Part I, Chapter 6, 2

Between the death of Constantine and the reign of Vortigern was an interregnum of about 14 years, in which the Britons had wars with the Picts and Scots, and twice obtained the assistance of a Roman Legion, who drove out the enemy, but told them positively at their departure that they would come no more. Of Vortigern's beginning to reign there is this record in an old Chronicle in Nennius, quoted by Camden and others: Guortigernus held the empire in Britain, in the consulship of Theodosius and Valentinian [namely A.C. 425.], and in the fourth year of his reign the Saxons came to Britain, in the consulship of Felix and Tauro [namely A.C. 428.]. This coming of the Saxons, Sigebert refers to the 4th year of Valentinian, which falls in with the year 428 assigned by this Chronicle: and two years after, the Saxons together with the Picts were beaten by the Britons. Afterwards in the reign of Martian the Emperor, that is, between the years 450 and 456, the Saxons under Hengist were called in by the Britons, but six years after revolted from them, made war upon them with various success, and by degrees succeeded them. Yet the Britons continued a flourishing kingdom till the reign of Careticus; and the war between the two nations continued till the pontificate of Sergius A.C. 688.²

8 The Kings of the Hunns were, A.C. 406 Octar and Rugila, 433 Bleda and Attila. Octar and Rugila were the brothers of Munzuc King of the Hunns in Gothia beyond the Danube; and Bleda and Attila were his sons, and Munzuc was the son of Balamir. The two first, as Jornandes tells us, were Kings of the Hunns, but not of them all; and had the two last for their successors. I date the reign of the Hunns in Pannonia from the time that the Vandals and Alans relinquished Pannonia to them, A.C. 407. Sigonius from the time that the Visigoths relinquished Pannonia A. C. 408. It is established, he says, that when the Goths set out from Illyricum the Hunns succeeded them and first took possession of Pannonia. For Honorius, left without strength to resist in such great difficulties, could not prevent them altogether; but taking better counsel and turning his mind to peace, he made a treaty with them, giving and receiving hostages; among those given, Ætius, who had also been given to Alaric, is particularly remembered. How Ætius was hostage to the Goths and Hunns is related by Frigeridus, who, after mentioning that Theodosius Emperor of the East had sent grievous commands to John, who after the death of Honorius had usurped the crown of the Western Empire, subjoins: Moved by these things, John sent Ætius, then holding the charge of the palace, to the Hunns with a great weight of gold, men known to him from the time of his captivity and bound to him by close friendship. And a little after: Ætius, for three years the hostage of Alaric, then of the Hunns, afterwards the son-in-law of Carpilio, having advanced from Count of the Domestics and curopalates to John. Now Bucher shows that Ætius was hostage to Alaric till the year 410, when Alaric died, and to the Hunns between the years 411 and 415, and son-in-law to Carpilio about the year 417 or 418, and curopalates to John about the end of the year 423. It is therefore probable that he became hostage to the Hunns about the year 412 or 413, when Honorius made leagues with almost all the barbarous nations, and granted them seats; but I would rather say with Sigonius, that Ætius became hostage to Alaric A.C. 403. It is further manifest out of Prosper, that the Hunns were in quiet possession of Pannonia in the year 432. For in the first book of Eusebius's Chronicle Prosper writes: In the tenth year after the death of Honorius, when Ætius, after the battle with Boniface, had taken refuge among the nation of the Hunns then ruled by Rugila, he returned to Roman soil with the aid he had obtained. And in the second book: In the consulship of Ætius and Valerius, Ætius, having laid down his power, fled as a fugitive to the Hunns in Pannonia, and using their friendship and aid, obtained peace from the leaders whose authority had been disturbed. Hereby it appears that at this time Rugila, or as Maximus calls him, Rechilla, reigned over the Hunns in Pannonia; and that Pannonia was not now so much as accounted within the soil of the Empire, being formerly granted away to the Hunns; and that these were the very same body of Hunns with which Ætius had, in the time of his being an hostage, contracted friendship: by virtue of which, as he solicited them before to the aid of John the Tyrant A.C. 424, so now he procured their intercession for himself with the Emperor. Octar died A.C. 430; for Socrates tells us, that about that time the Burgundians having been newly vexed by the Hunns, upon intelligence of Octar's death, seeing them without a leader, set upon them suddenly with so much vigor, that 3000 Burgundians killed 10000 Hunns. Of Rugila's being now King in Pannonia you have heard already. He died A.C. 433, and was succeeded by Bleda, as Prosper and Maximus inform us. This Bleda with his brother Attila were before this time Kings of the Hunns beyond the Danube, their father Munzuc's kingdom being divided between them; and now they united the kingdom of Pannonia to their own. From this Paulus Diaconus says, that they held the kingdom within Pannonia and Dacia. In the year 441, they began to invade the Empire afresh, adding to the Pannonian forces new and great armies from Scythia. But this war was soon settled, and then Attila, seeing Bleda inclined to peace, killed him, A.C. 444, inherited his dominions, and invaded the Empire again. At length, after various great wars with the Romans, Attila perished A.C. 454; and his sons quarreling about his dominions, gave occasion to the Gepides, Ostrogoths and other nations who were their subjects, to rebel and make war upon them. The same year the Ostrogoths had seats granted them in Pannonia by the Emperors Marcian and Valentinian; and with the Romans ejected the Hunns out of Pannonia, soon after the death of Attila, as all historians agree. This ejection was in the reign of Avitus, as is mentioned in the Chronicum Boiorum, and in Sidonius, Carm. 7 in Avitum, which speaks thus of that Emperor.

