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The Project Gutenberg Etext of History Of The Decline And Fall Of The
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#2 in our format series by Edward Gibbon, Esq. With notes by the Rev. H.
H. Milman


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History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Volume 3


by Edward Gibbon, Esq. With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

April, 1997  [Etext # 892]


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This is volume three of the six volumes of Edward Gibbon's History Of
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. If you find any errors please
feel free to notify me of them. I want to make this the best etext
edition possible for both scholars and the general public. Especially
Dale R. Fredrickson who has hand entered the Greek characters in the
footnotes and who has suggested retaining the conjoined ae character in
the text.  [e-mail] and [e-mail] are my email
addresses for now. Please feel free to send me your comments and I hope
you enjoy this.

David Reed

History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon, Esq.  With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman  Vol. 3  1782
(Written), 1845 (Revised)

Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius.

Part I.

Death Of Gratian. -- Ruin Of Arianism. -- St. Ambrose. -- First Civil
War, Against Maximus. -- Character, Administration, And Penance Of
Theodosius. -- Death Of Valentinian II. -- Second Civil War, Against
Eugenius. -- Death Of Theodosius.

The fame of Gratian, before he had accomplished the twentieth year of
his age, was equal to that of the most celebrated princes. His gentle
and amiable disposition endeared him to his private friends, the
graceful affability of his manners engaged the affection of the people:
the men of letters, who enjoyed the liberality, acknowledged the taste
and eloquence, of their sovereign; his valor and dexterity in arms were
equally applauded by the soldiers; and the clergy considered the humble
piety of Gratian as the first and most useful of his virtues. The
victory of Colmar had delivered the West from a formidable invasion; and
the grateful provinces of the East ascribed the merits of Theodosius to
the author of his greatness, and of the public safety. Gratian survived
those memorable events only four or five years; but he survived his
reputation; and, before he fell a victim to rebellion, he had lost, in a
great measure, the respect and confidence of the Roman world.

The remarkable alteration of his character or conduct may not be imputed
to the arts of flattery, which had besieged the son of Valentinian from
his infancy; nor to the headstrong passions which the that gentle youth
appears to have escaped. A more attentive view of the life of Gratian
may perhaps suggest the true cause of the disappointment of the public
hopes. His apparent virtues, instead of being the hardy productions of
experience and adversity, were the premature and artificial fruits of a
royal education. The anxious tenderness of his father was continually
employed to bestow on him those advantages, which he might perhaps
esteem the more highly, as he himself had been deprived of them; and the
most skilful masters of every science, and of every art, had labored to
form the mind and body of the young prince. The knowledge which they
painfully communicated was displayed with ostentation, and celebrated
with lavish praise. His soft and tractable disposition received the fair
impression of their judicious precepts, and the absence of passion might
easily be mistaken for the strength of reason. His preceptors gradually
rose to the rank and consequence of ministers of state:  and, as they
wisely dissembled their secret authority, he seemed to act with
firmness, with propriety, and with judgment, on the most important
occasions of his life and reign. But the influence of this elaborate
instruction did not penetrate beyond the surface; and the skilful
preceptors, who so accurately guided the steps of their royal pupil,
could not infuse into his feeble and indolent character the vigorous and
independent principle of action which renders the laborious pursuit of
glory essentially necessary to the happiness, and almost to the
existence, of the hero. As soon as time and accident had removed those
faithful counsellors from the throne, the emperor of the West insensibly
descended to the level of his natural genius; abandoned the reins of
government to the ambitious hands which were stretched forwards to grasp
them; and amused his leisure with the most frivolous gratifications. A
public sale of favor and injustice was instituted, both in the court and
in the provinces, by the worthless delegates of his power, whose merit
it was made sacrilegeto question.  The conscience of the credulous
prince was directed by saints and bishops;  who procured an Imperial
edict to punish, as a capital offence, the violation, the neglect, or
even the ignorance, of the divine law.  Among the various arts which had
exercised the youth of Gratian, he had applied himself, with singular
inclination and success, to manage the horse, to draw the bow, and to
dart the javelin; and these qualifications, which might be useful to a
soldier, were prostituted to the viler purposes of hunting. Large parks
were enclosed for the Imperial pleasures, and plentifully stocked with
every species of wild beasts; and Gratian neglected the duties, and even
the dignity, of his rank, to consume whole days in the vain display of
his dexterity and boldness in the chase. The pride and wish of the Roman
emperor to excel in an art, in which he might be surpassed by the
meanest of his slaves, reminded the numerous spectators of the examples
of Nero and Commodus, but the chaste and temperate Gratian was a
stranger to their monstrous vices; and his hands were stained only with
the blood of animals.  The behavior of Gratian, which degraded his
character in the eyes of mankind, could not have disturbed the security
of his reign, if the army had not been provoked to resent their peculiar
injuries. As long as the young emperor was guided by the instructions of
his masters, he professed himself the friend and pupil of the soldiers;
many of his hours were spent in the familiar conversation of the camp;
and the health, the comforts, the rewards, the honors, of his faithful
troops, appeared to be the objects of his attentive concern. But, after
Gratian more freely indulged his prevailing taste for hunting and
shooting, he naturally connected himself with the most dexterous
ministers of his favorite amusement. A body of the Alani was received
into the military and domestic service of the palace; and the admirable
skill, which they were accustomed to display in the unbounded plains of
Scythia, was exercised, on a more narrow theatre, in the parks and
enclosures of Gaul. Gratian admired the talents and customs of these
favorite guards, to whom alone he intrusted the defence of his person;
and, as if he meant to insult the public opinion, he frequently showed
himself to the soldiers and people, with the dress and arms, the long
bow, the sounding quiver, and the fur garments of a Scythian warrior.
The unworthy spectacle of a Roman prince, who had renounced the dress
and manners of his country, filled the minds of the legions with grief
and indignation.  Even the Germans, so strong and formidable in the
armies of the empire, affected to disdain the strange and horrid
appearance of the savages of the North, who, in the space of a few
years, had wandered from the banks of the Volga to those of the Seine. A
loud and licentious murmur was echoed through the camps and garrisons of
the West; and as the mild indolence of Gratian neglected to extinguish
the first symptoms of discontent, the want of love and respect was not
supplied by the influence of fear. But the subversion of an established
government is always a work of some real, and of much apparent,
difficulty; and the throne of Gratian was protected by the sanctions of
custom, law, religion, and the nice balance of the civil and military
powers, which had been established by the policy of Constantine. It is
not very important to inquire from what cause the revolt of Britain was
produced. Accident is commonly the parent of disorder; the seeds of
rebellion happened to fall on a soil which was supposed to be more
fruitful than any other in tyrants and usurpers;  the legions of that
sequestered island had been long famous for a spirit of presumption and
arrogance;  and the name of Maximus was proclaimed, by the tumultuary,
but unanimous voice, both of the soldiers and of the provincials. The
emperor, or the rebel, -- for this title was not yet ascertained by
fortune, -- was a native of Spain, the countryman, the fellow-soldier,
and the rival of Theodosius whose elevation he had not seen without some
emotions of envy and resentment: the events of his life had long since
fixed him in Britain; and I should not be unwilling to find some
evidence for the marriage, which he is said to have contracted with the
daughter of a wealthy lord of Caernarvonshire.  But this provincial rank
might justly be considered as a state of exile and obscurity; and if
Maximus had obtained any civil or military office, he was not invested
with the authority either of governor or general.  His abilities, and
even his integrity, are acknowledged by the partial writers of the age;
and the merit must indeed have been conspicuous that could extort such a
confession in favor of the vanquished enemy of Theodosius. The
discontent of Maximus might incline him to censure the conduct of his
sovereign, and to encourage, perhaps, without any views of ambition, the
murmurs of the troops. But in the midst of the tumult, he artfully, or
modestly, refused to ascend the throne; and some credit appears to have
been given to his own positive declaration, that he was compelled to
accept the dangerous present of the Imperial purple.

But there was danger likewise in refusing the empire; and from the
moment that Maximus had violated his allegiance to his lawful sovereign,
he could not hope to reign, or even to live, if he confined his moderate
ambition within the narrow limits of Britain. He boldly and wisely
resolved to prevent the designs of Gratian; the youth of the island
crowded to his standard, and he invaded Gaul with a fleet and army,
which were long afterwards remembered, as the emigration of a
considerable part of the British nation.  The emperor, in his peaceful
residence of Paris, was alarmed by their hostile approach; and the darts
which he idly wasted on lions and bears, might have been employed more
honorably against the rebels. But his feeble efforts announced his
degenerate spirit and desperate situation; and deprived him of the
resources, which he still might have found, in the support of his
subjects and allies. The armies of Gaul, instead of opposing the march
of Maximus, received him with joyful and loyal acclamations; and the
shame of the desertion was transferred from the people to the prince.
The troops, whose station more immediately attached them to the service
of the palace, abandoned the standard of Gratian the first time that it
was displayed in the neighborhood of Paris. The emperor of the West fled
towards Lyons, with a train of only three hundred horse; and, in the
cities along the road, where he hoped to find refuge, or at least a
passage, he was taught, by cruel experience, that every gate is shut
against the unfortunate. Yet he might still have reached, in safety, the
dominions of his brother; and soon have returned with the forces of
Italy and the East; if he had not suffered himself to be fatally
deceived by the perfidious governor of the Lyonnese province. Gratian
was amused by protestations of doubtful fidelity, and the hopes of a
support, which could not be effectual; till the arrival of Andragathius,
the general of the cavalry of Maximus, put an end to his suspense. That
resolute officer executed, without remorse, the orders or the intention
of the usurper. Gratian, as he rose from supper, was delivered into the
hands of the assassin: and his body was denied to the pious and pressing
entreaties of his brother Valentinian.  The death of the emperor was
followed by that of his powerful general Mellobaudes, the king of the
Franks; who maintained, to the last moment of his life, the ambiguous
reputation, which is the just recompense of obscure and subtle policy.
These executions might be necessary to the public safety: but the
successful usurper, whose power was acknowledged by all the provinces of
the West, had the merit, and the satisfaction, of boasting, that, except
those who had perished by the chance of war, his triumph was not stained
by the blood of the Romans.

The events of this revolution had passed in such rapid succession, that
it would have been impossible for Theodosius to march to the relief of
his benefactor, before he received the intelligence of his defeat and
death. During the season of sincere grief, or ostentatious mourning, the
Eastern emperor was interrupted by the arrival of the principal
chamberlain of Maximus; and the choice of a venerable old man, for an
office which was usually exercised by eunuchs, announced to the court of
Constantinople the gravity and temperance of the British usurper. The
ambassador condescended to justify, or excuse, the conduct of his
master; and to protest, in specious language, that the murder of Gratian
had been perpetrated, without his knowledge or consent, by the
precipitate zeal of the soldiers. But he proceeded, in a firm and equal
tone, to offer Theodosius the alternative of peace, or war. The speech
of the ambassador concluded with a spirited declaration, that although
Maximus, as a Roman, and as the father of his people, would choose
rather to employ his forces in the common defence of the republic, he
was armed and prepared, if his friendship should be rejected, to
dispute, in a field of battle, the empire of the world. An immediate and
peremptory answer was required; but it was extremely difficult for
Theodosius to satisfy, on this important occasion, either the feelings
of his own mind, or the expectations of the public. The imperious voice
of honor and gratitude called aloud for revenge. From the liberality of
Gratian, he had received the Imperial diadem; his patience would
encourage the odious suspicion, that he was more deeply sensible of
former injuries, than of recent obligations; and if he accepted the
friendship, he must seem to share the guilt, of the assassin. Even the
principles of justice, and the interest of society, would receive a
fatal blow from the impunity of Maximus; and the example of successful
usurpation would tend to dissolve the artificial fabric of government,
and once more to replunge the empire in the crimes and calamities of the
preceding age. But, as the sentiments of gratitude and honor should
invariably regulate the conduct of an individual, they may be
overbalanced in the mind of a sovereign, by the sense of superior
duties; and the maxims both of justice and humanity must permit the
escape of an atrocious criminal, if an innocent people would be involved
in the consequences of his punishment. The assassin of Gratian had
usurped, but he actually possessed, the most warlike provinces of the
empire: the East was exhausted by the misfortunes, and even by the
success, of the Gothic war; and it was seriously to be apprehended,
that, after the vital strength of the republic had been wasted in a
doubtful and destructive contest, the feeble conqueror would remain an
easy prey to the Barbarians of the North. These weighty considerations
engaged Theodosius to dissemble his resentment, and to accept the
alliance of the tyrant. But he stipulated, that Maximus should content
himself with the possession of the countries beyond the Alps. The
brother of Gratian was confirmed and secured in the sovereignty of
Italy, Africa, and the Western Illyricum; and some honorable conditions
were inserted in the treaty, to protect the memory, and the laws, of the
deceased emperor.  According to the custom of the age, the images of the
three Imperial colleagues were exhibited to the veneration of the
people; nor should it be lightly supposed, that, in the moment of a
solemn reconciliation, Theodosius secretly cherished the intention of
perfidy and revenge.

The contempt of Gratian for the Roman soldiers had exposed him to the
fatal effects of their resentment. His profound veneration for the
Christian clergy was rewarded by the applause and gratitude of a
powerful order, which has claimed, in every age, the privilege of
dispensing honors, both on earth and in heaven.  The orthodox bishops
bewailed his death, and their own irreparable loss; but they were soon
comforted by the discovery, that Gratian had committed the sceptre of
the East to the hands of a prince, whose humble faith and fervent zeal,
were supported by the spirit and abilities of a more vigorous character.
Among the benefactors of the church, the fame of Constantine has been
rivalled by the glory of Theodosius. If Constantine had the advantage of
erecting the standard of the cross, the emulation of his successor
assumed the merit of subduing the Arian heresy, and of abolishing the
worship of idols in the Roman world. Theodosius was the first of the
emperors baptized in the true faith of the Trinity. Although he was born
of a Christian family, the maxims, or at least the practice, of the age,
encouraged him to delay the ceremony of his initiation; till he was
admonished of the danger of delay, by the serious illness which
threatened his life, towards the end of the first year of his reign.
Before he again took the field against the Goths, he received the
sacrament of baptism  from Acholius, the orthodox bishop of
Thessalonica:  and, as the emperor ascended from the holy font, still
glowing with the warm feelings of regeneration, he dictated a solemn
edict, which proclaimed his own faith, and prescribed the religion of
his subjects. "It is our pleasure (such is the Imperial style) that all
the nations, which are governed by our clemency and moderation, should
steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the
Romans; which faithful tradition has preserved; and which is now
professed by the pontiff Damasus, and by Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a
man of apostolic holiness. According to the discipline of the apostles,
and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe the sole deity of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; under an equal majesty, and a pious
Trinity. We authorize the followers of this doctrine to assume the title
of Catholic Christians; and as we judge, that all others are extravagant
madmen, we brand them with the infamous name of Heretics; and declare
that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the respectable
appellation of churches. Besides the condemnation of divine justice,
they must expect to suffer the severe penalties, which our authority,
guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict upon them."
The faith of a soldier is commonly the fruit of instruction, rather than
of inquiry; but as the emperor always fixed his eyes on the visible
landmarks of orthodoxy, which he had so prudently constituted, his
religious opinions were never affected by the specious texts, the subtle
arguments, and the ambiguous creeds of the Arian doctors. Once indeed he
expressed a faint inclination to converse with the eloquent and learned
Eunomius, who lived in retirement at a small distance from
Constantinople. But the dangerous interview was prevented by the prayers
of the empress Flaccilla, who trembled for the salvation of her husband;
and the mind of Theodosius was confirmed by a theological argument,
adapted to the rudest capacity. He had lately bestowed on his eldest
son, Arcadius, the name and honors of Augustus, and the two princes were
seated on a stately throne to receive the homage of their subjects. A
bishop, Amphilochius of Iconium, approached the throne, and after
saluting, with due reverence, the person of his sovereign, he accosted
the royal youth with the same familiar tenderness which he might have
used towards a plebeian child. Provoked by this insolent behavior, the
monarch gave orders, that the rustic priest should be instantly driven
from his presence. But while the guards were forcing him to the door,
the dexterous polemic had time to execute his design, by exclaiming,
with a loud voice, "Such is the treatment, O emperor! which the King of
heaven has prepared for those impious men, who affect to worship the
Father, but refuse to acknowledge the equal majesty of his divine Son."
Theodosius immediately embraced the bishop of Iconium, and never forgot
the important lesson, which he had received from this dramatic parable.

Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius. -- Part II.

Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and, in
a long interval of forty years,  the faith of the princes and prelates,
who reigned in the capital of the East, was rejected in the purer
schools of Rome and Alexandria. The archiepiscopal throne of Macedonius,
which had been polluted with so much Christian blood, was successively
filled by Eudoxus and Damophilus. Their diocese enjoyed a free
importation of vice and error from every province of the empire; the
eager pursuit of religious controversy afforded a new occupation to the
busy idleness of the metropolis; and we may credit the assertion of an
intelligent observer, who describes, with some pleasantry, the effects
of their loquacious zeal. "This city," says he, "is full of mechanics
and slaves, who are all of them profound theologians; and preach in the
shops, and in the streets. If you desire a man to change a piece of
silver, he informs you, wherein the Son differs from the Father; if you
ask the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply, that the Son is
inferior to the Father; and if you inquire, whether the bath is ready,
the answer is, that the Son was made out of nothing."  The heretics, of
various denominations, subsisted in peace under the protection of the
Arians of Constantinople; who endeavored to secure the attachment of
those obscure sectaries, while they abused, with unrelenting severity,
the victory which they had obtained over the followers of the council of
Nice. During the partial reigns of Constantius and Valens, the feeble
remnant of the Homoousians was deprived of the public and private
exercise of their religion; and it has been observed, in pathetic
language, that the scattered flock was left without a shepherd to wander
on the mountains, or to be devoured by rapacious wolves.  But, as their
zeal, instead of being subdued, derived strength and vigor from
oppression, they seized the first moments of imperfect freedom, which
they had acquired by the death of Valens, to form themselves into a
regular congregation, under the conduct of an episcopal pastor. Two
natives of Cappadocia, Basil, and Gregory Nazianzen,  were distinguished
above all their contemporaries,  by the rare union of profane eloquence
and of orthodox piety. These orators, who might sometimes be compared,
by themselves, and by the public, to the most celebrated of the ancient
Greeks, were united by the ties of the strictest friendship. They had
cultivated, with equal ardor, the same liberal studies in the schools of
Athens; they had retired, with equal devotion, to the same solitude in
the deserts of Pontus; and every spark of emulation, or envy, appeared
to be totally extinguished in the holy and ingenuous breasts of Gregory
and Basil. But the exaltation of Basil, from a private life to the
archiepiscopal throne of Cæsarea, discovered to the world, and perhaps
to himself, the pride of his character; and the first favor which he
condescended to bestow on his friend, was received, and perhaps was
intended, as a cruel insult.  Instead of employing the superior talents
of Gregory in some useful and conspicuous station, the haughty prelate
selected, among the fifty bishoprics of his extensive province, the
wretched village of Sasima,  without water, without verdure, without
society, situate at the junction of three highways, and frequented only
by the incessant passage of rude and clamorous wagoners. Gregory
submitted with reluctance to this humiliating exile; he was ordained
bishop of Sasima; but he solemnly protests, that he never consummated
his spiritual marriage with this disgusting bride. He afterwards
consented to undertake the government of his native church of Nazianzus,
of which his father had been bishop above five-and-forty years. But as
he was still conscious that he deserved another audience, and another
theatre, he accepted, with no unworthy ambition, the honorable
invitation, which was addressed to him from the orthodox party of
Constantinople. On his arrival in the capital, Gregory was entertained
in the house of a pious and charitable kinsman; the most spacious room
was consecrated to the uses of religious worship; and the name of
Anastasiawas chosen to express the resurrection of the Nicene faith.
This private conventicle was afterwards converted into a magnificent
church; and the credulity of the succeeding age was prepared to believe
the miracles and visions, which attested the presence, or at least the
protection, of the Mother of God.  The pulpit of the Anastasia was the
scene of the labors and triumphs of Gregory Nazianzen; and, in the space
of two years, he experienced all the spiritual adventures which
constitute the prosperous or adverse fortunes of a missionary.  The
Arians, who were provoked by the boldness of his enterprise, represented
his doctrine, as if he had preached three distinct and equal Deities;
and the devout populace was excited to suppress, by violence and tumult,
the irregular assemblies of the Athanasian heretics. From the cathedral
of St. Sophia there issued a motley crowd "of common beggars, who had
forfeited their claim to pity; of monks, who had the appearance of goats
or satyrs; and of women, more terrible than so many Jezebels." The doors
of the Anastasia were broke open; much mischief was perpetrated, or
attempted, with sticks, stones, and firebrands; and as a man lost his
life in the affray, Gregory, who was summoned the next morning before
the magistrate, had the satisfaction of supposing, that he publicly
confessed the name of Christ. After he was delivered from the fear and
danger of a foreign enemy, his infant church was disgraced and
distracted by intestine faction. A stranger who assumed the name of
Maximus,  and the cloak of a Cynic philosopher, insinuated himself into
the confidence of Gregory; deceived and abused his favorable opinion;
and forming a secret connection with some bishops of Egypt, attempted,
by a clandestine ordination, to supplant his patron in the episcopal
seat of Constantinople. These mortifications might sometimes tempt the
Cappadocian missionary to regret his obscure solitude. But his fatigues
were rewarded by the daily increase of his fame and his congregation;
and he enjoyed the pleasure of observing, that the greater part of his
numerous audience retired from his sermons satisfied with the eloquence
of the preacher,  or dissatisfied with the manifold imperfections of
their faith and practice.

The Catholics of Constantinople were animated with joyful confidence by
the baptism and edict of Theodosius; and they impatiently waited the
effects of his gracious promise. Their hopes were speedily accomplished;
and the emperor, as soon as he had finished the operations of the
campaign, made his public entry into the capital at the head of a
victorious army. The next day after his arrival, he summoned Damophilus
to his presence, and offered that Arian prelate the hard alternative of
subscribing the Nicene creed, or of instantly resigning, to the orthodox
believers, the use and possession of the episcopal palace, the cathedral
of St. Sophia, and all the churches of Constantinople. The zeal of
Damophilus, which in a Catholic saint would have been justly applauded,
embraced, without hesitation, a life of poverty and exile,  and his
removal was immediately followed by the purification of the Imperial
city. The Arians might complain, with some appearance of justice, that
an inconsiderable congregation of sectaries should usurp the hundred
churches, which they were insufficient to fill; whilst the far greater
part of the people was cruelly excluded from every place of religious
worship. Theodosius was still inexorable; but as the angels who
protected the Catholic cause were only visible to the eyes of faith, he
prudently reënforced those heavenly legions with the more effectual aid
of temporal and carnal weapons; and the church of St. Sophia was
occupied by a large body of the Imperial guards. If the mind of Gregory
was susceptible of pride, he must have felt a very lively satisfaction,
when the emperor conducted him through the streets in solemn triumph;
and, with his own hand, respectfully placed him on the archiepiscopal
throne of Constantinople. But the saint (who had not subdued the
imperfections of human virtue) was deeply affected by the mortifying
consideration, that his entrance into the fold was that of a wolf,
rather than of a shepherd; that the glittering arms which surrounded his
person, were necessary for his safety; and that he alone was the object
of the imprecations of a great party, whom, as men and citizens, it was
impossible for him to despise. He beheld the innumerable multitude of
either sex, and of every age, who crowded the streets, the windows, and
the roofs of the houses; he heard the tumultuous voice of rage, grief,
astonishment, and despair; and Gregory fairly confesses, that on the
memorable day of his installation, the capital of the East wore the
appearance of a city taken by storm, and in the hands of a Barbarian
conqueror.  About six weeks afterwards, Theodosius declared his
resolution of expelling from all the churches of his dominions the
bishops and their clergy who should obstinately refuse to believe, or at
least to profess, the doctrine of the council of Nice. His lieutenant,
Sapor, was armed with the ample powers of a general law, a special
commission, and a military force;  and this ecclesiastical revolution
was conducted with so much discretion and vigor, that the religion of
the emperor was established, without tumult or bloodshed, in all the
provinces of the East. The writings of the Arians, if they had been
permitted to exist,  would perhaps contain the lamentable story of the
persecution, which afflicted the church under the reign of the impious
Theodosius; and the sufferings of theirholy confessors might claim the
pity of the disinterested reader. Yet there is reason to imagine, that
the violence of zeal and revenge was, in some measure, eluded by the
want of resistance; and that, in their adversity, the Arians displayed
much less firmness than had been exerted by the orthodox party under the
reigns of Constantius and Valens. The moral character and conduct of the
hostile sects appear to have been governed by the same common principles
of nature and religion: but a very material circumstance may be
discovered, which tended to distinguish the degrees of their theological
faith. Both parties, in the schools, as well as in the temples,
acknowledged and worshipped the divine majesty of Christ; and, as we are
always prone to impute our own sentiments and passions to the Deity, it
would be deemed more prudent and respectful to exaggerate, than to
circumscribe, the adorable perfections of the Son of God. The disciple
of Athanasius exulted in the proud confidence, that he had entitled
himself to the divine favor; while the follower of Arius must have been
tormented by the secret apprehension, that he was guilty, perhaps, of an
unpardonable offence, by the scanty praise, and parsimonious honors,
which he bestowed on the Judge of the World. The opinions of Arianism
might satisfy a cold and speculative mind: but the doctrine of the
Nicene creed, most powerfully recommended by the merits of faith and
devotion, was much better adapted to become popular and successful in a
believing age.

The hope, that truth and wisdom would be found in the assemblies of the
orthodox clergy, induced the emperor to convene, at Constantinople, a
synod of one hundred and fifty bishops, who proceeded, without much
difficulty or delay, to complete the theological system which had been
established in the council of Nice. The vehement disputes of the fourth
century had been chiefly employed on the nature of the Son of God; and
the various opinions which were embraced, concerning the Second, were
extended and transferred, by a natural analogy, to the Thirdperson of
the Trinity.  Yet it was found, or it was thought, necessary, by the
victorious adversaries of Arianism, to explain the ambiguous language of
some respectable doctors; to confirm the faith of the Catholics; and to
condemn an unpopular and inconsistent sect of Macedonians; who freely
admitted that the Son was consubstantial to the Father, while they were
fearful of seeming to acknowledge the existence of ThreeGods. A final
and unanimous sentence was pronounced to ratify the equal Deity of the
Holy Ghost: the mysterious doctrine has been received by all the
nations, and all the churches of the Christian world; and their grateful
reverence has assigned to the bishops of Theodosius the second rank
among the general councils.  Their knowledge of religious truth may have
been preserved by tradition, or it may have been communicated by
inspiration; but the sober evidence of history will not allow much
weight to the personal authority of the Fathers of Constantinople. In an
age when the ecclesiastics had scandalously degenerated from the model
of apostolic purity, the most worthless and corrupt were always the most
eager to frequent, and disturb, the episcopal assemblies. The conflict
and fermentation of so many opposite interests and tempers inflamed the
passions of the bishops: and their ruling passions were, the love of
gold, and the love of dispute. Many of the same prelates who now
applauded the orthodox piety of Theodosius, had repeatedly changed, with
prudent flexibility, their creeds and opinions; and in the various
revolutions of the church and state, the religion of their sovereign was
the rule of their obsequious faith. When the emperor suspended his
prevailing influence, the turbulent synod was blindly impelled by the
absurd or selfish motives of pride, hatred, or resentment. The death of
Meletius, which happened at the council of Constantinople, presented the
most favorable opportunity of terminating the schism of Antioch, by
suffering his aged rival, Paulinus, peaceably to end his days in the
episcopal chair. The faith and virtues of Paulinus were unblemished. But
his cause was supported by the Western churches; and the bishops of the
synod resolved to perpetuate the mischiefs of discord, by the hasty
ordination of a perjured candidate,  rather than to betray the imagined
dignity of the East, which had been illustrated by the birth and death
of the Son of God. Such unjust and disorderly proceedings forced the
gravest members of the assembly to dissent and to secede; and the
clamorous majority which remained masters of the field of battle, could
be compared only to wasps or magpies, to a flight of cranes, or to a
flock of geese.

A suspicion may possibly arise, that so unfavorable a picture of
ecclesiastical synods has been drawn by the partial hand of some
obstinate heretic, or some malicious infidel. But the name of the
sincere historian who has conveyed this instructive lesson to the
knowledge of posterity, must silence the impotent murmurs of
superstition and bigotry. He was one of the most pious and eloquent
bishops of the age; a saint, and a doctor of the church; the scourge of
Arianism, and the pillar of the orthodox faith; a distinguished member
of the council of Constantinople, in which, after the death of Meletius,
he exercised the functions of president; in a word -- Gregory Nazianzen
himself. The harsh and ungenerous treatment which he experienced,
instead of derogating from the truth of his evidence, affords an
additional proof of the spirit which actuated the deliberations of the
synod. Their unanimous suffrage had confirmed the pretensions which the
bishop of Constantinople derived from the choice of the people, and the
approbation of the emperor. But Gregory soon became the victim of malice
and envy. The bishops of the East, his strenuous adherents, provoked by
his moderation in the affairs of Antioch, abandoned him, without
support, to the adverse faction of the Egyptians; who disputed the
validity of his election, and rigorously asserted the obsolete canon,
that prohibited the licentious practice of episcopal translations. The
pride, or the humility, of Gregory prompted him to decline a contest
which might have been imputed to ambition and avarice; and he publicly
offered, not without some mixture of indignation, to renounce the
government of a church which had been restored, and almost created, by
his labors. His resignation was accepted by the synod, and by the
emperor, with more readiness than he seems to have expected. At the time
when he might have hoped to enjoy the fruits of his victory, his
episcopal throne was filled by the senator Nectarius; and the new
archbishop, accidentally recommended by his easy temper and venerable
aspect, was obliged to delay the ceremony of his consecration, till he
had previously despatched the rites of his baptism.  After this
remarkable experience of the ingratitude of princes and prelates,
Gregory retired once more to his obscure solitude of Cappadocia; where
he employed the remainder of his life, about eight years, in the
exercises of poetry and devotion. The title of Saint has been added to
his name: but the tenderness of his heart,  and the elegance of his
genius, reflect a more pleasing lustre on the memory of Gregory
Nazianzen.

It was not enough that Theodosius had suppressed the insolent reign of
Arianism, or that he had abundantly revenged the injuries which the
Catholics sustained from the zeal of Constantius and Valens. The
orthodox emperor considered every heretic as a rebel against the supreme
powers of heaven and of earth; and each of those powers might exercise
their peculiar jurisdiction over the soul and body of the guilty. The
decrees of the council of Constantinople had ascertained the true
standard of the faith; and the ecclesiastics, who governed the
conscience of Theodosius, suggested the most effectual methods of
persecution. In the space of fifteen years, he promulgated at least
fifteen severe edicts against the heretics;  more especially against
those who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity; and to deprive them of
every hope of escape, he sternly enacted, that if any laws or rescripts
should be alleged in their favor, the judges should consider them as the
illegal productions either of fraud or forgery. The penal statutes were
directed against the ministers, the assemblies, and the persons of the
heretics; and the passions of the legislator were expressed in the
language of declamation and invective. I. The heretical teachers, who
usurped the sacred titles of Bishops, or Presbyters, were not only
excluded from the privileges and emoluments so liberally granted to the
orthodox clergy, but they were exposed to the heavy penalties of exile
and confiscation, if they presumed to preach the doctrine, or to
practise the rites, of their accursedsects. A fine of ten pounds of gold
(above four hundred pounds sterling) was imposed on every person who
should dare to confer, or receive, or promote, an heretical ordination:
and it was reasonably expected, that if the race of pastors could be
extinguished, their helpless flocks would be compelled, by ignorance and
hunger, to return within the pale of the Catholic church. II. The
rigorous prohibition of conventicles was carefully extended to every
possible circumstance, in which the heretics could assemble with the
intention of worshipping God and Christ according to the dictates of
their conscience. Their religious meetings, whether public or secret, by
day or by night, in cities or in the country, were equally proscribed by
the edicts of Theodosius; and the building, or ground, which had been
used for that illegal purpose, was forfeited to the Imperial domain.
III. It was supposed, that the error of the heretics could proceed only
from the obstinate temper of their minds; and that such a temper was a
fit object of censure and punishment. The anathemas of the church were
fortified by a sort of civil excommunication; which separated them from
their fellow- citizens, by a peculiar brand of infamy; and this
declaration of the supreme magistrate tended to justify, or at least to
excuse, the insults of a fanatic populace. The sectaries were gradually
disqualified from the possession of honorable or lucrative employments;
and Theodosius was satisfied with his own justice, when he decreed,
that, as the Eunomians distinguished the nature of the Son from that of
the Father, they should be incapable of making their wills or of
receiving any advantage from testamentary donations. The guilt of the
Manichæan heresy was esteemed of such magnitude, that it could be
expiated only by the death of the offender; and the same capital
punishment was inflicted on the Audians, or Quartodecimans,  who should
dare to perpetrate the atrocious crime of celebrating on an improper day
the festival of Easter. Every Roman might exercise the right of public
accusation; but the office of Inquisitorsof the Faith, a name so
deservedly abhorred, was first instituted under the reign of Theodosius.
Yet we are assured, that the execution of his penal edicts was seldom
enforced; and that the pious emperor appeared less desirous to punish,
than to reclaim, or terrify, his refractory subjects.

The theory of persecution was established by Theodosius, whose justice
and piety have been applauded by the saints: but the practice of it, in
the fullest extent, was reserved for his rival and colleague, Maximus,
the first, among the Christian princes, who shed the blood of his
Christian subjects on account of their religious opinions. The cause of
the Priscillianists,  a recent sect of heretics, who disturbed the
provinces of Spain, was transferred, by appeal, from the synod of
Bordeaux to the Imperial consistory of Treves; and by the sentence of
the Prætorian præfect, seven persons were tortured, condemned, and
executed. The first of these was Priscillian  himself, bishop of Avila,
in Spain; who adorned the advantages of birth and fortune, by the
accomplishments of eloquence and learning. Two presbyters, and two
deacons, accompanied their beloved master in his death, which they
esteemed as a glorious martyrdom; and the number of religious victims
was completed by the execution of Latronian, a poet, who rivalled the
fame of the ancients; and of Euchrocia, a noble matron of Bordeaux, the
widow of the orator Delphidius.  Two bishops who had embraced the
sentiments of Priscillian, were condemned to a distant and dreary exile;
and some indulgence was shown to the meaner criminals, who assumed the
merit of an early repentance. If any credit could be allowed to
confessions extorted by fear or pain, and to vague reports, the
offspring of malice and credulity, the heresy of the Priscillianists
would be found to include the various abominations of magic, of impiety,
and of lewdness.  Priscillian, who wandered about the world in the
company of his spiritual sisters, was accused of praying stark naked in
the midst of the congregation; and it was confidently asserted, that the
effects of his criminal intercourse with the daughter of Euchrocia had
been suppressed, by means still more odious and criminal. But an
accurate, or rather a candid, inquiry will discover, that if the
Priscillianists violated the laws of nature, it was not by the
licentiousness, but by the austerity, of their lives. They absolutely
condemned the use of the marriage-bed; and the peace of families was
often disturbed by indiscreet separations. They enjoyed, or recommended,
a total abstinence from all anima food; and their continual prayers,
fasts, and vigils, inculcated a rule of strict and perfect devotion. The
speculative tenets of the sect, concerning the person of Christ, and the
nature of the human soul, were derived from the Gnostic and Manichæan
system; and this vain philosophy, which had been transported from Egypt
to Spain, was ill adapted to the grosser spirits of the West. The
obscure disciples of Priscillian suffered languished, and gradually
disappeared: his tenets were rejected by the clergy and people, but his
death was the subject of a long and vehement controversy; while some
arraigned, and others applauded, the justice of his sentence. It is with
pleasure that we can observe the humane inconsistency of the most
illustrious saints and bishops, Ambrose of Milan,  and Martin of Tours,
who, on this occasion, asserted the cause of toleration. They pitied the
unhappy men, who had been executed at Treves; they refused to hold
communion with their episcopal murderers; and if Martin deviated from
that generous resolution, his motives were laudable, and his repentance
was exemplary. The bishops of Tours and Milan pronounced, without
hesitation, the eternal damnation of heretics; but they were surprised,
and shocked, by the bloody image of their temporal death, and the honest
feelings of nature resisted the artificial prejudices of theology. The
humanity of Ambrose and Martin was confirmed by the scandalous
irregularity of the proceedings against Priscillian and his adherents.
The civil and ecclesiastical ministers had transgressed the limits of
their respective provinces. The secular judge had presumed to receive an
appeal, and to pronounce a definitive sentence, in a matter of faith,
and episcopal jurisdiction. The bishops had disgraced themselves, by
exercising the functions of accusers in a criminal prosecution. The
cruelty of Ithacius,  who beheld the tortures, and solicited the death,
of the heretics, provoked the just indignation of mankind; and the vices
of that profligate bishop were admitted as a proof, that his zeal was
instigated by the sordid motives of interest. Since the death of
Priscillian, the rude attempts of persecution have been refined and
methodized in the holy office, which assigns their distinct parts to the
ecclesiastical and secular powers. The devoted victim is regularly
delivered by the priest to the magistrate, and by the magistrate to the
executioner; and the inexorable sentence of the church, which declares
the spiritual guilt of the offender, is expressed in the mild language
of pity and intercession.

Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius. -- Part III.

Among the ecclesiastics, who illustrated the reign of Theodosius,
Gregory Nazianzen was distinguished by the talents of an eloquent
preacher; the reputation of miraculous gifts added weight and dignity to
the monastic virtues of Martin of Tours;  but the palm of episcopal
vigor and ability was justly claimed by the intrepid Ambrose.  He was
descended from a noble family of Romans; his father had exercised the
important office of Prætorian præfect of Gaul; and the son, after
passing through the studies of a liberal education, attained, in the
regular gradation of civil honors, the station of consular of Liguria, a
province which included the Imperial residence of Milan. At the age of
thirty-four, and before he had received the sacrament of baptism,
Ambrose, to his own surprise, and to that of the world, was suddenly
transformed from a governor to an archbishop. Without the least mixture,
as it is said, of art or intrigue, the whole body of the people
unanimously saluted him with the episcopal title; the concord and
perseverance of their acclamations were ascribed to a præternatural
impulse; and the reluctant magistrate was compelled to undertake a
spiritual office, for which he was not prepared by the habits and
occupations of his former life. But the active force of his genius soon
qualified him to exercise, with zeal and prudence, the duties of his
ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and while he cheerfully renounced the vain
and splendid trappings of temporal greatness, he condescended, for the
good of the church, to direct the conscience of the emperors, and to
control the administration of the empire. Gratian loved and revered him
as a father; and the elaborate treatise on the faith of the Trinity was
designed for the instruction of the young prince. After his tragic
death, at a time when the empress Justina trembled for her own safety,
and for that of her son Valentinian, the archbishop of Milan was
despatched, on two different embassies, to the court of Treves. He
exercised, with equal firmness and dexterity, the powers of his
spiritual and political characters; and perhaps contributed, by his
authority and eloquence, to check the ambition of Maximus, and to
protect the peace of Italy.  Ambrose had devoted his life, and his
abilities, to the service of the church. Wealth was the object of his
contempt; he had renounced his private patrimony; and he sold, without
hesitation, the consecrated plate, for the redemption of captives. The
clergy and people of Milan were attached to their archbishop; and he
deserved the esteem, without soliciting the favor, or apprehending the
displeasure, of his feeble sovereigns.

The government of Italy, and of the young emperor, naturally devolved to
his mother Justina, a woman of beauty and spirit, but who, in the midst
of an orthodox people, had the misfortune of professing the Arian
heresy, which she endeavored to instil into the mind of her son. Justina
was persuaded, that a Roman emperor might claim, in his own dominions,
the public exercise of his religion; and she proposed to the archbishop,
as a moderate and reasonable concession, that he should resign the use
of a single church, either in the city or the suburbs of Milan. But the
conduct of Ambrose was governed by very different principles.  The
palaces of the earth might indeed belong to Cæsar; but the churches were
the houses of God; and, within the limits of his diocese, he himself, as
the lawful successor of the apostles, was the only minister of God. The
privileges of Christianity, temporal as well as spiritual, were confined
to the true believers; and the mind of Ambrose was satisfied, that his
own theological opinions were the standard of truth and orthodoxy. The
archbishop, who refused to hold any conference, or negotiation, with the
instruments of Satan, declared, with modest firmness, his resolution to
die a martyr, rather than to yield to the impious sacrilege; and
Justina, who resented the refusal as an act of insolence and rebellion,
hastily determined to exert the Imperial prerogative of her son. As she
desired to perform her public devotions on the approaching festival of
Easter, Ambrose was ordered to appear before the council. He obeyed the
summons with the respect of a faithful subject, but he was followed,
without his consent, by an innumerable people they pressed, with
impetuous zeal, against the gates of the palace; and the affrighted
ministers of Valentinian, instead of pronouncing a sentence of exile on
the archbishop of Milan, humbly requested that he would interpose his
authority, to protect the person of the emperor, and to restore the
tranquility of the capital. But the promises which Ambrose received and
communicated were soon violated by a perfidious court; and, during six
of the most solemn days, which Christian piety had set apart for the
exercise of religion, the city was agitated by the irregular convulsions
of tumult and fanaticism. The officers of the household were directed to
prepare, first, the Portian, and afterwards, the new, Basilica, for the
immediate reception of the emperor and his mother. The splendid canopy
and hangings of the royal seat were arranged in the customary manner;
but it was found necessary to defend them. by a strong guard, from the
insults of the populace. The Arian ecclesiastics, who ventured to show
themselves in the streets, were exposed to the most imminent danger of
their lives; and Ambrose enjoyed the merit and reputation of rescuing
his personal enemies from the hands of the enraged multitude.

But while he labored to restrain the effects of their zeal, the pathetic
vehemence of his sermons continually inflamed the angry and seditious
temper of the people of Milan. The characters of Eve, of the wife of
Job, of Jezebel, of Herodias, were indecently applied to the mother of
the emperor; and her desire to obtain a church for the Arians was
compared to the most cruel persecutions which Christianity had endured
under the reign of Paganism. The measures of the court served only to
expose the magnitude of the evil. A fine of two hundred pounds of gold
was imposed on the corporate body of merchants and manufacturers: an
order was signified, in the name of the emperor, to all the officers,
and inferior servants, of the courts of justice, that, during the
continuance of the public disorders, they should strictly confine
themselves to their houses; and the ministers of Valentinian imprudently
confessed, that the most respectable part of the citizens of Milan was
attached to the cause of their archbishop. He was again solicited to
restore peace to his country, by timely compliance with the will of his
sovereign. The reply of Ambrose was couched in the most humble and
respectful terms, which might, however, be interpreted as a serious
declaration of civil war. "His life and fortune were in the hands of the
emperor; but he would never betray the church of Christ, or degrade the
dignity of the episcopal character. In such a cause he was prepared to
suffer whatever the malice of the dæmon could inflict; and he only
wished to die in the presence of his faithful flock, and at the foot of
the altar; he had not contributed to excite, but it was in the power of
God alone to appease, the rage of the people: he deprecated the scenes
of blood and confusion which were likely to ensue; and it was his
fervent prayer, that he might not survive to behold the ruin of a
flourishing city, and perhaps the desolation of all Italy."  The
obstinate bigotry of Justina would have endangered the empire of her
son, if, in this contest with the church and people of Milan, she could
have depended on the active obedience of the troops of the palace. A
large body of Goths had marched to occupy the Basilica, which was the
object of the dispute: and it might be expected from the Arian
principles, and barbarous manners, of these foreign mercenaries, that
they would not entertain any scruples in the execution of the most
sanguinary orders. They were encountered, on the sacred threshold, by
the archbishop, who, thundering against them a sentence of
excommunication, asked them, in the tone of a father and a master,
whether it was to invade the house of God, that they had implored the
hospitable protection of the republic. The suspense of the Barbarians
allowed some hours for a more effectual negotiation; and the empress was
persuaded, by the advice of her wisest counsellors, to leave the
Catholics in possession of all the churches of Milan; and to dissemble,
till a more convenient season, her intentions of revenge. The mother of
Valentinian could never forgive the triumph of Ambrose; and the royal
youth uttered a passionate exclamation, that his own servants were ready
to betray him into the hands of an insolent priest.

The laws of the empire, some of which were inscribed with the name of
Valentinian, still condemned the Arian heresy, and seemed to excuse the
resistance of the Catholics. By the influence of Justina, an edict of
toleration was promulgated in all the provinces which were subject to
the court of Milan; the free exercise of their religion was granted to
those who professed the faith of Rimini; and the emperor declared, that
all persons who should infringe this sacred and salutary constitution,
should be capitally punished, as the enemies of the public peace.  The
character and language of the archbishop of Milan may justify the
suspicion, that his conduct soon afforded a reasonable ground, or at
least a specious pretence, to the Arian ministers; who watched the
opportunity of surprising him in some act of disobedience to a law which
he strangely represents as a law of blood and tyranny. A sentence of
easy and honorable banishment was pronounced, which enjoined Ambrose to
depart from Milan without delay; whilst it permitted him to choose the
place of his exile, and the number of his companions. But the authority
of the saints, who have preached and practised the maxims of passive
loyalty, appeared to Ambrose of less moment than the extreme and
pressing danger of the church. He boldly refused to obey; and his
refusal was supported by the unanimous consent of his faithful people.
They guarded by turns the person of their archbishop; the gates of the
cathedral and the episcopal palace were strongly secured; and the
Imperial troops, who had formed the blockade, were unwilling to risk the
attack, of that impregnable fortress. The numerous poor, who had been
relieved by the liberality of Ambrose, embraced the fair occasion of
signalizing their zeal and gratitude; and as the patience of the
multitude might have been exhausted by the length and uniformity of
nocturnal vigils, he prudently introduced into the church of Milan the
useful institution of a loud and regular psalmody. While he maintained
this arduous contest, he was instructed, by a dream, to open the earth
in a place where the remains of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius,
had been deposited above three hundred years. Immediately under the
pavement of the church two perfect skeletons were found,  with the heads
separated from their bodies, and a plentiful effusion of blood. The holy
relics were presented, in solemn pomp, to the veneration of the people;
and every circumstance of this fortunate discovery was admirably adapted
to promote the designs of Ambrose. The bones of the martyrs, their
blood, their garments, were supposed to contain a healing power; and the
præternatural influence was communicated to the most distant objects,
without losing any part of its original virtue. The extraordinary cure
of a blind man,  and the reluctant confessions of several dæmoniacs,
appeared to justify the faith and sanctity of Ambrose; and the truth of
those miracles is attested by Ambrose himself, by his secretary
Paulinus, and by his proselyte, the celebrated Augustin, who, at that
time, professed the art of rhetoric in Milan. The reason of the present
age may possibly approve the incredulity of Justina and her Arian court;
who derided the theatrical representations which were exhibited by the
contrivance, and at the expense, of the archbishop.  Their effect,
however, on the minds of the people, was rapid and irresistible; and the
feeble sovereign of Italy found himself unable to contend with the
favorite of Heaven. The powers likewise of the earth interposed in the
defence of Ambrose: the disinterested advice of Theodosius was the
genuine result of piety and friendship; and the mask of religious zeal
concealed the hostile and ambitious designs of the tyrant of Gaul.

The reign of Maximus might have ended in peace and prosperity, could he
have contented himself with the possession of three ample countries,
which now constitute the three most flourishing kingdoms of modern
Europe. But the aspiring usurper, whose sordid ambition was not
dignified by the love of glory and of arms, considered his actual forces
as the instruments only of his future greatness, and his success was the
immediate cause of his destruction. The wealth which he extorted  from
the oppressed provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was employed in
levying and maintaining a formidable army of Barbarians, collected, for
the most part, from the fiercest nations of Germany. The conquest of
Italy was the object of his hopes and preparations: and he secretly
meditated the ruin of an innocent youth, whose government was abhorred
and despised by his Catholic subjects. But as Maximus wished to occupy,
without resistance, the passes of the Alps, he received, with perfidious
smiles, Domninus of Syria, the ambassador of Valentinian, and pressed
him to accept the aid of a considerable body of troops, for the service
of a Pannonian war. The penetration of Ambrose had discovered the snares
of an enemy under the professions of friendship;  but the Syrian
Domninus was corrupted, or deceived, by the liberal favor of the court
of Treves; and the council of Milan obstinately rejected the suspicion
of danger, with a blind confidence, which was the effect, not of
courage, but of fear. The march of the auxiliaries was guided by the
ambassador; and they were admitted, without distrust, into the
fortresses of the Alps. But the crafty tyrant followed, with hasty and
silent footsteps, in the rear; and, as he diligently intercepted all
intelligence of his motions, the gleam of armor, and the dust excited by
the troops of cavalry, first announced the hostile approach of a
stranger to the gates of Milan. In this extremity, Justina and her son
might accuse their own imprudence, and the perfidious arts of Maximus;
but they wanted time, and force, and resolution, to stand against the
Gauls and Germans, either in the field, or within the walls of a large
and disaffected city. Flight was their only hope, Aquileia their only
refuge; and as Maximus now displayed his genuine character, the brother
of Gratian might expect the same fate from the hands of the same
assassin. Maximus entered Milan in triumph; and if the wise archbishop
refused a dangerous and criminal connection with the usurper, he might
indirectly contribute to the success of his arms, by inculcating, from
the pulpit, the duty of resignation, rather than that of resistance.
The unfortunate Justina reached Aquileia in safety; but she distrusted
the strength of the fortifications: she dreaded the event of a siege;
and she resolved to implore the protection of the great Theodosius,
whose power and virtue were celebrated in all the countries of the West.
A vessel was secretly provided to transport the Imperial family; they
embarked with precipitation in one of the obscure harbors of Venetia, or
Istria; traversed the whole extent of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas;
turned the extreme promontory of Peloponnesus; and, after a long, but
successful navigation, reposed themselves in the port of Thessalonica.
All the subjects of Valentinian deserted the cause of a prince, who, by
his abdication, had absolved them from the duty of allegiance; and if
the little city of Æmona, on the verge of Italy, had not presumed to
stop the career of his inglorious victory, Maximus would have obtained,
without a struggle, the sole possession of the Western empire.

Instead of inviting his royal guests to take the palace of
Constantinople, Theodosius had some unknown reasons to fix their
residence at Thessalonica; but these reasons did not proceed from
contempt or indifference, as he speedily made a visit to that city,
accompanied by the greatest part of his court and senate. After the
first tender expressions of friendship and sympathy, the pious emperor
of the East gently admonished Justina, that the guilt of heresy was
sometimes punished in this world, as well as in the next; and that the
public profession of the Nicene faith would be the most efficacious step
to promote the restoration of her son, by the satisfaction which it must
occasion both on earth and in heaven. The momentous question of peace or
war was referred, by Theodosius, to the deliberation of his council; and
the arguments which might be alleged on the side of honor and justice,
had acquired, since the death of Gratian, a considerable degree of
additional weight. The persecution of the Imperial family, to which
Theodosius himself had been indebted for his fortune, was now aggravated
by recent and repeated injuries. Neither oaths nor treaties could
restrain the boundless ambition of Maximus; and the delay of vigorous
and decisive measures, instead of prolonging the blessings of peace,
would expose the Eastern empire to the danger of a hostile invasion. The
Barbarians, who had passed the Danube, had lately assumed the character
of soldiers and subjects, but their native fierceness was yet untamed:
and the operations of a war, which would exercise their valor, and
diminish their numbers, might tend to relieve the provinces from an
intolerable oppression. Notwithstanding these specious and solid
reasons, which were approved by a majority of the council, Theodosius
still hesitated whether he should draw the sword in a contest which
could no longer admit any terms of reconciliation; and his magnanimous
character was not disgraced by the apprehensions which he felt for the
safety of his infant sons, and the welfare of his exhausted people. In
this moment of anxious doubt, while the fate of the Roman world depended
on the resolution of a single man, the charms of the princess Galla most
powerfully pleaded the cause of her brother Valentinian.  The heart of
Theodosius was softened by the tears of beauty; his affections were
insensibly engaged by the graces of youth and innocence: the art of
Justina managed and directed the impulse of passion; and the celebration
of the royal nuptials was the assurance and signal of the civil war. The
unfeeling critics, who consider every amorous weakness as an indelible
stain on the memory of a great and orthodox emperor, are inclined, on
this occasion, to dispute the suspicious evidence of the historian
Zosimus. For my own part, I shall frankly confess, that I am willing to
find, or even to seek, in the revolutions of the world, some traces of
the mild and tender sentiments of domestic life; and amidst the crowd of
fierce and ambitious conquerors, I can distinguish, with peculiar
complacency, a gentle hero, who may be supposed to receive his armor
from the hands of love. The alliance of the Persian king was secured by
the faith of treaties; the martial Barbarians were persuaded to follow
the standard, or to respect the frontiers, of an active and liberal
monarch; and the dominions of Theodosius, from the Euphrates to the
Adriatic, resounded with the preparations of war both by land and sea.
The skilful disposition of the forces of the East seemed to multiply
their numbers, and distracted the attention of Maximus. He had reason to
fear, that a chosen body of troops, under the command of the intrepid
Arbogastes, would direct their march along the banks of the Danube, and
boldly penetrate through the Rhætian provinces into the centre of Gaul.
A powerful fleet was equipped in the harbors of Greece and Epirus, with
an apparent design, that, as soon as the passage had been opened by a
naval victory, Valentinian and his mother should land in Italy, proceed,
without delay, to Rome, and occupy the majestic seat of religion and
empire. In the mean while, Theodosius himself advanced at the head of a
brave and disciplined army, to encounter his unworthy rival, who, after
the siege of Æmona, * had fixed his camp in the neighborhood of Siscia,
a city of Pannonia, strongly fortified by the broad and rapid stream of
the Save.

Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius. -- Part IV.

The veterans, who still remembered the long resistance, and successive
resources, of the tyrant Magnentius, might prepare themselves for the
labors of three bloody campaigns. But the contest with his successor,
who, like him, had usurped the throne of the West, was easily decided in
the term of two months,  and within the space of two hundred miles. The
superior genius of the emperor of the East might prevail over the feeble
Maximus, who, in this important crisis, showed himself destitute of
military skill, or personal courage; but the abilities of Theodosius
were seconded by the advantage which he possessed of a numerous and
active cavalry. The Huns, the Alani, and, after their example, the Goths
themselves, were formed into squadrons of archers; who fought on
horseback, and confounded the steady valor of the Gauls and Germans, by
the rapid motions of a Tartar war. After the fatigue of a long march, in
the heat of summer, they spurred their foaming horses into the waters of
the Save, swam the river in the presence of the enemy, and instantly
charged and routed the troops who guarded the high ground on the
opposite side. Marcellinus, the tyrant's brother, advanced to support
them with the select cohorts, which were considered as the hope and
strength of the army. The action, which had been interrupted by the
approach of night, was renewed in the morning; and, after a sharp
conflict, the surviving remnant of the bravest soldiers of Maximus threw
down their arms at the feet of the conqueror. Without suspending his
march, to receive the loyal acclamations of the citizens of Æmona,
Theodosius pressed forwards to terminate the war by the death or
captivity of his rival, who fled before him with the diligence of fear.
From the summit of the Julian Alps, he descended with such incredible
speed into the plain of Italy, that he reached Aquileia on the evening
of the first day; and Maximus, who found himself encompassed on all
sides, had scarcely time to shut the gates of the city. But the gates
could not long resist the effort of a victorious enemy; and the despair,
the disaffection, the indifference of the soldiers and people, hastened
the downfall of the wretched Maximus. He was dragged from his throne,
rudely stripped of the Imperial ornaments, the robe, the diadem, and the
purple slippers; and conducted, like a malefactor, to the camp and
presence of Theodosius, at a place about three miles from Aquileia. The
behavior of the emperor was not intended to insult, and he showed
disposition to pity and forgive, the tyrant of the West, who had never
been his personal enemy, and was now become the object of his contempt.
Our sympathy is the most forcibly excited by the misfortunes to which we
are exposed; and the spectacle of a proud competitor, now prostrate at
his feet, could not fail of producing very serious and solemn thoughts
in the mind of the victorious emperor. But the feeble emotion of
involuntary pity was checked by his regard for public justice, and the
memory of Gratian; and he abandoned the victim to the pious zeal of the
soldiers, who drew him out of the Imperial presence, and instantly
separated his head from his body. The intelligence of his defeat and
death was received with sincere or well-dissembled joy: his son Victor,
on whom he had conferred the title of Augustus, died by the order,
perhaps by the hand, of the bold Arbogastes; and all the military plans
of Theodosius were successfully executed. When he had thus terminated
the civil war, with less difficulty and bloodshed than he might
naturally expect, he employed the winter months of his residence at
Milan, to restore the state of the afflicted provinces; and early in the
spring he made, after the example of Constantine and Constantius, his
triumphal entry into the ancient capital of the Roman empire.

The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without
difficulty, and without reluctance;  and posterity will confess, that
the character of Theodosius  might furnish the subject of a sincere and
ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws, and the success of his arms,
rendered his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects
and of his enemies. He loved and practised the virtues of domestic life,
which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings. Theodosius
was chaste and temperate; he enjoyed, without excess, the sensual and
social pleasures of the table; and the warmth of his amorous passions
was never diverted from their lawful objects. The proud titles of
Imperial greatness were adorned by the tender names of a faithful
husband, an indulgent father; his uncle was raised, by his affectionate
esteem, to the rank of a second parent: Theodosius embraced, as his own,
the children of his brother and sister; and the expressions of his
regard were extended to the most distant and obscure branches of his
numerous kindred. His familiar friends were judiciously selected from
among those persons, who, in the equal intercourse of private life, had
appeared before his eyes without a mask; the consciousness of personal
and superior merit enabled him to despise the accidental distinction of
the purple; and he proved by his conduct, that he had forgotten all the
injuries, while he most gratefully remembered all the favors and
services, which he had received before he ascended the throne of the
Roman empire. The serious or lively tone of his conversation was adapted
to the age, the rank, or the character of his subjects, whom he admitted
into his society; and the affability of his manners displayed the image
of his mind. Theodosius respected the simplicity of the good and
virtuous: every art, every talent, of a useful, or even of an innocent
nature, was rewarded by his judicious liberality; and, except the
heretics, whom he persecuted with implacable hatred, the diffusive
circle of his benevolence was circumscribed only by the limits of the
human race. The government of a mighty empire may assuredly suffice to
occupy the time, and the abilities, of a mortal: yet the diligent
prince, without aspiring to the unsuitable reputation of profound
learning, always reserved some moments of his leisure for the
instructive amusement of reading. History, which enlarged his
experience, was his favorite study. The annals of Rome, in the long
period of eleven hundred years, presented him with a various and
splendid picture of human life: and it has been particularly observed,
that whenever he perused the cruel acts of Cinna, of Marius, or of
Sylla, he warmly expressed his generous detestation of those enemies of
humanity and freedom. His disinterested opinion of past events was
usefully applied as the rule of his own actions; and Theodosius has
deserved the singular commendation, that his virtues always seemed to
expand with his fortune: the season of his prosperity was that of his
moderation; and his clemency appeared the most conspicuous after the
danger and success of a civil war. The Moorish guards of the tyrant had
been massacred in the first heat of the victory, and a small number of
the most obnoxious criminals suffered the punishment of the law. But the
emperor showed himself much more attentive to relieve the innocent than
to chastise the guilty. The oppressed subjects of the West, who would
have deemed themselves happy in the restoration of their lands, were
astonished to receive a sum of money equivalent to their losses; and the
liberality of the conqueror supported the aged mother, and educated the
orphan daughters, of Maximus.  A character thus accomplished might
almost excuse the extravagant supposition of the orator Pacatus; that,
if the elder Brutus could be permitted to revisit the earth, the stern
republican would abjure, at the feet of Theodosius, his hatred of kings;
and ingenuously confess, that such a monarch was the most faithful
guardian of the happiness and dignity of the Roman people.

Yet the piercing eye of the founder of the republic must have discerned
two essential imperfections, which might, perhaps, have abated his
recent love of despotism. The virtuous mind of Theodosius was often
relaxed by indolence,  and it was sometimes inflamed by passion.  In the
pursuit of an important object, his active courage was capable of the
most vigorous exertions; but, as soon as the design was accomplished, or
the danger was surmounted, the hero sunk into inglorious repose; and,
forgetful that the time of a prince is the property of his people,
resigned himself to the enjoyment of the innocent, but trifling,
pleasures of a luxurious court. The natural disposition of Theodosius
was hasty and choleric; and, in a station where none could resist, and
few would dissuade, the fatal consequence of his resentment, the humane
monarch was justly alarmed by the consciousness of his infirmity and of
his power. It was the constant study of his life to suppress, or
regulate, the intemperate sallies of passion and the success of his
efforts enhanced the merit of his clemency. But the painful virtue which
claims the merit of victory, is exposed to the danger of defeat; and the
reign of a wise and merciful prince was polluted by an act of cruelty
which would stain the annals of Nero or Domitian. Within the space of
three years, the inconsistent historian of Theodosius must relate the
generous pardon of the citizens of Antioch, and the inhuman massacre of
the people of Thessalonica.

The lively impatience of the inhabitants of Antioch was never satisfied
with their own situation, or with the character and conduct of their
successive sovereigns. The Arian subjects of Theodosius deplored the
loss of their churches; and as three rival bishops disputed the throne
of Antioch, the sentence which decided their pretensions excited the
murmurs of the two unsuccessful congregations. The exigencies of the
Gothic war, and the inevitable expense that accompanied the conclusion
of the peace, had constrained the emperor to aggravate the weight of the
public impositions; and the provinces of Asia, as they had not been
involved in the distress were the less inclined to contribute to the
relief, of Europe. The auspicious period now approached of the tenth
year of his reign; a festival more grateful to the soldiers, who
received a liberal donative, than to the subjects, whose voluntary
offerings had been long since converted into an extraordinary and
oppressive burden. The edicts of taxation interrupted the repose, and
pleasures, of Antioch; and the tribunal of the magistrate was besieged
by a suppliant crowd; who, in pathetic, but, at first, in respectful
language, solicited the redress of their grievances. They were gradually
incensed by the pride of their haughty rulers, who treated their
complaints as a criminal resistance; their satirical wit degenerated
into sharp and angry invectives; and, from the subordinate powers of
government, the invectives of the people insensibly rose to attack the
sacred character of the emperor himself. Their fury, provoked by a
feeble opposition, discharged itself on the images of the Imperial
family, which were erected, as objects of public veneration, in the most
conspicuous places of the city. The statues of Theodosius, of his
father, of his wife Flaccilla, of his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius,
were insolently thrown down from their pedestals, broken in pieces, or
dragged with contempt through the streets; and the indignities which
were offered to the representations of Imperial majesty, sufficiently
declared the impious and treasonable wishes of the populace. The tumult
was almost immediately suppressed by the arrival of a body of archers:
and Antioch had leisure to reflect on the nature and consequences of her
crime.  According to the duty of his office, the governor of the
province despatched a faithful narrative of the whole transaction: while
the trembling citizens intrusted the confession of their crime, and the
assurances of their repentance, to the zeal of Flavian, their bishop,
and to the eloquence of the senator Hilarius, the friend, and most
probably the disciple, of Libanius; whose genius, on this melancholy
occasion, was not useless to his country.  But the two capitals, Antioch
and Constantinople, were separated by the distance of eight hundred
miles; and, notwithstanding the diligence of the Imperial posts, the
guilty city was severely punished by a long and dreadful interval of
suspense. Every rumor agitated the hopes and fears of the Antiochians,
and they heard with terror, that their sovereign, exasperated by the
insult which had been offered to his own statues, and more especially,
to those of his beloved wife, had resolved to level with the ground the
offending city; and to massacre, without distinction of age or sex, the
criminal inhabitants;  many of whom were actually driven, by their
apprehensions, to seek a refuge in the mountains of Syria, and the
adjacent desert. At length, twenty-four days after the sedition, the
general Hellebicus and Cæsarius, master of the offices, declared the
will of the emperor, and the sentence of Antioch. That proud capital was
degraded from the rank of a city; and the metropolis of the East,
stripped of its lands, its privileges, and its revenues, was subjected,
under the humiliating denomination of a village, to the jurisdiction of
Laodicea.  The baths, the Circus, and the theatres were shut: and, that
every source of plenty and pleasure might at the same time be
intercepted, the distribution of corn was abolished, by the severe
instructions of Theodosius. His commissioners then proceeded to inquire
into the guilt of individuals; of those who had perpetrated, and of
those who had not prevented, the destruction of the sacred statues. The
tribunal of Hellebicus and Cæsarius, encompassed with armed soldiers,
was erected in the midst of the Forum. The noblest, and most wealthy, of
the citizens of Antioch appeared before them in chains; the examination
was assisted by the use of torture, and their sentence was pronounced or
suspended, according to the judgment of these extraordinary magistrates.
The houses of the criminals were exposed to sale, their wives and
children were suddenly reduced, from affluence and luxury, to the most
abject distress; and a bloody execution was expected to conclude the
horrors of the day,  which the preacher of Antioch, the eloquent
Chrysostom, has represented as a lively image of the last and universal
judgment of the world. But the ministers of Theodosius performed, with
reluctance, the cruel task which had been assigned them; they dropped a
gentle tear over the calamities of the people; and they listened with
reverence to the pressing solicitations of the monks and hermits, who
descended in swarms from the mountains.  Hellebicus and Cæsarius were
persuaded to suspend the execution of their sentence; and it was agreed
that the former should remain at Antioch, while the latter returned,
with all possible speed, to Constantinople; and presumed once more to
consult the will of his sovereign. The resentment of Theodosius had
already subsided; the deputies of the people, both the bishop and the
orator, had obtained a favorable audience; and the reproaches of the
emperor were the complaints of injured friendship, rather than the stern
menaces of pride and power. A free and general pardon was granted to the
city and citizens of Antioch; the prison doors were thrown open; the
senators, who despaired of their lives, recovered the possession of
their houses and estates; and the capital of the East was restored to
the enjoyment of her ancient dignity and splendor. Theodosius
condescended to praise the senate of Constantinople, who had generously
interceded for their distressed brethren: he rewarded the eloquence of
Hilarius with the government of Palestine; and dismissed the bishop of
Antioch with the warmest expressions of his respect and gratitude. A
thousand new statues arose to the clemency of Theodosius; the applause
of his subjects was ratified by the approbation of his own heart; and
the emperor confessed, that, if the exercise of justice is the most
important duty, the indulgence of mercy is the most exquisite pleasure,
of a sovereign.

The sedition of Thessalonica is ascribed to a more shameful cause, and
was productive of much more dreadful consequences. That great city, the
metropolis of all the Illyrian provinces, had been protected from the
dangers of the Gothic war by strong fortifications and a numerous
garrison. Botheric, the general of those troops, and, as it should seem
from his name, a Barbarian, had among his slaves a beautiful boy, who
excited the impure desires of one of the charioteers of the Circus. The
insolent and brutal lover was thrown into prison by the order of
Botheric; and he sternly rejected the importunate clamors of the
multitude, who, on the day of the public games, lamented the absence of
their favorite; and considered the skill of a charioteer as an object of
more importance than his virtue. The resentment of the people was
imbittered by some previous disputes; and, as the strength of the
garrison had been drawn away for the service of the Italian war, the
feeble remnant, whose numbers were reduced by desertion, could not save
the unhappy general from their licentious fury. Botheric, and several of
his principal officers, were inhumanly murdered; their mangled bodies
were dragged about the streets; and the emperor, who then resided at
Milan, was surprised by the intelligence of the audacious and wanton
cruelty of the people of Thessalonica. The sentence of a dispassionate
judge would have inflicted a severe punishment on the authors of the
crime; and the merit of Botheric might contribute to exasperate the
grief and indignation of his master. The fiery and choleric temper of
Theodosius was impatient of the dilatory forms of a judicial inquiry;
and he hastily resolved, that the blood of his lieutenant should be
expiated by the blood of the guilty people. Yet his mind still
fluctuated between the counsels of clemency and of revenge; the zeal of
the bishops had almost extorted from the reluctant emperor the promise
of a general pardon; his passion was again inflamed by the flattering
suggestions of his minister Rufinus; and, after Theodosius had
despatched the messengers of death, he attempted, when it was too late,
to prevent the execution of his orders. The punishment of a Roman city
was blindly committed to the undistinguishing sword of the Barbarians;
and the hostile preparations were concerted with the dark and perfidious
artifice of an illegal conspiracy. The people of Thessalonica were
treacherously invited, in the name of their sovereign, to the games of
the Circus; and such was their insatiate avidity for those amusements,
that every consideration of fear, or suspicion, was disregarded by the
numerous spectators. As soon as the assembly was complete, the soldiers,
who had secretly been posted round the Circus, received the signal, not
of the races, but of a general massacre. The promiscuous carnage
continued three hours, without discrimination of strangers or natives,
of age or sex, of innocence or guilt; the most moderate accounts state
the number of the slain at seven thousand; and it is affirmed by some
writers that more than fifteen thousand victims were sacrificed to the
names of Botheric. A foreign merchant, who had probably no concern in
his murder, offered his own life, and all his wealth, to supply the
place of one of his two sons; but, while the father hesitated with equal
tenderness, while he was doubtful to choose, and unwilling to condemn,
the soldiers determined his suspense, by plunging their daggers at the
same moment into the breasts of the defenceless youths. The apology of
the assassins, that they were obliged to produce the prescribed number
of heads, serves only to increase, by an appearance of order and design,
the horrors of the massacre, which was executed by the commands of
Theodosius. The guilt of the emperor is aggravated by his long and
frequent residence at Thessalonica. The situation of the unfortunate
city, the aspect of the streets and buildings, the dress and faces of
the inhabitants, were familiar, and even present, to his imagination;
and Theodosius possessed a quick and lively sense of the existence of
the people whom he destroyed.

The respectful attachment of the emperor for the orthodox clergy, had
disposed him to love and admire the character of Ambrose; who united all
the episcopal virtues in the most eminent degree. The friends and
ministers of Theodosius imitated the example of their sovereign; and he
observed, with more surprise than displeasure, that all his secret
counsels were immediately communicated to the archbishop; who acted from
the laudable persuasion, that every measure of civil government may have
some connection with the glory of God, and the interest of the true
religion. The monks and populace of Callinicum, * an obscure town on the
frontier of Persia, excited by their own fanaticism, and by that of
their bishop, had tumultuously burnt a conventicle of the Valentinians,
and a synagogue of the Jews. The seditious prelate was condemned, by the
magistrate of the province, either to rebuild the synagogue, or to repay
the damage; and this moderate sentence was confirmed by the emperor. But
it was not confirmed by the archbishop of Milan.  He dictated an epistle
of censure and reproach, more suitable, perhaps, if the emperor had
received the mark of circumcision, and renounced the faith of his
baptism. Ambrose considers the toleration of the Jewish, as the
persecution of the Christian, religion; boldly declares that he himself,
and every true believer, would eagerly dispute with the bishop of
Callinicum the merit of the deed, and the crown of martyrdom; and
laments, in the most pathetic terms, that the execution of the sentence
would be fatal to the fame and salvation of Theodosius. As this private
admonition did not produce an immediate effect, the archbishop, from his
pulpit,  publicly addressed the emperor on his throne;  nor would he
consent to offer the oblation of the altar, till he had obtained from
Theodosius a solemn and positive declaration, which secured the impunity
of the bishop and monks of Callinicum. The recantation of Theodosius was
sincere;  and, during the term of his residence at Milan, his affection
for Ambrose was continually increased by the habits of pious and
familiar conversation.

When Ambrose was informed of the massacre of Thessalonica, his mind was
filled with horror and anguish. He retired into the country to indulge
his grief, and to avoid the presence of Theodosius. But as the
archbishop was satisfied that a timid silence would render him the
accomplice of his guilt, he represented, in a private letter, the
enormity of the crime; which could only be effaced by the tears of
penitence. The episcopal vigor of Ambrose was tempered by prudence; and
he contented himself with signifying  an indirect sort of
excommunication, by the assurance, that he had been warned in a vision
not to offer the oblation in the name, or in the presence, of
Theodosius; and by the advice, that he would confine himself to the use
of prayer, without presuming to approach the altar of Christ, or to
receive the holy eucharist with those hands that were still polluted
with the blood of an innocent people. The emperor was deeply affected by
his own reproaches, and by those of his spiritual father; and after he
had bewailed the mischievous and irreparable consequences of his rash
fury, he proceeded, in the accustomed manner, to perform his devotions
in the great church of Milan. He was stopped in the porch by the
archbishop; who, in the tone and language of an ambassador of Heaven,
declared to his sovereign, that private contrition was not sufficient to
atone for a public fault, or to appease the justice of the offended
Deity. Theodosius humbly represented, that if he had contracted the
guilt of homicide, David, the man after God's own heart, had been
guilty, not only of murder, but of adultery. "You have imitated David in
his crime, imitate then his repentance," was the reply of the undaunted
Ambrose. The rigorous conditions of peace and pardon were accepted; and
the public penance of the emperor Theodosius has been recorded as one of
the most honorable events in the annals of the church. According to the
mildest rules of ecclesiastical discipline, which were established in
the fourth century, the crime of homicide was expiated by the penitence
of twenty years:  and as it was impossible, in the period of human life,
to purge the accumulated guilt of the massacre of Thessalonica, the
murderer should have been excluded from the holy communion till the hour
of his death. But the archbishop, consulting the maxims of religious
policy, granted some indulgence to the rank of his illustrious penitent,
who humbled in the dust the pride of the diadem; and the public
edification might be admitted as a weighty reason to abridge the
duration of his punishment. It was sufficient, that the emperor of the
Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty, should appear in a mournful
and suppliant posture; and that, in the midst of the church of Milan, he
should humbly solicit, with sighs and tears, the pardon of his sins.  In
this spiritual cure, Ambrose employed the various methods of mildness
and severity. After a delay of about eight months, Theodosius was
restored to the communion of the faithful; and the edict which
interposes a salutary interval of thirty days between the sentence and
the execution, may be accepted as the worthy fruits of his repentance.
Posterity has applauded the virtuous firmness of the archbishop; and the
example of Theodosius may prove the beneficial influence of those
principles, which could force a monarch, exalted above the apprehension
of human punishment, to respect the laws, and ministers, of an invisible
Judge. "The prince," says Montesquieu, "who is actuated by the hopes and
fears of religion, may be compared to a lion, docile only to the voice,
and tractable to the hand, of his keeper."  The motions of the royal
animal will therefore depend on the inclination, and interest, of the
man who has acquired such dangerous authority over him; and the priest,
who holds in his hands the conscience of a king, may inflame, or
moderate, his sanguinary passions. The cause of humanity, and that of
persecution, have been asserted, by the same Ambrose, with equal energy,
and with equal success.

