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Updated: June 21, 2025
The husband of Placidia, who, like most of his ancestors, had been invested with the consular dignity, might have continued to enjoy a secure and splendid fortune in the peaceful residence of Constantinople; nor does he appear to have been tormented by such a genius as cannot be amused or occupied, unless by the administration of an empire.
He had secretly persuaded Placidia to recall Boniface from the government of Africa; he secretly advised Boniface to disobey the Imperial summons: to the one, he represented the order as a sentence of death; to the other, he stated the refusal as a signal of revolt; and when the credulous and unsuspectful count had armed the province in his defence, Ætius applauded his sagacity in foreseeing the rebellion, which his own perfidy had excited.
It might seem more reasonable to find the Gothic king taking possession of the imperial palace, close to which the Augusta Galla Placidia had erected the church of S. Croce and her tomb. Perhaps this had been destroyed in the revolution or series of revolutions in which the empire in the West had fallen, perhaps it had been ruined in the Gothic siege which endured for some three years.
But her resistance ended with the ceremony of the nuptials: nor did Placidia refuse to become the mother of Honoria and Valentinian the Third, or to assume and exercise an absolute dominion over the mind of her grateful husband.
Italy, however, needed peace as badly as the Goths needed a secure retreat. And when negotiations were opened it was seen that their success depended entirely upon this question of Placidia. A treaty was drawn up of friendship and alliance between the Goths and the empire.
Have you seen Ravenna, Madame? It is an enchanted tomb where sparkling phantoms appear. The magic of death lies there. The mosaic works of Saint Vitale, with their barbarous angels and their aureolated empresses, make one feel the monstrous delights of the Orient. Despoiled to-day of its silver lamels, the grave of Galla Placidia is frightful under its crypt, luminous yet gloomy.
In their first interview at Carthage, the imaginary provocations were mutually explained; the opposite letters of Ætius were produced and compared; and the fraud was easily detected. Placidia and Boniface lamented their fatal error; and the count had sufficient magnanimity to confide in the forgiveness of his sovereign, or to expose his head to her future resentment.
At the time of the sacking of Rome this Gothic prince fell in love with Placidia, the sister of the Emperor Honorius; and after the fashion of his people, carried her away as his captive; not an unwilling one, we suspect, for we learn of her great devotion to her brave, strong wooer, with blond hair and blue eyes.
In the train rapide a little later, Placidia, when arranging her wraps for the night journey, chanced, among the medley of her belongings, upon a missing boat-ticket whose absence at the proper time had threatened complications. She burst into good-humoured laughter at the discovery. "Why, here's the ticket that man made all the fuss about.
The authority of Jornandes, who praises the beauty of Placidia, may perhaps be counterbalanced by the silence, the expressive silence, of her flatterers: yet the splendor of her birth, the bloom of youth, the elegance of manners, and the dexterous insinuation which she condescended to employ, made a deep impression on the mind of Adolphus; and the Gothic king aspired to call himself the brother of the emperor.
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