Epitome of the Progress of Natural Science. 151 



against his enemies, and when he was disgraced by Honorius, he 

 voluntarily retired from the world. Certainly, if great events 

 alone are wanting to inspire writers, these were not wanting, 

 but they were events rarely illustrated by examples of virtue : 

 they arose out of the ruin of a corrupted empire ; and nobleness 

 of conduct, as well as the sympathy due to true dignity were 

 wanting to them. The Roman Republic, a prey to the head- 

 strong passions and misrule of a few sanguinary chieftians, (these 

 rapidly and tragically removed by their own turbulent soldiery,) 

 foreign and civil wars, the repeated invasions of the barbarians, 

 the frightful desolations consequent upon them,* and the absence 

 of the pristine Roman virtue and courage, these were the un- 

 happy events presenting themselves to the Roman poets and his- 

 torians ; events least of all calculated to incite generous minds to 

 perpetuate the remembrance, of what every Roman breast could 

 not but revolt at. The Goth Odoacer, having dethroned the last 

 of the western Emperors in the person of Augustulus in 475, 

 was himself driven from the throne in 493 by the Ostrogoth The- 

 odoric. This prince, who had been educated at Constantinople, 

 was, to a certain extent, the protector of letters, although he had 

 never been taught to sign his own name. The manner in which 

 he signed his edicts, is characteristic of himself, and of the age in 

 which he lived. The five first letters ^ of his name were cut 

 through a golden blade, and by drawing his pen through the 

 openings, he produced the letters T, H, E, O, D. The venerable 

 Cassiodorus, who obtained and never abused his confidence, was 

 one of the wisest and best men of his time. Arts and letters 

 were eminently favoured by him, himself, being a writer only 

 second to Boethius, the accomplished author of a work, entitled, 

 " De Consolatione Philosophise," written during his imprisonment. 

 Boethius is the last of the Roman writers, now held in any esti- 

 mation, and was barbarously and unjustly put to death, under 

 the crudest tortures, by Theodoric : in despite of the high repu- 

 tation he had acquired, in a glorious reign of thirty years, by this 

 act he has shown that he was intrinsically a barbarian. 



' Justinian, Emperor of the East, to dehver Italy from the power 

 of the Ostrogoths, sent his general Belisarius there, who achieved 



* Alaric and the Goths sacked Rome three days in 409. Pope Leo ransomed it 

 from Attila and the Huns in 452. Six years afterwards Genseric and the Vandals 

 sacked it during fourteen days ; and in 475 Odoacer at the head of the Heruli, caused 

 himself to be crowned king of Italy, in the city of Rome. 



