And, indeed, in the heart of Attila there was more fear than hope, fear of the gods of this strange and lovely country he had ruined, of the gods of the marshes and the heats that were already devastating his armies with fever, of those gods Peter and Paul whom he had already learnt to dread in Gaul and whose City, the most ancient and the most holy in the world, it was in his heart next to ravage and to sack; fear of his own armies now heavy with loot and riches, anxious for home and already on the verge of starvation in a country they had made utterly barren; fear most of all, perhaps, of his own destiny. “What,” he asked himself, “if I conquer like Alaric only to die as he did?” That the very name of Rome was still terrible to the Barbarians is certain. They feared her name. Nevertheless the pride of Attila and his ambition conquered his fear of his army, of his destiny, of the name of Rome. He was determined to go on, and with this intention he ordered his troops to concentrate from Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan and Pavia upon Mantua, whence he proposed to cross the Po, probably at Hostilia, and so to descend upon the Via Emilia at Bologna. This move seems to have disturbed Rome profoundly. The enemies of Aetius were there in the ascendant with the Emperor, and their influence with the government was enough to cause a deep disquietude with regard to the strategy of the great general. They remembered Alaric; they remembered Radagaisus; they recalled the fate of Orleans, and the escape after the battle of Châlons, above all they whispered of Aquileia, Altinum and Concordia which were no more. In this state of panic they left Aetius out of account, they forgot the army of Marcian already on the move, they repudiated the whole strategy of their general and with it their own traditions. They decided to send an especial and unprecedented embassy to Attila, to offer a price for the safety of Italy. The ambassador they chose was the Pope. Perhaps this amazing act ought not to astonish us, for we have seen the like so often in Gaul. The acts of Anianus of Orleans, of Lupus of Troyes, should have prepared us for the supreme act of S. Leo the Great. That they have not done so is sufficient to prove to us that we have failed to understand the time. Moreover, this great embassy was not the first Leo had undertaken on behalf of the Imperial Court. During the pontificate of Sixtus III (432-40), when Leo was Roman Deacon, Valentinian III had sent him to Gaul to settle a dispute and bring about a reconciliation between Aetius their chief military commander in that province and Albinus the chief magistrate. Sixtus III died on August 19, 440, while Leo was in Gaul, and the ambassador was chosen as his successor.