M. de Guignes, by his extraordinary knowledge of the Chinese language and writers. See Hist, des Huns, torn. ii. p. 315-319-