Placidia died in the year 450, leaving the astute Ætius to avert the oncoming disaster by an alliance with the Ostrogoths against the Huns. For a quarter of a century she had had supreme power over the Western Empire. It is, perhaps, only an indication of mediocrity on her part that she could not avert the blows that fell upon it during that period, but it was a calamity for Rome. Her memory survived, in a singular way, for more than a thousand years. The pagan habit of cremating the bodies of Emperors and Empresses had been replaced by the Egyptian process of embalming, and Placidia had built a chapel at Ravenna for the reception of her body. There it sat, in a chair of cedar-wood, until the year 1577, when some children, thrusting a lighted taper into the tomb to see it better, set it aflame and reduced it to ashes. Meantime, another Empress of the West had appeared. In 437 Valentinian had married Licinia Eudoxia, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Eudocia, at Constantinople, and brought her to Italy. He had parted with a large slice of his Empire to Pulcheria and Theodosius for the honour, and is said to have held it lightly. The sequel will dispose us to believe his irregularities. A youth of eighteen at the time, frivolous, luxurious, and light-headed, he was content to enjoy the palace, and leave his mother, and then Ætius, to discharge his duties. Eudoxia could but idly follow the momentous movements of the nations, and appreciate the defeat of the Huns in the terrible battle of Chalons in 451; or shudder when, in the following year, Attila marched to the gates of Rome, demanding half the Empire as the dowry of his distant bride, Honoria; or when, in 453, the profligate Valentinian plunged his sword in the breast of his great minister Ætius. A grave personal tragedy was upon her. The court resided generally at Rome, where Valentinian enjoyed the larger and faster amusements of a metropolis. Here, in the year 455, he was stabbed by his soldiers, and a romantic story is told in connexion with his death. The story is rejected by a recent historical writer, Mr. Hodgkin (“Italy and her Invaders”), but Professor Bury has shown that it is probably true in substance. The full story, to which fictitious details may have been added before it reached Procopius, is that Valentinian, gambling heavily with the distinguished Senator Petronius Maximus, obtained his ring as a security for the money he had won. Maximus had a beautiful wife whom the Emperor desired, and he sent the ring to her with a summons to the palace. The unsuspecting lady was conducted to Valentinian’s apartments, and outraged by him. For this crime, and in virtue of the general discontent, Maximus had him slain and occupied his throne.