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The might and glory which had of yore reared the imperial city to its throne of universal domination, had long ago departed from the degenerate and weak posterity of the world’s conquerors! The name of Roman was but the lucid meteor of the charnel imparting a faint lustre to corruption and decay! The bold hordes of the hardy north had oftentimes already avenged the wrongs done by the elder Cæsar, while the frail silken puppets, who had succeeded to his style and station, trembled in the unguarded capital at every rumor from beyond the Danube. For, to the limits of that mighty river had they extended, years before the time of which we write, their arms, their arts, their sciences, and their religion—the pure and holy doctrines of the crucified Redeemer. All the Dalmatian coast of the bright gulf of Venice, now little more known than the wilds of central Asia, was studded with fair towns, and gorgeous palaces, and gay suburban villas; and all the wide spread plains of Thrace and Thessaly, now forest-clad and pathless, save to the untamed klepht or barbarous tartar, waved white with crops of grain, and blushed with teeming vineyards, and nurtured a dense happy population. At times indeed the overwhelming deluge of barbarian warfare had burst upon those fertile regions; and, wheresoever it burst,
“With sweepy sway
Their arms, their arts, their gods were whirled away—”
yet ever, when the refluent billows ebbed, the grass had sprung up green and copious even in the horse tramps of the innumerable cavalry that swelled the armies of the north, and the succeeding summer had smiled on meads and vineyards abundant as before, and on a population careless and free and jocund.
But now a mightier name was on the wind—a wilder terror was abroad—Attila!—Attila—the dread Hun! Still all as yet was peace; and, although rumors were abroad of meetings beyond the Danube; of the bent bow—emblem of instant warfare—sent with the speed of horse o’er moor, morass, and mountain—although the tribute, paid yearly by the degenerate Cæsars, had been refused indignantly by the bold Marcian—bold, and wise, and worthy the best days of the republic!—although from all these tokens prudent men had foreseen the wrath to come, and brave men armed to meet it, and cowards fled before it; still careless and improvident the crowd maintained their usual demeanor, and toiled, and laughed, and bought, and sold, and feasted, and slept sound o’ nights, as though there were no such things on earth as rapine, and revenge, and merciless unmitigated war.
It was as sweet and beautiful an evening in the early autumn as ever looked down with bright and cheerful smile from the calm heavens upon man’s hour of rest, what time the labor and the burthen of the day all past and over, he gathers round him his blythe household, and no more dreaming of anxiety or toil or sorrow, looks confidently forward to a secure night and happy morrow. And never did the eye of day, rising or sitting, look down from his height upon a brighter or a happier assemblage than was gathered on that evening in a sweet rural villa, scarce a mile distant from the gates of Singidurum one of the frontier towns of Masia on the Danube.
It was a wedding eve—the wedding of two beings both young and beautiful and loving. Julia, the fairest of the province, the bright and noble daughter of its grave proconsul, famed for her charms, her arts, her wit and elegance, even in the great Rome itself before her father had taken on himself—alas! in an evil hour—the duties and the honors of that remote provincial government—and brave Aurelius, the patrician—Aurelius, who, though not yet had he reached his thirtieth summer, had fought in nine pitched battles, besides affairs of posts and skirmishes past counting—won no less than five civic crowns, for the lives saved of Romans on the field, and collars, and horse trappings, and gold bracelets, as numerous as were awarded to the deeds of Marius, when valor was a common virtue in Rome’s martial offspring.
They were a noble pair, and beautiful, as noble—well-matched—she, light as the summer cloud and airy as its zephyr and graceful as the vine that waves at every breath—he vigorous and tall as the young oak before the blight of eld has gnarled one giant limb or scathed one wreath of its dark foliage.
Delicate, fair, and slender and tall beyond the middle height of woman with a waist ‘shaped to love’s wish’ and every graceful outline full of rich rounded symmetry, young Julia was a thing to dream of as the inhabitant of some far bright Elysian, rather than to behold as an inmate of the rude heartless world. It seemed as though it were a sin that the sun’s ardent kiss should visit her transparent cheek too warmly, that any breath but that of the softest summer gale should wanton in the luxuriant ringlets of her long silky auburn hair—her eyes were blue and clear as the bosom of some pure moonlit fountain, and there was in them a wild, yet not unquiet gaze, half languor and half tenderness. She was indeed a creature but little fitted to battle with the cares and sorrows of this pilgrimage, and as she leaned on the stalwart arm of her warrior lover, hanging upon him as if confident in his vast strength and relying absolutely on his protection, and fixing the soft yearning gaze of those blue eyes full on his broad brow and expressive lineaments, no one could doubt that she had chosen well the partner who should support and guide her through this vale of tears and sin and sorrow.