njust confiscation of her
fortune, cooled the ardor of her interested lover; but he still
demanded, in the name of Attila, an equivalent alliance; and, after
many ambiguous delays and excuses, the Byzantine court was compelled to
sacrifice to this insolent stranger the widow of Armatius, whose birth,
opulence, and beauty, placed her in the most illustrious rank of the
Roman matrons. For these importunate and oppressive embassies, Attila
claimed a suitable return: he weighed, with suspicious pride, the
character and station of the Imperial envoys; but he condescended to
promise that he would advance as far as Sardica to receive any ministers
who had been invested with the consular dignity. The council of
Theodosius eluded this proposal, by representing the desolate and ruined
condition of Sardica, and even ventured to insinuate that every officer
of the army or household was qualified to treat with the most powerful
princes of Scythia. Maximin, [40] a respectable courtier, whose
abilities had been long exercised in civil and military employments,
accepted, with reluctance, the troublesome, and perhaps dangerous,
commission of reconciling the angry spirit of the king of the Huns.
His friend, the historian Priscus, [41] embraced the opportunity of
observing the Barbarian hero in the peaceful and domestic scenes of
life: but the secret of the embassy, a fatal and guilty secret, was
intrusted only to the interpreter Vigilius. The two last ambassadors
of the Huns, Orestes, a noble subject of the Pannonian province, and
Edecon, a valiant chieftain of the tribe of the Scyrri, returned at the
same time from Constantinople to the royal camp. Their obscure names
were afterwards illustrated by the extraordinary fortune and the
contrast of their sons: the two servants of Attila became the fathers of
the last Roman emperor of the West, and of the first Barbarian king of
Italy.

[Footnote 38: Montesquieu (Considerations sur la Grandeur, &c. c. xix.)
has delineated, with a bold and easy pencil, some of the most striking
circumstances of the pride of Attila, and the disgrace of the Romans. He
deserves the praise of having read the Fragments of Priscus, which have
been too much disregarded.]

[Footnote 39: See Priscus, p. 69, 71, 72, &c. I would fain believe, that
this adventurer was afterwards crucified by the order of Attila, on a
suspicion of treasonable practices; but Priscus (p. 57) has too plainly
distinguished two persons of the