[25] If I seem to have given fewer of the details of the battle itself
than its importance would warrant, my excuse must be that Gibbon has
enriched our language with a description of it too long for quotation
and too splendidly for rivalry. I have not, however, taken altogether
the same view of it that he has.
FOUNDATION OF VENICE
A.D. 452
THOMAS HODGKIN JOHN RUSKIN
The foundation of Venice (Venetia) is an incident in the history of
Attila's incursions, at the head of his Huns, into Italy after his
defeat at the battle of Chalons-sur-Marne. Venetia was then a large
and fertile province of Northern Italy, and fifty Venetian cities
flourished in peace and safety under the protection of the Empire.
After Attila's remorseless hordes had taken and destroyed Aquileia,
near the head of the Adriatic, they swept, with resistless fury,
through Venetia, whose cities were so utterly destroyed that their
very sites could henceforth scarcely be identified. The inhabitants
fled in large numbers to the shores of the Adriatic, where, at the
extremity of the gulf, a group of a hundred islets is separated by
shallows from the mainland of Italy.
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