Chapter XXVII: Civil Wars, Reign Of Theodosius. -- Part V.

After the defeat and death of the tyrant of Gaul, the Roman world was in
the possession of Theodosius. He derived from the choice of Gratian his
honorable title to the provinces of the East: he had acquired the West
by the right of conquest; and the three years which he spent in Italy
were usefully employed to restore the authority of the laws, and to
correct the abuses which had prevailed with impunity under the
usurpation of Maximus, and the minority of Valentinian. The name of
Valentinian was regularly inserted in the public acts: but the tender
age, and doubtful faith, of the son of Justina, appeared to require the
prudent care of an orthodox guardian; and his specious ambition might
have excluded the unfortunate youth, without a struggle, and almost
without a murmur, from the administration, and even from the
inheritance, of the empire. If Theodosius had consulted the rigid maxims
of interest and policy, his conduct would have been justified by his
friends; but the generosity of his behavior on this memorable occasion
has extorted the applause of his most inveterate enemies. He seated
Valentinian on the throne of Milan; and, without stipulating any present
or future advantages, restored him to the absolute dominion of all the
provinces, from which he had been driven by the arms of Maximus. To the
restitution of his ample patrimony, Theodosius added the free and
generous gift of the countries beyond the Alps, which his successful
valor had recovered from the assassin of Gratian.  Satisfied with the
glory which he had acquired, by revenging the death of his benefactor,
and delivering the West from the yoke of tyranny, the emperor returned
from Milan to Constantinople; and, in the peaceful possession of the
East, insensibly relapsed into his former habits of luxury and
indolence. Theodosius discharged his obligation to the brother, he
indulged his conjugal tenderness to the sister, of Valentinian; and
posterity, which admires the pure and singular glory of his elevation,
must applaud his unrivalled generosity in the use of victory.

The empress Justina did not long survive her return to Italy; and,
though she beheld the triumph of Theodosius, she was not allowed to
influence the government of her son.  The pernicious attachment to the
Arian sect, which Valentinian had imbibed from her example and
instructions, was soon erased by the lessons of a more orthodox
education. His growing zeal for the faith of Nice, and his filial
reverence for the character and authority of Ambrose, disposed the
Catholics to entertain the most favorable opinion of the virtues of the
young emperor of the West.  They applauded his chastity and temperance,
his contempt of pleasure, his application to business, and his tender
affection for his two sisters; which could not, however, seduce his
impartial equity to pronounce an unjust sentence against the meanest of
his subjects. But this amiable youth, before he had accomplished the
twentieth year of his age, was oppressed by domestic treason; and the
empire was again involved in the horrors of a civil war. Arbogastes,  a
gallant soldier of the nation of the Franks, held the second rank in the
service of Gratian. On the death of his master he joined the standard of
Theodosius; contributed, by his valor and military conduct, to the
destruction of the tyrant; and was appointed, after the victory,
master-general of the armies of Gaul. His real merit, and apparent
fidelity, had gained the confidence both of the prince and people; his
boundless liberality corrupted the allegiance of the troops; and, whilst
he was universally esteemed as the pillar of the state, the bold and
crafty Barbarian was secretly determined either to rule, or to ruin, the
empire of the West. The important commands of the army were distributed
among the Franks; the creatures of Arbogastes were promoted to all the
honors and offices of the civil government; the progress of the
conspiracy removed every faithful servant from the presence of
Valentinian; and the emperor, without power and without intelligence,
insensibly sunk into the precarious and dependent condition of a
captive.  The indignation which he expressed, though it might arise only
from the rash and impatient temper of youth, may be candidly ascribed to
the generous spirit of a prince, who felt that he was not unworthy to
reign. He secretly invited the archbishop of Milan to undertake the
office of a mediator; as the pledge of his sincerity, and the guardian
of his safety. He contrived to apprise the emperor of the East of his
helpless situation, and he declared, that, unless Theodosius could
speedily march to his assistance, he must attempt to escape from the
palace, or rather prison, of Vienna in Gaul, where he had imprudently
fixed his residence in the midst of the hostile faction. But the hopes
of relief were distant, and doubtful: and, as every day furnished some
new provocation, the emperor, without strength or counsel, too hastily
resolved to risk an immediate contest with his powerful general. He
received Arbogastes on the throne; and, as the count approached with
some appearance of respect, delivered to him a paper, which dismissed
him from all his employments. "My authority," replied Arbogastes, with
insulting coolness, "does not depend on the smile or the frown of a
monarch;" and he contemptuously threw the paper on the ground. The
indignant monarch snatched at the sword of one of the guards, which he
struggled to draw from its scabbard; and it was not without some degree
of violence that he was prevented from using the deadly weapon against
his enemy, or against himself. A few days after this extraordinary
quarrel, in which he had exposed his resentment and his weakness, the
unfortunate Valentinian was found strangled in his apartment; and some
pains were employed to disguise the manifest guilt of Arbogastes, and to
persuade the world, that the death of the young emperor had been the
voluntary effect of his own despair.  His body was conducted with decent
pomp to the sepulchre of Milan; and the archbishop pronounced a funeral
oration to commemorate his virtues and his misfortunes.  On this
occasion the humanity of Ambrose tempted him to make a singular breach
in his theological system; and to comfort the weeping sisters of
Valentinian, by the firm assurance, that their pious brother, though he
had not received the sacrament of baptism, was introduced, without
difficulty, into the mansions of eternal bliss.

The prudence of Arbogastes had prepared the success of his ambitious
designs: and the provincials, in whose breast every sentiment of
patriotism or loyalty was extinguished, expected, with tame resignation,
the unknown master, whom the choice of a Frank might place on the
Imperial throne. But some remains of pride and prejudice still opposed
the elevation of Arbogastes himself; and the judicious Barbarian thought
it more advisable to reign under the name of some dependent Roman. He
bestowed the purple on the rhetorician Eugenius;  whom he had already
raised from the place of his domestic secretary to the rank of master of
the offices. In the course, both of his private and public service, the
count had always approved the attachment and abilities of Eugenius; his
learning and eloquence, supported by the gravity of his manners,
recommended him to the esteem of the people; and the reluctance with
which he seemed to ascend the throne, may inspire a favorable prejudice
of his virtue and moderation. The ambassadors of the new emperor were
immediately despatched to the court of Theodosius, to communicate, with
affected grief, the unfortunate accident of the death of Valentinian;
and, without mentioning the name of Arbogastes, to request, that the
monarch of the East would embrace, as his lawful colleague, the
respectable citizen, who had obtained the unanimous suffrage of the
armies and provinces of the West.  Theodosius was justly provoked, that
the perfidy of a Barbarian, should have destroyed, in a moment, the
labors, and the fruit, of his former victory; and he was excited by the
tears of his beloved wife,  to revenge the fate of her unhappy brother,
and once more to assert by arms the violated majesty of the throne. But
as the second conquest of the West was a task of difficulty and danger,
he dismissed, with splendid presents, and an ambiguous answer, the
ambassadors of Eugenius; and almost two years were consumed in the
preparations of the civil war. Before he formed any decisive resolution,
the pious emperor was anxious to discover the will of Heaven; and as the
progress of Christianity had silenced the oracles of Delphi and Dodona,
he consulted an Egyptian monk, who possessed, in the opinion of the age,
the gift of miracles, and the knowledge of futurity. Eutropius, one of
the favorite eunuchs of the palace of Constantinople, embarked for
Alexandria, from whence he sailed up the Nile, as far as the city of
Lycopolis, or of Wolves, in the remote province of Thebais.  In the
neighborhood of that city, and on the summit of a lofty mountain, the
holy John  had constructed, with his own hands, an humble cell, in which
he had dwelt above fifty years, without opening his door, without seeing
the face of a woman, and without tasting any food that had been prepared
by fire, or any human art. Five days of the week he spent in prayer and
meditation; but on Saturdays and Sundays he regularly opened a small
window, and gave audience to the crowd of suppliants who successively
flowed from every part of the Christian world. The eunuch of Theodosius
approached the window with respectful steps, proposed his questions
concerning the event of the civil war, and soon returned with a
favorable oracle, which animated the courage of the emperor by the
assurance of a bloody, but infallible victory.  The accomplishment of
the prediction was forwarded by all the means that human prudence could
supply. The industry of the two master-generals, Stilicho and Timasius,
was directed to recruit the numbers, and to revive the discipline of the
Roman legions. The formidable troops of Barbarians marched under the
ensigns of their national chieftains. The Iberian, the Arab, and the
Goth, who gazed on each other with mutual astonishment, were enlisted in
the service of the same prince; * and the renowned Alaric acquired, in
the school of Theodosius, the knowledge of the art of war, which he
afterwards so fatally exerted for the destruction of Rome.

The emperor of the West, or, to speak more properly, his general
Arbogastes, was instructed by the misconduct and misfortune of Maximus,
how dangerous it might prove to extend the line of defence against a
skilful antagonist, who was free to press, or to suspend, to contract,
or to multiply, his various methods of attack.  Arbogastes fixed his
station on the confines of Italy; the troops of Theodosius were
permitted to occupy, without resistance, the provinces of Pannonia, as
far as the foot of the Julian Alps; and even the passes of the mountains
were negligently, or perhaps artfully, abandoned to the bold invader. He
descended from the hills, and beheld, with some astonishment, the
formidable camp of the Gauls and Germans, that covered with arms and
tents the open country which extends to the walls of Aquileia, and the
banks of the Frigidus,  or Cold River.  This narrow theatre of the war,
circumscribed by the Alps and the Adriatic, did not allow much room for
the operations of military skill; the spirit of Arbogastes would have
disdained a pardon; his guilt extinguished the hope of a negotiation;
and Theodosius was impatient to satisfy his glory and revenge, by the
chastisement of the assassins of Valentinian. Without weighing the
natural and artificial obstacles that opposed his efforts, the emperor
of the East immediately attacked the fortifications of his rivals,
assigned the post of honorable danger to the Goths, and cherished a
secret wish, that the bloody conflict might diminish the pride and
numbers of the conquerors. Ten thousand of those auxiliaries, and
Bacurius, general of the Iberians, died bravely on the field of battle.
But the victory was not purchased by their blood; the Gauls maintained
their advantage; and the approach of night protected the disorderly
flight, or retreat, of the troops of Theodosius. The emperor retired to
the adjacent hills; where he passed a disconsolate night, without sleep,
without provisions, and without hopes;  except that strong assurance,
which, under the most desperate circumstances, the independent mind may
derive from the contempt of fortune and of life. The triumph of Eugenius
was celebrated by the insolent and dissolute joy of his camp; whilst the
active and vigilant Arbogastes secretly detached a considerable body of
troops to occupy the passes of the mountains, and to encompass the rear
of the Eastern army. The dawn of day discovered to the eyes of
Theodosius the extent and the extremity of his danger; but his
apprehensions were soon dispelled, by a friendly message from the
leaders of those troops who expressed their inclination to desert the
standard of the tyrant. The honorable and lucrative rewards, which they
stipulated as the price of their perfidy, were granted without
hesitation; and as ink and paper could not easily be procured, the
emperor subscribed, on his own tablets, the ratification of the treaty.
The spirit of his soldiers was revived by this seasonable reenforcement;
and they again marched, with confidence, to surprise the camp of a
tyrant, whose principal officers appeared to distrust, either the
justice or the success of his arms. In the heat of the battle, a violent
tempest,  such as is often felt among the Alps, suddenly arose from the
East. The army of Theodosius was sheltered by their position from the
impetuosity of the wind, which blew a cloud of dust in the faces of the
enemy, disordered their ranks, wrested their weapons from their hands,
and diverted, or repelled, their ineffectual javelins. This accidental
advantage was skilfully improved, the violence of the storm was
magnified by the superstitious terrors of the Gauls; and they yielded
without shame to the invisible powers of heaven, who seemed to militate
on the side of the pious emperor. His victory was decisive; and the
deaths of his two rivals were distinguished only by the difference of
their characters. The rhetorician Eugenius, who had almost acquired the
dominion of the world, was reduced to implore the mercy of the
conqueror; and the unrelenting soldiers separated his head from his body
as he lay prostrate at the feet of Theodosius. Arbogastes, after the
loss of a battle, in which he had discharged the duties of a soldier and
a general, wandered several days among the mountains. But when he was
convinced that his cause was desperate, and his escape impracticable,
the intrepid Barbarian imitated the example of the ancient Romans, and
turned his sword against his own breast. The fate of the empire was
determined in a narrow corner of Italy; and the legitimate successor of
the house of Valentinian embraced the archbishop of Milan, and
graciously received the submission of the provinces of the West. Those
provinces were involved in the guilt of rebellion; while the inflexible
courage of Ambrose alone had resisted the claims of successful
usurpation. With a manly freedom, which might have been fatal to any
other subject, the archbishop rejected the gifts of Eugenius, * declined
his correspondence, and withdrew himself from Milan, to avoid the odious
presence of a tyrant, whose downfall he predicted in discreet and
ambiguous language. The merit of Ambrose was applauded by the conqueror,
who secured the attachment of the people by his alliance with the
church; and the clemency of Theodosius is ascribed to the humane
intercession of the archbishop of Milan.

After the defeat of Eugenius, the merit, as well as the authority, of
Theodosius was cheerfully acknowledged by all the inhabitants of the
Roman world. The experience of his past conduct encouraged the most
pleasing expectations of his future reign; and the age of the emperor,
which did not exceed fifty years, seemed to extend the prospect of the
public felicity. His death, only four months after his victory, was
considered by the people as an unforeseen and fatal event, which
destroyed, in a moment, the hopes of the rising generation. But the
indulgence of ease and luxury had secretly nourished the principles of
disease.  The strength of Theodosius was unable to support the sudden
and violent transition from the palace to the camp; and the increasing
symptoms of a dropsy announced the speedy dissolution of the emperor.
The opinion, and perhaps the interest, of the public had confirmed the
division of the Eastern and Western empires; and the two royal youths,
Arcadius and Honorius, who had already obtained, from the tenderness of
their father, the title of Augustus, were destined to fill the thrones
of Constantinople and of Rome. Those princes were not permitted to share
the danger and glory of the civil war;  but as soon as Theodosius had
triumphed over his unworthy rivals, he called his younger son, Honorius,
to enjoy the fruits of the victory, and to receive the sceptre of the
West from the hands of his dying father. The arrival of Honorius at
Milan was welcomed by a splendid exhibition of the games of the Circus;
and the emperor, though he was oppressed by the weight of his disorder,
contributed by his presence to the public joy. But the remains of his
strength were exhausted by the painful effort which he made to assist at
the spectacles of the morning. Honorius supplied, during the rest of the
day, the place of his father; and the great Theodosius expired in the
ensuing night. Notwithstanding the recent animosities of a civil war,
his death was universally lamented. The Barbarians, whom he had
vanquished and the churchmen, by whom he had been subdued, celebrated,
with loud and sincere applause, the qualities of the deceased emperor,
which appeared the most valuable in their eyes. The Romans were
terrified by the impending dangers of a feeble and divided
administration, and every disgraceful moment of the unfortunate reigns
of Arcadius and Honorius revived the memory of their irreparable loss.

In the faithful picture of the virtues of Theodosius, his imperfections
have not been dissembled; the act of cruelty, and the habits of
indolence, which tarnished the glory of one of the greatest of the Roman
princes. An historian, perpetually adverse to the fame of Theodosius,
has exaggerated his vices, and their pernicious effects; he boldly
asserts, that every rank of subjects imitated the effeminate manners of
their sovereign; and that every species of corruption polluted the
course of public and private life; and that the feeble restraints of
order and decency were insufficient to resist the progress of that
degenerate spirit, which sacrifices, without a blush, the consideration
of duty and interest to the base indulgence of sloth and appetite.  The
complaints of contemporary writers, who deplore the increase of luxury,
and depravation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar
temper and situation. There are few observers, who possess a clear and
comprehensive view of the revolutions of society; and who are capable of
discovering the nice and secret springs of action, which impel, in the
same uniform direction, the blind and capricious passions of a multitude
of individuals. If it can be affirmed, with any degree of truth, that
the luxury of the Romans was more shameless and dissolute in the reign
of Theodosius than in the age of Constantine, perhaps, or of Augustus,
the alteration cannot be ascribed to any beneficial improvements, which
had gradually increased the stock of national riches. A long period of
calamity or decay must have checked the industry, and diminished the
wealth, of the people; and their profuse luxury must have been the
result of that indolent despair, which enjoys the present hour, and
declines the thoughts of futurity. The uncertain condition of their
property discouraged the subjects of Theodosius from engaging in those
useful and laborious undertakings which require an immediate expense,
and promise a slow and distant advantage. The frequent examples of ruin
and desolation tempted them not to spare the remains of a patrimony,
which might, every hour, become the prey of the rapacious Goth. And the
mad prodigality which prevails in the confusion of a shipwreck, or a
siege, may serve to explain the progress of luxury amidst the
misfortunes and terrors of a sinking nation.

The effeminate luxury, which infected the manners of courts and cities,
had instilled a secret and destructive poison into the camps of the
legions; and their degeneracy has been marked by the pen of a military
writer, who had accurately studied the genuine and ancient principles of
Roman discipline. It is the just and important observation of Vegetius,
that the infantry was invariably covered with defensive armor, from the
foundation of the city, to the reign of the emperor Gratian. The
relaxation of discipline, and the disuse of exercise, rendered the
soldiers less able, and less willing, to support the fatigues of the
service; they complained of the weight of the armor, which they seldom
wore; and they successively obtained the permission of laying aside both
their cuirasses and their helmets. The heavy weapons of their ancestors,
the short sword, and the formidable pilum, which had subdued the world,
insensibly dropped from their feeble hands. As the use of the shield is
incompatible with that of the bow, they reluctantly marched into the
field; condemned to suffer either the pain of wounds, or the ignominy of
flight, and always disposed to prefer the more shameful alternative. The
cavalry of the Goths, the Huns, and the Alani, had felt the benefits,
and adopted the use, of defensive armor; and, as they excelled in the
management of missile weapons, they easily overwhelmed the naked and
trembling legions, whose heads and breasts were exposed, without
defence, to the arrows of the Barbarians. The loss of armies, the
destruction of cities, and the dishonor of the Roman name, ineffectually
solicited the successors of Gratian to restore the helmets and the
cuirasses of the infantry. The enervated soldiers abandoned their own
and the public defence; and their pusillanimous indolence may be
considered as the immediate cause of the downfall of the empire.

Chapter XXVIII: Destruction Of Paganism.

Part I.

Final Destruction Of Paganism. -- Introduction Of The Worship Of Saints,
And Relics, Among The Christians.

The ruin of Paganism, in the age of Theodosius, is perhaps the only
example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular
superstition; and may therefore deserve to be considered as a singular
event in the history of the human mind. The Christians, more especially
the clergy, had impatiently supported the prudent delays of Constantine,
and the equal toleration of the elder Valentinian; nor could they deem
their conquest perfect or secure, as long as their adversaries were
permitted to exist. The influence which Ambrose and his brethren had
acquired over the youth of Gratian, and the piety of Theodosius, was
employed to infuse the maxims of persecution into the breasts of their
Imperial proselytes. Two specious principles of religious jurisprudence
were established, from whence they deduced a direct and rigorous
conclusion, against the subjects of the empire who still adhered to the
ceremonies of their ancestors: thatthe magistrate is, in some measure,
guilty of the crimes which he neglects to prohibit, or to punish; and,
thatthe idolatrous worship of fabulous deities, and real dæmons, is the
most abominable crime against the supreme majesty of the Creator. The
laws of Moses, and the examples of Jewish history,  were hastily,
perhaps erroneously, applied, by the clergy, to the mild and universal
reign of Christianity.  The zeal of the emperors was excited to
vindicate their own honor, and that of the Deity: and the temples of the
Roman world were subverted, about sixty years after the conversion of
Constantine.

From the age of Numa to the reign of Gratian, the Romans preserved the
regular succession of the several colleges of the sacerdotal order.
Fifteen Pontiffs exercised their supreme jurisdiction over all things,
and persons, that were consecrated to the service of the gods; and the
various questions which perpetually arose in a loose and traditionary
system, were submitted to the judgment of their holy tribunal Fifteen
grave and learned Augurs observed the face of the heavens, and
prescribed the actions of heroes, according to the flight of birds.
Fifteen keepers of the Sibylline books (their name of Quindecemvirs was
derived from their number) occasionally consulted the history of future,
and, as it should seem, of contingent, events. Six Vestals devoted their
virginity to the guard of the sacred fire, and of the unknown pledges of
the duration of Rome; which no mortal had been suffered to behold with
impunity.  Seven Epulos prepared the table of the gods, conducted the
solemn procession, and regulated the ceremonies of the annual festival.
The three Flamens of Jupiter, of Mars, and of Quirinus, were considered
as the peculiar ministers of the three most powerful deities, who
watched over the fate of Rome and of the universe. The King of the
Sacrifices represented the person of Numa, and of his successors, in the
religious functions, which could be performed only by royal hands. The
confraternities of the Salians, the Lupercals, &c., practised such rites
as might extort a smile of contempt from every reasonable man, with a
lively confidence of recommending themselves to the favor of the
immortal gods. The authority, which the Roman priests had formerly
obtained in the counsels of the republic, was gradually abolished by the
establishment of monarchy, and the removal of the seat of empire. But
the dignity of their sacred character was still protected by the laws,
and manners of their country; and they still continued, more especially
the college of pontiffs, to exercise in the capital, and sometimes in
the provinces, the rights of their ecclesiastical and civil
jurisdiction. Their robes of purple, chariots of state, and sumptuous
entertainments, attracted the admiration of the people; and they
received, from the consecrated lands, and the public revenue, an ample
stipend, which liberally supported the splendor of the priesthood, and
all the expenses of the religious worship of the state. As the service
of the altar was not incompatible with the command of armies, the
Romans, after their consulships and triumphs, aspired to the place of
pontiff, or of augur; the seats of Cicero  and Pompey were filled, in
the fourth century, by the most illustrious members of the senate; and
the dignity of their birth reflected additional splendor on their
sacerdotal character. The fifteen priests, who composed the college of
pontiffs, enjoyed a more distinguished rank as the companions of their
sovereign; and the Christian emperors condescended to accept the robe
and ensigns, which were appropriated to the office of supreme pontiff.
But when Gratian ascended the throne, more scrupulous or more
enlightened, he sternly rejected those profane symbols;  applied to the
service of the state, or of the church, the revenues of the priests and
vestals; abolished their honors and immunities; and dissolved the
ancient fabric of Roman superstition, which was supported by the
opinions and habits of eleven hundred years. Paganism was still the
constitutional religion of the senate. The hall, or temple, in which
they assembled, was adorned by the statue and altar of Victory;  a
majestic female standing on a globe, with flowing garments, expanded
wings, and a crown of laurel in her outstretched hand.  The senators
were sworn on the altar of the goddess to observe the laws of the
emperor and of the empire: and a solemn offering of wine and incense was
the ordinary prelude of their public deliberations.  The removal of this
ancient monument was the only injury which Constantius had offered to
the superstition of the Romans. The altar of Victory was again restored
by Julian, tolerated by Valentinian, and once more banished from the
senate by the zeal of Gratian.  But the emperor yet spared the statues
of the gods which were exposed to the public veneration: four hundred
and twenty-four temples, or chapels, still remained to satisfy the
devotion of the people; and in every quarter of Rome the delicacy of the
Christians was offended by the fumes of idolatrous sacrifice.

But the Christians formed the least numerous party in the senate of
Rome:  and it was only by their absence, that they could express their
dissent from the legal, though profane, acts of a Pagan majority. In
that assembly, the dying embers of freedom were, for a moment, revived
and inflamed by the breath of fanaticism. Four respectable deputations
were successively voted to the Imperial court,  to represent the
grievances of the priesthood and the senate, and to solicit the
restoration of the altar of Victory. The conduct of this important
business was intrusted to the eloquent Symmachus,  a wealthy and noble
senator, who united the sacred characters of pontiff and augur with the
civil dignities of proconsul of Africa and præfect of the city. The
breast of Symmachus was animated by the warmest zeal for the cause of
expiring Paganism; and his religious antagonists lamented the abuse of
his genius, and the inefficacy of his moral virtues.  The orator, whose
petition is extant to the emperor Valentinian, was conscious of the
difficulty and danger of the office which he had assumed. He cautiously
avoids every topic which might appear to reflect on the religion of his
sovereign; humbly declares, that prayers and entreaties are his only
arms; and artfully draws his arguments from the schools of rhetoric,
rather than from those of philosophy. Symmachus endeavors to seduce the
imagination of a young prince, by displaying the attributes of the
goddess of victory; he insinuates, that the confiscation of the
revenues, which were consecrated to the service of the gods, was a
measure unworthy of his liberal and disinterested character; and he
maintains, that the Roman sacrifices would be deprived of their force
and energy, if they were no longer celebrated at the expense, as well as
in the name, of the republic. Even scepticism is made to supply an
apology for superstition. The great and incomprehensible secretof the
universe eludes the inquiry of man. Where reason cannot instruct, custom
may be permitted to guide; and every nation seems to consult the
dictates of prudence, by a faithful attachment to those rites and
opinions, which have received the sanction of ages. If those ages have
been crowned with glory and prosperity, if the devout people have
frequently obtained the blessings which they have solicited at the
altars of the gods, it must appear still more advisable to persist in
the same salutary practice; and not to risk the unknown perils that may
attend any rash innovations. The test of antiquity and success was
applied with singular advantage to the religion of Numa; and Rome
herself, the celestial genius that presided over the fates of the city,
is introduced by the orator to plead her own cause before the tribunal
of the emperors. "Most excellent princes," says the venerable matron,
"fathers of your country! pity and respect my age, which has hitherto
flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety. Since I do not repent,
permit me to continue in the practice of my ancient rites. Since I am
born free, allow me to enjoy my domestic institutions. This religion has
reduced the world under my laws. These rites have repelled Hannibal from
the city, and the Gauls from the Capitol. Were my gray hairs reserved
for such intolerable disgrace? I am ignorant of the new system that I am
required to adopt; but I am well assured, that the correction of old age
is always an ungrateful and ignominious office."  The fears of the
people supplied what the discretion of the orator had suppressed; and
the calamities, which afflicted, or threatened, the declining empire,
were unanimously imputed, by the Pagans, to the new religion of Christ
and of Constantine.

But the hopes of Symmachus were repeatedly baffled by the firm and
dexterous opposition of the archbishop of Milan, who fortified the
emperors against the fallacious eloquence of the advocate of Rome. In
this controversy, Ambrose condescends to speak the language of a
philosopher, and to ask, with some contempt, why it should be thought
necessary to introduce an imaginary and invisible power, as the cause of
those victories, which were sufficiently explained by the valor and
discipline of the legions. He justly derides the absurd reverence for
antiquity, which could only tend to discourage the improvements of art,
and to replunge the human race into their original barbarism. From
thence, gradually rising to a more lofty and theological tone, he
pronounces, that Christianity alone is the doctrine of truth and
salvation; and that every mode of Polytheism conducts its deluded
votaries, through the paths of error, to the abyss of eternal perdition.
Arguments like these, when they were suggested by a favorite bishop, had
power to prevent the restoration of the altar of Victory; but the same
arguments fell, with much more energy and effect, from the mouth of a
conqueror; and the gods of antiquity were dragged in triumph at the
chariot-wheels of Theodosius.  In a full meeting of the senate, the
emperor proposed, according to the forms of the republic, the important
question, Whether the worship of Jupiter, or that of Christ, should be
the religion of the Romans. * The liberty of suffrages, which he
affected to allow, was destroyed by the hopes and fears that his
presence inspired; and the arbitrary exile of Symmachus was a recent
admonition, that it might be dangerous to oppose the wishes of the
monarch. On a regular division of the senate, Jupiter was condemned and
degraded by the sense of a very large majority; and it is rather
surprising, that any members should be found bold enough to declare, by
their speeches and votes, that they were still attached to the interest
of an abdicated deity.  The hasty conversion of the senate must be
attributed either to supernatural or to sordid motives; and many of
these reluctant proselytes betrayed, on every favorable occasion, their
secret disposition to throw aside the mask of odious dissimulation. But
they were gradually fixed in the new religion, as the cause of the
ancient became more hopeless; they yielded to the authority of the
emperor, to the fashion of the times, and to the entreaties of their
wives and children,  who were instigated and governed by the clergy of
Rome and the monks of the East. The edifying example of the Anician
family was soon imitated by the rest of the nobility: the Bassi, the
Paullini, the Gracchi, embraced the Christian religion; and "the
luminaries of the world, the venerable assembly of Catos (such are the
high-flown expressions of Prudentius) were impatient to strip themselves
of their pontifical garment; to cast the skin of the old serpent; to
assume the snowy robes of baptismal innocence, and to humble the pride
of the consular fasces before tombs of the martyrs."  The citizens, who
subsisted by their own industry, and the populace, who were supported by
the public liberality, filled the churches of the Lateran, and Vatican,
with an incessant throng of devout proselytes. The decrees of the
senate, which proscribed the worship of idols, were ratified by the
general consent of the Romans;  the splendor of the Capitol was defaced,
and the solitary temples were abandoned to ruin and contempt.  Rome
submitted to the yoke of the Gospel; and the vanquished provinces had
not yet lost their reverence for the name and authority of Rome. *

Chapter XXVIII: Destruction Of Paganism. -- Part II.

The filial piety of the emperors themselves engaged them to proceed,
with some caution and tenderness, in the reformation of the eternal
city. Those absolute monarchs acted with less regard to the prejudices
of the provincials. The pious labor which had been suspended near twenty
years since the death of Constantius,  was vigorously resumed, and
finally accomplished, by the zeal of Theodosius. Whilst that warlike
prince yet struggled with the Goths, not for the glory, but for the
safety, of the republic, he ventured to offend a considerable party of
his subjects, by some acts which might perhaps secure the protection of
Heaven, but which must seem rash and unseasonable in the eye of human
prudence. The success of his first experiments against the Pagans
encouraged the pious emperor to reiterate and enforce his edicts of
proscription: the same laws which had been originally published in the
provinces of the East, were applied, after the defeat of Maximus, to the
whole extent of the Western empire; and every victory of the orthodox
Theodosius contributed to the triumph of the Christian and Catholic
faith.  He attacked superstition in her most vital part, by prohibiting
the use of sacrifices, which he declared to be criminal as well as
infamous; and if the terms of his edicts more strictly condemned the
impious curiosity which examined the entrails of the victim,  every
subsequent explanation tended to involve in the same guilt the general
practice of immolation, which essentially constituted the religion of
the Pagans. As the temples had been erected for the purpose of
sacrifice, it was the duty of a benevolent prince to remove from his
subjects the dangerous temptation of offending against the laws which he
had enacted. A special commission was granted to Cynegius, the Prætorian
præfect of the East, and afterwards to the counts Jovius and Gaudentius,
two officers of distinguished rank in the West; by which they were
directed to shut the temples, to seize or destroy the instruments of
idolatry, to abolish the privileges of the priests, and to confiscate
the consecrated property for the benefit of the emperor, of the church,
or of the army.  Here the desolation might have stopped: and the naked
edifices, which were no longer employed in the service of idolatry,
might have been protected from the destructive rage of fanaticism. Many
of those temples were the most splendid and beautiful monuments of
Grecian architecture; and the emperor himself was interested not to
deface the splendor of his own cities, or to diminish the value of his
own possessions. Those stately edifices might be suffered to remain, as
so many lasting trophies of the victory of Christ. In the decline of the
arts they might be usefully converted into magazines, manufactures, or
places of public assembly: and perhaps, when the walls of the temple had
been sufficiently purified by holy rites, the worship of the true Deity
might be allowed to expiate the ancient guilt of idolatry. But as long
as they subsisted, the Pagans fondly cherished the secret hope, that an
auspicious revolution, a second Julian, might again restore the altars
of the gods: and the earnestness with which they addressed their
unavailing prayers to the throne,  increased the zeal of the Christian
reformers to extirpate, without mercy, the root of superstition. The
laws of the emperors exhibit some symptoms of a milder disposition:  but
their cold and languid efforts were insufficient to stem the torrent of
enthusiasm and rapine, which was conducted, or rather impelled, by the
spiritual rulers of the church. In Gaul, the holy Martin, bishop of
Tours,  marched at the head of his faithful monks to destroy the idols,
the temples, and the consecrated trees of his extensive diocese; and, in
the execution of this arduous task, the prudent reader will judge
whether Martin was supported by the aid of miraculous powers, or of
carnal weapons. In Syria, the divine and excellent Marcellus,  as he is
styled by Theodoret, a bishop animated with apostolic fervor, resolved
to level with the ground the stately temples within the diocese of
Apamea. His attack was resisted by the skill and solidity with which the
temple of Jupiter had been constructed. The building was seated on an
eminence: on each of the four sides, the lofty roof was supported by
fifteen massy columns, sixteen feet in circumference; and the large
stone, of which they were composed, were firmly cemented with lead and
iron. The force of the strongest and sharpest tools had been tried
without effect. It was found necessary to undermine the foundations of
the columns, which fell down as soon as the temporary wooden props had
been consumed with fire; and the difficulties of the enterprise are
described under the allegory of a black dæmon, who retarded, though he
could not defeat, the operations of the Christian engineers. Elated with
victory, Marcellus took the field in person against the powers of
darkness; a numerous troop of soldiers and gladiators marched under the
episcopal banner, and he successively attacked the villages and country
temples of the diocese of Apamea. Whenever any resistance or danger was
apprehended, the champion of the faith, whose lameness would not allow
him either to fight or fly, placed himself at a convenient distance,
beyond the reach of darts. But this prudence was the occasion of his
death: he was surprised and slain by a body of exasperated rustics; and
the synod of the province pronounced, without hesitation, that the holy
Marcellus had sacrificed his life in the cause of God. In the support of
this cause, the monks, who rushed with tumultuous fury from the desert,
distinguished themselves by their zeal and diligence. They deserved the
enmity of the Pagans; and some of them might deserve the reproaches of
avarice and intemperance; of avarice, which they gratified with holy
plunder, and of intemperance, which they indulged at the expense of the
people, who foolishly admired their tattered garments, loud psalmody,
and artificial paleness.  A small number of temples was protected by the
fears, the venality, the taste, or the prudence, of the civil and
ecclesiastical governors. The temple of the Celestial Venus at Carthage,
whose sacred precincts formed a circumference of two miles, was
judiciously converted into a Christian church;  and a similar
consecration has preserved inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon
at Rome.  But in almost every province of the Roman world, an army of
fanatics, without authority, and without discipline, invaded the
peaceful inhabitants; and the ruin of the fairest structures of
antiquity still displays the ravages of those Barbarians, who alone had
time and inclination to execute such laborious destruction.

In this wide and various prospect of devastation, the spectator may
distinguish the ruins of the temple of Serapis, at Alexandria.  Serapis
does not appear to have been one of the native gods, or monsters, who
sprung from the fruitful soil of superstitious Egypt.  The first of the
Ptolemies had been commanded, by a dream, to import the mysterious
stranger from the coast of Pontus, where he had been long adored by the
inhabitants of Sinope; but his attributes and his reign were so
imperfectly understood, that it became a subject of dispute, whether he
represented the bright orb of day, or the gloomy monarch of the
subterraneous regions.  The Egyptians, who were obstinately devoted to
the religion of their fathers, refused to admit this foreign deity
within the walls of their cities.  But the obsequious priests, who were
seduced by the liberality of the Ptolemies, submitted, without
resistance, to the power of the god of Pontus: an honorable and domestic
genealogy was provided; and this fortunate usurper was introduced into
the throne and bed of Osiris,  the husband of Isis, and the celestial
monarch of Egypt. Alexandria, which claimed his peculiar protection,
gloried in the name of the city of Serapis. His temple,  which rivalled
the pride and magnificence of the Capitol, was erected on the spacious
summit of an artificial mount, raised one hundred steps above the level
of the adjacent parts of the city; and the interior cavity was strongly
supported by arches, and distributed into vaults and subterraneous
apartments. The consecrated buildings were surrounded by a quadrangular
portico; the stately halls, and exquisite statues, displayed the triumph
of the arts; and the treasures of ancient learning were preserved in the
famous Alexandrian library, which had arisen with new splendor from its
ashes.  After the edicts of Theodosius had severely prohibited the
sacrifices of the Pagans, they were still tolerated in the city and
temple of Serapis; and this singular indulgence was imprudently ascribed
to the superstitious terrors of the Christians themselves; as if they
had feared to abolish those ancient rites, which could alone secure the
inundations of the Nile, the harvests of Egypt, and the subsistence of
Constantinople.

