Neither the accession of her son nor his marriage seem to have made
any real difference in the power of Placidia who, we may believe, not,
as Procopius asserts, by a cunning system of training by which she had
ruined his character, but rather by reason of her innate virility,
retained the reins of government in her own hands. Certainly she
ruled, the Augusta of the West, during the twelve years that remained
to her after her son's marriage. And when at last she died in Rome in
450, on the 27th November,[1] in the sixtieth year of her age, and a
few months after her nephew Theodosius II., and was borne in a last
triumph along the Via Flaminia, to be laid, seated in a chair of
cedar, in a sarcophagus of alabaster in the gorgeous mausoleum she had
prepared for herself beside the church of S. Croce in Ravenna, she
left Italy at least in a profound peace, so secure, as it seemed, that
the whole court had in that very year removed to Rome. It might appear
as though the barbarian had but awaited her passing to descend once
more upon the citadel of Europe.

[Footnote 1: Agnellus asserts that on the Ides of March in the year
following Placidia's death Ravenna suffered from a great fire, in
which many buildings perished, but he does not tell us what they
were.]




V

THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST