The church and the monastery which her niece
Singleida built beside it have perished.
But though during the lifetime of Placidia Italy was free from foreign
invasion, the decay of the western empire, of what had been the
western empire, was by no means arrested; on the contrary, Britain,
Gaul, Spain, and Africa were finally lost. Two appalling catastrophes
mark her reign, the Vandal invasion of the province of Africa and the
ever growing cloud of Huns upon the north-eastern frontiers.
[Illustration: THE APSE OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA]
Placidia's two chief ministers were Boniface and Aetius, either of
whom, according to Procopius, "had the other not been his
contemporary, might truly have been called the last of the Romans."
Their simultaneous appearance, however, finally destroyed all hope of
an immediate resurrection of civilisation in the West. For Boniface,
whose "one great object was the deliverance of Africa from all sorts
of barbarians," betrayed Africa to the Vandals, and to this he was led
by the rivalry and intrigue of Aetius who, on the other hand, must
always be remembered for his heroic and glorious victory over Attila
at Chalons which delivered Gaul from the worst deluge of all--that of
the Huns.
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