Chap, xxxvi] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 49 and Bicimer. 118 The unfortunate Anthemius was dragged from his concealment and inhumanly massacred by the command of his son-in-law ; who thus added a third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number of his victims. The soldiers, who united the rage of factious citizens with the savage manners of Barbarians, were indulged, without control, in the licence of rapine and murder ; the crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the indis- criminate pillage ; and the face of the city exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty and dissolute intemperance. 119 Forty days after this calamitous event, the subject not of glory but Death of of guilt, Italy was delivered, by a painful disease, from the Aug. 20 [is] tyrant Bicimer, who bequeathed the command of his army to his nephew Gundobald, one of the princes of the Bur-tGundo- gundians. In the same year, all the principal actors in this great revolution were removed from the stage ; and the whole reign of Olybrius, whose death does not betray any symptoms and of of violence, is included within the term of seven months. Heoct. 23 left one daughter, the offspring of his marriage with Placidia ; and the family of the great Theodosius, transplanted from Spain to Constantinople, was propagated in the female line as far as the eighth generation. 120 Whilst the vacant throne of Italy was abandoned to lawless juiiu Barbarians, 121 the election of a new colleague was seriously gi^ 8 Nepos and cerius, emperors of the 118 Nuper Anthemii et Eicimeris civili furore subversa est. Gelasius (in^' Epist. ad Andromach. apud Baron, a.d. 496, No. 42), Sigonius (torn. i. 1. xiv. de a.d. 472-475 Occidentali Imperio, p. 542, 543), and Muratori (Ann. d'ltalia, torn. iv. p. 308, 309), with the aid of a less imperfect Ms. of the Historia Miscella, have illustrated this dark and bloody transaction. [Bilimer (not Gilimer) was the name of the defender of the bridge. He is described (Hist. Misc., 15, 3) as ruler of the Gauls ; but this does not take us far. Gibbon has followed a guess of Sigonius. The account of these events in the Historia Miscella seems to be derived from a good source.] 119 Such had been the sseva ac deformis urbe tota facies, when Borne was assaulted and stormed by the troops of Vespasian (see Tacit. Hist. iii. 82, 83) ; and every cause of mischief had since acquired much additional energy. The revolution of ages may bring round the same • calamities ; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them. 120 See Ducange, Familiae Byzantinae, p. 74, 75. Areobindus, who appears to have married the niece of the emperor Justinian, was the eighth descendant of the elder Theodosius. [John of Antioch, fr. 209, states that Olybrius died at Borne of dropsy.] 121 The last revolutions of the Western Empire are faintly marked in Theo- phanes (p. 102), Jornandes (c. 45, p. 679), the Chronicle of Marcellinus, and the frag- ments of an anonymous writer, published by Valesius at the end of Ammianus (p. 716, 717). If Photius had not been so wretchedly concise, we should derive much information from the contemporary histories of Malchus and Candidus. See his Extracts, p. 172-179. vol. iv. — 4
