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8 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap.xxxvi his services. Compare this scene with the field of Cannae ; and judge between Hannibal and the successor of St. Cyprian. 10 The The deaths of Aetius and Valentinian had relaxed the ties Awtus° r which held the Barbarians of Gaul in peace and subordination. juVfoth The sea-coast was infested by the Saxons ; the Alemanni and the Franks advanced from the Rhine to the Seine ; and the ambition of the Goths seemed to meditate more extensive and permanent conquests. The emperor Maximus relieved himself, by a judicious choice, from the weight of these distant cares ; he silenced the solicitations of his friends, listened to the voice of fame, and promoted a stranger to the general command of the forces in Gaul. Avitus, 17 the stranger whose merit was so nobly rewarded, descended from a wealthy and honourable family in the diocese of Auvergne. The convulsions of the times urged him to embrace, with the same ardour, the civil and military professions ; and the indefatigable youth blended the studies of literature and jurisprudence with the exercise of arms and hunting. Thirty years of his life were laudably spent in the public service ; he alternately displayed his talents in war and negotiation ; and the soldier of Aetius, after execut- [c. 439A.D.]ing the most important embassies, was raised to the station of Praetorian praefect of Gaul. Either the merit of Avitus excited envy, or his moderation was desirous of repose, since he calmly [c. 445 a.d.] retired to an estate which he possessed in the neighbourhood of Clermont. A copious stream, issuing from the mountain, and falling headlong in many a loud and foaming cascade, dis- charged its waters into a lake about two miles in length, and the villa was pleasantly seated on the margin of the lake. The baths, the porticoes, the summer and winter apartments, were adapted to the purposes of luxury and use ; and the 16 The general evidence for the death of Maximus and the sack of Borne by the Yandals is comprised in Sidonius (Panegyr. Avit. 441-450), Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. 4, 5, p. 188, 189, and 1. ii. c. 9, p. 255), Evagrius (1. ii. c. 7), Jornandes (de Beb. Geticis, c. 45, p. 677), and the Chronicles of Idatiu6, Prosper, Marcellinus, and Theophanes under the proper year. [For the two churches which were turned into hospitals — the basilica Novarum and Fausti — cp. Audollent, Carthage romaine, p. 315.] 17 The private life and elevation of Avitus must be deduced, with becoming suspicion, from the panegyric pronounced by Sidonius Apollinaris, his subject and his son-in-law. [His name was Eparchius Avitus : De Bossi, Inscriptions chr^tiennes, i., No. 795. Borghesi, Oeuvres completes, x. p. 736. The date of his proclamation as Emperor is given in the Fasti Vind. priores as July 10, in the Continuatio Havniensis as July 9 : Chron. Min. i. p. 304.]