Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/175

 AETIUS 155 successively the slave of a vine-dresser's wife, a travelling tinker or a goldsmith, and a quack doctor. He then studied medicine and theology at Antioch, and became prominent as a dispu- tant. His theories (the chief of which were the Anomoean doctrines that the Son is of a nature unlike and inferior to that of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is but a crea- ture made by the Father and Son before all other creatures) incensed the Arians, and he was thrice compelled to seek safety in flight; but at length he was ordained deacon by Leontius, bishop of Antioch. He now devel- oped, in connection with Eunomius, his pupil and amanuensis, a new schism known as the Aetian or Eunomian heresy, and made many disciples. He was condemned by the coun- cil of Seleucia in 359, and banished by Con- stantius to Amblada, in Pisidia. After the death of Constantius he was recalled to Con- stantinople by Julian, and made a bishop. He* adopted every means of spreading his heresy, but, having by his intrigues and immorality alienated all his friends, died unpitied by any butJEunomius, who buried him. AETIUS, a general of the western empire, born in Moesia about A. D. 396, murdered in 454. He was brought up, owing to the influence of his high-bred Italian mother, in the imperial body guard of Honorius, and after the death of his father Gaudentius, an illustrious Scythian and master general of cavalry, who lost his life in a mutiny, he was given as a hostage to the king of the Huns. On his return to Rome he was made count on occasion of his marriage with the daughter of Carpileo, and became at- tached to the household of Joannes. After an ineffectual support of this usurper in 425 with an army of 60,000 Huns, whom Aetius con- ducted into Italy under the guidance, it is said, of the then youthful Attila, he turned traitor against the treacherous cause he had espoused, and after the death of Joannes he succeeded in obtaining from Placidia, mother of Valentinian III., the chief command over the army of Gaul, as the condition of his procuring the peaceful retreat of the Huns. In this post he displayed great military skill, delivering Aries from the Visigoths, recovering from Chlodio, king of the Franks, the parts of Gaul bordering on the Rhine, overpowering the Juthungi in Bava- ria, bringing to an end the Vindelician war, and in the following spring crushing the con- federated forces of the Burgundians, Huns, Heruli, Franks, Sarmatians, Salians, and Ge- loni, in one terrible encounter. In 432 his rival Boniface, who had been urged to treason and then betrayed by himself, returning from the province of Africa, which his treason had thrown into the hands of the Vandals, and ob- taining the dignity of master of the horse, they fought a duel at Ravenna on the chal- lenge of Aetius, of the wounds received in which Boniface soon afterward died. But Aetius, fearing for his life, which was threat- ened by his late rival's adherents, fled into Pan- nonia, and led a second army of Huns into Italy, threatened the throne of Valentinian, and, although the feeble emperor called in the aid of the Visigoths, forced the empress and her son, without an engagement, to submit to his terms, and returned as before with accumu- lated honors, to resume command of the army of Gaul. Here he once more displayed genius as a general, routing the Burgundians with ex- ceeding slaughter, and forcing their king to throw himself on his mercy. In the mean time, Roas, king of the Huns, died, and was succeeded by Attila and his brother Bleda, the latter of whom being soon murdered, Attila assumed the sole dominion, and was speedily involved in hostilities with both the Roman empires. For several years his arms were di- rected chiefly against the eastern empire, but in 451 he set in motion his vast army of a thousand nations, debouched from the defiles of the Hercynian forest, crossed the Rhine on rafts, and fell like a torrent on the rich plains of Gaul. Here for a time all fell before him, till, when he was in the very act of storming the walls of Orleans, while his Huns were mounting the breaches, the spears of Aetius and Theodoric the Visigoth appeared on the horizon, and, amid cries of "The aid of God " from the beleaguered citizens, the siege was raised, and the Hunnish hordes were forced to retreat. Some days later a tre- mendous pitched battle was fought on the field of Chalons, in Champagne, in which 162,000, or, according to other accounts, 300,000 men fell on both sides. The Huns were so completely defeated, that Attila prepared a funeral pile and contemplated burning himself alive, with his treasures, his women, and his baggage wagons, had the Romans renewed the battle on 'the following day. But Theodoric lay dead, and Aetius suffered the Huns to escape. After this he purposely remained inactive during the remainder of the war, took no measures to op- pose the invasion of Italy, and even advised Valentinian to evacuate that country and take refuge in Gaul, which would have left himself master of Rome, where by his great abilities he would speedily have rid himself of the Huns and assumed the imperial purple. Aetius is believed, according to Marcellinus, to have been implicated in the sudden death of Attila (453) ; but there is no evidence to support this, excepting that Aetius always had his emissa- ries, in the shape of confidential Greek secreta- ries, about the person of Attila, who had never ceased to intrigue with him. In the end he fell by a crime and a treason as. base as his own, stabbed by Valentinian with his own hand, during a friendly interview. The cir- cumstances of this murder are not clearly known, although a coin which has been pre- served, bearing the inscription Aetius Impera- tor Ccesar, proves that he had assumed the imperial purple, and actually declared himself emperor, before he was killed. Nominally a Roman, he invariably betrayed Rome to the