" But within a year Attila was dead in a
barbaric marriage-bed by the Danube, and his empire destroyed. And as
for Honoria we know no more of her, she disappears from history,
though tradition has it that she spent the rest of her life in a
convent in southern Italy.
The two heroes of the Hunnish deluge in the West were Aetius, the
great general who broke Attila upon the plain of Chalons, and Leo the
pope surnamed the Great. Aetius had been unable to persuade his
victorious troops to march to the defence of Italy, and in this again
we see the growing failure of the imperial idea; but he was a great
soldier, and certainly the greatest minister that Valentinian III.
could boast. Nevertheless, after the death of Attila he seemed to the
emperor both dangerous and useless; dangerous because, like Stilicho,
he thought of the empire for his son, and useless because Valentinian
had recently placed his confidence in another, the eunuch Heraclius.
Just as Honorius contrived the murder of Stilicho, so did Valentinian
contrive to rid himself of Aetius, and with his own hand, for
Valentinian stabbed him himself in his palace on the Palatine Hill in
Rome, towards the end of 454.
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