—Whose coming recalled lost Pannonia after so many ages; it is now easy to believe. What will he do in wars.

The Poet means, that by the coming of Avitus the Hunns yielded more easily to the Goths. This was written by Sidonius in the beginning of the reign of Avitus: and his reign began in the end of the year 455, and lasted not one full year.

Jornandes tells us: In the twelfth year of the reign of Valia, when also the Hunns, after almost fifty years, were driven out of the Pannonia they had invaded, by the Romans and Goths. And Marcellinus: In the consulship of Hierius and Ardabur, Pannonia, which for fifty years had been held by the Hunns, was recovered by the Romans: from these it should seem that the Hunns invaded and held Pannonia from the year 378 or 379 to the year 427, and then were driven out of it. But this is a plain mistake: for it is certain that the Emperor Theodosius left the Empire entire; and we have shown out of Prosper, that the Hunns were in quiet possession of Pannonia in the year 432. The Visigoths in those days had nothing to do with Pannonia, and the Ostrogoths continued subject to the Hunns till the death of Attila, A.C. 454; and Valia King of the Visigoths did not reign twelve years. He began his reign in the end of the year 415, reigned three years, and was killed A.C. 419, as Idacius, Isidorus, and the Spanish manuscript Chronicles seen by Grotius testify. And Olympiodorus, who carries his history only to the year 425, sets down tin this the death of Valia King of the Visigoths, and conjoins it with that of Constantius which happened A.C. 420. Therefore the Valia of Jornandes, who reigned at least twelve years, is some other King. And I suspect that this name has been put by mistake for Valamir King of the Ostrogoths: for the action recorded was of the Romans and Ostrogoths driving the Hunns out of Pannonia after the death of Attila; and it is not likely that the historian would refer the history of the Ostrogoths to the years of the Visigothic Kings. This action happened in the end of the year 455, which I take to be the twelfth year of Valamir in Pannonia, and which was almost fifty years after the year 406, in which the Hunns succeeded the Vandals and Alans in Pannonia. Upon the ceasing of the line of Hunnimund the son of Hermaneric, the Ostrogoths lived without Kings of their own nation about forty years together, being subject to the Hunns. And when Alaric began to make war upon the Romans, which was in the year 444, he made Valamir, with his brothers Theodomir and Videmir the grandsons of Vinethar, captains or kings of these Ostrogoths under him. In the twelfth year of Valamir's reign dated from then, the Hunns were driven out of Pannonia.

