CHAPTER XVII: BEATA URBS.
"Many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye see." [29] THE enemy on the Danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of the mighty invading hosts of the fifth century.

Illusively repressed just now, those confused movements along the northern boundary of the Empire were destined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism, which, powerless to destroy the Christian church, was yet to suppress for a time the achieved culture of the pagan world.

The kingdom of Christ was to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beauty of the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly mistaken tradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it might almost seem at times, for eventual reconciliation thereto.

Meantime Italy had armed itself once more, in haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for the Alps.
Whatever misgiving the Roman people may [30] have felt as to the leadership of the younger was unexpectedly set at rest; though with some temporary regret for the loss of what had been, after all, a popular figure on the world's stage.

Travelling fraternally in the same litter with Aurelius, Lucius Verus was struck with sudden and mysterious disease, and died as he hastened back to Rome.