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30 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxvi warfare ; the hardy generation of the first conquerors was almost extinguished, and their sons, who were born in Africa, enjoyed the delicious baths and gardens which had been acquired by the valour of their fathers. Their place was readily supplied by a various multitude of Moors and Romans, of captives and outlaws ; and those desperate wretches who had already violated the laws of their country were the most eager to promote the atrocious acts which disgrace the victories of Genseric. In the treatment of his unhappy prisoners, he sometimes consulted his avarice, and sometimes indulged his cruelty; and the massacre of five hundred noble citizens of Zant or Zacynthus, whose mangled bodies he cast into the Ionian sea, was imputed, by the public indignation, to his latest posterity. Negotia- Such crimes could not be excused by any provocations ; but the n EaIt- th the war which the king of the Vandals prosecuted against the pi?e. em A.D. Roman empire was justified by a specious and reasonable 462, &c. mo tive. The widow of Valentinian, Eudoxia, whom he had led captive from Eome to Carthage, was the sole heiress of the Theodosian house ; her elder daughter, Eudocia, became the reluctant wife of Huimeric, his eldest son ; and the stern father, asserting a legal claim, which could not easily be refuted or satisfied, demanded a just proportion of the Imperial patrimony. [a.d. 462] An adequate, or at least a valuable, compensation was offered by the Eastern emperor, to purchase a necessary peace. Eudoxia and her younger daughter, Placidia, were honourably restored, and the fury of the Vandals was confined to the limits of the Western empire. The Italians, destitute of a naval force, which alone was capable of protecting their coasts, implored the aid of the more fortunate nations of the East ; who had formerly acknowledged, in peace and war, the supremacy of Rome. But the perpetual division of the two empires had alienated their interest and their inclinations ; the faith of a recent treaty was alleged ; and the Western Romans, instead of arms and ships, could only obtain the assistance of a cold and ineffectual mediation. The haughty Ricimer, who had long struggled with the difficulties of his situation, was at length reduced to address the throne of Con- stantinople, in the humble language of a subject ; and Italy submitted, as the price and security of the alliance, to accept