and Dalmatia which shew most clearly the ruin of the Empire. The
flagging brain ceases to control the limbs and members of the State ; the
Roman scheme of an organised world-community falls into fragments.
Marcellinus, one of the young men trained by Aëtius, had been promoted
to the office of magister militiae in Dalmatia. On the murder of Aetius,
he had refused obedience to Valentinian III ; but on the succession of Majorian, who was also one of Aëtius’ men, he resumed his allegiance to
the Empire, and was given the task of defending Sicily. The fall of
Majorian drove him once more into rebellion, and though he was forced
to leave Sicily, owing to the intrigues of Ricimer among his troops, he
maintained himself as the independent ruler of Dalmatia. In the great
expedition of 468 he joined with the Eastern and Western Emperors as
a practically independent sovereign, and though he was assassinated in
the course of the expedition, possibly at the instigation of Ricimer, he
seems to have left his nephew, Nepos, the future Emperor, to succeed to
his position. A pagan, and a friend of philosophers, with whom he held
high converse in his Dalmatian palace, Marcellinus stands, alike in his
character and in his political position, as one of the most interesting
figures of his age. His contemporary, Aegidius, is a man of more ordinary
type. A lieutenant of Majorian, he had been created magister miliium per Gallias; and on the death of his master, he had assumed an independent
position in central Gaul, with the aid of the Salian Franks, who, in
revolt against their own king, had, if Gregory of Tours may be trusted,
accepted him for their chief. In 463 he had defeated the Visigoths in
a battle near Orleans, and put himself into touch with Gaiseric for a
combined attack on Italy; but in 464 he died. His power descended to
his son Syagrius, who maintained his independence as “Roman King of
Soissons” until he was overthrown by Clovis in 486. Parallel in some
ways to the position of Marcellinus and Aegidius is the beneficent
theocracy which St Severinus established about the same time in
Noricum, a masterless province unprotected by Rome, and harassed
by the raids of the Rugii from the north of the river. The Saint
mediated for his people with the Rugian kings Flaccitheus and his
successor Feletheus; he used his influence among the provincials of
Noricum to secure the regular payment of tithes for the use of the
poor; in famine and flood he helped his flock, and kept the lamp of
Christianity alight in a dark land.
The death of the nominal Emperor, Severus, in 465, made little difference in the history of the West. For two years after his death the West had no emperor of its own, and the whole Empire was nominally united under Leo I. Ricimer was content to prolong an interregnum, which left him sole ruler; Gaiseric was still pressing for the succession of Olybrius; and Leo was at once unwilling to create an emperor who was likely to be a vassal of Gaiseric, and anxious to maintain the peace which existed between the Vandals and the Eastern Empire. Accord-
