According to Paulus Diaconus, the Lombards with many other Gothic nations came into the Empire from beyond the Danube in the reign of Arcadius and Honorius, that is, between the years 395 and 408.  But they might come in a little earlier:  for we are told that the Lombards, under their captains Ibor and Ayon, beat the Vandals in battle; and Prosper placeth this victory in the Consulship of Ausonius and Olybrius, that is, A.C. 379.  Before this war the Vandals had remained quiet forty years in the seats granted them in Pannonia by Constantine the great.  And therefore if these were the same Vandals, this war must have been in Pannonia; and might be occasioned by the coming of the Lombards over the Danube into Pannonia, a year or two before the battle; and so have put an end to that quiet which had lasted forty years.  After Gratian and Theodosius had quieted the Barbarians, they might either retire over the Danube, or continue quiet under the Romans till the death of Theodosius; and then either invade the Empire anew, or throw off all subjection to it.  By their wars, first with the Vandals, and then with the Bulgarians, a Scythian nation so called from the river Volga whence they came; it appears that even in those days they were a kingdom not contemptible.

10.  These nine kingdoms being rent away, we are next to consider the residue of the Western Empire.  While this Empire continued entire, it was the Beast itself:  but the residue thereof is only a part of it.  Now if this part be considered as a horn, the reign of this horn may be dated from the translation of the imperial seat from Rome to Ravenna, which was in October A.C. 408.  For then the Emperor Honorius, fearing that Alaric would besiege him in Rome, if he staid there, retired to Millain, and thence to Ravenna:  and the ensuing siege and sacking of Rome confirmed his residence there, so that he and his successors ever after made it their home.  Accordingly Macchiavel in his Florentine history writes, that Valentinian having left Rome, translated the seat of the Empire to Ravenna.

Rhaetia belonged to the Western Emperors, so long as that Empire stood; and then it descended, with Italy and the Roman Senate, to Odoacer King of the Heruli in Italy, and after him to Theoderic King of the Ostrogoths and his successors, by the grant of the Greek Emperors.  Upon the death of Valentinian the second, the Alemans and Suevians invaded Rhaetia A.C. 455.  But I do not find they erected any settled kingdom there:  for in the year 457, while they were yet depopulating