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But at Milan we have to seek for the so-called tomb of Athaulf in a side-chapel of a church which has lost all ancient character, and the so-called tomb of Stilicho, tho placed in the most venerable church of the city, stands in a strange position as the support of a pulpit.
His successors, Athaulf and Wallia, undertook to pacify Gaul and to recover Spain for the rulers of Ravenna; the second of these sovereigns was rewarded with a settlement, for himself and his followers, between the Loire and the Garonne . In the terrible battle of Troyes, against Attila the Hun , they did good service to the Roman cause; but both before and after that event they were chiefly occupied in extending their boundaries by force or fraud.
"When I was young," said King Athaulf the Visigoth, "I desired to obliterate the Roman name and to bring under the sway of the Goths all that once belonged to the Romans. But I learned better by experience. The Goths were licentious barbarians who would obey no laws; and to deprive the commonwealth of laws would have been a crime.
To the best minds of the eighth century the Roman Empire appeared, not as to an Athaulf or a Theodoric, a masterpiece of human statesmanship, but rather a divine institution, providentially created before the birth of Christ to school the nations for the universal domination of His Church.
In the Old and in the New Rome, and in Milan also, works of the same date exist; but either they do not form the chief objects of the city, or they have lost their character and position through later changes. If Ravenna boasts of the tombs of Honorius and Theodoric, Milan boasts also, truly or falsely, of the tombs of Stilicho and Athaulf.
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