husband whom Placidia loved and lamented." On the seventh day of his
reign, however, Singeric was himself assassinated and Wallia, who then
became king of the Goths, after repeated representations backed at
last by the despatch of an army surrendered the princess to her
brother in exchange for 600,000 measures of wheat.

That must have been a strange home-coming for Placidia. Bought and
sold twice over, twice a fugitive, the companion of the rude Goth, she
is the most pathetic figure in all that terrible fifth century, and
never does she appear more pitiful than on her return from the camps
and the triumphs of the barbarians to the decadent splendour and the
corruption of the imperial court of Ravenna, and again as a captive, a
prize, booty.

For the man who had been at the head of that army whose approach, real
or supposed, had decided the Goths to deliver up the sister of the
emperor was Constantius, her old lover, he who had delayed her
marriage with Ataulfus and who now determined to marry her himself.

It was in 416 that Placidia returned to Ravenna. In the following year
Honorius gave her to Constantius, then his colleague in the consular
office for the second time. The marriage ceremony of very great
splendour took place in Ravenna; and in the same year was born of that
marriage Honoria, who was to offer herself to Attila, and in 419
Valentinian, one day to be emperor.

That marriage soon had the result Constantius had intended. In 421
Honorius was compelled to associate him with himself on the imperial
throne and to give to Placidia the title of Augusta. The new emperor,
however, survived his elevation to the throne but seven months and