The force of the old empire had always lain in wholly
material things and its excuse had been its material success; but it
was a servile state, and after the advent of Christianity it was
inevitable that it should change or perish. It changed. The force of
the new empire was to be so completely spiritual that to-day we can
scarcely understand it. Upon the banks of the Mincio it declared
itself; and when, twenty-three years later, Odoacer the barbarian
deposed Romulus Augustulus and made himself king of Italy, the true
champion of all that Latin genius had established was already
enthroned in Rome; but the throne was Peter's, and men called him not
Emperor but Father.
Those twenty-three years, so brief a period, are, as we might imagine,
full of confusion and strange barbarian voices.
After Leo had turned him back from Italy there by the Mincio, Attila
retreated again into Pannonia, but he still insisted "on this point
above all, that Honoria, the sister of the emperor and the daughter of
the Augusta Placidia, should be sent to him with the portion of the
royal wealth which was her due; and he threatened that unless this
were done he would lay upon Italy a far heavier punishment than any
which it had yet borne.
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