Yet the Hunns were not so ejected, but that they had further contests with the Romans, until the head of Denfix the son of Attila was carried to Constantinople, A.C. 469, in the Consulship of Zeno and Marcian, as Marcellinus relates. Nor were they yet totally driven out of the Empire: for besides their relics in Pannonia, Sigonius tells us, that when the Emperors Marcian and Valentinian granted Pannonia to the Goths, which was in the year 454, they granted part of Illyricum to some of the Hunns and Sarmatians. And in the year 526, when the Lombards removing into Pannonia made war there with the Gepides, the Avares, a part of the Hunns, who had taken the name of Avares from one of their Kings, assisted the Lombards in that war; and the Lombards afterwards, when they went into Italy, left their seats in Pannonia to the Avares in recompense for their friendship. From that time the Hunns grew again very powerful; their Kings, whom they called Chagan, troubling the Empire much in the reigns of the Emperors Mauritius, Phocas, and Heraclius: and this is the original of the present kingdom of Hungary, which from these Avares and other Hunns mixed together, took the name of Hun-Avaria, and by contraction Hungary.

9 The Lombards, before they came over the Danube, were commanded by two captains, Ibor and Ayon: after whose death they had Kings, Agilmund, Lamisso, Lechu, Hildehoc, Gudehoc, Classo, Tato, Wacho, Walter, Audoin, Alboin, Cleophis, etc. Agilmund was the son of Ayon, who became their King, according to Prosper, in the Consulship of Honorius and Theodosius A.C. 389, reigned thirty three years, according to Paulus Warnefridus, and was killed in battle by the Bulgarians. Prosper places his death in the Consulship of Marinianus and Asclepiodorus, A.C. 413. Lamisso routed the Bulgarians, and reigned three years, and Lechu almost forty. Gudehoc was contemporary to Odoacer King of the Heruli in Italy, and led his people from Pannonia into Rugia, a country on the north side of Noricum next beyond the Danube; from which Odoacer then carried his people into Italy. Tato overthrew the kingdom of the Heruli beyond the Danube. Wacho conquered the Suevians, a kingdom then bounded on the east by Bavaria, on the west by France, and on the south by the Burgundians. Audoin returned into Pannonia A.C. 526, and there overcame the Gepides. Alboin A.C. 551 overthrew the kingdom of the Gepides, and killed their King Chunnimund: A.C. 563 he assisted the Greek Emperor against Totila King of the Ostrogoths in Italy; and A.C. 568 led his people out of Pannonia into Lombardy, where they reigned till the year 774.

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 places 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 from which 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 of it 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 stayed there, retired to Millain, and from there 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.

Rhætia 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 Rhætia A.C. 455. But I do not find that they erected any settled kingdom there: for in the year 457, while they were yet depopulating Rhætia, they were attacked and beaten by Burto Master of the horse to the Emperor Majoranus; and I hear nothing more of their invading Rhætia. Clodovæus King of France, in or about the year 496, conquered a kingdom of the Alemans, and killed their last King Ermeric. But this kingdom was seated in Germany, and only bordered upon Rhætia: for its people fled from Clodovæus into the neighboring kingdom of the Ostrogoths under Theoderic, who received them as friends, and wrote a friendly letter to Clodovæus in their behalf: and by this means they became inhabitants of Rhætia, as subjects under the dominion of the Ostrogoths.

When the Greek Emperor conquered the Ostrogoths, he succeeded them in the kingdom of Ravenna, not only by right of conquest but also by right of inheritance, the Roman Senate still going along with this kingdom. Therefore we may reckon that this kingdom continued in the Exarchate of Ravenna and Senate of Rome: for the remainder of the Western Empire went along with the Senate of Rome, by reason of the right which this Senate still retained, and at length exerted, of choosing a new Western Emperor.

I have now enumerated the ten kingdoms, into which the Western Empire became divided at its first breaking, that is, at the time of Rome's being besieged and taken by the Goths. Some of these kingdoms at length fell, and new ones arose: but whatever was their number afterwards, they are still called the Ten Kings from their first number.

Notes to Chap. VI.

1 Apud Bucherum, l. 14. c. 9. n. 8.

2 Rolevinc's Antiqua Saxon. l. 1. c. 6.

Between the death of Constantine and the reign of Vortigern there was an interregnum of about 14 years. In it the Britons fought the Picts and Scots, and twice got help from a Roman Legion. The Legion drove the enemy out, but said plainly when it left that it would not come again. Of the start of Vortigern's reign there is this record in an old Chronicle in Nennius, quoted by Camden and others: "Guortigernus held the rule in Britain, Theodosius and Valentinian being Consuls [that is, A.C. 425.]; and in the fourth year of his reign the Saxons came to Britain, Felix and Taurus being Consuls [that is, A.C. 428.]" This coming of the Saxons, Sigebert refers to the 4th year of Valentinian, which matches the year 428 given by this Chronicle; and two years later the Saxons together with the Picts were beaten by the Britons. Later, in the reign of the Emperor Martian, that is, between the years 450 and 456, the Britons called in the Saxons under Hengist. Six years later the Saxons broke away from them, made war on them with varying success, and in time took their place. Even so, the Britons remained a flourishing kingdom until the reign of Careticus; and the war between the two nations went on until the pontificate of Sergius, A.C. 688.²

