By his second wife he had Valentinian the
Second, who, upon the death of his brother Gratian, was allowed to share
the empire by Theodosius. Theodosius, by his first wife, had two sons,--
Arcadius, who afterwards reigned in the east, and Honorius, whose western
reign was so much illustrated by Stilicho. By a second wife, daughter to
Valentinian the First, Theodosius had a daughter, (half-sister, therefore,
to Honorius,) whose son was Valentinian the Third.] in whose descendant,
of the third generation, the empire, properly speaking, expired. For the
seven shadows who succeeded, from Avitus and Majorian to Julius Nepos and
Romulus Augustulus, were in no proper sense Roman emperors,--they were not
even emperors of the West,--but had a limited kingdom in the Italian
peninsula. Valentinian the Third was, as we have said, the last emperor of
the West.
But, in a fuller and ampler sense, recurring to what we have said of
Dioclesian and the tenor of his great revolutions, we may affirm that
Probus and Carus were the final representatives of the majesty of Rome:
for they reigned over the whole empire, not yet incapable of sustaining
its own unity; and in them were still preserved, not yet obliterated by
oriental effeminacy, those majestic features which reflected republican
consuls, and, through them, the senate and people of Rome.
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