Valentinian fled from Ravenna to Rome, prepared to desert his people and his empire.  The fortitude of AEtius alone supported and preserved the tottering state.  Leo, Bishop of Rome, in his sacerdotal robes, dared to demand the clemency of the savage king, and the intervention of St. Peter and St. Paul is supposed to have induced Attila to retire beyond the Danube, with the Princess Honoria as his bride.  He did not long survive this last campaign, and in 453 he died, and was buried amidst all the savage pomp and grief of his subjects.  His death resolved the bonds that had united the various nations of which his subjects were composed, and in a very few years domestic discord had extinguished the empire of the Huns.

Genseric, king of the Vandals, sacked and pillaged the ancient capital in June 455.

The vacant throne was filled by the nomination of Theodoric, king of the Goths.  The senate of Rome bitterly opposed the elevation of this stranger, and though Avitus might have supported his title against the votes of an unarmed assembly, he fell immediately he incurred the resentment of Count Ricimer, one of the chief commanders of the barbarian troops who formed the military defence of Italy.  At a distance from his Gothic allies, he was compelled to abdicate (October 16, 456), and Majorian was raised to fill his place.

IV.—­The Last Emperor of the West

The successor of Avitus was a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise in a degenerate age to vindicate the honour of the human species.  In the ruin of the Roman world he loved his people, sympathised with their distress, and studied by judicial and effectual remedies to allay their sufferings.  He reformed the most intolerable grievances of the taxes, attempted to restore and maintain the edifices of Rome, and to establish a new and healthier moral code.  His military abilities and his fortune were not in proportion to his merits.  An unsuccessful attempt against the Vandals to recover the lost provinces of Africa resulted in the loss of his fleet, and his return from this disastrous campaign terminated his reign.  He was deposed by Ricimer, and five days later died of a reported dysentery, on August 7, 461.

At the command of Ricimer, the senate bestowed the imperial title on Libius Severus, who reigned as long as it suited his patron.  The increasing difficulties, however, of the kingdom of Italy, due largely to the naval depredation of the Vandals, compelled Ricimer to seek the assistance of the emperor Leo, who had succeeded Marcian in the East in 457.  Leo determined to extirpate the tyranny of the Vandals, and solemnly invested Anthemius with the diadem and purple of the West (467).

In 472, Ricimer raised the senator Olybrius to the purple, and, advancing from Milan, entered and sacked Rome and murdered Anthemius (July 11, 472).  Forty days after this calamitous event, the tyrant Ricimer died of a painful disease, and two months later death also removed Olybrius.