8 The Kings of the Hunns were, in A.C. 406, Octar and Rugila, and in 433, Bleda and Attila. Octar and Rugila were brothers of Munzuc King of the Hunns in Gothia beyond the Danube; Bleda and Attila were his sons, and Munzuc was the son of Balamir. As Jornandes tells us, the first two were Kings of the Hunns, but not of all of them, and the last two succeeded them. I date the reign of the Hunns in Pannonia from the time the Vandals and Alans gave up Pannonia to them, A.C. 407. Sigonius dates it from the time the Visigoths gave up Pannonia, A.C. 408. "It is clear," he says, "that when the Goths set out from Illyricum the Hunns came after them, and first of all took hold of Pannonia. Honorius, it is true, lacked the strength to resist in such difficulties and could not hold them back outright; but with better judgment he turned his mind to peace, and made a treaty with them, giving and receiving hostages. Of those who were given, Ætius is named above the rest, since he had also been handed over to Alaric." How Ætius came to be a hostage to the Goths and the Hunns is told by Frigeridus. He says that Theodosius Emperor of the East had sent harsh commands to John, who after the death of Honorius had seized the crown of the Western Empire, and then adds: "Moved by these things, John sent Ætius, who at that time held the office of chamberlain, to the Hunns with a great weight of gold; they were people known to him and bound to him by familiar friendship, going back to the time of his own hostage-taking." And a little later: "Ætius was a hostage to Alaric for three years, then to the Hunns, and later the son-in-law of Carpilio, moving from Count of the household troops to become John's curopalate." Now Bucher shows that Ætius was a hostage to Alaric until the year 410, when Alaric died; to the Hunns between the years 411 and 415; son-in-law to Carpilio about the year 417 or 418; and curopalate to John about the end of the year 423. So it is likely that he became a hostage to the Hunns about the year 412 or 413, when Honorius made treaties with almost all the barbarous nations and granted them seats. But I would rather say with Sigonius that Ætius became a hostage to Alaric in A.C. 403. It is further clear from Prosper that the Hunns were in quiet possession of Pannonia in the year 432. For in the first book of Eusebius's Chronicle Prosper writes: "In the tenth year after the death of Honorius, when Ætius, after his battle with Boniface, had made his way to the nation of the Hunns, then led by Rugila, he got help from them and returned to Roman soil." And in the second book: "In the consulship of Ætius and Valerius, Ætius, his power laid aside, fled as a refugee to the Hunns in Pannonia. Using their friendship and help, he won peace from the rulers, his own authority having been cut short." Here it appears that at this time Rugila, or as Maximus calls him, Rechilla, ruled the Hunns in Pannonia; that Pannonia was not even counted part of the soil of the Empire by then, since it had long before been granted away to the Hunns; and that these were the very same Hunns with whom Ætius, in the time he was a hostage, had made friends. By that friendship, as he had earlier brought them in to help John the Tyrant in A.C. 424, so now he got them to speak up for him with the Emperor. Octar died A.C. 430; for Socrates tells us that about that time the Burgundians, newly troubled by the Hunns, heard of Octar's death, saw the Hunns without a leader, and fell on them so suddenly and hard that 3000 Burgundians killed 10000 Hunns. You have already heard of Rugila being now King in Pannonia. He died A.C. 433 and was succeeded by Bleda, as Prosper and Maximus inform us. Before this time Bleda and his brother Attila had been Kings of the Hunns beyond the Danube, their father Munzuc's kingdom divided between them; now they added the kingdom of Pannonia to their own. So Paulus Diaconus says they "did rule the kingdom within Pannonia and Dacia." In the year 441 they began to invade the Empire again, adding new and great armies from Scythia to the forces in Pannonia. But this war was soon settled, and then Attila, seeing Bleda leaned toward peace, killed him, A.C. 444, took over his lands, and invaded the Empire again. At last, after many great wars with the Romans, Attila died A.C. 454. His sons then quarreled over his lands, which gave the Gepids, Ostrogoths and other nations that had been their subjects the chance to rebel and make war on them. That same year the Ostrogoths were granted seats in Pannonia by the Emperors Marcian and Valentinian; and together with the Romans they drove the Hunns out of Pannonia soon after the death of Attila, as all historians agree. This expulsion took place in the reign of Avitus, as the Chronicum Boiorum mentions, and as Sidonius says in his Poem 7 on Avitus, which speaks like this of that Emperor:

