The phenomena of the fourth trumpet are thus briefly sketched by Mr. Elliott: "The vision has passed; the fourth angel sounds. Hitherto, though its land, its sea, and its frontier rivers and fountains of waters have been desolated, yet the sun has still continued shining on the Western Empire as before. But now at length this too is affected. To the extent of a third part of its orb, it suffers eclipse. The shadow falls over the Western Empire. Then the night supervenes. And see the eclipsing influences act on the luminaries of the night also. Presently the Western third of the moon becomes eclipsed; and of the stars scattered over the symbolic firmament, all that are in the third of the Roman sky, are darkened also."

Thus, by the judgments of the first, second, and third, trumpets, the final catastrophe was preparing, by which the emperors of the west and their dominions were to be extinguished. Rome’s glory had long departed; its provinces severally and successively separated from it; the territory still remaining to it had become like a desert; and its maritime dependencies, and its fleets and commerce, been annihilated. Little remained to it but the vain titles and insignia of sovereignty; and now the time was come that, by the smiting of the fourth trumpet, these too were to be withdrawn; and that the imperial, or Sixth Head of the Roman Dragon should be "as it were slain unto death," and give place to the SEVENTH HEAD, which had not then yet come, and which, "when he cometh, must continue a short space" (Apoc. xiii. 3; xvii. 10).

The blast of the fourth trumpet when it began to sound, found Romulus Augustulus, A.D. 476, the last and feeblest of emperors, upon the throne of the catholic dominion of the West. He was placed there by his father Orestes, the secretary of state to the imperious Attila: and after his death "Patrician, and Master General" of the barbarian confederates in the service of the Western empire, who formed the defence and the terror of Italy. They oppressed and insulted the last remains of Roman freedom and dignity. Their insolence and avarice at length prompted them peremptorily to demand, that a third part of the lands of Italy should be immediately divided among them. But Orestes rejected the audacious demand. The standard of revolt was raised, therefore, by the bold barbarian ODOACER. From all the camps and garrisons of Italy, the confederates flocked to the standard of this popular leader. Overwhelmed by the torrent, Orestes entrenched himself in Pavia, which was stormed and pillaged; and the tumult could be appeased only by his execution. This "smiting" left Augustulus at the mercy of Odoacer, whose clemency he was induced to implore.

The success of this revolt elevated the king of the Heruli to the Vicegerency of the Emperor of the West. But deeming the imperial office both useless and expensive, Odoacer determined to abolish it. The unfortunate Augustulus was made the instrument of his own disgrace, by sending in his resignation to the Senate. An epistle was addressed by their unanimous decree to Zeno, the contemporary incumbent of the Byzantine throne. In this document, they solemnly "disclaim the necessity, or even the wish, of continuing any longer the succession in Italy; since, in their opinion, the Majesty of a Sole Monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect, at the same time, both the east and the west. In their own name, and in the name of the people, they consent that the Throne of Universal Empire shall be transferred from Rome to Constantinople; while they renounce the right of choosing a master, the only vestige that yet remained of the authority which had given laws to the world. The republic might safely confide in the civil and military virtues of Odoacer; and they humbly request, that the Emperor would invest him with the title of PATRICIAN, and the administration of the diocese of Italy." After some display of displeasure and indignation, Zeno’s prudence and vanity prevailed. He was gratified by the title of SOLE EMPEROR, and by the statues erected to his honor in the several quarters of Rome. He gratefully accepted the imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the throne and palace, which the Patrician Odoacer was not unwilling to remove from the sight of the people.

Speaking of Romulus Augustulus, whom Odoacer sent into banishment, Gibbon says, that of all the nine emperors of the last twenty years of the empire, Augustulus "would be the least entitled to the notice of posterity, if his reign, which was marked by the extinction of the Roman empire in the west, did not leave a memorable era in the history of mankind." The epoch was, indeed, remarkable and peculiar. The Roman Sun was still recognized as shining; but still it shed no administrative light in the west. One third of its face was pervaded by the shadow of a darkening body -- the administration of the Patrician of Italy. By this also the light of the Roman Moon was diminished one third; for of what account in the state were -the bishop of Rome and his clergy, while "the diocese of Italy" was the patrimony, not of St. Peter and his pretended successor, but of Odoacer and his military compatriots?

Odoacer was the first barbarian who reigned in Italy. The stern Ricimer had exercised the power, without assuming the title, of a king; so that the patient Romans were insensibly prepared to acknowledge the royalty of Odoacer and his barbaric successors. The laws of the emperors were strictly enforced, and the civil administration of Italy was still exercised by the praetorian praefect and his subordinates; while the Roman Magistrates were appointed by Odoacer to the odious and oppressive task of collecting the public revenue. Being an Arian Catholic, the Trinitarian Catholics of the Italian Diocese were in eclipse. Their sect no longer constituted the State Church. The bishop of Rome was now the mere bishop of churches in Rome; and he and his clergy were nothing but sectaries and dissenters. The absence of catholic abuse of the Patrician by his contemporaries, attests the toleration which they enjoyed. His praefect, however, had to interfere in the choice of their bishop that the peace of the city might be preserved. They regarded this interference with disgust; but being under eclipse they could not help themselves. The brightness of their ecclesiasticism was darkened over them; and Trinitarian churches had to submit to the humiliation and defilement of heretical Arian interference in the election of a so-called Successor of St. Peter and St. Paul!

