The Death of Attila.—The year after his defeat at Chalons, Attila again crossed the Alps, and burned or plundered all the important cities of Northern Italy. The Veneti fled for safety to the morasses at the head of the Adriatic (A.D. 452). Upon the islets where they built their rude dwellings, there grew up in time the city of Venice, the "eldest daughter of the Roman Empire," the "Carthage of the Middle Ages."
The conqueror threatened Rome; but Leo the Great, bishop of the capital, went with an embassy to the camp of Attila, and pleaded for the city. He recalled to the mind of Attila the fact that death had overtaken the impious Alaric soon after he had given the Imperial City to be sacked, and warned him not to call down upon himself the like judgment of heaven. To these admonitions of the Christian bishop was added the persuasion of a golden bribe from the Emperor Valentinian; and Attila was induced to spare Southern Italy, and to lead his warriors back beyond the Alps. Shortly after he had crossed the Danube, he died suddenly in his camp. His followers gradually withdrew from Europe into the wilds of their native Scythia, or were absorbed by the peoples they had conquered.
Sack of Rome by the Vandals (A.D. 455).—Rome had been saved a visitation from the spoiler of the North, but a new destruction was about to burst upon it by way of the sea from the South. Africa sent out another enemy whose greed for plunder proved more fatal to Rome than the eternal hate of Hannibal. The kings of the Vandal Empire in Northern Africa had acquired as perfect a supremacy in the Western Mediterranean as Carthage ever enjoyed in the days of her commercial pride. Vandal corsairs swept the seas and harassed the coasts of Sicily and Italy, and even plundered the maritime towns of the Eastern provinces. In the year 455 a Vandal fleet, led by the dread Genseric, sailed up the Tiber.
Panic seized the people; for the name of Vandal was pronounced with terror throughout the world. Again the great Leo, who had once before saved his flock from the fury of an Attila,