At that time  the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria was filled by
Theophilus,  the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue; a bold, bad man,
whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood. His
pious indignation was excited by the honors of Serapis; and the insults
which he offered to an ancient temple of Bacchus, * convinced the Pagans
that he meditated a more important and dangerous enterprise. In the
tumultuous capital of Egypt, the slightest provocation was sufficient to
inflame a civil war. The votaries of Serapis, whose strength and numbers
were much inferior to those of their antagonists, rose in arms at the
instigation of the philosopher Olympius,  who exhorted them to die in
the defence of the altars of the gods. These Pagan fanatics fortified
themselves in the temple, or rather fortress, of Serapis; repelled the
besiegers by daring sallies, and a resolute defence; and, by the inhuman
cruelties which they exercised on their Christian prisoners, obtained
the last consolation of despair. The efforts of the prudent magistrate
were usefully exerted for the establishment of a truce, till the answer
of Theodosius should determine the fate of Serapis. The two parties
assembled, without arms, in the principal square; and the Imperial
rescript was publicly read. But when a sentence of destruction against
the idols of Alexandria was pronounced, the Christians set up a shout of
joy and exultation, whilst the unfortunate Pagans, whose fury had given
way to consternation, retired with hasty and silent steps, and eluded,
by their flight or obscurity, the resentment of their enemies.
Theophilus proceeded to demolish the temple of Serapis, without any
other difficulties, than those which he found in the weight and solidity
of the materials: but these obstacles proved so insuperable, that he was
obliged to leave the foundations; and to content himself with reducing
the edifice itself to a heap of rubbish, a part of which was soon
afterwards cleared away, to make room for a church, erected in honor of
the Christian martyrs. The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged
or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the
empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator,
whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice.  The
compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably
perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry,
for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages; and either the
zeal or the avarice of the archbishop,  might have been satiated with
the rich spoils, which were the reward of his victory. While the images
and vases of gold and silver were carefully melted, and those of a less
valuable metal were contemptuously broken, and cast into the streets,
Theophilus labored to expose the frauds and vices of the ministers of
the idols; their dexterity in the management of the loadstone; their
secret methods of introducing a human actor into a hollow statue; * and
their scandalous abuse of the confidence of devout husbands and
unsuspecting females.  Charges like these may seem to deserve some
degree of credit, as they are not repugnant to the crafty and interested
spirit of superstition. But the same spirit is equally prone to the base
practice of insulting and calumniating a fallen enemy; and our belief is
naturally checked by the reflection, that it is much less difficult to
invent a fictitious story, than to support a practical fraud. The
colossal statue of Serapis  was involved in the ruin of his temple and
religion. A great number of plates of different metals, artificially
joined together, composed the majestic figure of the deity, who touched
on either side the walls of the sanctuary. The aspect of Serapis, his
sitting posture, and the sceptre, which he bore in his left hand, were
extremely similar to the ordinary representations of Jupiter. He was
distinguished from Jupiter by the basket, or bushel, which was placed on
his head; and by the emblematic monster which he held in his right hand;
the head and body of a serpent branching into three tails, which were
again terminated by the triple heads of a dog, a lion, and a wolf. It
was confidently affirmed, that if any impious hand should dare to
violate the majesty of the god, the heavens and the earth would
instantly return to their original chaos. An intrepid soldier, animated
by zeal, and armed with a weighty battle-axe, ascended the ladder; and
even the Christian multitude expected, with some anxiety, the event of
the combat.  He aimed a vigorous stroke against the cheek of Serapis;
the cheek fell to the ground; the thunder was still silent, and both the
heavens and the earth continued to preserve their accustomed order and
tranquillity. The victorious soldier repeated his blows: the huge idol
was overthrown, and broken in pieces; and the limbs of Serapis were
ignominiously dragged through the streets of Alexandria. His mangled
carcass was burnt in the Amphitheatre, amidst the shouts of the
populace; and many persons attributed their conversion to this discovery
of the impotence of their tutelar deity. The popular modes of religion,
that propose any visible and material objects of worship, have the
advantage of adapting and familiarizing themselves to the senses of
mankind: but this advantage is counterbalanced by the various and
inevitable accidents to which the faith of the idolater is exposed. It
is scarcely possible, that, in every disposition of mind, he should
preserve his implicit reverence for the idols, or the relics, which the
naked eye, and the profane hand, are unable to distinguish from the most
common productions of art or nature; and if, in the hour of danger,
their secret and miraculous virtue does not operate for their own
preservation, he scorns the vain apologies of his priests, and justly
derides the object, and the folly, of his superstitious attachment.
After the fall of Serapis, some hopes were still entertained by the
Pagans, that the Nile would refuse his annual supply to the impious
masters of Egypt; and the extraordinary delay of the inundation seemed
to announce the displeasure of the river-god. But this delay was soon
compensated by the rapid swell of the waters. They suddenly rose to such
an unusual height, as to comfort the discontented party with the
pleasing expectation of a deluge; till the peaceful river again subsided
to the well-known and fertilizing level of sixteen cubits, or about
thirty English feet.

The temples of the Roman empire were deserted, or destroyed; but the
ingenious superstition of the Pagans still attempted to elude the laws
of Theodosius, by which all sacrifices had been severely prohibited. The
inhabitants of the country, whose conduct was less opposed to the eye of
malicious curiosity, disguised their religious, under the appearance of
convivial, meetings. On the days of solemn festivals, they assembled in
great numbers under the spreading shade of some consecrated trees; sheep
and oxen were slaughtered and roasted; and this rural entertainment was
sanctified by the use of incense, and by the hymns which were sung in
honor of the gods. But it was alleged, that, as no part of the animal
was made a burnt-offering, as no altar was provided to receive the
blood, and as the previous oblation of salt cakes, and the concluding
ceremony of libations, were carefully omitted, these festal meetings did
not involve the guests in the guilt, or penalty, of an illegal
sacrifice.  Whatever might be the truth of the facts, or the merit of
the distinction,  these vain pretences were swept away by the last edict
of Theodosius, which inflicted a deadly wound on the superstition of the
Pagans.  * This prohibitory law is expressed in the most absolute and
comprehensive terms. "It is our will and pleasure," says the emperor,
"that none of our subjects, whether magistrates or private citizens,
however exalted or however humble may be their rank and condition, shall
presume, in any city or in any place, to worship an inanimate idol, by
the sacrifice of a guiltless victim." The act of sacrificing, and the
practice of divination by the entrails of the victim, are declared
(without any regard to the object of the inquiry) a crime of high
treason against the state, which can be expiated only by the death of
the guilty. The rites of Pagan superstition, which might seem less
bloody and atrocious, are abolished, as highly injurious to the truth
and honor of religion; luminaries, garlands, frankincense, and libations
of wine, are specially enumerated and condemned; and the harmless claims
of the domestic genius, of the household gods, are included in this
rigorous proscription. The use of any of these profane and illegal
ceremonies, subjects the offender to the forfeiture of the house or
estate, where they have been performed; and if he has artfully chosen
the property of another for the scene of his impiety, he is compelled to
discharge, without delay, a heavy fine of twenty-five pounds of gold, or
more than one thousand pounds sterling. A fine, not less considerable,
is imposed on the connivance of the secret enemies of religion, who
shall neglect the duty of their respective stations, either to reveal,
or to punish, the guilt of idolatry. Such was the persecuting spirit of
the laws of Theodosius, which were repeatedly enforced by his sons and
grandsons, with the loud and unanimous applause of the Christian world.

Chapter XXVIII: Destruction Of Paganism. -- Part III.

In the cruel reigns of Decius and Dioclesian, Christianity had been
proscribed, as a revolt from the ancient and hereditary religion of the
empire; and the unjust suspicions which were entertained of a dark and
dangerous faction, were, in some measure, countenanced by the
inseparable union and rapid conquests of the Catholic church. But the
same excuses of fear and ignorance cannot be applied to the Christian
emperors who violated the precepts of humanity and of the Gospel. The
experience of ages had betrayed the weakness, as well as folly, of
Paganism; the light of reason and of faith had already exposed, to the
greatest part of mankind, the vanity of idols; and the declining sect,
which still adhered to their worship, might have been permitted to
enjoy, in peace and obscurity, the religious costumes of their
ancestors. Had the Pagans been animated by the undaunted zeal which
possessed the minds of the primitive believers, the triumph of the
Church must have been stained with blood; and the martyrs of Jupiter and
Apollo might have embraced the glorious opportunity of devoting their
lives and fortunes at the foot of their altars. But such obstinate zeal
was not congenial to the loose and careless temper of Polytheism. The
violent and repeated strokes of the orthodox princes were broken by the
soft and yielding substance against which they were directed; and the
ready obedience of the Pagans protected them from the pains and
penalties of the Theodosian Code.  Instead of asserting, that the
authority of the gods was superior to that of the emperor, they
desisted, with a plaintive murmur, from the use of those sacred rites
which their sovereign had condemned. If they were sometimes tempted by a
sally of passion, or by the hopes of concealment, to indulge their
favorite superstition, their humble repentance disarmed the severity of
the Christian magistrate, and they seldom refused to atone for their
rashness, by submitting, with some secret reluctance, to the yoke of the
Gospel. The churches were filled with the increasing multitude of these
unworthy proselytes, who had conformed, from temporal motives, to the
reigning religion; and whilst they devoutly imitated the postures, and
recited the prayers, of the faithful, they satisfied their conscience by
the silent and sincere invocation of the gods of antiquity.  If the
Pagans wanted patience to suffer they wanted spirit to resist; and the
scattered myriads, who deplored the ruin of the temples, yielded,
without a contest, to the fortune of their adversaries. The disorderly
opposition  of the peasants of Syria, and the populace of Alexandria, to
the rage of private fanaticism, was silenced by the name and authority
of the emperor. The Pagans of the West, without contributing to the
elevation of Eugenius, disgraced, by their partial attachment, the cause
and character of the usurper. The clergy vehemently exclaimed, that he
aggravated the crime of rebellion by the guilt of apostasy; that, by his
permission, the altar of victory was again restored; and that the
idolatrous symbols of Jupiter and Hercules were displayed in the field,
against the invincible standard of the cross. But the vain hopes of the
Pagans were soon annihilated by the defeat of Eugenius; and they were
left exposed to the resentment of the conqueror, who labored to deserve
the favor of Heaven by the extirpation of idolatry.

A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their
master, who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the
last extremes of injustice and oppression. Theodosius might undoubtedly
have proposed to his Pagan subjects the alternative of baptism or of
death; and the eloquent Libanius has praised the moderation of a prince,
who never enacted, by any positive law, that all his subjects should
immediately embrace and practise the religion of their sovereign.  The
profession of Christianity was not made an essential qualification for
the enjoyment of the civil rights of society, nor were any peculiar
hardships imposed on the sectaries, who credulously received the fables
of Ovid, and obstinately rejected the miracles of the Gospel. The
palace, the schools, the army, and the senate, were filled with declared
and devout Pagans; they obtained, without distinction, the civil and
military honors of the empire. * Theodosius distinguished his liberal
regard for virtue and genius by the consular dignity, which he bestowed
on Symmachus;  and by the personal friendship which he expressed to
Libanius;  and the two eloquent apologists of Paganism were never
required either to change or to dissemble their religious opinions. The
Pagans were indulged in the most licentious freedom of speech and
writing; the historical and philosophic remains of Eunapius, Zosimus,
and the fanatic teachers of the school of Plato, betray the most furious
animosity, and contain the sharpest invectives, against the sentiments
and conduct of their victorious adversaries. If these audacious libels
were publicly known, we must applaud the good sense of the Christian
princes, who viewed, with a smile of contempt, the last struggles of
superstition and despair.  But the Imperial laws, which prohibited the
sacrifices and ceremonies of Paganism, were rigidly executed; and every
hour contributed to destroy the influence of a religion, which was
supported by custom, rather than by argument. The devotion or the poet,
or the philosopher, may be secretly nourished by prayer, meditation, and
study; but the exercise of public worship appears to be the only solid
foundation of the religious sentiments of the people, which derive their
force from imitation and habit. The interruption of that public exercise
may consummate, in the period of a few years, the important work of a
national revolution. The memory of theological opinions cannot long be
preserved, without the artificial helps of priests, of temples, and of
books.  The ignorant vulgar, whose minds are still agitated by the blind
hopes and terrors of superstition, will be soon persuaded by their
superiors to direct their vows to the reigning deities of the age; and
will insensibly imbibe an ardent zeal for the support and propagation of
the new doctrine, which spiritual hunger at first compelled them to
accept. The generation that arose in the world after the promulgation of
the Imperial laws, was attracted within the pale of the Catholic church:
and so rapid, yet so gentle, was the fall of Paganism, that only
twenty-eight years after the death of Theodosius, the faint and minute
vestiges were no longer visible to the eye of the legislator.

The ruin of the Pagan religion is described by the sophists as a
dreadful and amazing prodigy, which covered the earth with darkness, and
restored the ancient dominion of chaos and of night. They relate, in
solemn and pathetic strains, that the temples were converted into
sepulchres, and that the holy places, which had been adorned by the
statues of the gods, were basely polluted by the relics of Christian
martyrs. "The monks" (a race of filthy animals, to whom Eunapius is
tempted to refuse the name of men) "are the authors of the new worship,
which, in the place of those deities who are conceived by the
understanding, has substituted the meanest and most contemptible slaves.
The heads, salted and pickled, of those infamous malefactors, who for
the multitude of their crimes have suffered a just and ignominious
death; their bodies still marked by the impression of the lash, and the
scars of those tortures which were inflicted by the sentence of the
magistrate; such" (continues Eunapius) 'are the gods which the earth
produces in our days; such are the martyrs, the supreme arbitrators of
our prayers and petitions to the Deity, whose tombs are now consecrated
as the objects of the veneration of the people."  Without approving the
malice, it is natural enough to share the surprise of the sophist, the
spectator of a revolution, which raised those obscure victims of the
laws of Rome to the rank of celestial and invisible protectors of the
Roman empire. The grateful respect of the Christians for the martyrs of
the faith, was exalted, by time and victory, into religious adoration;
and the most illustrious of the saints and prophets were deservedly
associated to the honors of the martyrs. One hundred and fifty years
after the glorious deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Vatican and the
Ostian road were distinguished by the tombs, or rather by the trophies,
of those spiritual heroes.  In the age which followed the conversion of
Constantine, the emperors, the consuls, and the generals of armies,
devoutly visited the sepulchres of a tentmaker and a fisherman;  and
their venerable bones were deposited under the altars of Christ, on
which the bishops of the royal city continually offered the unbloody
sacrifice.  The new capital of the Eastern world, unable to produce any
ancient and domestic trophies, was enriched by the spoils of dependent
provinces. The bodies of St. Andrew, St. Luke, and St. Timothy, had
reposed near three hundred years in the obscure graves, from whence they
were transported, in solemn pomp, to the church of the apostles, which
the magnificence of Constantine had founded on the banks of the Thracian
Bosphorus.  About fifty years afterwards, the same banks were honored by
the presence of Samuel, the judge and prophet of the people of Israel.
His ashes, deposited in a golden vase, and covered with a silken veil,
were delivered by the bishops into each other's hands. The relics of
Samuel were received by the people with the same joy and reverence which
they would have shown to the living prophet; the highways, from
Palestine to the gates of Constantinople, were filled with an
uninterrupted procession; and the emperor Arcadius himself, at the head
of the most illustrious members of the clergy and senate, advanced to
meet his extraordinary guest, who had always deserved and claimed the
homage of kings.  The example of Rome and Constantinople confirmed the
faith and discipline of the Catholic world. The honors of the saints and
martyrs, after a feeble and ineffectual murmur of profane reason,  were
universally established; and in the age of Ambrose and Jerom, something
was still deemed wanting to the sanctity of a Christian church, till it
had been consecrated by some portion of holy relics, which fixed and
inflamed the devotion of the faithful.

In the long period of twelve hundred years, which elapsed between the
reign of Constantine and the reformation of Luther, the worship of
saints and relics corrupted the pure and perfect simplicity of the
Christian model: and some symptoms of degeneracy may be observed even in
the first generations which adopted and cherished this pernicious
innovation.

I. The satisfactory experience, that the relics of saints were more
valuable than gold or precious stones,  stimulated the clergy to
multiply the treasures of the church. Without much regard for truth or
probability, they invented names for skeletons, and actions for names.
The fame of the apostles, and of the holy men who had imitated their
virtues, was darkened by religious fiction. To the invincible band of
genuine and primitive martyrs, they added myriads of imaginary heroes,
who had never existed, except in the fancy of crafty or credulous
legendaries; and there is reason to suspect, that Tours might not be the
only diocese in which the bones of a malefactor were adored, instead of
those of a saint.  A superstitious practice, which tended to increase
the temptations of fraud, and credulity, insensibly extinguished the
light of history, and of reason, in the Christian world.

II. But the progress of superstition would have been much less rapid and
victorious, if the faith of the people had not been assisted by the
seasonable aid of visions and miracles, to ascertain the authenticity
and virtue of the most suspicious relics. In the reign of the younger
Theodosius, Lucian,  a presbyter of Jerusalem, and the ecclesiastical
minister of the village of Caphargamala, about twenty miles from the
city, related a very singular dream, which, to remove his doubts, had
been repeated on three successive Saturdays. A venerable figure stood
before him, in the silence of the night, with a long beard, a white
robe, and a gold rod; announced himself by the name of Gamaliel, and
revealed to the astonished presbyter, that his own corpse, with the
bodies of his son Abibas, his friend Nicodemus, and the illustrious
Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian faith, were secretly buried
in the adjacent field. He added, with some impatience, that it was time
to release himself and his companions from their obscure prison; that
their appearance would be salutary to a distressed world; and that they
had made choice of Lucian to inform the bishop of Jerusalem of their
situation and their wishes. The doubts and difficulties which still
retarded this important discovery were successively removed by new
visions; and the ground was opened by the bishop, in the presence of an
innumerable multitude. The coffins of Gamaliel, of his son, and of his
friend, were found in regular order; but when the fourth coffin, which
contained the remains of Stephen, was shown to the light, the earth
trembled, and an odor, such as that of paradise, was smelt, which
instantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the assistants.
The companions of Stephen were left in their peaceful residence of
Caphargamala: but the relics of the first martyr were transported, in
solemn procession, to a church constructed in their honor on Mount Sion;
and the minute particles of those relics, a drop of blood,  or the
scrapings of a bone, were acknowledged, in almost every province of the
Roman world, to possess a divine and miraculous virtue. The grave and
learned Augustin,  whose understanding scarcely admits the excuse of
credulity, has attested the innumerable prodigies which were performed
in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen; and this marvellous narrative is
inserted in the elaborate work of the City of God, which the bishop of
Hippo designed as a solid and immortal proof of the truth of
Christianity. Augustin solemnly declares, that he has selected those
miracles only which were publicly certified by the persons who were
either the objects, or the spectators, of the power of the martyr. Many
prodigies were omitted, or forgotten; and Hippo had been less favorably
treated than the other cities of the province. And yet the bishop
enumerates above seventy miracles, of which three were resurrections
from the dead, in the space of two years, and within the limits of his
own diocese.  If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses, and all the
saints, of the Christian world, it will not be easy to calculate the
fables, and the errors, which issued from this inexhaustible source. But
we may surely be allowed to observe, that a miracle, in that age of
superstition and credulity, lost its name and its merit, since it could
scarcely be considered as a deviation from the ordinary and established
laws of nature.

III. The innumerable miracles, of which the tombs of the martyrs were
the perpetual theatre, revealed to the pious believer the actual state
and constitution of the invisible world; and his religious speculations
appeared to be founded on the firm basis of fact and experience.
Whatever might be the condition of vulgar souls, in the long interval
between the dissolution and the resurrection of their bodies, it was
evident that the superior spirits of the saints and martyrs did not
consume that portion of their existence in silent and inglorious sleep.
It was evident (without presuming to determine the place of their
habitation, or the nature of their felicity) that they enjoyed the
lively and active consciousness of their happiness, their virtue, and
their powers; and that they had already secured the possession of their
eternal reward. The enlargement of their intellectual faculties
surpassed the measure of the human imagination; since it was proved by
experience, that they were capable of hearing and understanding the
various petitions of their numerous votaries; who, in the same moment of
time, but in the most distant parts of the world, invoked the name and
assistance of Stephen or of Martin.  The confidence of their petitioners
was founded on the persuasion, that the saints, who reigned with Christ,
cast an eye of pity upon earth; that they were warmly interested in the
prosperity of the Catholic Church; and that the individuals, who
imitated the example of their faith and piety, were the peculiar and
favorite objects of their most tender regard. Sometimes, indeed, their
friendship might be influenced by considerations of a less exalted kind:
they viewed with partial affection the places which had been consecrated
by their birth, their residence, their death, their burial, or the
possession of their relics. The meaner passions of pride, avarice, and
revenge, may be deemed unworthy of a celestial breast; yet the saints
themselves condescended to testify their grateful approbation of the
liberality of their votaries; and the sharpest bolts of punishment were
hurled against those impious wretches, who violated their magnificent
shrines, or disbelieved their supernatural power.  Atrocious, indeed,
must have been the guilt, and strange would have been the scepticism, of
those men, if they had obstinately resisted the proofs of a divine
agency, which the elements, the whole range of the animal creation, and
even the subtle and invisible operations of the human mind, were
compelled to obey.  The immediate, and almost instantaneous, effects
that were supposed to follow the prayer, or the offence, satisfied the
Christians of the ample measure of favor and authority which the saints
enjoyed in the presence of the Supreme God; and it seemed almost
superfluous to inquire whether they were continually obliged to
intercede before the throne of grace; or whether they might not be
permitted to exercise, according to the dictates of their benevolence
and justice, the delegated powers of their subordinate ministry. The
imagination, which had been raised by a painful effort to the
contemplation and worship of the Universal Cause, eagerly embraced such
inferior objects of adoration as were more proportioned to its gross
conceptions and imperfect faculties. The sublime and simple theology of
the primitive Christians was gradually corrupted; and the Monarchy of
heaven, already clouded by metaphysical subtleties, was degraded by the
introduction of a popular mythology, which tended to restore the reign
of polytheism.

IV. As the objects of religion were gradually reduced to the standard of
the imagination, the rites and ceremonies were introduced that seemed
most powerfully to affect the senses of the vulgar. If, in the beginning
of the fifth century,  Tertullian, or Lactantius,  had been suddenly
raised from the dead, to assist at the festival of some popular saint,
or martyr,  they would have gazed with astonishment, and indignation, on
the profane spectacle, which had succeeded to the pure and spiritual
worship of a Christian congregation. As soon as the doors of the church
were thrown open, they must have been offended by the smoke of incense,
the perfume of flowers, and the glare of lamps and tapers, which
diffused, at noonday, a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their opinion, a
sacrilegious light. If they approached the balustrade of the altar, they
made their way through the prostrate crowd, consisting, for the most
part, of strangers and pilgrims, who resorted to the city on the vigil
of the feast; and who already felt the strong intoxication of
fanaticism, and, perhaps, of wine. Their devout kisses were imprinted on
the walls and pavement of the sacred edifice; and their fervent prayers
were directed, whatever might be the language of their church, to the
bones, the blood, or the ashes of the saint, which were usually
concealed, by a linen or silken veil, from the eyes of the vulgar. The
Christians frequented the tombs of the martyrs, in the hope of
obtaining, from their powerful intercession, every sort of spiritual,
but more especially of temporal, blessings. They implored the
preservation of their health, or the cure of their infirmities; the
fruitfulness of their barren wives, or the safety and happiness of their
children. Whenever they undertook any distant or dangerous journey, they
requested, that the holy martyrs would be their guides and protectors on
the road; and if they returned without having experienced any
misfortune, they again hastened to the tombs of the martyrs, to
celebrate, with grateful thanksgivings, their obligations to the memory
and relics of those heavenly patrons. The walls were hung round with
symbols of the favors which they had received; eyes, and hands, and
feet, of gold and silver: and edifying pictures, which could not long
escape the abuse of indiscreet or idolatrous devotion, represented the
image, the attributes, and the miracles of the tutelar saint. The same
uniform original spirit of superstition might suggest, in the most
distant ages and countries, the same methods of deceiving the credulity,
and of affecting the senses of mankind:  but it must ingenuously be
confessed, that the ministers of the Catholic church imitated the
profane model, which they were impatient to destroy. The most
respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics
would more cheerfully renounce the superstitions of Paganism, if they
found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity.
The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final
conquest of the Roman empire: but the victors themselves were insensibly
subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals.  *

Chapter XXIX: Division Of Roman Empire Between Sons Of Theodosius.

Part I.

Final Division Of The Roman Empire Between The Sons Of Theodosius. --
Reign Of Arcadius And Honorius -- Administration Of Rufinus And
Stilicho. -- Revolt And Defeat Of Gildo In Africa.

The genius of Rome expired with Theodosius; the last of the successors
of Augustus and Constantine, who appeared in the field at the head of
their armies, and whose authority was universally acknowledged
throughout the whole extent of the empire. The memory of his virtues
still continued, however, to protect the feeble and inexperienced youth
of his two sons. After the death of their father, Arcadius and Honorius
were saluted, by the unanimous consent of mankind, as the lawful
emperors of the East, and of the West; and the oath of fidelity was
eagerly taken by every order of the state; the senates of old and new
Rome, the clergy, the magistrates, the soldiers, and the people.
Arcadius, who was then about eighteen years of age, was born in Spain,
in the humble habitation of a private family. But he received a princely
education in the palace of Constantinople; and his inglorious life was
spent in that peaceful and splendid seat of royalty, from whence he
appeared to reign over the provinces of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and
Egypt, from the Lower Danube to the confines of Persia and Æthiopia. His
younger brother Honorius, assumed, in the eleventh year of his age, the
nominal government of Italy, Africa, Gaul, Spain, and Britain; and the
troops, which guarded the frontiers of his kingdom, were opposed, on one
side, to the Caledonians, and on the other, to the Moors. The great and
martial præfecture of Illyricum was divided between the two princes: the
defence and possession of the provinces of Noricum, Pannonia, and
Dalmatia still belonged to the Western empire; but the two large
dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia, which Gratian had intrusted to the
valor of Theodosius, were forever united to the empire of the East. The
boundary in Europe was not very different from the line which now
separates the Germans and the Turks; and the respective advantages of
territory, riches, populousness, and military strength, were fairly
balanced and compensated, in this final and permanent division of the
Roman empire. The hereditary sceptre of the sons of Theodosius appeared
to be the gift of nature, and of their father; the generals and
ministers had been accustomed to adore the majesty of the royal infants;
and the army and people were not admonished of their rights, and of
their power, by the dangerous example of a recent election. The gradual
discovery of the weakness of Arcadius and Honorius, and the repeated
calamities of their reign, were not sufficient to obliterate the deep
and early impressions of loyalty. The subjects of Rome, who still
reverenced the persons, or rather the names, of their sovereigns,
beheld, with equal abhorrence, the rebels who opposed, and the ministers
who abused, the authority of the throne.

Theodosius had tarnished the glory of his reign by the elevation of
Rufinus; an odious favorite, who, in an age of civil and religious
faction, has deserved, from every party, the imputation of every crime.
The strong impulse of ambition and avarice  had urged Rufinus to abandon
his native country, an obscure corner of Gaul,  to advance his fortune
in the capital of the East: the talent of bold and ready elocution,
qualified him to succeed in the lucrative profession of the law; and his
success in that profession was a regular step to the most honorable and
important employments of the state. He was raised, by just degrees, to
the station of master of the offices. In the exercise of his various
functions, so essentially connected with the whole system of civil
government, he acquired the confidence of a monarch, who soon discovered
his diligence and capacity in business, and who long remained ignorant
of the pride, the malice, and the covetousness of his disposition. These
vices were concealed beneath the mask of profound dissimulation;  his
passions were subservient only to the passions of his master; yet in the
horrid massacre of Thessalonica, the cruel Rufinus inflamed the fury,
without imitating the repentance, of Theodosius. The minister, who
viewed with proud indifference the rest of mankind, never forgave the
appearance of an injury; and his personal enemies had forfeited, in his
opinion, the merit of all public services. Promotus, the master-general
of the infantry, had saved the empire from the invasion of the
Ostrogoths; but he indignantly supported the preeminence of a rival,
whose character and profession he despised; and in the midst of a public
council, the impatient soldier was provoked to chastise with a blow the
indecent pride of the favorite. This act of violence was represented to
the emperor as an insult, which it was incumbent on his dignity to
resent. The disgrace and exile of Promotus were signified by a
peremptory order, to repair, without delay, to a military station on the
banks of the Danube; and the death of that general (though he was slain
in a skirmish with the Barbarians) was imputed to the perfidious arts of
Rufinus.  The sacrifice of a hero gratified his revenge; the honors of
the consulship elated his vanity; but his power was still imperfect and
precarious, as long as the important posts of præfect of the East, and
of præfect of Constantinople, were filled by Tatian,  and his son
Proculus; whose united authority balanced, for some time, the ambition
and favor of the master of the offices. The two præfects were accused of
rapine and corruption in the administration of the laws and finances.
For the trial of these illustrious offenders, the emperor constituted a
special commission: several judges were named to share the guilt and
reproach of injustice; but the right of pronouncing sentence was
reserved to the president alone, and that president was Rufinus himself.
The father, stripped of the præfecture of the East, was thrown into a
dungeon; but the son, conscious that few ministers can be found
innocent, where an enemy is their judge, had secretly escaped; and
Rufinus must have been satisfied with the least obnoxious victim, if
despotism had not condescended to employ the basest and most ungenerous
artifice. The prosecution was conducted with an appearance of equity and
moderation, which flattered Tatian with the hope of a favorable event:
his confidence was fortified by the solemn assurances, and perfidious
oaths, of the president, who presumed to interpose the sacred name of
Theodosius himself; and the unhappy father was at last persuaded to
recall, by a private letter, the fugitive Proculus. He was instantly
seized, examined, condemned, and beheaded, in one of the suburbs of
Constantinople, with a precipitation which disappointed the clemency of
the emperor. Without respecting the misfortunes of a consular senator,
the cruel judges of Tatian compelled him to behold the execution of his
son: the fatal cord was fastened round his own neck; but in the moment
when he expected. and perhaps desired, the relief of a speedy death, he
was permitted to consume the miserable remnant of his old age in poverty
and exile.  The punishment of the two præfects might, perhaps, be
excused by the exceptionable parts of their own conduct; the enmity of
Rufinus might be palliated by the jealous and unsociable nature of
ambition. But he indulged a spirit of revenge equally repugnant to
prudence and to justice, when he degraded their native country of Lycia
from the rank of Roman provinces; stigmatized a guiltless people with a
mark of ignominy; and declared, that the countrymen of Tatian and
Proculus should forever remain incapable of holding any employment of
honor or advantage under the Imperial government.  The new præfect of
the East (for Rufinus instantly succeeded to the vacant honors of his
adversary) was not diverted, however, by the most criminal pursuits,
from the performance of the religious duties, which in that age were
considered as the most essential to salvation. In the suburb of
Chalcedon, surnamed the Oak, he had built a magnificent villa; to which
he devoutly added a stately church, consecrated to the apostles St.
Peter and St. Paul, and continually sanctified by the prayers and
penance of a regular society of monks. A numerous, and almost general,
synod of the bishops of the Eastern empire, was summoned to celebrate,
at the same time, the dedication of the church, and the baptism of the
founder. This double ceremony was performed with extraordinary pomp; and
when Rufinus was purified, in the holy font, from all the sins that he
had hitherto committed, a venerable hermit of Egypt rashly proposed
himself as the sponsor of a proud and ambitious statesman.

The character of Theodosius imposed on his minister the task of
hypocrisy, which disguised, and sometimes restrained, the abuse of
power; and Rufinus was apprehensive of disturbing the indolent slumber
of a prince still capable of exerting the abilities and the virtue,
which had raised him to the throne.  But the absence, and, soon
afterwards, the death, of the emperor, confirmed the absolute authority
of Rufinus over the person and dominions of Arcadius; a feeble youth,
whom the imperious præfect considered as his pupil, rather than his
sovereign. Regardless of the public opinion, he indulged his passions
without remorse, and without resistance; and his malignant and rapacious
spirit rejected every passion that might have contributed to his own
glory, or the happiness of the people. His avarice,  which seems to have
prevailed, in his corrupt mind, over every other sentiment, attracted
the wealth of the East, by the various arts of partial and general
extortion; oppressive taxes, scandalous bribery, immoderate fines,
unjust confiscations, forced or fictitious testaments, by which the
tyrant despoiled of their lawful inheritance the children of strangers,
or enemies; and the public sale of justice, as well as of favor, which
he instituted in the palace of Constantinople. The ambitious candidate
eagerly solicited, at the expense of the fairest part of his patrimony,
the honors and emoluments of some provincial government; the lives and
fortunes of the unhappy people were abandoned to the most liberal
purchaser; and the public discontent was sometimes appeased by the
sacrifice of an unpopular criminal, whose punishment was profitable only
to the præfect of the East, his accomplice and his judge. If avarice
were not the blindest of the human passions, the motives of Rufinus
might excite our curiosity; and we might be tempted to inquire with what
view he violated every principle of humanity and justice, to accumulate
those immense treasures, which he could not spend without folly, nor
possess without danger. Perhaps he vainly imagined, that he labored for
the interest of an only daughter, on whom he intended to bestow his
royal pupil, and the august rank of Empress of the East. Perhaps he
deceived himself by the opinion, that his avarice was the instrument of
his ambition. He aspired to place his fortune on a secure and
independent basis, which should no longer depend on the caprice of the
young emperor; yet he neglected to conciliate the hearts of the soldiers
and people, by the liberal distribution of those riches, which he had
acquired with so much toil, and with so much guilt. The extreme
parsimony of Rufinus left him only the reproach and envy of ill-gotten
wealth; his dependants served him without attachment; the universal
hatred of mankind was repressed only by the influence of servile fear.
The fate of Lucian proclaimed to the East, that the præfect, whose
industry was much abated in the despatch of ordinary business, was
active and indefatigable in the pursuit of revenge. Lucian, the son of
the præfect Florentius, the oppressor of Gaul, and the enemy of Julian,
had employed a considerable part of his inheritance, the fruit of rapine
and corruption, to purchase the friendship of Rufinus, and the high
office of Count of the East. But the new magistrate imprudently departed
from the maxims of the court, and of the times; disgraced his benefactor
by the contrast of a virtuous and temperate administration; and presumed
to refuse an act of injustice, which might have tended to the profit of
the emperor's uncle. Arcadius was easily persuaded to resent the
supposed insult; and the præfect of the East resolved to execute in
person the cruel vengeance, which he meditated against this ungrateful
delegate of his power. He performed with incessant speed the journey of
seven or eight hundred miles, from Constantinople to Antioch, entered
the capital of Syria at the dead of night, and spread universal
consternation among a people ignorant of his design, but not ignorant of
his character. The Count of the fifteen provinces of the East was
dragged, like the vilest malefactor, before the arbitrary tribunal of
Rufinus. Notwithstanding the clearest evidence of his integrity, which
was not impeached even by the voice of an accuser, Lucian was condemned,
almost with out a trial, to suffer a cruel and ignominious punishment.
The ministers of the tyrant, by the orders, and in the presence, of
their master, beat him on the neck with leather thongs armed at the
extremities with lead; and when he fainted under the violence of the
pain, he was removed in a close litter, to conceal his dying agonies
from the eyes of the indignant city. No sooner had Rufinus perpetrated
this inhuman act, the sole object of his expedition, than he returned,
amidst the deep and silent curses of a trembling people, from Antioch to
Constantinople; and his diligence was accelerated by the hope of
accomplishing, without delay, the nuptials of his daughter with the
emperor of the East.

