Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/323

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 301 fied by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian. The voice of fame has accused the second Otho of a perfidious and bloody act, the massacre of the senators, whom he had in- vited to his table under the fair semblance of hospitality and friendship. 1^'' In the minority of his son Otho the Third, Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke, and the consul C'rescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the of the consul condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the com- a'!d.'^98s "*' mand of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek emperors. In the fortress of St. Angelo he maintained an obstinate siege, till the unfortunate consul was betrayed by a promise of safety ; his body was suspended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlements of the castle. By a reverse of fortune, Otho, after sepai'ating his troops, was be- sieged three days, without food, in his palace ; and a disgraceful escape saved him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator Ptolemy was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of re- venging her husband, by a poison which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the design of Otho the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the north, to erect his throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy. But his successors only once in their lives appeared on the banks of the Tiber, to receive their crown in the Vatican. i^*' Their absence was contemptible, their presence odious and for- midable. They descended from the Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and enemies to the country ; and their transient visit was a scene of tumult and bloodshed. i^'-' A faint remembrance of their ancestors still tormented the Romans ; and they beheld with pious indignation the succes- 1*'' This bloody feast is described in Leonine verse, in the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo (Script. Ital. torn. vii. p. 436, 437 [ed. Waitz, in Pertz's Mon., xxii., p. 107 sqq.l), who flourished towards the end of the xiith century (P'abricius, Bibliot. Latin, med. et infimi JEvi, torn. iii. p. 69. edit. Mansi) ; but his evidence, which imposed on Sigonius, is reasonably suspected by Muratori (Annali, torn. viii. p. 177). I'^SThe coronation of the emperor, and some origmal ceremonies of the xth century, are preserved in the Panegyric on Berengarius [composed 915-922] (Script. Ital. torn. ii. pars i. 405-414), illustrated by the Notes of Hadrian Valesius, and Leibnitz. [Gesta Berengarii imp., ed. E. Diimmler, 1871. Also in Pertz's Monum. vol. iv.] Sigonius has related the whole process of the Roman expedition, in good Latin, but with some errors of time and fact (1. vii. p. 441-446). i'*" In a quarrel at the coronation of Conrad II. Muratori takes leave to observe — doveano ben essere allora, indisciplinati, Barbari, e bestiali i Tedeschi. Annal. tom. viii. p. 368.