The wreck of matter and the crash of worlds.”
But Attila did not mount his funeral pile. The day passed without attack upon Attila’s formidable position. King Theodoric lay dead upon the plain and his son Prince Thorismund, who had distinguished himself in the battle, was victoriously proclaimed King of the Visigoths.
Ætius, Valentinian’s able general, held in leash both the Romans and the Visigoths even while Attila slowly broke up camp and withdrew in long lines leading northward.
Effect.
The effect was that of victory for the allies. Rome was saved from a fresh infusion of barbarism whilst her Teutonic element was still semi-barbarous. The German characteristics—love of liberty, independence, and reverential regard for women—thus dominated the Christian civilization which now began to flourish vigorously out from the decadence of pagan Rome.
If, as Byron says,
“Cervantes laughed Spain’s chivalry away,”
then also it may be said that Lucan laughed Rome’s gods and goddesses away. The laugh is the most insidiously potent of all destructive forces when the laugher is loved and the times are attuned to hear. Not satire, not personal bitterness, not even the withering invectives of a Juvenal are as sweepingly effective as the quills of ridicule, the inescapable miasma of the laugh. Once let the grin distort the frown of Zeus and majesty trembles, awe smiles, reverence dies.
And so the pagan deities were dead; their temples empty and meaningless; and thundering Jove and jealous Juno and murderous Mars and all the other deifications of the all too human heart of man were impotently silent under the spell of the solemn central figure of the new religion—Christ on the Cross.
And the Church in the name and with the power of that sublime Sufferer taught the reverse of all that paganism had taught; of all that the world had hitherto heard and heeded; of all that the all too human heart of man held as dearest and best. “Love your enemies,” said the Church to the men who had fought at Chalons. “Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the clean of heart, Blessed are the peacemakers”, reiterated the Church to her semi-barbarous children. And they understood only in part, and they did deeds of appalling atrocity even while acquiescing to her teachings: for the will to do good was, indeed, emotionally present with them, but the power so to do failed them crucially. Yet their sins were of surface-passions not of the inmost heart; for they were ever in reverential awe of the sublime Sufferer on the Cross; for he spoke as no man ever yet had spoken, and he lived what he said, and he died praying for his murderers: and all this is not of man—as none knew better than they who knew the naked human heart.