But Rufinus soon experienced, that a prudent minister should constantly
secure his royal captive by the strong, though invisible chain of habit;
and that the merit, and much more easily the favor, of the absent, are
obliterated in a short time from the mind of a weak and capricious
sovereign. While the præfect satiated his revenge at Antioch, a secret
conspiracy of the favorite eunuchs, directed by the great chamberlain
Eutropius, undermined his power in the palace of Constantinople. They
discovered that Arcadius was not inclined to love the daughter of
Rufinus, who had been chosen, without his consent, for his bride; and
they contrived to substitute in her place the fair Eudoxia, the daughter
of Bauto,  a general of the Franks in the service of Rome; and who was
educated, since the death of her father, in the family of the sons of
Promotus. The young emperor, whose chastity had been strictly guarded by
the pious care of his tutor Arsenius,  eagerly listened to the artful
and flattering descriptions of the charms of Eudoxia: he gazed with
impatient ardor on her picture, and he understood the necessity of
concealing his amorous designs from the knowledge of a minister who was
so deeply interested to oppose the consummation of his happiness. Soon
after the return of Rufinus, the approaching ceremony of the royal
nuptials was announced to the people of Constantinople, who prepared to
celebrate, with false and hollow acclamations, the fortune of his
daughter. A splendid train of eunuchs and officers issued, in hymeneal
pomp, from the gates of the palace; bearing aloft the diadem, the robes,
and the inestimable ornaments, of the future empress. The solemn
procession passed through the streets of the city, which were adorned
with garlands, and filled with spectators; but when it reached the house
of the sons of Promotus, the principal eunuch respectfully entered the
mansion, invested the fair Eudoxia with the Imperial robes, and
conducted her in triumph to the palace and bed of Arcadius.  The secrecy
and success with which this conspiracy against Rufinus had been
conducted, imprinted a mark of indelible ridicule on the character of a
minister, who had suffered himself to be deceived, in a post where the
arts of deceit and dissimulation constitute the most distinguished
merit. He considered, with a mixture of indignation and fear, the
victory of an aspiring eunuch, who had secretly captivated the favor of
his sovereign; and the disgrace of his daughter, whose interest was
inseparably connected with his own, wounded the tenderness, or, at
least, the pride of Rufinus. At the moment when he flattered himself
that he should become the father of a line of kings, a foreign maid, who
had been educated in the house of his implacable enemies, was introduced
into the Imperial bed; and Eudoxia soon displayed a superiority of sense
and spirit, to improve the ascendant which her beauty must acquire over
the mind of a fond and youthful husband. The emperor would soon be
instructed to hate, to fear, and to destroy the powerful subject, whom
he had injured; and the consciousness of guilt deprived Rufinus of every
hope, either of safety or comfort, in the retirement of a private life.
But he still possessed the most effectual means of defending his
dignity, and perhaps of oppressing his enemies. The præfect still
exercised an uncontrolled authority over the civil and military
government of the East; and his treasures, if he could resolve to use
them, might be employed to procure proper instruments for the execution
of the blackest designs, that pride, ambition, and revenge could suggest
to a desperate statesman. The character of Rufinus seemed to justify the
accusations that he conspired against the person of his sovereign, to
seat himself on the vacant throne; and that he had secretly invited the
Huns and the Goths to invade the provinces of the empire, and to
increase the public confusion. The subtle præfect, whose life had been
spent in the intrigues of the palace, opposed, with equal arms, the
artful measures of the eunuch Eutropius; but the timid soul of Rufinus
was astonished by the hostile approach of a more formidable rival, of
the great Stilicho, the general, or rather the master, of the empire of
the West.

The celestial gift, which Achilles obtained, and Alexander envied, of a
poet worthy to celebrate the actions of heroes has been enjoyed by
Stilicho, in a much higher degree than might have been expected from the
declining state of genius, and of art. The muse of Claudian,  devoted to
his service, was always prepared to stigmatize his adversaries, Rufinus,
or Eutropius, with eternal infamy; or to paint, in the most splendid
colors, the victories and virtues of a powerful benefactor. In the
review of a period indifferently supplied with authentic materials, we
cannot refuse to illustrate the annals of Honorius, from the invectives,
or the panegyrics, of a contemporary writer; but as Claudian appears to
have indulged the most ample privilege of a poet and a courtier, some
criticism will be requisite to translate the language of fiction or
exaggeration, into the truth and simplicity of historic prose. His
silence concerning the family of Stilicho may be admitted as a proof,
that his patron was neither able, nor desirous, to boast of a long
series of illustrious progenitors; and the slight mention of his father,
an officer of Barbarian cavalry in the service of Valens, seems to
countenance the assertion, that the general, who so long commanded the
armies of Rome, was descended from the savage and perfidious race of the
Vandals.  If Stilicho had not possessed the external advantages of
strength and stature, the most flattering bard, in the presence of so
many thousand spectators, would have hesitated to affirm, that he
surpassed the measure of the demi-gods of antiquity; and that whenever
he moved, with lofty steps, through the streets of the capital, the
astonished crowd made room for the stranger, who displayed, in a private
condition, the awful majesty of a hero. From his earliest youth he
embraced the profession of arms; his prudence and valor were soon
distinguished in the field; the horsemen and archers of the East admired
his superior dexterity; and in each degree of his military promotions,
the public judgment always prevented and approved the choice of the
sovereign. He was named, by Theodosius, to ratify a solemn treaty with
the monarch of Persia; he supported, during that important embassy, the
dignity of the Roman name; and after he return to Constantinople, his
merit was rewarded by an intimate and honorable alliance with the
Imperial family. Theodosius had been prompted, by a pious motive of
fraternal affection, to adopt, for his own, the daughter of his brother
Honorius; the beauty and accomplishments of Serena  were universally
admired by the obsequious court; and Stilicho obtained the preference
over a crowd of rivals, who ambitiously disputed the hand of the
princess, and the favor of her adopted father.  The assurance that the
husband of Serena would be faithful to the throne, which he was
permitted to approach, engaged the emperor to exalt the fortunes, and to
employ the abilities, of the sagacious and intrepid Stilicho. He rose,
through the successive steps of master of the horse, and count of the
domestics, to the supreme rank of master-general of all the cavalry and
infantry of the Roman, or at least of the Western, empire;  and his
enemies confessed, that he invariably disdained to barter for gold the
rewards of merit, or to defraud the soldiers of the pay and
gratifications which they deserved or claimed, from the liberality of
the state.  The valor and conduct which he afterwards displayed, in the
defence of Italy, against the arms of Alaric and Radagaisus, may justify
the fame of his early achievements and in an age less attentive to the
laws of honor, or of pride, the Roman generals might yield the
preeminence of rank, to the ascendant of superior genius.  He lamented,
and revenged, the murder of Promotus, his rival and his friend; and the
massacre of many thousands of the flying Bastarnæis represented by the
poet as a bloody sacrifice, which the Roman Achilles offered to the
manes of another Patroclus. The virtues and victories of Stilicho
deserved the hatred of Rufinus: and the arts of calumny might have been
successful if the tender and vigilant Serena had not protected her
husband against his domestic foes, whilst he vanquished in the field the
enemies of the empire.  Theodosius continued to support an unworthy
minister, to whose diligence he delegated the government of the palace,
and of the East; but when he marched against the tyrant Eugenius, he
associated his faithful general to the labors and glories of the civil
war; and in the last moments of his life, the dying monarch recommended
to Stilicho the care of his sons, and of the republic.  The ambition and
the abilities of Stilicho were not unequal to the important trust; and
he claimed the guardianship of the two empires, during the minority of
Arcadius and Honorius.  The first measure of his administration, or
rather of his reign, displayed to the nations the vigor and activity of
a spirit worthy to command. He passed the Alps in the depth of winter;
descended the stream of the Rhine, from the fortress of Basil to the
marshes of Batavia; reviewed the state of the garrisons; repressed the
enterprises of the Germans; and, after establishing along the banks a
firm and honorable peace, returned, with incredible speed, to the palace
of Milan.  The person and court of Honorius were subject to the
master-general of the West; and the armies and provinces of Europe
obeyed, without hesitation, a regular authority, which was exercised in
the name of their young sovereign. Two rivals only remained to dispute
the claims, and to provoke the vengeance, of Stilicho. Within the limits
of Africa, Gildo, the Moor, maintained a proud and dangerous
independence; and the minister of Constantinople asserted his equal
reign over the emperor, and the empire, of the East.

Chapter XXIX: Division Of Roman Empire Between Sons Of Theodosius. --
Part II.

The impartiality which Stilicho affected, as the common guardian of the
royal brothers, engaged him to regulate the equal division of the arms,
the jewels, and the magnificent wardrobe and furniture of the deceased
emperor.  But the most important object of the inheritance consisted of
the numerous legions, cohorts, and squadrons, of Romans, or Barbarians,
whom the event of the civil war had united under the standard of
Theodosius. The various multitudes of Europe and Asia, exasperated by
recent animosities, were overawed by the authority of a single man; and
the rigid discipline of Stilicho protected the lands of the citizens
from the rapine of the licentious soldier.  Anxious, however, and
impatient, to relieve Italy from the presence of this formidable host,
which could be useful only on the frontiers of the empire, he listened
to the just requisition of the minister of Arcadius, declared his
intention of reconducting in person the troops of the East, and
dexterously employed the rumor of a Gothic tumult to conceal his private
designs of ambition and revenge.  The guilty soul of Rufinus was alarmed
by the approach of a warrior and a rival, whose enmity he deserved; he
computed, with increasing terror, the narrow space of his life and
greatness; and, as the last hope of safety, he interposed the authority
of the emperor Arcadius. Stilicho, who appears to have directed his
march along the sea-coast of the Adriatic, was not far distant from the
city of Thessalonica, when he received a peremptory message, to recall
the troops of the East, and to declare, that his nearer approach would
be considered, by the Byzantine court, as an act of hostility. The
prompt and unexpected obedience of the general of the West, convinced
the vulgar of his loyalty and moderation; and, as he had already engaged
the affection of the Eastern troops, he recommended to their zeal the
execution of his bloody design, which might be accomplished in his
absence, with less danger, perhaps, and with less reproach. Stilicho
left the command of the troops of the East to Gainas, the Goth, on whose
fidelity he firmly relied, with an assurance, at least, that the hardy
Barbarians would never be diverted from his purpose by any consideration
of fear or remorse. The soldiers were easily persuaded to punish the
enemy of Stilicho and of Rome; and such was the general hatred which
Rufinus had excited, that the fatal secret, communicated to thousands,
was faithfully preserved during the long march from Thessalonica to the
gates of Constantinople. As soon as they had resolved his death, they
condescended to flatter his pride; the ambitious præfect was seduced to
believe, that those powerful auxiliaries might be tempted to place the
diadem on his head; and the treasures which he distributed, with a tardy
and reluctant hand, were accepted by the indignant multitude as an
insult, rather than as a gift. At the distance of a mile from the
capital, in the field of Mars, before the palace of Hebdomon, the troops
halted: and the emperor, as well as his minister, advanced, according to
ancient custom, respectfully to salute the power which supported their
throne. As Rufinus passed along the ranks, and disguised, with studied
courtesy, his innate haughtiness, the wings insensibly wheeled from the
right and left, and enclosed the devoted victim within the circle of
their arms. Before he could reflect on the danger of his situation,
Gainas gave the signal of death; a daring and forward soldier plunged
his sword into the breast of the guilty præfect, and Rufinus fell,
groaned, and expired, at the feet of the affrighted emperor. If the
agonies of a moment could expiate the crimes of a whole life, or if the
outrages inflicted on a breathless corpse could be the object of pity,
our humanity might perhaps be affected by the horrid circumstances which
accompanied the murder of Rufinus. His mangled body was abandoned to the
brutal fury of the populace of either sex, who hastened in crowds, from
every quarter of the city, to trample on the remains of the haughty
minister, at whose frown they had so lately trembled. His right hand was
cut off, and carried through the streets of Constantinople, in cruel
mockery, to extort contributions for the avaricious tyrant, whose head
was publicly exposed, borne aloft on the point of a long lance.
According to the savage maxims of the Greek republics, his innocent
family would have shared the punishment of his crimes. The wife and
daughter of Rufinus were indebted for their safety to the influence of
religion. Hersanctuary protected them from the raging madness of the
people; and they were permitted to spend the remainder of their lives in
the exercise of Christian devotions, in the peaceful retirement of
Jerusalem.

The servile poet of Stilicho applauds, with ferocious joy, this horrid
deed, which, in the execution, perhaps, of justice, violated every law
of nature and society, profaned the majesty of the prince, and renewed
the dangerous examples of military license. The contemplation of the
universal order and harmony had satisfied Claudian of the existence of
the Deity; but the prosperous impunity of vice appeared to contradict
his moral attributes; and the fate of Rufinus was the only event which
could dispel the religious doubts of the poet.  Such an act might
vindicate the honor of Providence, but it did not much contribute to the
happiness of the people. In less than three months they were informed of
the maxims of the new administration, by a singular edict, which
established the exclusive right of the treasury over the spoils of
Rufinus; and silenced, under heavy penalties, the presumptuous claims of
the subjects of the Eastern empire, who had been injured by his
rapacious tyranny.  Even Stilicho did not derive from the murder of his
rival the fruit which he had proposed; and though he gratified his
revenge, his ambition was disappointed. Under the name of a favorite,
the weakness of Arcadius required a master, but he naturally preferred
the obsequious arts of the eunuch Eutropius, who had obtained his
domestic confidence: and the emperor contemplated, with terror and
aversion, the stern genius of a foreign warrior. Till they were divided
by the jealousy of power, the sword of Gainas, and the charms of
Eudoxia, supported the favor of the great chamberlain of the palace: the
perfidious Goth, who was appointed master-general of the East, betrayed,
without scruple, the interest of his benefactor; and the same troops,
who had so lately massacred the enemy of Stilicho, were engaged to
support, against him, the independence of the throne of Constantinople.
The favorites of Arcadius fomented a secret and irreconcilable war
against a formidable hero, who aspired to govern, and to defend, the two
empires of Rome, and the two sons of Theodosius. They incessantly
labored, by dark and treacherous machinations, to deprive him of the
esteem of the prince, the respect of the people, and the friendship of
the Barbarians. The life of Stilicho was repeatedly attempted by the
dagger of hired assassins; and a decree was obtained from the senate of
Constantinople, to declare him an enemy of the republic, and to
confiscate his ample possessions in the provinces of the East. At a time
when the only hope of delaying the ruin of the Roman name depended on
the firm union, and reciprocal aid, of all the nations to whom it had
been gradually communicated, the subjects of Arcadius and Honorius were
instructed, by their respective masters, to view each other in a
foreign, and even hostile, light; to rejoice in their mutual calamities,
and to embrace, as their faithful allies, the Barbarians, whom they
excited to invade the territories of their countrymen.  The natives of
Italy affected to despise the servile and effeminate Greeks of
Byzantium, who presumed to imitate the dress, and to usurp the dignity,
of Roman senators;  and the Greeks had not yet forgot the sentiments of
hatred and contempt, which their polished ancestors had so long
entertained for the rude inhabitants of the West. The distinction of two
governments, which soon produced the separation of two nations, will
justify my design of suspending the series of the Byzantine history, to
prosecute, without interruption, the disgraceful, but memorable, reign
of Honorius.

The prudent Stilicho, instead of persisting to force the inclinations of
a prince, and people, who rejected his government, wisely abandoned
Arcadius to his unworthy favorites; and his reluctance to involve the
two empires in a civil war displayed the moderation of a minister, who
had so often signalized his military spirit and abilities. But if
Stilicho had any longer endured the revolt of Africa, he would have
betrayed the security of the capital, and the majesty of the Western
emperor, to the capricious insolence of a Moorish rebel. Gildo,  the
brother of the tyrant Firmus, had preserved and obtained, as the reward
of his apparent fidelity, the immense patrimony which was forfeited by
treason: long and meritorious service, in the armies of Rome, raised him
to the dignity of a military count; the narrow policy of the court of
Theodosius had adopted the mischievous expedient of supporting a legal
government by the interest of a powerful family; and the brother of
Firmus was invested with the command of Africa. His ambition soon
usurped the administration of justice, and of the finances, without
account, and without control; and he maintained, during a reign of
twelve years, the possession of an office, from which it was impossible
to remove him, without the danger of a civil war. During those twelve
years, the provinces of Africa groaned under the dominion of a tyrant,
who seemed to unite the unfeeling temper of a stranger with the partial
resentments of domestic faction. The forms of law were often superseded
by the use of poison; and if the trembling guests, who were invited to
the table of Gildo, presumed to express fears, the insolent suspicion
served only to excite his fury, and he loudly summoned the ministers of
death. Gildo alternately indulged the passions of avarice and lust;  and
if his dayswere terrible to the rich, his nightswere not less dreadful
to husbands and parents. The fairest of their wives and daughters were
prostituted to the embraces of the tyrant; and afterwards abandoned to a
ferocious troop of Barbarians and assassins, the black, or swarthy,
natives of the desert; whom Gildo considered as the only of his throne.
In the civil war between Theodosius and Eugenius, the count, or rather
the sovereign, of Africa, maintained a haughty and suspicious
neutrality; refused to assist either of the contending parties with
troops or vessels, expected the declaration of fortune, and reserved for
the conqueror the vain professions of his allegiance. Such professions
would not have satisfied the master of the Roman world; but the death of
Theodosius, and the weakness and discord of his sons, confirmed the
power of the Moor; who condescended, as a proof of his moderation, to
abstain from the use of the diadem, and to supply Rome with the
customary tribute, or rather subsidy, of corn. In every division of the
empire, the five provinces of Africa were invariably assigned to the
West; and Gildo had to govern that extensive country in the name of
Honorius, but his knowledge of the character and designs of Stilicho
soon engaged him to address his homage to a more distant and feeble
sovereign. The ministers of Arcadius embraced the cause of a perfidious
rebel; and the delusive hope of adding the numerous cities of Africa to
the empire of the East, tempted them to assert a claim, which they were
incapable of supporting, either by reason or by arms.

When Stilicho had given a firm and decisive answer to the pretensions of
the Byzantine court, he solemnly accused the tyrant of Africa before the
tribunal, which had formerly judged the kings and nations of the earth;
and the image of the republic was revived, after a long interval, under
the reign of Honorius. The emperor transmitted an accurate and ample
detail of the complaints of the provincials, and the crimes of Gildo, to
the Roman senate; and the members of that venerable assembly were
required to pronounce the condemnation of the rebel. Their unanimous
suffrage declared him the enemy of the republic; and the decree of the
senate added a sacred and legitimate sanction to the Roman arms.  A
people, who still remembered that their ancestors had been the masters
of the world, would have applauded, with conscious pride, the
representation of ancient freedom; if they had not since been accustomed
to prefer the solid assurance of bread to the unsubstantial visions of
liberty and greatness. The subsistence of Rome depended on the harvests
of Africa; and it was evident, that a declaration of war would be the
signal of famine. The præfect Symmachus, who presided in the
deliberations of the senate, admonished the minister of his just
apprehension, that as soon as the revengeful Moor should prohibit the
exportation of corn, the and perhaps the safety, of the capital would be
threatened by the hungry rage of a turbulent multitude.  The prudence of
Stilicho conceived and executed, without delay, the most effectual
measure for the relief of the Roman people. A large and seasonable
supply of corn, collected in the inland provinces of Gaul, was embarked
on the rapid stream of the Rhone, and transported, by an easy
navigation, from the Rhone to the Tyber. During the whole term of the
African war, the granaries of Rome were continually filled, her dignity
was vindicated from the humiliating dependence, and the minds of an
immense people were quieted by the calm confidence of peace and plenty.

The cause of Rome, and the conduct of the African war, were intrusted by
Stilicho to a general, active and ardent to avenge his private injuries
on the head of the tyrant. The spirit of discord which prevailed in the
house of Nabal, had excited a deadly quarrel between two of his sons,
Gildo and Mascezel.  The usurper pursued, with implacable rage, the life
of his younger brother, whose courage and abilities he feared; and
Mascezel, oppressed by superior power, refuge in the court of Milan,
where he soon received the cruel intelligence that his two innocent and
helpless children had been murdered by their inhuman uncle. The
affliction of the father was suspended only by the desire of revenge.
The vigilant Stilicho already prepared to collect the naval and military
force of the Western empire; and he had resolved, if the tyrant should
be able to wage an equal and doubtful war, to march against him in
person. But as Italy required his presence, and as it might be dangerous
to weaken the of the frontier, he judged it more advisable, that
Mascezel should attempt this arduous adventure at the head of a chosen
body of Gallic veterans, who had lately served exhorted to convince the
world that they could subvert, as well as defend the throne of a
usurper, consisted of the Jovian, the Herculian, and the
Augustanlegions; of the Nervianauxiliaries; of the soldiers who
displayed in their banners the symbol of a lion, and of the troops which
were distinguished by the auspicious names of Fortunate, and Invincible.
Yet such was the smallness of their establishments, or the difficulty of
recruiting, that these sevenbands,  of high dignity and reputation in
the service of Rome, amounted to no more than five thousand effective
men.  The fleet of galleys and transports sailed in tempestuous weather
from the port of Pisa, in Tuscany, and steered their course to the
little island of Capraria; which had borrowed that name from the wild
goats, its original inhabitants, whose place was occupied by a new
colony of a strange and savage appearance. "The whole island (says an
ingenious traveller of those times) is filled, or rather defiled, by men
who fly from the light. They call themselves Monks, or solitaries,
because they choose to live alone, without any witnesses of their
actions. They fear the gifts of fortune, from the apprehension of losing
them; and, lest they should be miserable, they embrace a life of
voluntary wretchedness. How absurd is their choice! how perverse their
understanding! to dread the evils, without being able to support the
blessings, of the human condition. Either this melancholy madness is the
effect of disease, or exercise on their own bodies the tortures which
are inflicted on fugitive slaves by the hand of justice."  Such was the
contempt of a profane magistrate for the monks as the chosen servants of
God.  Some of them were persuaded, by his entreaties, to embark on board
the fleet; and it is observed, to the praise of the Roman general, that
his days and nights were employed in prayer, fasting, and the occupation
of singing psalms. The devout leader, who, with such a reenforcement,
appeared confident of victory, avoided the dangerous rocks of Corsica,
coasted along the eastern side of Sardinia, and secured his ships
against the violence of the south wind, by casting anchor in the and
capacious harbor of Cagliari, at the distance of one hundred and forty
miles from the African shores.

Gildo was prepared to resist the invasion with all the forces of Africa.
By the liberality of his gifts and promises, he endeavored to secure the
doubtful allegiance of the Roman soldiers, whilst he attracted to his
standard the distant tribes of Gætulia and Æthiopia. He proudly reviewed
an army of seventy thousand men, and boasted, with the rash presumption
which is the forerunner of disgrace, that his numerous cavalry would
trample under their horses' feet the troops of Mascezel, and involve, in
a cloud of burning sand, the natives of the cold regions of Gaul and
Germany.  But the Moor, who commanded the legions of Honorius, was too
well acquainted with the manners of his countrymen, to entertain any
serious apprehension of a naked and disorderly host of Barbarians; whose
left arm, instead of a shield, was protected only by mantle; who were
totally disarmed as soon as they had darted their javelin from their
right hand; and whose horses had never He fixed his camp of five
thousand veterans in the face of a superior enemy, and, after the delay
of three days, gave the signal of a general engagement.  As Mascezel
advanced before the front with fair offers of peace and pardon, he
encountered one of the foremost standard-bearers of the Africans, and,
on his refusal to yield, struck him on the arm with his sword. The arm,
and the standard, sunk under the weight of the blow; and the imaginary
act of submission was hastily repeated by all the standards of the line.
At this the disaffected cohorts proclaimed the name of their lawful
sovereign; the Barbarians, astonished by the defection of their Roman
allies, dispersed, according to their custom, in tumultuary flight; and
Mascezel obtained the of an easy, and almost bloodless, victory.  The
tyrant escaped from the field of battle to the sea-shore; and threw
himself into a small vessel, with the hope of reaching in safety some
friendly port of the empire of the East; but the obstinacy of the wind
drove him back into the harbor of Tabraca,  which had acknowledged, with
the rest of the province, the dominion of Honorius, and the authority of
his lieutenant. The inhabitants, as a proof of their repentance and
loyalty, seized and confined the person of Gildo in a dungeon; and his
own despair saved him from the intolerable torture of supporting the
presence of an injured and victorious brother.  The captives and the
spoils of Africa were laid at the feet of the emperor; but more sincere,
in the midst of prosperity, still affected to consult the laws of the
republic; and referred to the senate and people of Rome the judgment of
the most illustrious criminals.  Their trial was public and solemn; but
the judges, in the exercise of this obsolete and precarious
jurisdiction, were impatient to punish the African magistrates, who had
intercepted the subsistence of the Roman people. The rich and guilty
province was oppressed by the Imperial ministers, who had a visible
interest to multiply the number of the accomplices of Gildo; and if an
edict of Honorius seems to check the malicious industry of informers, a
subsequent edict, at the distance of ten years, continues and renews the
prosecution of the which had been committed in the time of the general
rebellion.  The adherents of the tyrant who escaped the first fury of
the soldiers, and the judges, might derive some consolation from the
tragic fate of his brother, who could never obtain his pardon for the
extraordinary services which he had performed. After he had finished an
important war in the space of a single winter, Mascezel was received at
the court of Milan with loud applause, affected gratitude, and secret
jealousy;  and his death, which, perhaps, was the effect of passage of a
bridge, the Moorish prince, who accompanied the master-general of the
West, was suddenly thrown from his horse into the river; the officious
haste of the attendants was on the countenance of Stilicho; and while
they delayed the necessary assistance, the unfortunate Mascezel was
irrecoverably drowned.

The joy of the African triumph was happily connected with the nuptials
of the emperor Honorius, and of his cousin Maria, the daughter of
Stilicho: and this equal and honorable alliance seemed to invest the
powerful minister with the authority of a parent over his submissive
pupil. The muse of Claudian was not silent on this propitious day;  he
sung, in various and lively strains, the happiness of the royal pair;
and the glory of the hero, who confirmed their union, and supported
their throne. The ancient fables of Greece, which had almost ceased to
be the object of religious faith, were saved from oblivion by the genius
of poetry. The picture of the Cyprian grove, the seat of harmony and
love; the triumphant progress of Venus over her native seas, and the
mild influence which her presence diffused in the palace of Milan,
express to every age the natural sentiments of the heart, in the just
and pleasing language of allegorical fiction. But the amorous impatience
which Claudian attributes to the young prince,  must excite the smiles
of the court; and his beauteous spouse (if she deserved the praise of
beauty) had not much to fear or to hope from the passions of her lover.
Honorius was only in the fourteenth year of his age; Serena, the mother
of his bride, deferred, by art of persuasion, the consummation of the
royal nuptials; Maria died a virgin, after she had been ten years a
wife; and the chastity of the emperor was secured by the coldness,
perhaps, the debility, of his constitution.  His subjects, who
attentively studied the character of their young sovereign, discovered
that Honorius was without passions, and consequently without talents;
and that his feeble and languid disposition was alike incapable of
discharging the duties of his rank, or of enjoying the pleasures of his
age. In his early youth he made some progress in the exercises of riding
and drawing the bow: but he soon relinquished these fatiguing
occupations, and the amusement of feeding poultry became the serious and
daily care of the monarch of the West,  who resigned the reins of empire
to the firm and skilful hand of his guardian Stilicho. The experience of
history will countenance the suspicion that a prince who was born in the
purple, received a worse education than the meanest peasant of his
dominions; and that the ambitious minister suffered him to attain the
age of manhood, without attempting to excite his courage, or to
enlighten his under standing.  The predecessors of Honorius were
accustomed to animate by their example, or at least by their presence,
the valor of the legions; and the dates of their laws attest the
perpetual activity of their motions through the provinces of the Roman
world. But the son of Theodosius passed the slumber of his life, a
captive in his palace, a stranger in his country, and the patient,
almost the indifferent, spectator of the ruin of the Western empire,
which was repeatedly attacked, and finally subverted, by the arms of the
Barbarians. In the eventful history of a reign of twenty-eight years, it
will seldom be necessary to mention the name of the emperor Honorius.

Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths.

Part I.

Revolt Of The Goths. -- They Plunder Greece. -- Two Great Invasions Of
Italy By Alaric And Radagaisus. -- They Are Repulsed By Stilicho. -- The
Germans Overrun Gaul. -- Usurpation Of Constantine In The West. --
Disgrace And Death Of Stilicho.

If the subjects of Rome could be ignorant of their obligations to the
great Theodosius, they were too soon convinced, how painfully the spirit
and abilities of their deceased emperor had supported the frail and
mouldering edifice of the republic. He died in the month of January; and
before the end of the winter of the same year, the Gothic nation was in
arms.  The Barbarian auxiliaries erected their independent standard; and
boldly avowed the hostile designs, which they had long cherished in
their ferocious minds. Their countrymen, who had been condemned, by the
conditions of the last treaty, to a life of tranquility and labor,
deserted their farms at the first sound of the trumpet; and eagerly
resumed the weapons which they had reluctantly laid down. The barriers
of the Danube were thrown open; the savage warriors of Scythia issued
from their forests; and the uncommon severity of the winter allowed the
poet to remark, "that they rolled their ponderous wagons over the broad
and icy back of the indignant river."  The unhappy natives of the
provinces to the south of the Danube submitted to the calamities, which,
in the course of twenty years, were almost grown familiar to their
imagination; and the various troops of Barbarians, who gloried in the
Gothic name, were irregularly spread from woody shores of Dalmatia, to
the walls of Constantinople.  The interruption, or at least the
diminution, of the subsidy, which the Goths had received from the
prudent liberality of Theodosius, was the specious pretence of their
revolt: the affront was imbittered by their contempt for the unwarlike
sons of Theodosius; and their resentment was inflamed by the weakness,
or treachery, of the minister of Arcadius. The frequent visits of
Rufinus to the camp of the Barbarians whose arms and apparel he affected
to imitate, were considered as a sufficient evidence of his guilty
correspondence, and the public enemy, from a motive either of gratitude
or of policy, was attentive, amidst the general devastation, to spare
the private estates of the unpopular præfect. The Goths, instead of
being impelled by the blind and headstrong passions of their chiefs,
were now directed by the bold and artful genius of Alaric. That renowned
leader was descended from the noble race of the Balti;  which yielded
only to the royal dignity of the Amali: he had solicited the command of
the Roman armies; and the Imperial court provoked him to demonstrate the
folly of their refusal, and the importance of their loss. Whatever hopes
might be entertained of the conquest of Constantinople, the judicious
general soon abandoned an impracticable enterprise. In the midst of a
divided court and a discontented people, the emperor Arcadius was
terrified by the aspect of the Gothic arms; but the want of wisdom and
valor was supplied by the strength of the city; and the fortifications,
both of the sea and land, might securely brave the impotent and random
darts of the Barbarians. Alaric disdained to trample any longer on the
prostrate and ruined countries of Thrace and Dacia, and he resolved to
seek a plentiful harvest of fame and riches in a province which had
hitherto escaped the ravages of war.

The character of the civil and military officers, on whom Rufinus had
devolved the government of Greece, confirmed the public suspicion, that
he had betrayed the ancient seat of freedom and learning to the Gothic
invader. The proconsul Antiochus was the unworthy son of a respectable
father; and Gerontius, who commanded the provincial troops, was much
better qualified to execute the oppressive orders of a tyrant, than to
defend, with courage and ability, a country most remarkably fortified by
the hand of nature. Alaric had traversed, without resistance, the plains
of Macedonia and Thessaly, as far as the foot of Mount Oeta, a steep and
woody range of hills, almost impervious to his cavalry. They stretched
from east to west, to the edge of the sea-shore; and left, between the
precipice and the Malian Gulf, an interval of three hundred feet, which,
in some places, was contracted to a road capable of admitting only a
single carriage.  In this narrow pass of Thermopylæ, where Leonidas and
the three hundred Spartans had gloriously devoted their lives, the Goths
might have been stopped, or destroyed, by a skilful general; and perhaps
the view of that sacred spot might have kindled some sparks of military
ardor in the breasts of the degenerate Greeks. The troops which had been
posted to defend the Straits of Thermopylæ, retired, as they were
directed, without attempting to disturb the secure and rapid passage of
Alaric;  and the fertile fields of Phocis and Botia were instantly
covered by a deluge of Barbarians who massacred the males of an age to
bear arms, and drove away the beautiful females, with the spoil and
cattle of the flaming villages. The travellers, who visited Greece
several years afterwards, could easily discover the deep and bloody
traces of the march of the Goths; and Thebes was less indebted for her
preservation to the strength of her seven gates, than to the eager haste
of Alaric, who advanced to occupy the city of Athens, and the important
harbor of the Piræus. The same impatience urged him to prevent the delay
and danger of a siege, by the offer of a capitulation; and as soon as
the Athenians heard the voice of the Gothic herald, they were easily
persuaded to deliver the greatest part of their wealth, as the ransom of
the city of Minerva and its inhabitants. The treaty was ratified by
solemn oaths, and observed with mutual fidelity. The Gothic prince, with
a small and select train, was admitted within the walls; he indulged
himself in the refreshment of the bath, accepted a splendid banquet,
which was provided by the magistrate, and affected to show that he was
not ignorant of the manners of civilized nations.  But the whole
territory of Attica, from the promontory of Sunium to the town of
Megara, was blasted by his baleful presence; and, if we may use the
comparison of a contemporary philosopher, Athens itself resembled the
bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim. The distance between
Megara and Corinth could not much exceed thirty miles; but the bad road,
an expressive name, which it still bears among the Greeks, was, or might
easily have been made, impassable for the march of an enemy. The thick
and gloomy woods of Mount Cithæron covered the inland country; the
Scironian rocks approached the water's edge, and hung over the narrow
and winding path, which was confined above six miles along the
sea-shore.  The passage of those rocks, so infamous in every age, was
terminated by the Isthmus of Corinth; and a small a body of firm and
intrepid soldiers might have successfully defended a temporary
intrenchment of five or six miles from the Ionian to the Ægean Sea. The
confidence of the cities of Peloponnesus in their natural rampart, had
tempted them to neglect the care of their antique walls; and the avarice
of the Roman governors had exhausted and betrayed the unhappy province.
Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms of the
Goths; and the most fortunate of the inhabitants were saved, by death,
from beholding the slavery of their families and the conflagration of
their cities.  The vases and statues were distributed among the
Barbarians, with more regard to the value of the materials, than to the
elegance of the workmanship; the female captives submitted to the laws
of war; the enjoyment of beauty was the reward of valor; and the Greeks
could not reasonably complain of an abuse which was justified by the
example of the heroic times.  The descendants of that extraordinary
people, who had considered valor and discipline as the walls of Sparta,
no longer remembered the generous reply of their ancestors to an invader
more formidable than Alaric. "If thou art a god, thou wilt not hurt
those who have never injured thee; if thou art a man, advance: -- and
thou wilt find men equal to thyself."  From Thermopylæto Sparta, the
leader of the Goths pursued his victorious march without encountering
any mortal antagonists: but one of the advocates of expiring Paganism
has confidently asserted, that the walls of Athens were guarded by the
goddess Minerva, with her formidable Ægis, and by the angry phantom of
Achilles;  and that the conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the
hostile deities of Greece. In an age of miracles, it would perhaps be
unjust to dispute the claim of the historian Zosimus to the common
benefit: yet it cannot be dissembled, that the mind of Alaric was ill
prepared to receive, either in sleeping or waking visions, the
impressions of Greek superstition. The songs of Homer, and the fame of
Achilles, had probably never reached the ear of the illiterate
Barbarian; and the Christianfaith, which he had devoutly embraced,
taught him to despise the imaginary deities of Rome and Athens. The
invasion of the Goths, instead of vindicating the honor, contributed, at
least accidentally, to extirpate the last remains of Paganism: and the
mysteries of Ceres, which had subsisted eighteen hundred years, did not
survive the destruction of Eleusis, and the calamities of Greece.

The last hope of a people who could no longer depend on their arms,
their gods, or their sovereign, was placed in the powerful assistance of
the general of the West; and Stilicho, who had not been permitted to
repulse, advanced to chastise, the invaders of Greece.  A numerous fleet
was equipped in the ports of Italy; and the troops, after a short and
prosperous navigation over the Ionian Sea, were safely disembarked on
the isthmus, near the ruins of Corinth. The woody and mountainous
country of Arcadia, the fabulous residence of Pan and the Dryads, became
the scene of a long and doubtful conflict between the two generals not
unworthy of each other. The skill and perseverance of the Roman at
length prevailed; and the Goths, after sustaining a considerable loss
from disease and desertion, gradually retreated to the lofty mountain of
Pholoe, near the sources of the Peneus, and on the frontiers of Elis; a
sacred country, which had formerly been exempted from the calamities of
war.  The camp of the Barbarians was immediately besieged; the waters of
the river  were diverted into another channel; and while they labored
under the intolerable pressure of thirst and hunger, a strong line of
circumvallation was formed to prevent their escape. After these
precautions, Stilicho, too confident of victory, retired to enjoy his
triumph, in the theatrical games, and lascivious dances, of the Greeks;
his soldiers, deserting their standards, spread themselves over the
country of their allies, which they stripped of all that had been saved
from the rapacious hands of the enemy. Alaric appears to have seized the
favorable moment to execute one of those hardy enterprises, in which the
abilities of a general are displayed with more genuine lustre, than in
the tumult of a day of battle. To extricate himself from the prison of
Peloponnesus, it was necessary that he should pierce the intrenchments
which surrounded his camp; that he should perform a difficult and
dangerous march of thirty miles, as far as the Gulf of Corinth; and that
he should transport his troops, his captives, and his spoil, over an arm
of the sea, which, in the narrow interval between Rhium and the opposite
shore, is at least half a mile in breadth.  The operations of Alaric
must have been secret, prudent, and rapid; since the Roman general was
confounded by the intelligence, that the Goths, who had eluded his
efforts, were in full possession of the important province of Epirus.
This unfortunate delay allowed Alaric sufficient time to conclude the
treaty, which he secretly negotiated, with the ministers of
Constantinople. The apprehension of a civil war compelled Stilicho to
retire, at the haughty mandate of his rivals, from the dominions of
Arcadius; and he respected, in the enemy of Rome, the honorable
character of the ally and servant of the emperor of the East.