Notwithstanding the prudence and success of Odoacer, his patriciate exhibited the sad prospect of misery and desolation. The country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, famine, and pestilence; and Gelasius, the Roman bishop, and one of Odoacer’s subjects, affirms, that in Aemilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated. The plebeians of Rome, who were fed by the hand of their master, perished or disappeared, as soon as his liberality was suppressed; and the senators, "the stars" of the Roman firmament, bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury. One third of their ample estates was appropriated to the use of Odoacer’s confederates. Actual sufferings were imbittered by the fear of more dreadful evils; and as new lands were allotted to new swarms of barbarians, each senator, or "star," was apprehensive lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favorite villa, or his most profitable farm. But the darkening power was irresistible, and absolute master of their fortunes. Desiring to live, they owed some gratitude to the tyrant who spared their lives; and as he could have taken all, they had to accept the portion he was pleased to leave as his pure and voluntary gift.

But the end was not immediately. The judgments of the fourth trumpet had not yet "slain" the Imperial Head "as it were to death." Odoacer was the Patrician Representative of the Constantinopolitan Imperiality. He had ruled as such during fourteen years in Rome, and the epoch had now arrived. A.D. 489-493, that he should succumb to the superior genius of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who, after a march of seven hundred miles from the region of Illyria, descended from the Julian Alps, and displayed his invincible banners on the confines of Italy. After the loss of two battles, Zeno’s Patrician fled to Ravenna. Favored, however, again "by fortune," Odoacer reappeared upon the field in formidable array. The fierce conflict that ensued was finally decided by the victory of Verona, which conferred on Theodoric the independent royalty of Italy. The assassination of Odoacer, A.D. 493, left him without a rival, and the emperor of the East without a representative to administer the Diocese of Italy. From the Alps to the extremity of Campania, from Sicily to the Danube, and from Belgrade to the Atlantic Ocean, Theodoric reigned first King of the Seventh Head of the Beast. His royalty was proclaimed by the Goths, with a tardy, reluctant and ambiguous recognition by the emperor of the East. He maintained with a powerful hand, during a reign of thirty-three years, the balance of the West; and the Greeks themselves acknowledged that the heretical king of Italy reigned over the fairest portion of the darkened empire of the West.

"From a tender regard to the expiring prejudices of Rome, Theodoric declined the name, the purple and the diadem of the emperors; but he assumed," says Gibbon, "under the hereditary title of king, the whole substance and plenitude of imperial prerogative. His addresses to the Eastern Throne were respectful and ambiguous; he celebrated in pompous style the harmony of the two republics, applauded his own government as the perfect similitude of a sole and undivided empire, and claimed above the kings of the earth the same pre-eminence which he modestly allowed to the person or rank of Anastasius." Thus, while the jurisdiction and authority of the Sixth Head were completely darkened in Rome, after shining upon its Seven Hills for five hundred and twenty-four years, they continued in the light of imperial majesty to illume the eastern third of the catholic firmament. In regard to Rome, "it was slain as it were to death" by the Gothic sword. It seemed to be dead beyond all possibility of being "healed" or restored to life. It was expelled from the Seven Hills, and a new form of government established there, a Seventh Head, which claimed and possessed, and was able to maintain, the pre-eminence of its predecessor. In the recognition of the sovereignty of the Seventh Head, and the Horn-Powers that had established themselves in the sounding of these tempestuous trumpets, in Gaul, Spain and Africa, by the Sixth Head "the Dragon" had "ceded to the Beast his power, and his throne and a great authority"; so that the worshipful allegiance of catholics "in the whole earth" -- en hole te ge -- was divided between the Dragon and the Beast: as it is written, "they worshipped the dragon which gave power to the beast; and they worshipped the beast saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?" (xiii. 3,4).

Under the first king of the Seventh Head, prosperity and peace were revived under the shadow of the Seven Hills. Theodoric cultivated the affections of the Roman Senate and people. The nobles were flattered by sonorous epithets and formal professions of respect; while the people enjoyed, without fear or danger, order, plenty, and public amusements. But the reign of Theodoric was only a temporary arrest of judgment. The Seventh Head was only to "continue a short space" sixty years, which is "short" compared with the supremacy of the Sixth. This was to be "healed" of its "deadly wound," a process to be enacted at a great cost of blood and treasure. The death wound to the authority of the Sixth Head could only be "healed" by the destruction of the Seventh. When this should be abolished, the obscuration of the Imperial Roman "day and night" would cease. The fourth trumpet does not symbolize the healing of the deadly wound it judicially inflicted. To this our attention will be recalled in my exposition of Apoc. xiii.