Chapter 13

In the year of our Lord 423, Theodosius the Younger, next after Honorius and forty-fifth in succession from Augustus, ruled the Empire for twenty-six years. In the eighth year of his reign, the Roman Pontiff Celestine sent Palladius¹ to the Irish who believed in Christ to be their first bishop. In the twenty-third year of his reign, Aëtius, an illustrious patrician, became Consul for the third time together with Symmachus. To him the wretched remnant of the Britons sent a letter, which commences: ‘To Aëtius, thrice Consul, come the groans of the Britons’, and in the course of the letter they describe their calamities: ‘The barbarians drive us into the sea, and the sea drives us back to the barbarians. Between these, two deadly alternatives confront us, drowning or slaughter.’ But even this plea could not obtain help; for at the time Aëtius was already engaged in two serious wars with Blaedla and Attila, the kings of the Huns. And although Blaedla had been assassinated the previous year through the treachery of his brother Attila, the latter remained so dangerous an enemy to the State that he devastated nearly all Europe, invading and destroying cities and strongholds alike. During this period there was a famine at Constantinople, followed closely by a plague, and much of the walls of that city and fifty-seven towers fell into ruin. Many other cities fell into disrepair, and the polluting stench of rotting corpses spread disease among men and beasts alike.