— By whose coming, after many long ages, the long-lost Pannonias turned back to their path; now it is easy to believe. What will he do in war.

The poet means that with the coming of Avitus the Hunns gave way to the Goths more easily. Sidonius wrote this at the start of the reign of Avitus; his reign began at the end of the year 455 and did not last one full year.

Jornandes tells us: "In the twelfth year of the reign of Valia, when the Hunns too, after almost fifty years of holding Pannonia, were driven out of it by the Romans and Goths." And Marcellinus: "In the consulship of Hierius and Ardabur, Pannonia, which the Hunns had held for fifty years, was taken back by the Romans." From this it should seem that the Hunns invaded and held Pannonia from the year 378 or 379 to the year 427, and were then driven out of it. But this is a plain mistake. It is certain that the Emperor Theodosius left the Empire whole; and we have shown from Prosper that the Hunns were in quiet possession of Pannonia in the year 432. In those days the Visigoths had nothing to do with Pannonia, and the Ostrogoths stayed subject to the Hunns until the death of Attila, A.C. 454; and Valia King of the Visigoths did not reign twelve years. He began his reign at the end of the year 415, reigned three years, and was killed A.C. 419, as Idacius, Isidorus, and the Spanish manuscript Chronicles seen by Grotius testify. Olympiodorus, who carries his history only to the year 425, records in it the death of Valia King of the Visigoths, and joins it with that of Constantius, which happened A.C. 420. So the Valia of Jornandes, who reigned at least twelve years, is some other King. I suspect that this name was put by mistake for Valamir King of the Ostrogoths: the deed recorded was of the Romans and Ostrogoths driving the Hunns out of Pannonia after the death of Attila; and it is unlikely that the historian would date the history of the Ostrogoths by the years of the Visigothic Kings. This deed happened at the end of the year 455, which I take to be the twelfth year of Valamir in Pannonia, and which was almost fifty years after the year 406, in which the Hunns took Pannonia over from the Vandals and Alans. When the line of Hunnimund the son of Hermaneric died out, the Ostrogoths lived without Kings of their own nation for about forty years together, being subject to the Hunns. When Alaric began to make war on the Romans, which was in the year 444, he made Valamir, with his brothers Theodomir and Videmir, the grandsons of Vinethar, the captains or kings of these Ostrogoths under him. Counting from that point, in the twelfth year of Valamir's reign the Hunns were driven out of Pannonia.

Even so, the Hunns were not driven out for good; they still had contests with the Romans, until the head of Denfix the son of Attila was carried to Constantinople, A.C. 469, in the consulship of Zeno and Marcian, as Marcellinus relates. Nor were they yet completely out of the Empire. Besides their remains in Pannonia, Sigonius tells us that when the Emperors Marcian and Valentinian granted Pannonia to the Goths, which was in the year 454, they granted part of Illyricum to some of the Hunns and Sarmatians. And in the year 526, when the Lombards moved into Pannonia and made war there with the Gepids, the Avares, a part of the Hunns who had taken the name Avares from one of their Kings, helped the Lombards in that war. Later, when the Lombards went into Italy, they left their seats in Pannonia to the Avares in return for their friendship. From that time the Hunns grew powerful again. Their Kings, whom they called Chagan, troubled the Empire much in the reigns of the Emperors Mauritius, Phocas, and Heraclius. This is the origin of the present kingdom of Hungary, which took its name from these Avares and other Hunns mixed together: Hun-Avaria, shortened to Hungary.