A Grecian philosopher,  who visited Constantinople soon after the death
of Theodosius, published his liberal opinions concerning the duties of
kings, and the state of the Roman republic. Synesius observes, and
deplores, the fatal abuse, which the imprudent bounty of the late
emperor had introduced into the military service. The citizens and
subjects had purchased an exemption from the indispensable duty of
defending their country; which was supported by the arms of Barbarian
mercenaries. The fugitives of Scythia were permitted to disgrace the
illustrious dignities of the empire; their ferocious youth, who
disdained the salutary restraint of laws, were more anxious to acquire
the riches, than to imitate the arts, of a people, the object of their
contempt and hatred; and the power of the Goths was the stone of
Tantalus, perpetually suspended over the peace and safety of the devoted
state. The measures which Synesius recommends, are the dictates of a
bold and generous patriot. He exhorts the emperor to revive the courage
of his subjects, by the example of manly virtue; to banish luxury from
the court and from the camp; to substitute, in the place of the
Barbarian mercenaries, an army of men, interested in the defence of
their laws and of their property; to force, in such a moment of public
danger, the mechanic from his shop, and the philosopher from his school;
to rouse the indolent citizen from his dream of pleasure, and to arm,
for the protection of agriculture, the hands of the laborious
husbandman. At the head of such troops, who might deserve the name, and
would display the spirit, of Romans, he animates the son of Theodosius
to encounter a race of Barbarians, who were destitute of any real
courage; and never to lay down his arms, till he had chased them far
away into the solitudes of Scythia; or had reduced them to the state of
ignominious servitude, which the Lacedæmonians formerly imposed on the
captive Helots.  The court of Arcadius indulged the zeal, applauded the
eloquence, and neglected the advice, of Synesius. Perhaps the
philosopher who addresses the emperor of the East in the language of
reason and virtue, which he might have used to a Spartan king, had not
condescended to form a practicable scheme, consistent with the temper,
and circumstances, of a degenerate age. Perhaps the pride of the
ministers, whose business was seldom interrupted by reflection, might
reject, as wild and visionary, every proposal, which exceeded the
measure of their capacity, and deviated from the forms and precedents of
office. While the oration of Synesius, and the downfall of the
Barbarians, were the topics of popular conversation, an edict was
published at Constantinople, which declared the promotion of Alaric to
the rank of master-general of the Eastern Illyricum. The Roman
provincials, and the allies, who had respected the faith of treaties,
were justly indignant, that the ruin of Greece and Epirus should be so
liberally rewarded. The Gothic conqueror was received as a lawful
magistrate, in the cities which he had so lately besieged. The fathers,
whose sons he had massacred, the husbands, whose wives he had violated,
were subject to his authority; and the success of his rebellion
encouraged the ambition of every leader of the foreign mercenaries. The
use to which Alaric applied his new command, distinguishes the firm and
judicious character of his policy. He issued his orders to the four
magazines and manufactures of offensive and defensive arms, Margus,
Ratiaria, Naissus, and Thessalonica, to provide his troops with an
extraordinary supply of shields, helmets, swords, and spears; the
unhappy provincials were compelled to forge the instruments of their own
destruction; and the Barbarians removed the only defect which had
sometimes disappointed the efforts of their courage.  The birth of
Alaric, the glory of his past exploits, and the confidence in his future
designs, insensibly united the body of the nation under his victorious
standard; and, with the unanimous consent of the Barbarian chieftains,
the master-general of Illyricum was elevated, according to ancient
custom, on a shield, and solemnly proclaimed king of the Visigoths.
Armed with this double power, seated on the verge of the two empires, he
alternately sold his deceitful promises to the courts of Arcadius and
Honorius;  till he declared and executed his resolution of invading the
dominions of the West. The provinces of Europe which belonged to the
Eastern emperor, were already exhausted; those of Asia were
inaccessible; and the strength of Constantinople had resisted his
attack. But he was tempted by the fame, the beauty, the wealth of Italy,
which he had twice visited; and he secretly aspired to plant the Gothic
standard on the walls of Rome, and to enrich his army with the
accumulated spoils of three hundred triumphs.

The scarcity of facts,  and the uncertainty of dates,  oppose our
attempts to describe the circumstances of the first invasion of Italy by
the arms of Alaric. His march, perhaps from Thessalonica, through the
warlike and hostile country of Pannonia, as far as the foot of the
Julian Alps; his passage of those mountains, which were strongly guarded
by troops and intrenchments; the siege of Aquileia, and the conquest of
the provinces of Istria and Venetia, appear to have employed a
considerable time. Unless his operations were extremely cautious and
slow, the length of the interval would suggest a probable suspicion,
that the Gothic king retreated towards the banks of the Danube; and
reënforced his army with fresh swarms of Barbarians, before he again
attempted to penetrate into the heart of Italy. Since the public and
important events escape the diligence of the historian, he may amuse
himself with contemplating, for a moment, the influence of the arms of
Alaric on the fortunes of two obscure individuals, a presbyter of
Aquileia and a husbandman of Verona. The learned Rufinus, who was
summoned by his enemies to appear before a Roman synod,  wisely
preferred the dangers of a besieged city; and the Barbarians, who
furiously shook the walls of Aquileia, might save him from the cruel
sentence of another heretic, who, at the request of the same bishops,
was severely whipped, and condemned to perpetual exile on a desert
island.  The old man,  who had passed his simple and innocent life in
the neighborhood of Verona, was a stranger to the quarrels both of kings
and of bishops; hispleasures, his desires, his knowledge, were confined
within the little circle of his paternal farm; and a staff supported his
aged steps, on the same ground where he had sported in his infancy. Yet
even this humble and rustic felicity (which Claudian describes with so
much truth and feeling) was still exposed to the undistinguishing rage
of war. His trees, his old contemporarytrees,  must blaze in the
conflagration of the whole country; a detachment of Gothic cavalry might
sweep away his cottage and his family; and the power of Alaric could
destroy this happiness, which he was not able either to taste or to
bestow. "Fame," says the poet, "encircling with terror her gloomy wings,
proclaimed the march of the Barbarian army, and filled Italy with
consternation:" the apprehensions of each individual were increased in
just proportion to the measure of his fortune: and the most timid, who
had already embarked their valuable effects, meditated their escape to
the Island of Sicily, or the African coast. The public distress was
aggravated by the fears and reproaches of superstition.  Every hour
produced some horrid tale of strange and portentous accidents; the
Pagans deplored the neglect of omens, and the interruption of
sacrifices; but the Christians still derived some comfort from the
powerful intercession of the saints and martyrs.

Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths. -- Part II.

The emperor Honorius was distinguished, above his subjects, by the
preeminence of fear, as well as of rank. The pride and luxury in which
he was educated, had not allowed him to suspect, that there existed on
the earth any power presumptuous enough to invade the repose of the
successor of Augustus. The arts of flattery concealed the impending
danger, till Alaric approached the palace of Milan. But when the sound
of war had awakened the young emperor, instead of flying to arms with
the spirit, or even the rashness, of his age, he eagerly listened to
those timid counsellors, who proposed to convey his sacred person, and
his faithful attendants, to some secure and distant station in the
provinces of Gaul. Stilicho alone  had courage and authority to resist
his disgraceful measure, which would have abandoned Rome and Italy to
the Barbarians; but as the troops of the palace had been lately detached
to the Rhætian frontier, and as the resource of new levies was slow and
precarious, the general of the West could only promise, that if the
court of Milan would maintain their ground during his absence, he would
soon return with an army equal to the encounter of the Gothic king.
Without losing a moment, (while each moment was so important to the
public safety,) Stilicho hastily embarked on the Larian Lake, ascended
the mountains of ice and snow, amidst the severity of an Alpine winter,
and suddenly repressed, by his unexpected presence, the enemy, who had
disturbed the tranquillity of Rhætia.  The Barbarians, perhaps some
tribes of the Alemanni, respected the firmness of a chief, who still
assumed the language of command; and the choice which he condescended to
make, of a select number of their bravest youth, was considered as a
mark of his esteem and favor. The cohorts, who were delivered from the
neighboring foe, diligently repaired to the Imperial standard; and
Stilicho issued his orders to the most remote troops of the West, to
advance, by rapid marches, to the defence of Honorius and of Italy. The
fortresses of the Rhine were abandoned; and the safety of Gaul was
protected only by the faith of the Germans, and the ancient terror of
the Roman name. Even the legion, which had been stationed to guard the
wall of Britain against the Caledonians of the North, was hastily
recalled;  and a numerous body of the cavalry of the Alani was persuaded
to engage in the service of the emperor, who anxiously expected the
return of his general. The prudence and vigor of Stilicho were
conspicuous on this occasion, which revealed, at the same time, the
weakness of the falling empire. The legions of Rome, which had long
since languished in the gradual decay of discipline and courage, were
exterminated by the Gothic and civil wars; and it was found impossible,
without exhausting and exposing the provinces, to assemble an army for
the defence of Italy.

Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths. -- Part III.

When Stilicho seemed to abandon his sovereign in the unguarded palace of
Milan, he had probably calculated the term of his absence, the distance
of the enemy, and the obstacles that might retard their march. He
principally depended on the rivers of Italy, the Adige, the Mincius, the
Oglio, and the Addua, which, in the winter or spring, by the fall of
rains, or by the melting of the snows, are commonly swelled into broad
and impetuous torrents.  But the season happened to be remarkably dry:
and the Goths could traverse, without impediment, the wide and stony
beds, whose centre was faintly marked by the course of a shallow stream.
The bridge and passage of the Addua were secured by a strong detachment
of the Gothic army; and as Alaric approached the walls, or rather the
suburbs, of Milan, he enjoyed the proud satisfaction of seeing the
emperor of the Romans fly before him. Honorius, accompanied by a feeble
train of statesmen and eunuchs, hastily retreated towards the Alps, with
a design of securing his person in the city of Arles, which had often
been the royal residence of his predecessors. * But Honorius  had
scarcely passed the Po, before he was overtaken by the speed of the
Gothic cavalry;  since the urgency of the danger compelled him to seek a
temporary shelter within the fortifications of Asta, a town of Liguria
or Piemont, situate on the banks of the Tanarus.  The siege of an
obscure place, which contained so rich a prize, and seemed incapable of
a long resistance, was instantly formed, and indefatigably pressed, by
the king of the Goths; and the bold declaration, which the emperor might
afterwards make, that his breast had never been susceptible of fear, did
not probably obtain much credit, even in his own court.  In the last,
and almost hopeless extremity, after the Barbarians had already proposed
the indignity of a capitulation, the Imperial captive was suddenly
relieved by the fame, the approach, and at length the presence, of the
hero, whom he had so long expected. At the head of a chosen and intrepid
vanguard, Stilicho swam the stream of the Addua, to gain the time which
he must have lost in the attack of the bridge; the passage of the Po was
an enterprise of much less hazard and difficulty; and the successful
action, in which he cut his way through the Gothic camp under the walls
of Asta, revived the hopes, and vindicated the honor, of Rome. Instead
of grasping the fruit of his victory, the Barbarian was gradually
invested, on every side, by the troops of the West, who successively
issued through all the passes of the Alps; his quarters were straitened;
his convoys were intercepted; and the vigilance of the Romans prepared
to form a chain of fortifications, and to besiege the lines of the
besiegers. A military council was assembled of the long-haired chiefs of
the Gothic nation; of aged warriors, whose bodies were wrapped in furs,
and whose stern countenances were marked with honorable wounds. They
weighed the glory of persisting in their attempt against the advantage
of securing their plunder; and they recommended the prudent measure of a
seasonable retreat. In this important debate, Alaric displayed the
spirit of the conqueror of Rome; and after he had reminded his
countrymen of their achievements and of their designs, he concluded his
animating speech by the solemn and positive assurance that he was
resolved to find in Italy either a kingdom or a grave.

The loose discipline of the Barbarians always exposed them to the danger
of a surprise; but, instead of choosing the dissolute hours of riot and
intemperance, Stilicho resolved to attack the Christian Goths, whilst
they were devoutly employed in celebrating the festival of Easter.  The
execution of the stratagem, or, as it was termed by the clergy of the
sacrilege, was intrusted to Saul, a Barbarian and a Pagan, who had
served, however, with distinguished reputation among the veteran
generals of Theodosius. The camp of the Goths, which Alaric had pitched
in the neighborhood of Pollentia,  was thrown into confusion by the
sudden and impetuous charge of the Imperial cavalry; but, in a few
moments, the undaunted genius of their leader gave them an order, and a
field of battle; and, as soon as they had recovered from their
astonishment, the pious confidence, that the God of the Christians would
assert their cause, added new strength to their native valor. In this
engagement, which was long maintained with equal courage and success,
the chief of the Alani, whose diminutive and savage form concealed a
magnanimous soul approved his suspected loyalty, by the zeal with which
he fought, and fell, in the service of the republic; and the fame of
this gallant Barbarian has been imperfectly preserved in the verses of
Claudian, since the poet, who celebrates his virtue, has omitted the
mention of his name. His death was followed by the flight and dismay of
the squadrons which he commanded; and the defeat of the wing of cavalry
might have decided the victory of Alaric, if Stilicho had not
immediately led the Roman and Barbarian infantry to the attack. The
skill of the general, and the bravery of the soldiers, surmounted every
obstacle. In the evening of the bloody day, the Goths retreated from the
field of battle; the intrenchments of their camp were forced, and the
scene of rapine and slaughter made some atonement for the calamities
which they had inflicted on the subjects of the empire.  The magnificent
spoils of Corinth and Argos enriched the veterans of the West; the
captive wife of Alaric, who had impatiently claimed his promise of Roman
jewels and Patrician handmaids,  was reduced to implore the mercy of the
insulting foe; and many thousand prisoners, released from the Gothic
chains, dispersed through the provinces of Italy the praises of their
heroic deliverer. The triumph of Stilicho  was compared by the poet, and
perhaps by the public, to that of Marius; who, in the same part of
Italy, had encountered and destroyed another army of Northern
Barbarians. The huge bones, and the empty helmets, of the Cimbri and of
the Goths, would easily be confounded by succeeding generations; and
posterity might erect a common trophy to the memory of the two most
illustrious generals, who had vanquished, on the same memorable ground,
the two most formidable enemies of Rome.

The eloquence of Claudian  has celebrated, with lavish applause, the
victory of Pollentia, one of the most glorious days in the life of his
patron; but his reluctant and partial muse bestows more genuine praise
on the character of the Gothic king. His name is, indeed, branded with
the reproachful epithets of pirate and robber, to which the conquerors
of every age are so justly entitled; but the poet of Stilicho is
compelled to acknowledge that Alaric possessed the invincible temper of
mind, which rises superior to every misfortune, and derives new
resources from adversity. After the total defeat of his infantry, he
escaped, or rather withdrew, from the field of battle, with the greatest
part of his cavalry entire and unbroken. Without wasting a moment to
lament the irreparable loss of so many brave companions, he left his
victorious enemy to bind in chains the captive images of a Gothic king;
and boldly resolved to break through the unguarded passes of the
Apennine, to spread desolation over the fruitful face of Tuscany, and to
conquer or die before the gates of Rome. The capital was saved by the
active and incessant diligence of Stilicho; but he respected the despair
of his enemy; and, instead of committing the fate of the republic to the
chance of another battle, he proposed to purchase the absence of the
Barbarians. The spirit of Alaric would have rejected such terms, the
permission of a retreat, and the offer of a pension, with contempt and
indignation; but he exercised a limited and precarious authority over
the independent chieftains who had raised him, for theirservice, above
the rank of his equals; they were still less disposed to follow an
unsuccessful general, and many of them were tempted to consult their
interest by a private negotiation with the minister of Honorius. The
king submitted to the voice of his people, ratified the treaty with the
empire of the West, and repassed the Po with the remains of the
flourishing army which he had led into Italy. A considerable part of the
Roman forces still continued to attend his motions; and Stilicho, who
maintained a secret correspondence with some of the Barbarian chiefs,
was punctually apprised of the designs that were formed in the camp and
council of Alaric. The king of the Goths, ambitious to signalize his
retreat by some splendid achievement, had resolved to occupy the
important city of Verona, which commands the principal passage of the
Rhætian Alps; and, directing his march through the territories of those
German tribes, whose alliance would restore his exhausted strength, to
invade, on the side of the Rhine, the wealthy and unsuspecting provinces
of Gaul. Ignorant of the treason which had already betrayed his bold and
judicious enterprise, he advanced towards the passes of the mountains,
already possessed by the Imperial troops; where he was exposed, almost
at the same instant, to a general attack in the front, on his flanks,
and in the rear. In this bloody action, at a small distance from the
walls of Verona, the loss of the Goths was not less heavy than that
which they had sustained in the defeat of Pollentia; and their valiant
king, who escaped by the swiftness of his horse, must either have been
slain or made prisoner, if the hasty rashness of the Alani had not
disappointed the measures of the Roman general. Alaric secured the
remains of his army on the adjacent rocks; and prepared himself, with
undaunted resolution, to maintain a siege against the superior numbers
of the enemy, who invested him on all sides. But he could not oppose the
destructive progress of hunger and disease; nor was it possible for him
to check the continual desertion of his impatient and capricious
Barbarians. In this extremity he still found resources in his own
courage, or in the moderation of his adversary; and the retreat of the
Gothic king was considered as the deliverance of Italy.  Yet the people,
and even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgment of the
business of peace and war, presumed to arraign the policy of Stilicho,
who so often vanquished, so often surrounded, and so often dismissed the
implacable enemy of the republic. The first moment of the public safety
is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is diligently occupied
by envy and calumny.

The citizens of Rome had been astonished by the approach of Alaric; and
the diligence with which they labored to restore the walls of the
capital, confessed their own fears, and the decline of the empire. After
the retreat of the Barbarians, Honorius was directed to accept the
dutiful invitation of the senate, and to celebrate, in the Imperial
city, the auspicious æra of the Gothic victory, and of his sixth
consulship.  The suburbs and the streets, from the Milvian bridge to the
Palatine mount, were filled by the Roman people, who, in the space of a
hundred years, had only thrice been honored with the presence of their
sovereigns. While their eyes were fixed on the chariot where Stilicho
was deservedly seated by the side of his royal pupil, they applauded the
pomp of a triumph, which was not stained, like that of Constantine, or
of Theodosius, with civil blood. The procession passed under a lofty
arch, which had been purposely erected: but in less than seven years,
the Gothic conquerors of Rome might read, if they were able to read, the
superb inscription of that monument, which attested the total defeat and
destruction of their nation.  The emperor resided several months in the
capital, and every part of his behavior was regulated with care to
conciliate the affection of the clergy, the senate, and the people of
Rome. The clergy was edified by his frequent visits and liberal gifts to
the shrines of the apostles. The senate, who, in the triumphal
procession, had been excused from the humiliating ceremony of preceding
on foot the Imperial chariot, was treated with the decent reverence
which Stilicho always affected for that assembly. The people was
repeatedly gratified by the attention and courtesy of Honorius in the
public games, which were celebrated on that occasion with a magnificence
not unworthy of the spectator. As soon as the appointed number of
chariot- races was concluded, the decoration of the Circus was suddenly
changed; the hunting of wild beasts afforded a various and splendid
entertainment; and the chase was succeeded by a military dance, which
seems, in the lively description of Claudian, to present the image of a
modern tournament.

In these games of Honorius, the inhuman combats of gladiators  polluted,
for the last time, the amphitheater of Rome. The first Christian emperor
may claim the honor of the first edict which condemned the art and
amusement of shedding human blood;  but this benevolent law expressed
the wishes of the prince, without reforming an inveterate abuse, which
degraded a civilized nation below the condition of savage cannibals.
Several hundred, perhaps several thousand, victims were annually
slaughtered in the great cities of the empire; and the month of
December, more peculiarly devoted to the combats of gladiators, still
exhibited to the eyes of the Roman people a grateful spectacle of blood
and cruelty. Amidst the general joy of the victory of Pollentia, a
Christian poet exhorted the emperor to extirpate, by his authority, the
horrid custom which had so long resisted the voice of humanity and
religion.  The pathetic representations of Prudentius were less
effectual than the generous boldness of Telemachus, and Asiatic monk,
whose death was more useful to mankind than his life.  The Romans were
provoked by the interruption of their pleasures; and the rash monk, who
had descended into the arena to separate the gladiators, was overwhelmed
under a shower of stones. But the madness of the people soon subsided;
they respected the memory of Telemachus, who had deserved the honors of
martyrdom; and they submitted, without a murmur, to the laws of
Honorius, which abolished forever the human sacrifices of the
amphitheater. * The citizens, who adhered to the manners of their
ancestors, might perhaps insinuate that the last remains of a martial
spirit were preserved in this school of fortitude, which accustomed the
Romans to the sight of blood, and to the contempt of death; a vain and
cruel prejudice, so nobly confuted by the valor of ancient Greece, and
of modern Europe!

The recent danger, to which the person of the emperor had been exposed
in the defenceless palace of Milan, urged him to seek a retreat in some
inaccessible fortress of Italy, where he might securely remain, while
the open country was covered by a deluge of Barbarians. On the coast of
the Adriatic, about ten or twelve miles from the most southern of the
seven mouths of the Po, the Thessalians had founded the ancient colony
of Ravenna,  which they afterwards resigned to the natives of Umbria.
Augustus, who had observed the opportunity of the place, prepared, at
the distance of three miles from the old town, a capacious harbor, for
the reception of two hundred and fifty ships of war. This naval
establishment, which included the arsenals and magazines, the barracks
of the troops, and the houses of the artificers, derived its origin and
name from the permanent station of the Roman fleet; the intermediate
space was soon filled with buildings and inhabitants, and the three
extensive and populous quarters of Ravenna gradually contributed to form
one of the most important cities of Italy. The principal canal of
Augustus poured a copious stream of the waters of the Po through the
midst of the city, to the entrance of the harbor; the same waters were
introduced into the profound ditches that encompassed the walls; they
were distributed by a thousand subordinate canals, into every part of
the city, which they divided into a variety of small islands; the
communication was maintained only by the use of boats and bridges; and
the houses of Ravenna, whose appearance may be compared to that of
Venice, were raised on the foundation of wooden piles. The adjacent
country, to the distance of many miles, was a deep and impassable
morass; and the artificial causeway, which connected Ravenna with the
continent, might be easily guarded or destroyed, on the approach of a
hostile army These morasses were interspersed, however, with vineyards:
and though the soil was exhausted by four or five crops, the town
enjoyed a more plentiful supply of wine than of fresh water.  The air,
instead of receiving the sickly, and almost pestilential, exhalations of
low and marshy grounds, was distinguished, like the neighborhood of
Alexandria, as uncommonly pure and salubrious; and this singular
advantage was ascribed to the regular tides of the Adriatic, which swept
the canals, interrupted the unwholesome stagnation of the waters, and
floated, every day, the vessels of the adjacent country into the heart
of Ravenna. The gradual retreat of the sea has left the modern city at
the distance of four miles from the Adriatic; and as early as the fifth
or sixth century of the Christian æra, the port of Augustus was
converted into pleasant orchards; and a lonely grove of pines covered
the ground where the Roman fleet once rode at anchor.  Even this
alteration contributed to increase the natural strength of the place,
and the shallowness of the water was a sufficient barrier against the
large ships of the enemy. This advantageous situation was fortified by
art and labor; and in the twentieth year of his age, the emperor of the
West, anxious only for his personal safety, retired to the perpetual
confinement of the walls and morasses of Ravenna. The example of
Honorius was imitated by his feeble successors, the Gothic kings, and
afterwards the Exarchs, who occupied the throne and palace of the
emperors; and till the middle of the eight century, Ravenna was
considered as the seat of government, and the capital of Italy.

The fears of Honorius were not without foundation, nor were his
precautions without effect. While Italy rejoiced in her deliverance from
the Goths, a furious tempest was excited among the nations of Germany,
who yielded to the irresistible impulse that appears to have been
gradually communicated from the eastern extremity of the continent of
Asia. The Chinese annals, as they have been interpreted by the earned
industry of the present age, may be usefully applied to reveal the
secret and remote causes of the fall of the Roman empire. The extensive
territory to the north of the great wall was possessed, after the flight
of the Huns, by the victorious Sienpi, who were sometimes broken into
independent tribes, and sometimes reunited under a supreme chief; till
at length, styling themselves Topa, or masters of the earth, they
acquired a more solid consistence, and a more formidable power. The Topa
soon compelled the pastoral nations of the eastern desert to acknowledge
the superiority of their arms; they invaded China in a period of
weakness and intestine discord; and these fortunate Tartars, adopting
the laws and manners of the vanquished people, founded an Imperial
dynasty, which reigned near one hundred and sixty years over the
northern provinces of the monarchy. Some generations before they
ascended the throne of China, one of the Topa princes had enlisted in
his cavalry a slave of the name of Moko, renowned for his valor, but who
was tempted, by the fear of punishment, to desert his standard, and to
range the desert at the head of a hundred followers. This gang of
robbers and outlaws swelled into a camp, a tribe, a numerous people,
distinguished by the appellation of Geougen; and their hereditary
chieftains, the posterity of Moko the slave, assumed their rank among
the Scythian monarchs. The youth of Toulun, the greatest of his
descendants, was exercised by those misfortunes which are the school of
heroes. He bravely struggled with adversity, broke the imperious yoke of
the Topa, and became the legislator of his nation, and the conqueror of
Tartary. His troops were distributed into regular bands of a hundred and
of a thousand men; cowards were stoned to death; the most splendid
honors were proposed as the reward of valor; and Toulun, who had
knowledge enough to despise the learning of China, adopted only such
arts and institutions as were favorable to the military spirit of his
government. His tents, which he removed in the winter season to a more
southern latitude, were pitched, during the summer, on the fruitful
banks of the Selinga. His conquests stretched from Corea far beyond the
River Irtish. He vanquished, in the country to the north of the Caspian
Sea, the nation of the Huns; and the new title of Khan, or Cagan,
expressed the fame and power which he derived from this memorable
victory.

The chain of events is interrupted, or rather is concealed, as it passes
from the Volga to the Vistula, through the dark interval which separates
the extreme limits of the Chinese, and of the Roman, geography. Yet the
temper of the Barbarians, and the experience of successive emigrations,
sufficiently declare, that the Huns, who were oppressed by the arms of
the Geougen, soon withdrew from the presence of an insulting victor. The
countries towards the Euxine were already occupied by their kindred
tribes; and their hasty flight, which they soon converted into a bold
attack, would more naturally be directed towards the rich and level
plains, through which the Vistula gently flows into the Baltic Sea. The
North must again have been alarmed, and agitated, by the invasion of the
Huns; * and the nations who retreated before them must have pressed with
incumbent weight on the confines of Germany.  The inhabitants of those
regions, which the ancients have assigned to the Suevi, the Vandals, and
the Burgundians, might embrace the resolution of abandoning to the
fugitives of Sarmatia their woods and morasses; or at least of
discharging their superfluous numbers on the provinces of the Roman
empire.  About four years after the victorious Toulun had assumed the
title of Khan of the Geougen, another Barbarian, the haughty Rhodogast,
or Radagaisus,  marched from the northern extremities of Germany almost
to the gates of Rome, and left the remains of his army to achieve the
destruction of the West. The Vandals, the Suevi, and the Burgundians,
formed the strength of this mighty host; but the Alani, who had found a
hospitable reception in their new seats, added their active cavalry to
the heavy infantry of the Germans; and the Gothic adventurers crowded so
eagerly to the standard of Radagaisus, that by some historians, he has
been styled the King of the Goths. Twelve thousand warriors,
distinguished above the vulgar by their noble birth, or their valiant
deeds, glittered in the van;  and the whole multitude, which was not
less than two hundred thousand fighting men, might be increased, by the
accession of women, of children, and of slaves, to the amount of four
hundred thousand persons. This formidable emigration issued from the
same coast of the Baltic, which had poured forth the myriads of the
Cimbri and Teutones, to assault Rome and Italy in the vigor of the
republic. After the departure of those Barbarians, their native country,
which was marked by the vestiges of their greatness, long ramparts, and
gigantic moles,  remained, during some ages, a vast and dreary solitude;
till the human species was renewed by the powers of generation, and the
vacancy was filled by the influx of new inhabitants. The nations who now
usurp an extent of land which they are unable to cultivate, would soon
be assisted by the industrious poverty of their neighbors, if the
government of Europe did not protect the claims of dominion and
property.

Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths. -- Part IV.

The correspondence of nations was, in that age, so imperfect and
precarious, that the revolutions of the North might escape the knowledge
of the court of Ravenna; till the dark cloud, which was collected along
the coast of the Baltic, burst in thunder upon the banks of the Upper
Danube. The emperor of the West, if his ministers disturbed his
amusements by the news of the impending danger, was satisfied with being
the occasion, and the spectator, of the war.  The safety of Rome was
intrusted to the counsels, and the sword, of Stilicho; but such was the
feeble and exhausted state of the empire, that it was impossible to
restore the fortifications of the Danube, or to prevent, by a vigorous
effort, the invasion of the Germans.  The hopes of the vigilant minister
of Honorius were confined to the defence of Italy. He once more
abandoned the provinces, recalled the troops, pressed the new levies,
which were rigorously exacted, and pusillanimously eluded; employed the
most efficacious means to arrest, or allure, the deserters; and offered
the gift of freedom, and of two pieces of gold, to all the slaves who
would enlist.  By these efforts he painfully collected, from the
subjects of a great empire, an army of thirty or forty thousand men,
which, in the days of Scipio or Camillus, would have been instantly
furnished by the free citizens of the territory of Rome.  The thirty
legions of Stilicho were reënforced by a large body of Barbarian
auxiliaries; the faithful Alani were personally attached to his service;
and the troops of Huns and of Goths, who marched under the banners of
their native princes, Huldin and Sarus, were animated by interest and
resentment to oppose the ambition of Radagaisus. The king of the
confederate Germans passed, without resistance, the Alps, the Po, and
the Apennine; leaving on one hand the inaccessible palace of Honorius,
securely buried among the marshes of Ravenna; and, on the other, the
camp of Stilicho, who had fixed his head-quarters at Ticinum, or Pavia,
but who seems to have avoided a decisive battle, till he had assembled
his distant forces. Many cities of Italy were pillaged, or destroyed;
and the siege of Florence,  by Radagaisus, is one of the earliest events
in the history of that celebrated republic; whose firmness checked and
delayed the unskillful fury of the Barbarians. The senate and people
trembled at their approached within a hundred and eighty miles of Rome;
and anxiously compared the danger which they had escaped, with the new
perils to which they were exposed. Alaric was a Christian and a soldier,
the leader of a disciplined army; who understood the laws of war, who
respected the sanctity of treaties, and who had familiarly conversed
with the subjects of the empire in the same camps, and the same
churches. The savage Radagaisus was a stranger to the manners, the
religion, and even the language, of the civilized nations of the South.
The fierceness of his temper was exasperated by cruel superstition; and
it was universally believed, that he had bound himself, by a solemn vow,
to reduce the city into a heap of stones and ashes, and to sacrifice the
most illustrious of the Roman senators on the altars of those gods who
were appeased by human blood. The public danger, which should have
reconciled all domestic animosities, displayed the incurable madness of
religious faction. The oppressed votaries of Jupiter and Mercury
respected, in the implacable enemy of Rome, the character of a devout
Pagan; loudly declared, that they were more apprehensive of the
sacrifices, than of the arms, of Radagaisus; and secretly rejoiced in
the calamities of their country, which condemned the faith of their
Christian adversaries.  *

Florence was reduced to the last extremity; and the fainting courage of
the citizens was supported only by the authority of St. Ambrose; who had
communicated, in a dream, the promise of a speedy deliverance.  On a
sudden, they beheld, from their walls, the banners of Stilicho, who
advanced, with his united force, to the relief of the faithful city; and
who soon marked that fatal spot for the grave of the Barbarian host. The
apparent contradictions of those writers who variously relate the defeat
of Radagaisus, may be reconciled without offering much violence to their
respective testimonies. Orosius and Augustin, who were intimately
connected by friendship and religion, ascribed this miraculous victory
to the providence of God, rather than to the valor of man.  They
strictly exclude every idea of chance, or even of bloodshed; and
positively affirm, that the Romans, whose camp was the scene of plenty
and idleness, enjoyed the distress of the Barbarians, slowly expiring on
the sharp and barren ridge of the hills of Fæsulæ, which rise above the
city of Florence. Their extravagant assertion that not a single soldier
of the Christian army was killed, or even wounded, may be dismissed with
silent contempt; but the rest of the narrative of Augustin and Orosius
is consistent with the state of the war, and the character of Stilicho.
Conscious that he commanded the last army of the republic, his prudence
would not expose it, in the open field, to the headstrong fury of the
Germans. The method of surrounding the enemy with strong lines of
circumvallation, which he had twice employed against the Gothic king,
was repeated on a larger scale, and with more considerable effect. The
examples of Cæsar must have been familiar to the most illiterate of the
Roman warriors; and the fortifications of Dyrrachium, which connected
twenty-four castles, by a perpetual ditch and rampart of fifteen miles,
afforded the model of an intrenchment which might confine, and starve,
the most numerous host of Barbarians.  The Roman troops had less
degenerated from the industry, than from the valor, of their ancestors;
and if their servile and laborious work offended the pride of the
soldiers, Tuscany could supply many thousand peasants, who would labor,
though, perhaps, they would not fight, for the salvation of their native
country. The imprisoned multitude of horses and men  was gradually
destroyed, by famine rather than by the sword; but the Romans were
exposed, during the progress of such an extensive work, to the frequent
attacks of an impatient enemy. The despair of the hungry Barbarians
would precipitate them against the fortifications of Stilicho; the
general might sometimes indulge the ardor of his brave auxiliaries, who
eagerly pressed to assault the camp of the Germans; and these various
incidents might produce the sharp and bloody conflicts which dignify the
narrative of Zosimus, and the Chronicles of Prosper and Marcellinus.  A
seasonable supply of men and provisions had been introduced into the
walls of Florence, and the famished host of Radagaisus was in its turn
besieged. The proud monarch of so many warlike nations, after the loss
of his bravest warriors, was reduced to confide either in the faith of a
capitulation, or in the clemency of Stilicho.  But the death of the
royal captive, who was ignominiously beheaded, disgraced the triumph of
Rome and of Christianity; and the short delay of his execution was
sufficient to brand the conqueror with the guilt of cool and deliberate
cruelty.  The famished Germans, who escaped the fury of the auxiliaries,
were sold as slaves, at the contemptible price of as many single pieces
of gold; but the difference of food and climate swept away great numbers
of those unhappy strangers; and it was observed, that the inhuman
purchasers, instead of reaping the fruits of their labor were soon
obliged to provide the expense of their interment Stilicho informed the
emperor and the senate of his success; and deserved, a second time, the
glorious title of Deliverer of Italy.

The fame of the victory, and more especially of the miracle, has
encouraged a vain persuasion, that the whole army, or rather nation, of
Germans, who migrated from the shores of the Baltic, miserably perished
under the walls of Florence. Such indeed was the fate of Radagaisus
himself, of his brave and faithful companions, and of more than one
third of the various multitude of Sueves and Vandals, of Alani and
Burgundians, who adhered to the standard of their general.  The union of
such an army might excite our surprise, but the causes of separation are
obvious and forcible; the pride of birth, the insolence of valor, the
jealousy of command, the impatience of subordination, and the obstinate
conflict of opinions, of interests, and of passions, among so many kings
and warriors, who were untaught to yield, or to obey. After the defeat
of Radagaisus, two parts of the German host, which must have exceeded
the number of one hundred thousand men, still remained in arms, between
the Apennine and the Alps, or between the Alps and the Danube. It is
uncertain whether they attempted to revenge the death of their general;
but their irregular fury was soon diverted by the prudence and firmness
of Stilicho, who opposed their march, and facilitated their retreat; who
considered the safety of Rome and Italy as the great object of his care,
and who sacrificed, with too much indifference, the wealth and
tranquillity of the distant provinces.  The Barbarians acquired, from
the junction of some Pannonian deserters, the knowledge of the country,
and of the roads; and the invasion of Gaul, which Alaric had designed,
was executed by the remains of the great army of Radagaisus.

Yet if they expected to derive any assistance from the tribes of
Germany, who inhabited the banks of the Rhine, their hopes were
disappointed. The Alemanni preserved a state of inactive neutrality; and
the Franks distinguished their zeal and courage in the defence of the of
the empire. In the rapid progress down the Rhine, which was the first
act of the administration of Stilicho, he had applied himself, with
peculiar attention, to secure the alliance of the warlike Franks, and to
remove the irreconcilable enemies of peace and of the republic.
Marcomir, one of their kings, was publicly convicted, before the
tribunal of the Roman magistrate, of violating the faith of treaties. He
was sentenced to a mild, but distant exile, in the province of Tuscany;
and this degradation of the regal dignity was so far from exciting the
resentment of his subjects, that they punished with death the turbulent
Sunno, who attempted to revenge his brother; and maintained a dutiful
allegiance to the princes, who were established on the throne by the
choice of Stilicho.  When the limits of Gaul and Germany were shaken by
the northern emigration, the Franks bravely encountered the single force
of the Vandals; who, regardless of the lessons of adversity, had again
separated their troops from the standard of their Barbarian allies. They
paid the penalty of their rashness; and twenty thousand Vandals, with
their king Godigisclus, were slain in the field of battle. The whole
people must have been extirpated, if the squadrons of the Alani,
advancing to their relief, had not trampled down the infantry of the
Franks; who, after an honorable resistance, were compelled to relinquish
the unequal contest. The victorious confederates pursued their march,
and on the last day of the year, in a season when the waters of the
Rhine were most probably frozen, they entered, without opposition, the
defenceless provinces of Gaul. This memorable passage of the Suevi, the
Vandals, the Alani, and the Burgundians, who never afterwards retreated,
may be considered as the fall of the Roman empire in the countries
beyond the Alps; and the barriers, which had so long separated the
savage and the civilized nations of the earth, were from that fatal
moment levelled with the ground.

