460 THE DECLINE AND FALL mitigated by his private assurances ; he alternately soothed and threatened the Romans and the Goths ; and the courts of Ravenna and Toulouse, mutually suspicious of each other's intentions, beheld with supine indifference the approach of their common enemy. Aetius was the sole guardian of the public safety ; but his wisest measures were embarrassed by a faction which, since the death of Placidia, infested the Imperial palace ; the youth of Italy trembled at the sound of the trum- pet ; and the Barbarians who, from fear or affection, were in- clined to the cause of Attila awaited, with doubtful and venal faith, the event of the war. The patrician passed the Alps at the head of some troops, whose strength and numbers scarcely deserved the name of an army."^" But on his arrival at Aries, or Lyons, he was confounded by the intelligence that the Visigoths, refusing to embrace the defence of Gaul, had determined to ex- pect, within their own territories, the formidable invader, whom they professed to despise. The senator Avitus, Avho, after the honourable exercise of the praetorian Praefecture, had retired to his estate in Auvergne, was persuaded to accept the important embassy, which he executed with ability and success. He re- presented to Theodoric that an ambitious conqueror, who aspired to the dominion of the earth, could be resisted only by the firm and unanimous alliance of the powers whom he laboured to oppress. The lively eloquence of Avitus inflamed the Gothic warriors, by the description of the injuries which their ancestors had suffered from the Huns ; whose implacable fury still pur- sued them from the Danube to the foot of the Pyrenees. He strenuously urged that it was the duty of every Christian to save from sacrilegious violation the churches of God and the relics of the saints ; that it was the interest of every Barbarian who had acquired a settlement in Gaul to defend the fields and vineyards, which were cultivated for his use, against the desola- tion of the Scythian shepherds. Theodoric yielded to the evi- dence of truth ; adopted the measure at once the most prudent and the most honourable ; and declared that, as the faithful ally of Aetius and the Romans, he was ready to expose his life and kingdom for the common safety oi' Gaul.^ The V^isigoths, •■•^ Vix liquerat Alpes Aetius, tenue et raruni sine milite ducens Robur in auxiliis, Geticum male credulus agsnen Incassum propriis prsesumens adfore castris. Panegyr. Avit. 328, &c. 38 The policy of Attila, of Aetius, and of the Visigoths, is imperfectly described in the Panegyric of Avitus and the thirty-sixth chapter of Jornandes. The poet