9 Before they came over the Danube, the Lombards were led by two captains, Ibor and Ayon. After their death they had Kings: Agilmund, Lamisso, Lechu, Hildehoc, Gudehoc, Classo, Tato, Wacho, Walter, Audoin, Alboin, Cleophis, etc. Agilmund was the son of Ayon. He became their King, according to Prosper, in the consulship of Honorius and Theodosius, A.C. 389; he reigned thirty three years, according to Paulus Warnefridus, and was killed in battle by the Bulgarians. Prosper places his death in the consulship of Marinianus and Asclepiodorus, A.C. 413. Lamisso defeated the Bulgarians and reigned three years, and Lechu almost forty. Gudehoc was a contemporary of Odoacer King of the Heruli in Italy, and led his people from Pannonia into Rugia, a country on the north side of Noricum, next beyond the Danube; from there Odoacer then carried his people into Italy. Tato overthrew the kingdom of the Heruli beyond the Danube. Wacho conquered the Suevians, a kingdom then bounded on the east by Bavaria, on the west by France, and on the south by the Burgundians. Audoin returned to Pannonia A.C. 526 and there defeated the Gepids. Alboin in A.C. 551 overthrew the kingdom of the Gepids and killed their King Chunnimund. In A.C. 563 he helped the Greek Emperor against Totila King of the Ostrogoths in Italy; and in A.C. 568 he led his people out of Pannonia into Lombardy, where they reigned until the year 774.

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 have come a little earlier. We are told that the Lombards, under their captains Ibor and Ayon, beat the Vandals in battle; and Prosper places this victory in the consulship of Ausonius and Olybrius, that is, A.C. 379. Before this war the Vandals had kept quiet for forty years in the seats granted them in Pannonia by Constantine the Great. So if these were the same Vandals, this war must have been in Pannonia. It might have been caused by the Lombards coming over the Danube into Pannonia a year or two before the battle, and so putting an end to the quiet that had lasted forty years. After Gratian and Theodosius had settled the Barbarians, they might either have retired across the Danube or stayed quiet under the Romans until the death of Theodosius, and then either invade the Empire again or throw off all obedience to it. From their wars, first with the Vandals and then with the Bulgarians, a Scythian nation named after the river Volga from which they came, it is clear that even in those days the Lombards were a kingdom not to be taken lightly.

10 With these nine kingdoms torn away, we next consider the rest of the Western Empire. While that Empire stayed whole, it was the Beast itself; but the rest of it is only a part. If this part is taken as a horn, then the reign of this horn may be dated from the move 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 stayed there, withdrew to Millain, and from there to Ravenna; and the siege and sacking of Rome that followed kept him there, so he and his successors made it their home ever after. Accordingly Macchiavel writes in his Florentine history that Valentinian, having left Rome, moved the seat of the Empire to Ravenna.

Rhætia belonged to the Western Emperors as long as that Empire stood; and then it passed, 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. After the death of Valentinian the second, the Alemans and Suevians invaded Rhætia A.C. 455. But I do not find that they set up any settled kingdom there: in the year 457, while they were still wasting Rhætia, they were attacked and beaten by Burto, master of the horse to the Emperor Majoranus; and I hear nothing more of them invading Rhætia. Clodovæus King of France, in or about the year 496, conquered a kingdom of the Alemans and killed their last King Ermeric. But that kingdom lay in Germany and only bordered on Rhætia. Its people fled from Clodovæus into the neighboring kingdom of the Ostrogoths under Theoderic, who received them as friends and wrote a friendly letter to Clodovæus on their behalf. By this means they became inhabitants of Rhætia, as subjects under the dominion of the Ostrogoths.

When the Greek Emperor conquered the Ostrogoths, he succeeded them in the kingdom of Ravenna, not only by right of conquest but also by right of inheritance, the Roman Senate still going along with this kingdom. So we may count this kingdom as continuing in the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Senate of Rome: for the rest of the Western Empire went with the Senate of Rome, because of the right this Senate always kept, and at last used, of choosing a new Western Emperor.

I have now listed the ten kingdoms into which the Western Empire was divided at its first breaking, that is, at the time Rome was besieged and taken by the Goths. Some of these kingdoms in time fell, and new ones arose; but whatever their number was later, they are still called the Ten Kings from their first number.

Notes to Chap. VI.

1 In Bucher, book 14, chapter 9, no. 8.

2 Rolevinc's Antiqua Saxon. book 1, chapter 6.