While the peace of Germany was secured by the attachment of the Franks,
and the neutrality of the Alemanni, the subjects of Rome, unconscious of
their approaching calamities, enjoyed the state of quiet and prosperity,
which had seldom blessed the frontiers of Gaul. Their flocks and herds
were permitted to graze in the pastures of the Barbarians; their
huntsmen penetrated, without fear or danger, into the darkest recesses
of the Hercynian wood.  The banks of the Rhine were crowned, like those
of the Tyber, with elegant houses, and well-cultivated farms; and if a
poet descended the river, he might express his doubt, on which side was
situated the territory of the Romans.  This scene of peace and plenty
was suddenly changed into a desert; and the prospect of the smoking
ruins could alone distinguish the solitude of nature from the desolation
of man. The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed; and
many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms
perished after a long and obstinate siege; Strasburgh, Spires, Rheims,
Tournay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German
yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the banks of the Rhine
over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and
extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was
delivered to the Barbarians, who drove before them, in a promiscuous
crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of
their houses and altars.  The ecclesiastics, to whom we are indebted for
this vague description of the public calamities, embraced the
opportunity of exhorting the Christians to repent of the sins which had
provoked the Divine Justice, and to renounce the perishable goods of a
wretched and deceitful world. But as the Pelagian controversy,  which
attempts to sound the abyss of grace and predestination, soon became the
serious employment of the Latin clergy, the Providence which had
decreed, or foreseen, or permitted, such a train of moral and natural
evils, was rashly weighed in the imperfect and fallacious balance of
reason. The crimes, and the misfortunes, of the suffering people, were
presumptuously compared with those of their ancestors; and they
arraigned the Divine Justice, which did not exempt from the common
destruction the feeble, the guiltless, the infant portion of the human
species. These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature,
which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and
safety with valor. The timid and selfish policy of the court of Ravenna
might recall the Palatine legions for the protection of Italy; the
remains of the stationary troops might be unequal to the arduous task;
and the Barbarian auxiliaries might prefer the unbounded license of
spoil to the benefits of a moderate and regular stipend. But the
provinces of Gaul were filled with a numerous race of hardy and robust
youth, who, in the defence of their houses, their families, and their
altars, if they had dared to die, would have deserved to vanquish. The
knowledge of their native country would have enabled them to oppose
continual and insuperable obstacles to the progress of an invader; and
the deficiency of the Barbarians, in arms, as well as in discipline,
removed the only pretence which excuses the submission of a populous
country to the inferior numbers of a veteran army. When France was
invaded by Charles V., he inquired of a prisoner, how many daysParis
might be distant from the frontier; "Perhaps twelve, but they will be
days of battle:"  such was the gallant answer which checked the
arrogance of that ambitious prince. The subjects of Honorius, and those
of Francis I., were animated by a very different spirit; and in less
than two years, the divided troops of the savages of the Baltic, whose
numbers, were they fairly stated, would appear contemptible, advanced,
without a combat, to the foot of the Pyrenean Mountains.

In the early part of the reign of Honorius, the vigilance of Stilicho
had successfully guarded the remote island of Britain from her incessant
enemies of the ocean, the mountains, and the Irish coast.  But those
restless Barbarians could not neglect the fair opportunity of the Gothic
war, when the walls and stations of the province were stripped of the
Roman troops. If any of the legionaries were permitted to return from
the Italian expedition, their faithful report of the court and character
of Honorius must have tended to dissolve the bonds of allegiance, and to
exasperate the seditious temper of the British army. The spirit of
revolt, which had formerly disturbed the age of Gallienus, was revived
by the capricious violence of the soldiers; and the unfortunate, perhaps
the ambitious, candidates, who were the objects of their choice, were
the instruments, and at length the victims, of their passion.  Marcus
was the first whom they placed on the throne, as the lawful emperor of
Britain and of the West. They violated, by the hasty murder of Marcus,
the oath of fidelity which they had imposed on themselves; and
theirdisapprobation of his manners may seem to inscribe an honorable
epitaph on his tomb. Gratian was the next whom they adorned with the
diadem and the purple; and, at the end of four months, Gratian
experienced the fate of his predecessor. The memory of the great
Constantine, whom the British legions had given to the church and to the
empire, suggested the singular motive of their third choice. They
discovered in the ranks a private soldier of the name of Constantine,
and their impetuous levity had already seated him on the throne, before
they perceived his incapacity to sustain the weight of that glorious
appellation.  Yet the authority of Constantine was less precarious, and
his government was more successful, than the transient reigns of Marcus
and of Gratian. The danger of leaving his inactive troops in those
camps, which had been twice polluted with blood and sedition, urged him
to attempt the reduction of the Western provinces. He landed at Boulogne
with an inconsiderable force; and after he had reposed himself some
days, he summoned the cities of Gaul, which had escaped the yoke of the
Barbarians, to acknowledge their lawful sovereign. They obeyed the
summons without reluctance. The neglect of the court of Ravenna had
absolved a deserted people from the duty of allegiance; their actual
distress encouraged them to accept any circumstances of change, without
apprehension, and, perhaps, with some degree of hope; and they might
flatter themselves, that the troops, the authority, and even the name of
a Roman emperor, who fixed his residence in Gaul, would protect the
unhappy country from the rage of the Barbarians. The first successes of
Constantine against the detached parties of the Germans, were magnified
by the voice of adulation into splendid and decisive victories; which
the reunion and insolence of the enemy soon reduced to their just value.
His negotiations procured a short and precarious truce; and if some
tribes of the Barbarians were engaged, by the liberality of his gifts
and promises, to undertake the defence of the Rhine, these expensive and
uncertain treaties, instead of restoring the pristine vigor of the
Gallic frontier, served only to disgrace the majesty of the prince, and
to exhaust what yet remained of the treasures of the republic. Elated,
however, with this imaginary triumph, the vain deliverer of Gaul
advanced into the provinces of the South, to encounter a more pressing
and personal danger. Sarus the Goth was ordered to lay the head of the
rebel at the feet of the emperor Honorius; and the forces of Britain and
Italy were unworthily consumed in this domestic quarrel. After the loss
of his two bravest generals, Justinian and Nevigastes, the former of
whom was slain in the field of battle, the latter in a peaceful but
treacherous interview, Constantine fortified himself within the walls of
Vienna. The place was ineffectually attacked seven days; and the
Imperial army supported, in a precipitate retreat, the ignominy of
purchasing a secure passage from the freebooters and outlaws of the
Alps.  Those mountains now separated the dominions of two rival
monarchs; and the fortifications of the double frontier were guarded by
the troops of the empire, whose arms would have been more usefully
employed to maintain the Roman limits against the Barbarians of Germany
and Scythia.

Chapter XXX: Revolt Of The Goths. -- Part V.

On the side of the Pyrenees, the ambition of Constantine might be
justified by the proximity of danger; but his throne was soon
established by the conquest, or rather submission, of Spain; which
yielded to the influence of regular and habitual subordination, and
received the laws and magistrates of the Gallic præfecture. The only
opposition which was made to the authority of Constantine proceeded not
so much from the powers of government, or the spirit of the people, as
from the private zeal and interest of the family of Theodosius. Four
brothers  had obtained, by the favor of their kinsman, the deceased
emperor, an honorable rank and ample possessions in their native
country; and the grateful youths resolved to risk those advantages in
the service of his son. After an unsuccessful effort to maintain their
ground at the head of the stationary troops of Lusitania, they retired
to their estates; where they armed and levied, at their own expense, a
considerable body of slaves and dependants, and boldly marched to occupy
the strong posts of the Pyrenean Mountains. This domestic insurrection
alarmed and perplexed the sovereign of Gaul and Britain; and he was
compelled to negotiate with some troops of Barbarian auxiliaries, for
the service of the Spanish war. They were distinguished by the title of
Honorians;  a name which might have reminded them of their fidelity to
their lawful sovereign; and if it should candidly be allowed that the
Scotswere influenced by any partial affection for a British prince, the
Moorsand the Marcomannicould be tempted only by the profuse liberality
of the usurper, who distributed among the Barbarians the military, and
even the civil, honors of Spain. The nine bands of Honorians, which may
be easily traced on the establishment of the Western empire, could not
exceed the number of five thousand men: yet this inconsiderable force
was sufficient to terminate a war, which had threatened the power and
safety of Constantine. The rustic army of the Theodosian family was
surrounded and destroyed in the Pyrenees: two of the brothers had the
good fortune to escape by sea to Italy, or the East; the other two,
after an interval of suspense, were executed at Arles; and if Honorius
could remain insensible of the public disgrace, he might perhaps be
affected by the personal misfortunes of his generous kinsmen. Such were
the feeble arms which decided the possession of the Western provinces of
Europe, from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules. The
events of peace and war have undoubtedly been diminished by the narrow
and imperfect view of the historians of the times, who were equally
ignorant of the causes, and of the effects, of the most important
revolutions. But the total decay of the national strength had
annihilated even the last resource of a despotic government; and the
revenue of exhausted provinces could no longer purchase the military
service of a discontented and pusillanimous people.

The poet, whose flattery has ascribed to the Roman eagle the victories
of Pollentia and Verona, pursues the hasty retreat of Alaric, from the
confines of Italy, with a horrid train of imaginary spectres, such as
might hover over an army of Barbarians, which was almost exterminated by
war, famine, and disease.  In the course of this unfortunate expedition,
the king of the Goths must indeed have sustained a considerable loss;
and his harassed forces required an interval of repose, to recruit their
numbers and revive their confidence. Adversity had exercised and
displayed the genius of Alaric; and the fame of his valor invited to the
Gothic standard the bravest of the Barbarian warriors; who, from the
Euxine to the Rhine, were agitated by the desire of rapine and conquest.
He had deserved the esteem, and he soon accepted the friendship, of
Stilicho himself. Renouncing the service of the emperor of the East,
Alaric concluded, with the court of Ravenna, a treaty of peace and
alliance, by which he was declared master-general of the Roman armies
throughout the præfecture of Illyricum; as it was claimed, according to
the true and ancient limits, by the minister of Honorius.  The execution
of the ambitious design, which was either stipulated, or implied, in the
articles of the treaty, appears to have been suspended by the formidable
irruption of Radagaisus; and the neutrality of the Gothic king may
perhaps be compared to the indifference of Cæsar, who, in the conspiracy
of Catiline, refused either to assist, or to oppose, the enemy of the
republic. After the defeat of the Vandals, Stilicho resumed his
pretensions to the provinces of the East; appointed civil magistrates
for the administration of justice, and of the finances; and declared his
impatience to lead to the gates of Constantinople the united armies of
the Romans and of the Goths. The prudence, however, of Stilicho, his
aversion to civil war, and his perfect knowledge of the weakness of the
state, may countenance the suspicion, that domestic peace, rather than
foreign conquest, was the object of his policy; and that his principal
care was to employ the forces of Alaric at a distance from Italy. This
design could not long escape the penetration of the Gothic king, who
continued to hold a doubtful, and perhaps a treacherous, correspondence
with the rival courts; who protracted, like a dissatisfied mercenary,
his languid operations in Thessaly and Epirus, and who soon returned to
claim the extravagant reward of his ineffectual services. From his camp
near Æmona,  on the confines of Italy, he transmitted to the emperor of
the West a long account of promises, of expenses, and of demands; called
for immediate satisfaction, and clearly intimated the consequences of a
refusal. Yet if his conduct was hostile, his language was decent and
dutiful. He humbly professed himself the friend of Stilicho, and the
soldier of Honorius; offered his person and his troops to march, without
delay, against the usurper of Gaul; and solicited, as a permanent
retreat for the Gothic nation, the possession of some vacant province of
the Western empire.

The political and secret transactions of two statesmen, who labored to
deceive each other and the world, must forever have been concealed in
the impenetrable darkness of the cabinet, if the debates of a popular
assembly had not thrown some rays of light on the correspondence of
Alaric and Stilicho. The necessity of finding some artificial support
for a government, which, from a principle, not of moderation, but of
weakness, was reduced to negotiate with its own subjects, had insensibly
revived the authority of the Roman senate; and the minister of Honorius
respectfully consulted the legislative council of the republic. Stilicho
assembled the senate in the palace of the Cæsars; represented, in a
studied oration, the actual state of affairs; proposed the demands of
the Gothic king, and submitted to their consideration the choice of
peace or war. The senators, as if they had been suddenly awakened from a
dream of four hundred years, appeared, on this important occasion, to be
inspired by the courage, rather than by the wisdom, of their
predecessors. They loudly declared, in regular speeches, or in
tumultuary acclamations, that it was unworthy of the majesty of Rome to
purchase a precarious and disgraceful truce from a Barbarian king; and
that, in the judgment of a magnanimous people, the chance of ruin was
always preferable to the certainty of dishonor. The minister, whose
pacific intentions were seconded only by the voice of a few servile and
venal followers, attempted to allay the general ferment, by an apology
for his own conduct, and even for the demands of the Gothic prince. "The
payment of a subsidy, which had excited the indignation of the Romans,
ought not (such was the language of Stilicho) to be considered in the
odious light, either of a tribute, or of a ransom, extorted by the
menaces of a Barbarian enemy. Alaric had faithfully asserted the just
pretensions of the republic to the provinces which were usurped by the
Greeks of Constantinople: he modestly required the fair and stipulated
recompense of his services; and if he had desisted from the prosecution
of his enterprise, he had obeyed, in his retreat, the peremptory, though
private, letters of the emperor himself. These contradictory orders (he
would not dissemble the errors of his own family) had been procured by
the intercession of Serena. The tender piety of his wife had been too
deeply affected by the discord of the royal brothers, the sons of her
adopted father; and the sentiments of nature had too easily prevailed
over the stern dictates of the public welfare." These ostensible
reasons, which faintly disguise the obscure intrigues of the palace of
Ravenna, were supported by the authority of Stilicho; and obtained,
after a warm debate, the reluctant approbation of the senate. The tumult
of virtue and freedom subsided; and the sum of four thousand pounds of
gold was granted, under the name of a subsidy, to secure the peace of
Italy, and to conciliate the friendship of the king of the Goths.
Lampadius alone, one of the most illustrious members of the assembly,
still persisted in his dissent; exclaimed, with a loud voice, "This is
not a treaty of peace, but of servitude;"  and escaped the danger of
such bold opposition by immediately retiring to the sanctuary of a
Christian church.

[See Palace Of The Cæsars]

But the reign of Stilicho drew towards its end; and the proud minister
might perceive the symptoms of his approaching disgrace. The generous
boldness of Lampadius had been applauded; and the senate, so patiently
resigned to a long servitude, rejected with disdain the offer of
invidious and imaginary freedom. The troops, who still assumed the name
and prerogatives of the Roman legions, were exasperated by the partial
affection of Stilicho for the Barbarians: and the people imputed to the
mischievous policy of the minister the public misfortunes, which were
the natural consequence of their own degeneracy. Yet Stilicho might have
continued to brave the clamors of the people, and even of the soldiers,
if he could have maintained his dominion over the feeble mind of his
pupil. But the respectful attachment of Honorius was converted into
fear, suspicion, and hatred. The crafty Olympius,  who concealed his
vices under the mask of Christian piety, had secretly undermined the
benefactor, by whose favor he was promoted to the honorable offices of
the Imperial palace. Olympius revealed to the unsuspecting emperor, who
had attained the twenty-fifth year of his age, that he was without
weight, or authority, in his own government; and artfully alarmed his
timid and indolent disposition by a lively picture of the designs of
Stilicho, who already meditated the death of his sovereign, with the
ambitious hope of placing the diadem on the head of his son Eucherius.
The emperor was instigated, by his new favorite, to assume the tone of
independent dignity; and the minister was astonished to find, that
secret resolutions were formed in the court and council, which were
repugnant to his interest, or to his intentions. Instead of residing in
the palace of Rome, Honorius declared that it was his pleasure to return
to the secure fortress of Ravenna. On the first intelligence of the
death of his brother Arcadius, he prepared to visit Constantinople, and
to regulate, with the authority of a guardian, the provinces of the
infant Theodosius.  The representation of the difficulty and expense of
such a distant expedition, checked this strange and sudden sally of
active diligence; but the dangerous project of showing the emperor to
the camp of Pavia, which was composed of the Roman troops, the enemies
of Stilicho, and his Barbarian auxiliaries, remained fixed and
unalterable. The minister was pressed, by the advice of his confidant,
Justinian, a Roman advocate, of a lively and penetrating genius, to
oppose a journey so prejudicial to his reputation and safety. His
strenuous but ineffectual efforts confirmed the triumph of Olympius; and
the prudent lawyer withdrew himself from the impending ruin of his
patron.

In the passage of the emperor through Bologna, a mutiny of the guards
was excited and appeased by the secret policy of Stilicho; who announced
his instructions to decimate the guilty, and ascribed to his own
intercession the merit of their pardon. After this tumult, Honorius
embraced, for the last time, the minister whom he now considered as a
tyrant, and proceeded on his way to the camp of Pavia; where he was
received by the loyal acclamations of the troops who were assembled for
the service of the Gallic war. On the morning of the fourth day, he
pronounced, as he had been taught, a military oration in the presence of
the soldiers, whom the charitable visits, and artful discourses, of
Olympius had prepared to execute a dark and bloody conspiracy. At the
first signal, they massacred the friends of Stilicho, the most
illustrious officers of the empire; two Prætorian præfects, of Gaul and
of Italy; two masters-general of the cavalry and infantry; the master of
the offices; the quæstor, the treasurer, and the count of the domestics.
Many lives were lost; many houses were plundered; the furious sedition
continued to rage till the close of the evening; and the trembling
emperor, who was seen in the streets of Pavia without his robes or
diadem, yielded to the persuasions of his favorite; condemned the memory
of the slain; and solemnly approved the innocence and fidelity of their
assassins. The intelligence of the massacre of Pavia filled the mind of
Stilicho with just and gloomy apprehensions; and he instantly summoned,
in the camp of Bologna, a council of the confederate leaders, who were
attached to his service, and would be involved in his ruin. The
impetuous voice of the assembly called aloud for arms, and for revenge;
to march, without a moment's delay, under the banners of a hero, whom
they had so often followed to victory; to surprise, to oppress, to
extirpate the guilty Olympius, and his degenerate Romans; and perhaps to
fix the diadem on the head of their injured general. Instead of
executing a resolution, which might have been justified by success,
Stilicho hesitated till he was irrecoverably lost. He was still ignorant
of the fate of the emperor; he distrusted the fidelity of his own party;
and he viewed with horror the fatal consequences of arming a crowd of
licentious Barbarians against the soldiers and people of Italy. The
confederates, impatient of his timorous and doubtful delay, hastily
retired, with fear and indignation. At the hour of midnight, Sarus, a
Gothic warrior, renowned among the Barbarians themselves for his
strength and valor, suddenly invaded the camp of his benefactor,
plundered the baggage, cut in pieces the faithful Huns, who guarded his
person, and penetrated to the tent, where the minister, pensive and
sleepless, meditated on the dangers of his situation. Stilicho escaped
with difficulty from the sword of the Goths and, after issuing a last
and generous admonition to the cities of Italy, to shut their gates
against the Barbarians, his confidence, or his despair, urged him to
throw himself into Ravenna, which was already in the absolute possession
of his enemies. Olympius, who had assumed the dominion of Honorius, was
speedily informed, that his rival had embraced, as a suppliant the altar
of the Christian church. The base and cruel disposition of the hypocrite
was incapable of pity or remorse; but he piously affected to elude,
rather than to violate, the privilege of the sanctuary. Count Heraclian,
with a troop of soldiers, appeared, at the dawn of day, before the gates
of the church of Ravenna. The bishop was satisfied by a solemn oath,
that the Imperial mandate only directed them to secure the person of
Stilicho: but as soon as the unfortunate minister had been tempted
beyond the holy threshold, he produced the warrant for his instant
execution. Stilicho supported, with calm resignation, the injurious
names of traitor and parricide; repressed the unseasonable zeal of his
followers, who were ready to attempt an ineffectual rescue; and, with a
firmness not unworthy of the last of the Roman generals, submitted his
neck to the sword of Heraclian.

The servile crowd of the palace, who had so long adored the fortune of
Stilicho, affected to insult his fall; and the most distant connection
with the master-general of the West, which had so lately been a title to
wealth and honors, was studiously denied, and rigorously punished. His
family, united by a triple alliance with the family of Theodosius, might
envy the condition of the meanest peasant. The flight of his son
Eucherius was intercepted; and the death of that innocent youth soon
followed the divorce of Thermantia, who filled the place of her sister
Maria; and who, like Maria, had remained a virgin in the Imperial bed.
The friends of Stilicho, who had escaped the massacre of Pavia, were
persecuted by the implacable revenge of Olympius; and the most exquisite
cruelty was employed to extort the confession of a treasonable and
sacrilegious conspiracy. They died in silence: their firmness justified
the choice,  and perhaps absolved the innocence of their patron: and the
despotic power, which could take his life without a trial, and
stigmatize his memory without a proof, has no jurisdiction over the
impartial suffrage of posterity.  The services of Stilicho are great and
manifest; his crimes, as they are vaguely stated in the language of
flattery and hatred, are obscure at least, and improbable. About four
months after his death, an edict was published, in the name of Honorius,
to restore the free communication of the two empires, which had been so
long interrupted by the public enemy.  The minister, whose fame and
fortune depended on the prosperity of the state, was accused of
betraying Italy to the Barbarians; whom he repeatedly vanquished at
Pollentia, at Verona, and before the walls of Florence. His pretended
design of placing the diadem on the head of his son Eucherius, could not
have been conducted without preparations or accomplices; and the
ambitious father would not surely have left the future emperor, till the
twentieth year of his age, in the humble station of tribune of the
notaries. Even the religion of Stilicho was arraigned by the malice of
his rival. The seasonable, and almost miraculous, deliverance was
devoutly celebrated by the applause of the clergy; who asserted, that
the restoration of idols, and the persecution of the church, would have
been the first measure of the reign of Eucherius. The son of Stilicho,
however, was educated in the bosom of Christianity, which his father had
uniformly professed, and zealously supported.  * Serena had borrowed her
magnificent necklace from the statue of Vesta;  and the Pagans execrated
the memory of the sacrilegious minister, by whose order the Sibylline
books, the oracles of Rome, had been committed to the flames.  The pride
and power of Stilicho constituted his real guilt. An honorable
reluctance to shed the blood of his countrymen appears to have
contributed to the success of his unworthy rival; and it is the last
humiliation of the character of Honorius, that posterity has not
condescended to reproach him with his base ingratitude to the guardian
of his youth, and the support of his empire.

Among the train of dependants whose wealth and dignity attracted the
notice of their own times, ourcuriosity is excited by the celebrated
name of the poet Claudian, who enjoyed the favor of Stilicho, and was
overwhelmed in the ruin of his patron. The titular offices of tribune
and notary fixed his rank in the Imperial court: he was indebted to the
powerful intercession of Serena for his marriage with a very rich
heiress of the province of Africa;  and the statute of Claudian, erected
in the forum of Trajan, was a monument of the taste and liberality of
the Roman senate.  After the praises of Stilicho became offensive and
criminal, Claudian was exposed to the enmity of a powerful and
unforgiving courtier, whom he had provoked by the insolence of wit. He
had compared, in a lively epigram, the opposite characters of two
Prætorian præfects of Italy; he contrasts the innocent repose of a
philosopher, who sometimes resigned the hours of business to slumber,
perhaps to study, with the interesting diligence of a rapacious
minister, indefatigable in the pursuit of unjust or sacrilegious, gain.
"How happy," continues Claudian, "how happy might it be for the people
of Italy, if Mallius could be constantly awake, and if Hadrian would
always sleep!"  The repose of Mallius was not disturbed by this friendly
and gentle admonition; but the cruel vigilance of Hadrian watched the
opportunity of revenge, and easily obtained, from the enemies of
Stilicho, the trifling sacrifice of an obnoxious poet. The poet
concealed himself, however, during the tumult of the revolution; and,
consulting the dictates of prudence rather than of honor, he addressed,
in the form of an epistle, a suppliant and humble recantation to the
offended præfect. He deplores, in mournful strains, the fatal
indiscretion into which he had been hurried by passion and folly;
submits to the imitation of his adversary the generous examples of the
clemency of gods, of heroes, and of lions; and expresses his hope that
the magnanimity of Hadrian will not trample on a defenceless and
contemptible foe, already humbled by disgrace and poverty, and deeply
wounded by the exile, the tortures, and the death of his dearest
friends.  Whatever might be the success of his prayer, or the accidents
of his future life, the period of a few years levelled in the grave the
minister and the poet: but the name of Hadrian is almost sunk in
oblivion, while Claudian is read with pleasure in every country which
has retained, or acquired, the knowledge of the Latin language. If we
fairly balance his merits and his defects, we shall acknowledge that
Claudian does not either satisfy, or silence, our reason. It would not
be easy to produce a passage that deserves the epithet of sublime or
pathetic; to select a verse that melts the heart or enlarges the
imagination. We should vainly seek, in the poems of Claudian, the happy
invention, and artificial conduct, of an interesting fable; or the just
and lively representation of the characters and situations of real life.
For the service of his patron, he published occasional panegyrics and
invectives: and the design of these slavish compositions encouraged his
propensity to exceed the limits of truth and nature. These
imperfections, however, are compensated in some degree by the poetical
virtues of Claudian. He was endowed with the rare and precious talent of
raising the meanest, of adorning the most barren, and of diversifying
the most similar, topics: his coloring, more especially in descriptive
poetry, is soft and splendid; and he seldom fails to display, and even
to abuse, the advantages of a cultivated understanding, a copious fancy,
an easy, and sometimes forcible, expression; and a perpetual flow of
harmonious versification. To these commendations, independent of any
accidents of time and place, we must add the peculiar merit which
Claudian derived from the unfavorable circumstances of his birth. In the
decline of arts, and of empire, a native of Egypt,  who had received the
education of a Greek, assumed, in a mature age, the familiar use, and
absolute command, of the Latin language;  soared above the heads of his
feeble contemporaries; and placed himself, after an interval of three
hundred years, among the poets of ancient Rome.

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians.

Part I.

Invasion Of Italy By Alaric. -- Manners Of The Roman Senate And People.
-- Rome Is Thrice Besieged, And At Length Pillaged, By The Goths. --
Death Of Alaric. -- The Goths Evacuate Italy. -- Fall Of Constantine. --
Gaul And Spain Are Occupied By The Barbarians. -- Independence Of
Britain.

The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the
appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence
with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the
council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures
which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.  The king of
the Goths would have conspired, perhaps with some reluctance, to destroy
the formidable adversary, by whose arms, in Italy, as well as in Greece,
he had been twice overthrown. Theiractive and interested hatred
laboriously accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho.
The valor of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal, or hereditary,
influence over the confederate Barbarians, could recommend him only to
the friends of their country, who despised, or detested, the worthless
characters of Turpilio, Varanes, and Vigilantius. By the pressing
instances of the new favorites, these generals, unworthy as they had
shown themselves of the names of soldiers,  were promoted to the command
of the cavalry, of the infantry, and of the domestic troops. The Gothic
prince would have subscribed with pleasure the edict which the
fanaticism of Olympius dictated to the simple and devout emperor.
Honorius excluded all persons, who were adverse to the Catholic church,
from holding any office in the state; obstinately rejected the service
of all those who dissented from his religion; and rashly disqualified
many of his bravest and most skilful officers, who adhered to the Pagan
worship, or who had imbibed the opinions of Arianism.  These measures,
so advantageous to an enemy, Alaric would have approved, and might
perhaps have suggested; but it may seem doubtful, whether the Barbarian
would have promoted his interest at the expense of the inhuman and
absurd cruelty which was perpetrated by the direction, or at least with
the connivance of the Imperial ministers. The foreign auxiliaries, who
had been attached to the person of Stilicho, lamented his death; but the
desire of revenge was checked by a natural apprehension for the safety
of their wives and children; who were detained as hostages in the strong
cities of Italy, where they had likewise deposited their most valuable
effects. At the same hour, and as if by a common signal, the cities of
Italy were polluted by the same horrid scenes of universal massacre and
pillage, which involved, in promiscuous destruction, the families and
fortunes of the Barbarians. Exasperated by such an injury, which might
have awakened the tamest and most servile spirit, they cast a look of
indignation and hope towards the camp of Alaric, and unanimously swore
to pursue, with just and implacable war, the perfidious nation who had
so basely violated the laws of hospitality. By the imprudent conduct of
the ministers of Honorius, the republic lost the assistance, and
deserved the enmity, of thirty thousand of her bravest soldiers; and the
weight of that formidable army, which alone might have determined the
event of the war, was transferred from the scale of the Romans into that
of the Goths.

In the arts of negotiation, as well as in those of war, the Gothic king
maintained his superior ascendant over an enemy, whose seeming changes
proceeded from the total want of counsel and design. From his camp, on
the confines of Italy, Alaric attentively observed the revolutions of
the palace, watched the progress of faction and discontent, disguised
the hostile aspect of a Barbarian invader, and assumed the more popular
appearance of the friend and ally of the great Stilicho: to whose
virtues, when they were no longer formidable, he could pay a just
tribute of sincere praise and regret. The pressing invitation of the
malecontents, who urged the king of the Goths to invade Italy, was
enforced by a lively sense of his personal injuries; and he might
especially complain, that the Imperial ministers still delayed and
eluded the payment of the four thousand pounds of gold which had been
granted by the Roman senate, either to reward his services, or to
appease his fury. His decent firmness was supported by an artful
moderation, which contributed to the success of his designs. He required
a fair and reasonable satisfaction; but he gave the strongest
assurances, that, as soon as he had obtained it, he would immediately
retire. He refused to trust the faith of the Romans, unless Ætius and
Jason, the sons of two great officers of state, were sent as hostages to
his camp; but he offered to deliver, in exchange, several of the noblest
youths of the Gothic nation. The modesty of Alaric was interpreted, by
the ministers of Ravenna, as a sure evidence of his weakness and fear.
They disdained either to negotiate a treaty, or to assemble an army; and
with a rash confidence, derived only from their ignorance of the extreme
danger, irretrievably wasted the decisive moments of peace and war.
While they expected, in sullen silence, that the Barbarians would
evacuate the confines of Italy, Alaric, with bold and rapid marches,
passed the Alps and the Po; hastily pillaged the cities of Aquileia,
Altinum, Concordia, and Cremona, which yielded to his arms; increased
his forces by the accession of thirty thousand auxiliaries; and, without
meeting a single enemy in the field, advanced as far as the edge of the
morass which protected the impregnable residence of the emperor of the
West. Instead of attempting the hopeless siege of Ravenna, the prudent
leader of the Goths proceeded to Rimini, stretched his ravages along the
sea-coast of the Hadriatic, and meditated the conquest of the ancient
mistress of the world. An Italian hermit, whose zeal and sanctity were
respected by the Barbarians themselves, encountered the victorious
monarch, and boldly denounced the indignation of Heaven against the
oppressors of the earth; but the saint himself was confounded by the
solemn asseveration of Alaric, that he felt a secret and præternatural
impulse, which directed, and even compelled, his march to the gates of
Rome. He felt, that his genius and his fortune were equal to the most
arduous enterprises; and the enthusiasm which he communicated to the
Goths, insensibly removed the popular, and almost superstitious,
reverence of the nations for the majesty of the Roman name. His troops,
animated by the hopes of spoil, followed the course of the Flaminian
way, occupied the unguarded passes of the Apennine,  descended into the
rich plains of Umbria; and, as they lay encamped on the banks of the
Clitumnus, might wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen,
which had been so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs.  A lofty
situation, and a seasonable tempest of thunder and lightning, preserved
the little city of Narni; but the king of the Goths, despising the
ignoble prey, still advanced with unabated vigor; and after he had
passed through the stately arches, adorned with the spoils of Barbaric
victories, he pitched his camp under the walls of Rome.

During a period of six hundred and nineteen years, the seat of empire
had never been violated by the presence of a foreign enemy. The
unsuccessful expedition of Hannibal  served only to display the
character of the senate and people; of a senate degraded, rather than
ennobled, by the comparison of an assembly of kings; and of a people, to
whom the ambassador of Pyrrhus ascribed the inexhaustible resources of
the Hydra.  Each of the senators, in the time of the Punic war, had
accomplished his term of the military service, either in a subordinate
or a superior station; and the decree, which invested with temporary
command all those who had been consuls, or censors, or dictators, gave
the republic the immediate assistance of many brave and experienced
generals. In the beginning of the war, the Roman people consisted of two
hundred and fifty thousand citizens of an age to bear arms.  Fifty
thousand had already died in the defence of their country; and the
twenty-three legions which were employed in the different camps of
Italy, Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, and Spain, required about one hundred
thousand men. But there still remained an equal number in Rome, and the
adjacent territory, who were animated by the same intrepid courage; and
every citizen was trained, from his earliest youth, in the discipline
and exercises of a soldier. Hannibal was astonished by the constancy of
the senate, who, without raising the siege of Capua, or recalling their
scattered forces, expected his approach. He encamped on the banks of the
Anio, at the distance of three miles from the city; and he was soon
informed, that the ground on which he had pitched his tent, was sold for
an adequate price at a public auction; * and that a body of troops was
dismissed by an opposite road, to reënforce the legions of Spain.  He
led his Africans to the gates of Rome, where he found three armies in
order of battle, prepared to receive him; but Hannibal dreaded the event
of a combat, from which he could not hope to escape, unless he destroyed
the last of his enemies; and his speedy retreat confessed the invincible
courage of the Romans.

From the time of the Punic war, the uninterrupted succession of senators
had preserved the name and image of the republic; and the degenerate
subjects of Honorius ambitiously derived their descent from the heroes
who had repulsed the arms of Hannibal, and subdued the nations of the
earth. The temporal honors which the devout Paula  inherited and
despised, are carefully recapitulated by Jerom, the guide of her
conscience, and the historian of her life. The genealogy of her father,
Rogatus, which ascended as high as Agamemnon, might seem to betray a
Grecian origin; but her mother, Blæsilla, numbered the Scipios, Æmilius
Paulus, and the Gracchi, in the list of her ancestors; and Toxotius, the
husband of Paula, deduced his royal lineage from Æneas, the father of
the Julian line. The vanity of the rich, who desired to be noble, was
gratified by these lofty pretensions. Encouraged by the applause of
their parasites, they easily imposed on the credulity of the vulgar; and
were countenanced, in some measure, by the custom of adopting the name
of their patron, which had always prevailed among the freedmen and
clients of illustrious families. Most of those families, however,
attacked by so many causes of external violence or internal decay, were
gradually extirpated; and it would be more reasonable to seek for a
lineal descent of twenty generations, among the mountains of the Alps,
or in the peaceful solitude of Apulia, than on the theatre of Rome, the
seat of fortune, of danger, and of perpetual revolutions. Under each
successive reign, and from every province of the empire, a crowd of
hardy adventurers, rising to eminence by their talents or their vices,
usurped the wealth, the honors, and the palaces of Rome; and oppressed,
or protected, the poor and humble remains of consular families; who were
ignorant, perhaps, of the glory of their ancestors.

In the time of Jerom and Claudian, the senators unanimously yielded the
preeminence to the Anician line; and a slight view of theirhistory will
serve to appreciate the rank and antiquity of the noble families, which
contended only for the second place.  During the five first ages of the
city, the name of the Anicians was unknown; they appear to have derived
their origin from Præneste; and the ambition of those new citizens was
long satisfied with the Plebeian honors of tribunes of the people.  One
hundred and sixty-eight years before the Christian æra, the family was
ennobled by the Prætorship of Anicius, who gloriously terminated the
Illyrian war, by the conquest of the nation, and the captivity of their
king.  From the triumph of that general, three consulships, in distant
periods, mark the succession of the Anician name.  From the reign of
Diocletian to the final extinction of the Western empire, that name
shone with a lustre which was not eclipsed, in the public estimation, by
the majesty of the Imperial purple.  The several branches, to whom it
was communicated, united, by marriage or inheritance, the wealth and
titles of the Annian, the Petronian, and the Olybrian houses; and in
each generation the number of consulships was multiplied by an
hereditary claim.  The Anician family excelled in faith and in riches:
they were the first of the Roman senate who embraced Christianity; and
it is probable that Anicius Julian, who was afterwards consul and
præfect of the city, atoned for his attachment to the party of
Maxentius, by the readiness with which he accepted the religion of
Constantine.  Their ample patrimony was increased by the industry of
Probus, the chief of the Anician family; who shared with Gratian the
honors of the consulship, and exercised, four times, the high office of
Prætorian præfect.  His immense estates were scattered over the wide
extent of the Roman world; and though the public might suspect or
disapprove the methods by which they had been acquired, the generosity
and magnificence of that fortunate statesman deserved the gratitude of
his clients, and the admiration of strangers.  Such was the respect
entertained for his memory, that the two sons of Probus, in their
earliest youth, and at the request of the senate, were associated in the
consular dignity; a memorable distinction, without example, in the
annals of Rome.

