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Updated: June 9, 2025
More came than were expressly invited; for, beyond the legitimate interest of the occasion, curiosity had been aroused by the gossip of Petronilla, and some whose connection with the Anician house was of the very slightest, hastened to present themselves at Basil's door.
Though a man of great ability, Anthemius, the new emperor, was unpopular with the Italians and the barbarians, and he, again, was deposed by Ricimer, and Olybrius, a senator of the Anician house, reigned in his stead, A.D. 472. It was then that Rome for the third time was sacked by one of her own generals.
Being the son of a freedman who had served in the Anician house, the bishop could not approach Maximus without excessive reverence; before Petronilla he was even more unduly awed. On Sunday morning the good prelate lay wakeful at the hour of matins, and with quavering voice chanted to himself the psalm of the office from which his weakness held him apart.
After much clanking, the door yielded, and an elderly servant, the freedman Eugenius, offered greeting to his lord. Basil's first question was whether Decius had been there; he learnt that his kinsman was now in the house, having come yesterday to reside here from the Anician palace beyond the Tiber. 'Tell him at once that I am here. Stay; I dare say he is in the library. I will go to him.
The senator Olybrius, of the Anician family, might esteem himself the lawful heir of the Western empire. He had married Placidia, the younger daughter of Valentinian, after she was restored by Genseric; who still detained her sister Eudoxia, as the wife, or rather as the captive, of his son.
She has confessed to the priest, and will utter no word more. Look to yourself; the air you breathe is deadly. And Basil, weak as a child, suffered himself to be led away. The library in Basil's house was a spacious, graceful room, offering at this day very much the same aspect as in the time of that ancestral Anician, who, when Aurelian ruled, first laid rolls and codices upon its shelves.
After a sleepless night he set out at sunrise, accompanied by Felix alone. Whether he would be admitted at Petronilla's door was quite uncertain; in any case, it would serve no purpose to go thither with a band of attendants, for the Anician house was sure to be strongly guarded.
The Anician family excelled in faith and in riches: they were the first of the Roman senate who embraced Christianity; and it is probable that Anicius Julian, who was afterwards consul and præfect of the city, atoned for his attachment to the party of Maxentius, by the readiness with which he accepted the religion of Constantine.
But Euzoius was an avowed Arian; Eudoxius differed little from him, and only the remaining scruples of Constantius delayed the victory of the Anomoeans. Flavius Claudius Julianus was the son of Constantine's half-brother, Julius Constantius, by his second wife, Basilina, a lady of the great Anician family.
As a wealthy orphan, he inherited the patrimony and honors of the Anician family, a name ambitiously assumed by the kings and emperors of the age; and the appellation of Manlius asserted his genuine or fabulous descent from a race of consuls and dictators, who had repulsed the Gauls from the Capitol, and sacrificed their sons to the discipline of the republic.
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