Some score of
glebe-bound peasants cultivated the large estate for their lord's
behoof. Notwithstanding the distress that had fallen upon the Roman
nobility, many of whom were sunk into indigence, the chief of the
Anicii still controlled large means; and the disposal of these
possessions at his death was matter of interest to many persons--
not least to the clergy of Rome, who found in the dying man's sister
a piously tenacious advocate. Children had been born to Maximus, but
the only son who reached mature years fell a victim to pestilence
when Vitiges was camped about the City. There survived one daughter,
Aurelia. Her the father had not seen for years; her he longed to see
and to pardon ere he died. For Aurelia, widowed of her first husband
in early youth, had used her liberty to love and wed a flaxen-haired
barbarian, a lord of the Goths; and, worse still, had renounced the
Catholic faith for the religion of the Gothic people, that heresy of
Arianism condemned and abhorred by Rome. In Consequence she became
an outcast from her kith and kin. Her husband commanded in the city
of Cumae, hard by Neapolis.
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