THE RETREAT OF ATTILA AND THE BATTLE OF THE CATALAUNIAN PLAINS 111 CHAPTER VIII ATTILA’S ATTACK UPON AND RETREAT FROM ITALY 127 CHAPTER IX ATTILA’S HOME-COMING 145 MAIN SOURCES I. AMMIANI MARCELLINI RERUM GESTARUM, LIBER XXXI 153 II. EX HISTORIA BYZANTINA PRISCI RHETORIS ET SOPHISTAE 159 EX HISTORIA GOTHICA PRISCI RHETORIS ET SOPHISTAE 170 III. JORNANDES: DE REBUS GETICIS 207 IV. EX VITA MS. SANCTI ANIANI EPISCOPI AURELIANENSIS 225 I THE EMPIRE AND THE BARBARIANS At the opening of the fifth century of our era the Roman Empire had long been not only the civilised world but Christendom. The four centuries which had passed since the birth of Our Lord had seen in fact the foundation of Europe, not as we know it to-day a mosaic of hostile nationalities, but as one perfect whole in which all that is worth having in the world lay like a treasure. There were born and founded that they might always endure, the culture, the civilisation and the Faith which we enjoy and by which we live. There were established for ever the great lines upon which our art was to develop, to change and yet not to die. There was erected the supremacy of the idea that it might always renew our lives, our culture, and our polity, that we might always judge everything by it and fear neither revolution, nor defeat nor decay. There we Europeans were established in the secure possession of our own souls; so that we alone in the world develop from within to change but never to die, and to be, alone in the world, Christians.