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians. -- Part II.

"The marbles of the Anician palace," were used as a proverbial
expression of opulence and splendor;  but the nobles and senators of
Rome aspired, in due gradation, to imitate that illustrious family. The
accurate description of the city, which was composed in the Theodosian
age, enumerates one thousand seven hundred and eighty houses, the
residence of wealthy and honorable citizens.  Many of these stately
mansions might almost excuse the exaggeration of the poet; that Rome
contained a multitude of palaces, and that each palace was equal to a
city: since it included within its own precincts every thing which could
be subservient either to use or luxury; markets, hippodromes, temples,
fountains, baths, porticos, shady groves, and artificial aviaries.  The
historian Olympiodorus, who represents the state of Rome when it was
besieged by the Goths,  continues to observe, that several of the
richest senators received from their estates an annual income of four
thousand pounds of gold, above one hundred and sixty thousand pounds
sterling; without computing the stated provision of corn and wine,
which, had they been sold, might have equalled in value one third of the
money. Compared to this immoderate wealth, an ordinary revenue of a
thousand or fifteen hundred pounds of gold might be considered as no
more than adequate to the dignity of the senatorian rank, which required
many expenses of a public and ostentatious kind. Several examples are
recorded, in the age of Honorius, of vain and popular nobles, who
celebrated the year of their prætorship by a festival, which lasted
seven days, and cost above one hundred thousand pounds sterling.  The
estates of the Roman senators, which so far exceeded the proportion of
modern wealth, were not confined to the limits of Italy. Their
possessions extended far beyond the Ionian and Ægean Seas, to the most
distant provinces: the city of Nicopolis, which Augustus had founded as
an eternal monument of the Actian victory, was the property of the
devout Paula;  and it is observed by Seneca, that the rivers, which had
divided hostile nations, now flowed through the lands of private
citizens.  According to their temper and circumstances, the estates of
the Romans were either cultivated by the labor of their slaves, or
granted, for a certain and stipulated rent, to the industrious farmer.
The economical writers of antiquity strenuously recommend the former
method, wherever it may be practicable; but if the object should be
removed, by its distance or magnitude, from the immediate eye of the
master, they prefer the active care of an old hereditary tenant,
attached to the soil, and interested in the produce, to the mercenary
administration of a negligent, perhaps an unfaithful, steward.

The opulent nobles of an immense capital, who were never excited by the
pursuit of military glory, and seldom engaged in the occupations of
civil government, naturally resigned their leisure to the business and
amusements of private life. At Rome, commerce was always held in
contempt: but the senators, from the first age of the republic,
increased their patrimony, and multiplied their clients, by the
lucrative practice of usury; and the obsolete laws were eluded, or
violated, by the mutual inclinations and interest of both parties.  A
considerable mass of treasure must always have existed at Rome, either
in the current coin of the empire, or in the form of gold and silver
plate; and there were many sideboards in the time of Pliny which
contained more solid silver, than had been transported by Scipio from
vanquished Carthage.  The greater part of the nobles, who dissipated
their fortunes in profuse luxury, found themselves poor in the midst of
wealth, and idle in a constant round of dissipation. Their desires were
continually gratified by the labor of a thousand hands; of the numerous
train of their domestic slaves, who were actuated by the fear of
punishment; and of the various professions of artificers and merchants,
who were more powerfully impelled by the hopes of gain. The ancients
were destitute of many of the conveniences of life, which have been
invented or improved by the progress of industry; and the plenty of
glass and linen has diffused more real comforts among the modern nations
of Europe, than the senators of Rome could derive from all the
refinements of pompous or sensual luxury.  Their luxury, and their
manners, have been the subject of minute and laborious disposition: but
as such inquiries would divert me too long from the design of the
present work, I shall produce an authentic state of Rome and its
inhabitants, which is more peculiarly applicable to the period of the
Gothic invasion. Ammianus Marcellinus, who prudently chose the capital
of the empire as the residence the best adapted to the historian of his
own times, has mixed with the narrative of public events a lively
representation of the scenes with which he was familiarly conversant.
The judicious reader will not always approve of the asperity of censure,
the choice of circumstances, or the style of expression; he will perhaps
detect the latent prejudices, and personal resentments, which soured the
temper of Ammianus himself; but he will surely observe, with philosophic
curiosity, the interesting and original picture of the manners of Rome.

"The greatness of Rome" -- such is the language of the historian -- "was
founded on the rare, and almost incredible, alliance of virtue and of
fortune. The long period of her infancy was employed in a laborious
struggle against the tribes of Italy, the neighbors and enemies of the
rising city. In the strength and ardor of youth, she sustained the
storms of war; carried her victorious arms beyond the seas and the
mountains; and brought home triumphal laurels from every country of the
globe. At length, verging towards old age, and sometimes conquering by
the terror only of her name, she sought the blessings of ease and
tranquillity. The venerable city, which had trampled on the necks of the
fiercest nations, and established a system of laws, the perpetual
guardians of justice and freedom, was content, like a wise and wealthy
parent, to devolve on the Cæsars, her favorite sons, the care of
governing her ample patrimony.  A secure and profound peace, such as had
been once enjoyed in the reign of Numa, succeeded to the tumults of a
republic; while Rome was still adored as the queen of the earth; and the
subject nations still reverenced the name of the people, and the majesty
of the senate. But this native splendor," continues Ammianus, "is
degraded, and sullied, by the conduct of some nobles, who, unmindful of
their own dignity, and of that of their country, assume an unbounded
license of vice and folly. They contend with each other in the empty
vanity of titles and surnames; and curiously select, or invent, the most
lofty and sonorous appellations, Reburrus, or Fabunius, Pagonius, or
Tarasius,  which may impress the ears of the vulgar with astonishment
and respect. From a vain ambition of perpetuating their memory, they
affect to multiply their likeness, in statues of bronze and marble; nor
are they satisfied, unless those statues are covered with plates of
gold; an honorable distinction, first granted to Acilius the consul,
after he had subdued, by his arms and counsels, the power of King
Antiochus. The ostentation of displaying, of magnifying, perhaps, the
rent-roll of the estates which they possess in all the provinces, from
the rising to the setting sun, provokes the just resentment of every
man, who recollects, that their poor and invincible ancestors were not
distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers, by the delicacy of their
food, or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure
their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots,
and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk
and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or
accident, they occasionally discover the under garments, the rich
tunics, embroidered with the figures of various animals.  Followed by a
train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along
the streets with the same impetuous speed as if they travelled with
post-horses; and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the
matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving
round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons
of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume,
on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate
to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman
people. If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet any
of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express their
affection by a tender embrace; while they proudly decline the
salutations of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire
above the honor of kissing their hands, or their knees. As soon as they
have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume
their rings, and the other ensigns of their dignity, select from their
private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen
persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain
till their departure the same haughty demeanor; which perhaps might have
been excused in the great Marcellus, after the conquest of Syracuse.
Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements;
they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil
of servile hands, the amusements of the chase.  If at any time, but more
especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail, in their painted
galleys, from the Lucrine Lake  to their elegant villas on the seacoast
of Puteoli and Cayeta,  they compare their own expeditions to the
marches of Cæsar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on
the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas; should a sunbeam penetrate
through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their
intolerable hardships, and lament, in affected language, that they were
not born in the land of the Cimmerians,  the regions of eternal
darkness. In these journeys into the country,  the whole body of the
household marches with their master. In the same manner as the cavalry
and infantry, the heavy and the light armed troops, the advanced guard
and the rear, are marshalled by the skill of their military leaders; so
the domestic officers, who bear a rod, as an ensign of authority,
distribute and arrange the numerous train of slaves and attendants. The
baggage and wardrobe move in the front; and are immediately followed by
a multitude of cooks, and inferior ministers, employed in the service of
the kitchens, and of the table. The main body is composed of a
promiscuous crowd of slaves, increased by the accidental concourse of
idle or dependent plebeians. The rear is closed by the favorite band of
eunuchs, distributed from age to youth, according to the order of
seniority. Their numbers and their deformity excite the horror of the
indignant spectators, who are ready to execrate the memory of Semiramis,
for the cruel art which she invented, of frustrating the purposes of
nature, and of blasting in the bud the hopes of future generations. In
the exercise of domestic jurisdiction, the nobles of Rome express an
exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous
indifference for the rest of the human species. When they have called
for warm water, if a slave has been tardy in his obedience, he is
instantly chastised with three hundred lashes: but should the same slave
commit a wilful murder, the master will mildly observe, that he is a
worthless fellow; but that, if he repeats the offence, he shall not
escape punishment. Hospitality was formerly the virtue of the Romans;
and every stranger, who could plead either merit or misfortune, was
relieved, or rewarded by their generosity. At present, if a foreigner,
perhaps of no contemptible rank, is introduced to one of the proud and
wealthy senators, he is welcomed indeed in the first audience, with such
warm professions, and such kind inquiries, that he retires, enchanted
with the affability of his illustrious friend, and full of regret that
he had so long delayed his journey to Rome, the active seat of manners,
as well as of empire. Secure of a favorable reception, he repeats his
visit the ensuing day, and is mortified by the discovery, that his
person, his name, and his country, are already forgotten. If he still
has resolution to persevere, he is gradually numbered in the train of
dependants, and obtains the permission to pay his assiduous and
unprofitable court to a haughty patron, incapable of gratitude or
friendship; who scarcely deigns to remark his presence, his departure,
or his return. Whenever the rich prepare a solemn and popular
entertainment;  whenever they celebrate, with profuse and pernicious
luxury, their private banquets; the choice of the guests is the subject
of anxious deliberation. The modest, the sober, and the learned, are
seldom preferred; and the nomenclators, who are commonly swayed by
interested motives, have the address to insert, in the list of
invitations, the obscure names of the most worthless of mankind. But the
frequent and familiar companions of the great, are those parasites, who
practise the most useful of all arts, the art of flattery; who eagerly
applaud each word, and every action, of their immortal patron; gaze with
rapture on his marble columns and variegated pavements; and strenuously
praise the pomp and elegance which he is taught to consider as a part of
his personal merit. At the Roman tables, the birds, the squirrels,

or the fish, which appear of an uncommon size, are contemplated with
curious attention; a pair of scales is accurately applied, to ascertain
their real weight; and, while the more rational guests are disgusted by
the vain and tedious repetition, notaries are summoned to attest, by an
authentic record, the truth of such a marvelous event. Another method of
introduction into the houses and society of the great, is derived from
the profession of gaming, or, as it is more politely styled, of play.
The confederates are united by a strict and indissoluble bond of
friendship, or rather of conspiracy; a superior degree of skill in the
Tesserarianart (which may be interpreted the game of dice and tables)
is a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of that sublime
science, who in a supper, or assembly, is placed below a magistrate,
displays in his countenance the surprise and indignation which Cato
might be supposed to feel, when he was refused the prætorship by the
votes of a capricious people. The acquisition of knowledge seldom
engages the curiosity of nobles, who abhor the fatigue, and disdain the
advantages, of study; and the only books which they peruse are the
Satires of Juvenal, and the verbose and fabulous histories of Marius
Maximus.  The libraries, which they have inherited from their fathers,
are secluded, like dreary sepulchres, from the light of day.  But the
costly instruments of the theatre, flutes, and enormous lyres, and
hydraulic organs, are constructed for their use; and the harmony of
vocal and instrumental music is incessantly repeated in the palaces of
Rome. In those palaces, sound is preferred to sense, and the care of the
body to that of the mind. It is allowed as a salutary maxim, that the
light and frivolous suspicion of a contagious malady, is of sufficient
weight to excuse the visits of the most intimate friends; and even the
servants, who are despatched to make the decent inquiries, are not
suffered to return home, till they have undergone the ceremony of a
previous ablution. Yet this selfish and unmanly delicacy occasionally
yields to the more imperious passion of avarice. The prospect of gain
will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleto; every sentiment of
arrogance and dignity is subdued by the hopes of an inheritance, or even
of a legacy; and a wealthy childless citizen is the most powerful of the
Romans. The art of obtaining the signature of a favorable testament, and
sometimes of hastening the moment of its execution, is perfectly
understood; and it has happened, that in the same house, though in
different apartments, a husband and a wife, with the laudable design of
overreaching each other, have summoned their respective lawyers, to
declare, at the same time, their mutual, but contradictory, intentions.
The distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury, often
reduces the great to the use of the most humiliating expedients. When
they desire to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of
the slave in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they
assume the royal and tragic declamation of the grandsons of Hercules. If
the demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant,
instructed to maintain a charge of poison, or magic, against the
insolent creditor; who is seldom released from prison, till he has
signed a discharge of the whole debt. These vices, which degrade the
moral character of the Romans, are mixed with a puerile superstition,
that disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the
predictions of haruspices, who pretend to read, in the entrails of
victims, the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and there are
many who do not presume either to bathe, or to dine, or to appear in
public, till they have diligently consulted, according to the rules of
astrology, the situation of Mercury, and the aspect of the moon.  It is
singular enough, that this vain credulity may often be discovered among
the profane sceptics, who impiously doubt, or deny, the existence of a
celestial power."

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians. -- Part III.

In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the
middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the
dexterity or labor of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the
most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the
community. But the plebeians of Rome, who disdained such sedentary and
servile arts, had been oppressed from the earliest times by the weight
of debt and usury; and the husbandman, during the term of his military
service, was obliged to abandon the cultivation of his farm.  The lands
of Italy which had been originally divided among the families of free
and indigent proprietors, were insensibly purchased or usurped by the
avarice of the nobles; and in the age which preceded the fall of the
republic, it was computed that only two thousand citizens were possessed
of an independent substance.  Yet as long as the people bestowed, by
their suffrages, the honors of the state, the command of the legions,
and the administration of wealthy provinces, their conscious pride
alleviated in some measure, the hardships of poverty; and their wants
were seasonably supplied by the ambitious liberality of the candidates,
who aspired to secure a venal majority in the thirty-five tribes, or the
hundred and ninety-three centuries, of Rome. But when the prodigal
commons had not only imprudently alienated not only the use, but the
inheritanceof power, they sunk, under the reign of the Cæsars, into a
vile and wretched populace, which must, in a few generations, have been
totally extinguished, if it had not been continually recruited by the
manumission of slaves, and the influx of strangers. As early as the time
of Hadrian, it was the just complaint of the ingenuous natives, that the
capital had attracted the vices of the universe, and the manners of the
most opposite nations. The intemperance of the Gauls, the cunning and
levity of the Greeks, the savage obstinacy of the Egyptians and Jews,
the servile temper of the Asiatics, and the dissolute, effeminate
prostitution of the Syrians, were mingled in the various multitude,
which, under the proud and false denomination of Romans, presumed to
despise their fellow- subjects, and even their sovereigns, who dwelt
beyond the precincts of the Eternal City.

Yet the name of that city was still pronounced with respect: the
frequent and capricious tumults of its inhabitants were indulged with
impunity; and the successors of Constantine, instead of crushing the
last remains of the democracy by the strong arm of military power,
embraced the mild policy of Augustus, and studied to relieve the
poverty, and to amuse the idleness, of an innumerable people.  I. For
the convenience of the lazy plebeians, the monthly distributions of corn
were converted into a daily allowance of bread; a great number of ovens
were constructed and maintained at the public expense; and at the
appointed hour, each citizen, who was furnished with a ticket, ascended
the flight of steps, which had been assigned to his peculiar quarter or
division, and received, either as a gift, or at a very low price, a loaf
of bread of the weight of three pounds, for the use of his family. II.
The forest of Lucania, whose acorns fattened large droves of wild hogs,
afforded, as a species of tribute, a plentiful supply of cheap and
wholesome meat. During five months of the year, a regular allowance of
bacon was distributed to the poorer citizens; and the annual consumption
of the capital, at a time when it was much declined from its former
lustre, was ascertained, by an edict from Valentinian the Third, at
three millions six hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds.  III. In
the manners of antiquity, the use of oil was indispensable for the lamp,
as well as for the bath; and the annual tax, which was imposed on Africa
for the benefit of Rome, amounted to the weight of three millions of
pounds, to the measure, perhaps, of three hundred thousand English
gallons. IV. The anxiety of Augustus to provide the metropolis with
sufficient plenty of corn, was not extended beyond that necessary
article of human subsistence; and when the popular clamor accused the
dearness and scarcity of wine, a proclamation was issued, by the grave
reformer, to remind his subjects that no man could reasonably complain
of thirst, since the aqueducts of Agrippa had introduced into the city
so many copious streams of pure and salubrious water.  This rigid
sobriety was insensibly relaxed; and, although the generous design of
Aurelian  does not appear to have been executed in its full extent, the
use of wine was allowed on very easy and liberal terms. The
administration of the public cellars was delegated to a magistrate of
honorable rank; and a considerable part of the vintage of Campania was
reserved for the fortunate inhabitants of Rome.

The stupendous aqueducts, so justly celebrated by the praises of
Augustus himself, replenished the Therm, or baths, which had been
constructed in every part of the city, with Imperial magnificence. The
baths of Antoninus Caracalla, which were open, at stated hours, for the
indiscriminate service of the senators and the people, contained above
sixteen hundred seats of marble; and more than three thousand were
reckoned in the baths of Diocletian.  The walls of the lofty apartments
were covered with curious mosaics, that imitated the art of the pencil
in the elegance of design, and the variety of colors. The Egyptian
granite was beautifully encrusted with the precious green marble of
Numidia; the perpetual stream of hot water was poured into the capacious
basins, through so many wide mouths of bright and massy silver; and the
meanest Roman could purchase, with a small copper coin, the daily
enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury, which might excite the envy of
the kings of Asia.  From these stately palaces issued a swarm of dirty
and ragged plebeians, without shoes and without a mantle; who loitered
away whole days in the street of Forum, to hear news and to hold
disputes; who dissipated in extravagant gaming, the miserable pittance
of their wives and children; and spent the hours of the night in the
obscure taverns, and brothels, in the indulgence of gross and vulgar
sensuality.

But the most lively and splendid amusement of the idle multitude,
depended on the frequent exhibition of public games and spectacles. The
piety of Christian princes had suppressed the inhuman combats of
gladiators; but the Roman people still considered the Circus as their
home, their temple, and the seat of the republic. The impatient crowd
rushed at the dawn of day to secure their places, and there were many
who passed a sleepless and anxious night in the adjacent porticos. From
the morning to the evening, careless of the sun, or of the rain, the
spectators, who sometimes amounted to the number of four hundred
thousand, remained in eager attention; their eyes fixed on the horses
and charioteers, their minds agitated with hope and fear, for the
success of the colorswhich they espoused: and the happiness of Rome
appeared to hang on the event of a race.  The same immoderate ardor
inspired their clamors and their applause, as often as they were
entertained with the hunting of wild beasts, and the various modes of
theatrical representation. These representations in modern capitals may
deserve to be considered as a pure and elegant school of taste, and
perhaps of virtue. But the Tragic and Comic Muse of the Romans, who
seldom aspired beyond the imitation of Attic genius,  had been almost
totally silent since the fall of the republic;  and their place was
unworthily occupied by licentious farce, effeminate music, and splendid
pageantry. The pantomimes,  who maintained their reputation from the age
of Augustus to the sixth century, expressed, without the use of words,
the various fables of the gods and heroes of antiquity; and the
perfection of their art, which sometimes disarmed the gravity of the
philosopher, always excited the applause and wonder of the people. The
vast and magnificent theatres of Rome were filled by three thousand
female dancers, and by three thousand singers, with the masters of the
respective choruses. Such was the popular favor which they enjoyed,
that, in a time of scarcity, when all strangers were banished from the
city, the merit of contributing to the public pleasures exempted
themfrom a law, which was strictly executed against the professors of
the liberal arts.

It is said, that the foolish curiosity of Elagabalus attempted to
discover, from the quantity of spiders' webs, the number of the
inhabitants of Rome. A more rational method of inquiry might not have
been undeserving of the attention of the wisest princes, who could
easily have resolved a question so important for the Roman government,
and so interesting to succeeding ages. The births and deaths of the
citizens were duly registered; and if any writer of antiquity had
condescended to mention the annual amount, or the common average, we
might now produce some satisfactory calculation, which would destroy the
extravagant assertions of critics, and perhaps confirm the modest and
probable conjectures of philosophers.  The most diligent researches have
collected only the following circumstances; which, slight and imperfect
as they are, may tend, in some degree, to illustrate the question of the
populousness of ancient Rome. I. When the capital of the empire was
besieged by the Goths, the circuit of the walls was accurately measured,
by Ammonius, the mathematician, who found it equal to twenty-one miles.
It should not be forgotten that the form of the city was almost that of
a circle; the geometrical figure which is known to contain the largest
space within any given circumference. II. The architect Vitruvius, who
flourished in the Augustan age, and whose evidence, on this occasion,
has peculiar weight and authority, observes, that the innumerable
habitations of the Roman people would have spread themselves far beyond
the narrow limits of the city; and that the want of ground, which was
probably contracted on every side by gardens and villas, suggested the
common, though inconvenient, practice of raising the houses to a
considerable height in the air.  But the loftiness of these buildings,
which often consisted of hasty work and insufficient materials, was the
cause of frequent and fatal accidents; and it was repeatedly enacted by
Augustus, as well as by Nero, that the height of private edifices within
the walls of Rome, should not exceed the measure of seventy feet from
the ground.  III. Juvenal  laments, as it should seem from his own
experience, the hardships of the poorer citizens, to whom he addresses
the salutary advice of emigrating, without delay, from the smoke of
Rome, since they might purchase, in the little towns of Italy, a
cheerful commodious dwelling, at the same price which they annually paid
for a dark and miserable lodging. House-rent was therefore immoderately
dear: the rich acquired, at an enormous expense, the ground, which they
covered with palaces and gardens; but the body of the Roman people was
crowded into a narrow space; and the different floors, and apartments,
of the same house, were divided, as it is still the custom of Paris, and
other cities, among several families of plebeians. IV. The total number
of houses in the fourteen regions of the city, is accurately stated in
the description of Rome, composed under the reign of Theodosius, and
they amount to forty-eight thousand three hundred and eighty-two.  The
two classes of domusand of insul, into which they are divided, include
all the habitations of the capital, of every rank and condition from the
marble palace of the Anicii, with a numerous establishment of freedmen
and slaves, to the lofty and narrow lodging-house, where the poet Codrus
and his wife were permitted to hire a wretched garret immediately under
the files. If we adopt the same average, which, under similar
circumstances, has been found applicable to Paris,  and indifferently
allow about twenty-five persons for each house, of every degree, we may
fairly estimate the inhabitants of Rome at twelve hundred thousand: a
number which cannot be thought excessive for the capital of a mighty
empire, though it exceeds the populousness of the greatest cities of
modern Europe.  *

Such was the state of Rome under the reign of Honorius; at the time when
the Gothic army formed the siege, or rather the blockade, of the city.
By a skilful disposition of his numerous forces, who impatiently watched
the moment of an assault, Alaric encompassed the walls, commanded the
twelve principal gates, intercepted all communication with the adjacent
country, and vigilantly guarded the navigation of the Tyber, from which
the Romans derived the surest and most plentiful supply of provisions.
The first emotions of the nobles, and of the people, were those of
surprise and indignation, that a vile Barbarian should dare to insult
the capital of the world: but their arrogance was soon humbled by
misfortune; and their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an
enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent
victim. Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected
the niece of Theodosius, the aunt, nay, even the adoptive mother, of the
reigning emperor: but they abhorred the widow of Stilicho; and they
listened with credulous passion to the tale of calumny, which accused
her of maintaining a secret and criminal correspondence with the Gothic
invader. Actuated, or overawed, by the same popular frenzy, the senate,
without requiring any evidence of his guilt, pronounced the sentence of
her death. Serena was ignominiously strangled; and the infatuated
multitude were astonished to find, that this cruel act of injustice did
not immediately produce the retreat of the Barbarians, and the
deliverance of the city. That unfortunate city gradually experienced the
distress of scarcity, and at length the horrid calamities of famine. The
daily allowance of three pounds of bread was reduced to one half, to one
third, to nothing; and the price of corn still continued to rise in a
rapid and extravagant proportion. The poorer citizens, who were unable
to purchase the necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of
the rich; and for a while the public misery was alleviated by the
humanity of Læta, the widow of the emperor Gratian, who had fixed her
residence at Rome, and consecrated to the use of the indigent the
princely revenue which she annually received from the grateful
successors of her husband.  But these private and temporary donatives
were insufficient to appease the hunger of a numerous people; and the
progress of famine invaded the marble palaces of the senators
themselves. The persons of both sexes, who had been educated in the
enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is requisite to
supply the demands of nature; and lavished their unavailing treasures of
gold and silver, to obtain the coarse and scanty sustenance which they
would formerly have rejected with disdain. The food the most repugnant
to sense or imagination, the aliments the most unwholesome and
pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured, and fiercely
disputed, by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained, that
some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their fellow-creatures,
whom they had secretly murdered; and even mothers, (such was the horrid
conflict of the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the
human breast,) even mothers are said to have tasted the flesh of their
slaughtered infants!  Many thousands of the inhabitants of Rome expired
in their houses, or in the streets, for want of sustenance; and as the
public sepulchres without the walls were in the power of the enemy the
stench, which arose from so many putrid and unburied carcasses, infected
the air; and the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the
contagion of a pestilential disease. The assurances of speedy and
effectual relief, which were repeatedly transmitted from the court of
Ravenna, supported for some time, the fainting resolution of the Romans,
till at length the despair of any human aid tempted them to accept the
offers of a præternatural deliverance. Pompeianus, præfect of the city,
had been persuaded, by the art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners,
that, by the mysterious force of spells and sacrifices, they could
extract the lightning from the clouds, and point those celestial fires
against the camp of the Barbarians.  The important secret was
communicated to Innocent, the bishop of Rome; and the successor of St.
Peter is accused, perhaps without foundation, of preferring the safety
of the republic to the rigid severity of the Christian worship. But when
the question was agitated in the senate; when it was proposed, as an
essential condition, that those sacrifices should be performed in the
Capitol, by the authority, and in the presence, of the magistrates, the
majority of that respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the Divine
or of the Imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act, which
appeared almost equivalent to the public restoration of Paganism.

The last resource of the Romans was in the clemency, or at least in the
moderation, of the king of the Goths. The senate, who in this emergency
assumed the supreme powers of government, appointed two ambassadors to
negotiate with the enemy. This important trust was delegated to
Basilius, a senator, of Spanish extraction, and already conspicuous in
the administration of provinces; and to John, the first tribune of the
notaries, who was peculiarly qualified, by his dexterity in business, as
well as by his former intimacy with the Gothic prince. When they were
introduced into his presence, they declared, perhaps in a more lofty
style than became their abject condition, that the Romans were resolved
to maintain their dignity, either in peace or war; and that, if Alaric
refused them a fair and honorable capitulation, he might sound his
trumpets, and prepare to give battle to an innumerable people, exercised
in arms, and animated by despair. "The thicker the hay, the easier it is
mowed," was the concise reply of the Barbarian; and this rustic metaphor
was accompanied by a loud and insulting laugh, expressive of his
contempt for the menaces of an unwarlike populace, enervated by luxury
before they were emaciated by famine. He then condescended to fix the
ransom, which he would accept as the price of his retreat from the walls
of Rome: allthe gold and silver in the city, whether it were the
property of the state, or of individuals; allthe rich and precious
movables; and allthe slaves that could prove their title to the name of
Barbarians. The ministers of the senate presumed to ask, in a modest and
suppliant tone, "If such, O king, are your demands, what do you intend
to leave us?" "Your Lives!" replied the haughty conqueror: they
trembled, and retired. Yet, before they retired, a short suspension of
arms was granted, which allowed some time for a more temperate
negotiation. The stern features of Alaric were insensibly relaxed; he
abated much of the rigor of his terms; and at length consented to raise
the siege, on the immediate payment of five thousand pounds of gold, of
thirty thousand pounds of silver, of four thousand robes of silk, of
three thousand pieces of fine scarlet cloth, and of three thousand
pounds weight of pepper.  But the public treasury was exhausted; the
annual rents of the great estates in Italy and the provinces, had been
exchanged, during the famine, for the vilest sustenance; the hoards of
secret wealth were still concealed by the obstinacy of avarice; and some
remains of consecrated spoils afforded the only resource that could
avert the impending ruin of the city. As soon as the Romans had
satisfied the rapacious demands of Alaric, they were restored, in some
measure, to the enjoyment of peace and plenty. Several of the gates were
cautiously opened; the importation of provisions from the river and the
adjacent country was no longer obstructed by the Goths; the citizens
resorted in crowds to the free market, which was held during three days
in the suburbs; and while the merchants who undertook this gainful trade
made a considerable profit, the future subsistence of the city was
secured by the ample magazines which were deposited in the public and
private granaries. A more regular discipline than could have been
expected, was maintained in the camp of Alaric; and the wise Barbarian
justified his regard for the faith of treaties, by the just severity
with which he chastised a party of licentious Goths, who had insulted
some Roman citizens on the road to Ostia. His army, enriched by the
contributions of the capital, slowly advanced into the fair and fruitful
province of Tuscany, where he proposed to establish his winter quarters;
and the Gothic standard became the refuge of forty thousand Barbarian
slaves, who had broke their chains, and aspired, under the command of
their great deliverer, to revenge the injuries and the disgrace of their
cruel servitude. About the same time, he received a more honorable
reenforcement of Goths and Huns, whom Adolphus,  the brother of his
wife, had conducted, at his pressing invitation, from the banks of the
Danube to those of the Tyber, and who had cut their way, with some
difficulty and loss, through the superior number of the Imperial troops.
A victorious leader, who united the daring spirit of a Barbarian with
the art and discipline of a Roman general, was at the head of a hundred
thousand fighting men; and Italy pronounced, with terror and respect,
the formidable name of Alaric.

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians. -- Part IV.

At the distance of fourteen centuries, we may be satisfied with relating
the military exploits of the conquerors of Rome, without presuming to
investigate the motives of their political conduct. In the midst of his
apparent prosperity, Alaric was conscious, perhaps, of some secret
weakness, some internal defect; or perhaps the moderation which he
displayed, was intended only to deceive and disarm the easy credulity of
the ministers of Honorius. The king of the Goths repeatedly declared,
that it was his desire to be considered as the friend of peace, and of
the Romans. Three senators, at his earnest request, were sent
ambassadors to the court of Ravenna, to solicit the exchange of
hostages, and the conclusion of the treaty; and the proposals, which he
more clearly expressed during the course of the negotiations, could only
inspire a doubt of his sincerity, as they might seem inadequate to the
state of his fortune. The Barbarian still aspired to the rank of
master-general of the armies of the West; he stipulated an annual
subsidy of corn and money; and he chose the provinces of Dalmatia,
Noricum, and Venetia, for the seat of his new kingdom, which would have
commanded the important communication between Italy and the Danube. If
these modest terms should be rejected, Alaric showed a disposition to
relinquish his pecuniary demands, and even to content himself with the
possession of Noricum; an exhausted and impoverished country,
perpetually exposed to the inroads of the Barbarians of Germany.  But
the hopes of peace were disappointed by the weak obstinacy, or
interested views, of the minister Olympius. Without listening to the
salutary remonstrances of the senate, he dismissed their ambassadors
under the conduct of a military escort, too numerous for a retinue of
honor, and too feeble for any army of defence. Six thousand Dalmatians,
the flower of the Imperial legions, were ordered to march from Ravenna
to Rome, through an open country which was occupied by the formidable
myriads of the Barbarians. These brave legionaries, encompassed and
betrayed, fell a sacrifice to ministerial folly; their general, Valens,
with a hundred soldiers, escaped from the field of battle; and one of
the ambassadors, who could no longer claim the protection of the law of
nations, was obliged to purchase his freedom with a ransom of thirty
thousand pieces of gold. Yet Alaric, instead of resenting this act of
impotent hostility, immediately renewed his proposals of peace; and the
second embassy of the Roman senate, which derived weight and dignity
from the presence of Innocent, bishop of the city, was guarded from the
dangers of the road by a detachment of Gothic soldiers.

Olympius  might have continued to insult the just resentment of a people
who loudly accused him as the author of the public calamities; but his
power was undermined by the secret intrigues of the palace. The favorite
eunuchs transferred the government of Honorius, and the empire, to
Jovius, the Prætorian præfect; an unworthy servant, who did not atone,
by the merit of personal attachment, for the errors and misfortunes of
his administration. The exile, or escape, of the guilty Olympius,
reserved him for more vicissitudes of fortune: he experienced the
adventures of an obscure and wandering life; he again rose to power; he
fell a second time into disgrace; his ears were cut off; he expired
under the lash; and his ignominious death afforded a grateful spectacle
to the friends of Stilicho. After the removal of Olympius, whose
character was deeply tainted with religious fanaticism, the Pagans and
heretics were delivered from the impolitic proscription, which excluded
them from the dignities of the state. The brave Gennerid,  a soldier of
Barbarian origin, who still adhered to the worship of his ancestors, had
been obliged to lay aside the military belt: and though he was
repeatedly assured by the emperor himself, that laws were not made for
persons of his rank or merit, he refused to accept any partial
dispensation, and persevered in honorable disgrace, till he had extorted
a general act of justice from the distress of the Roman government. The
conduct of Gennerid in the important station to which he was promoted or
restored, of master-general of Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhætia,
seemed to revive the discipline and spirit of the republic. From a life
of idleness and want, his troops were soon habituated to severe exercise
and plentiful subsistence; and his private generosity often supplied the
rewards, which were denied by the avarice, or poverty, of the court of
Ravenna. The valor of Gennerid, formidable to the adjacent Barbarians,
was the firmest bulwark of the Illyrian frontier; and his vigilant care
assisted the empire with a reenforcement of ten thousand Huns, who
arrived on the confines of Italy, attended by such a convoy of
provisions, and such a numerous train of sheep and oxen, as might have
been sufficient, not only for the march of an army, but for the
settlement of a colony. But the court and councils of Honorius still
remained a scene of weakness and distraction, of corruption and anarchy.
Instigated by the præfect Jovius, the guards rose in furious mutiny, and
demanded the heads of two generals, and of the two principal eunuchs.
The generals, under a perfidious promise of safety, were sent on
shipboard, and privately executed; while the favor of the eunuchs
procured them a mild and secure exile at Milan and Constantinople.
Eusebius the eunuch, and the Barbarian Allobich, succeeded to the
command of the bed-chamber and of the guards; and the mutual jealousy of
these subordinate ministers was the cause of their mutual destruction.
By the insolent order of the count of the domestics, the great
chamberlain was shamefully beaten to death with sticks, before the eyes
of the astonished emperor; and the subsequent assassination of Allobich,
in the midst of a public procession, is the only circumstance of his
life, in which Honorius discovered the faintest symptom of courage or
resentment. Yet before they fell, Eusebius and Allobich had contributed
their part to the ruin of the empire, by opposing the conclusion of a
treaty which Jovius, from a selfish, and perhaps a criminal, motive, had
negotiated with Alaric, in a personal interview under the walls of
Rimini. During the absence of Jovius, the emperor was persuaded to
assume a lofty tone of inflexible dignity, such as neither his
situation, nor his character, could enable him to support; and a letter,
signed with the name of Honorius, was immediately despatched to the
Prætorian præfect, granting him a free permission to dispose of the
public money, but sternly refusing to prostitute the military honors of
Rome to the proud demands of a Barbarian. This letter was imprudently
communicated to Alaric himself; and the Goth, who in the whole
transaction had behaved with temper and decency, expressed, in the most
outrageous language, his lively sense of the insult so wantonly offered
to his person and to his nation. The conference of Rimini was hastily
interrupted; and the præfect Jovius, on his return to Ravenna, was
compelled to adopt, and even to encourage, the fashionable opinions of
the court. By his advice and example, the principal officers of the
state and army were obliged to swear, that, without listening, in
anycircumstances, to anyconditions of peace, they would still persevere
in perpetual and implacable war against the enemy of the republic. This
rash engagement opposed an insuperable bar to all future negotiation.
The ministers of Honorius were heard to declare, that, if they had only
invoked the name of the Deity, they would consult the public safety, and
trust their souls to the mercy of Heaven: but they had sworn by the
sacred head of the emperor himself; they had sworn by the sacred head of
the emperor himself; they had touched, in solemn ceremony, that august
seat of majesty and wisdom; and the violation of their oath would expose
them to the temporal penalties of sacrilege and rebellion.

While the emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, the security
of the marches and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned Rome,
almost without defence, to the resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the
moderation which he still preserved, or affected, that, as he moved with
his army along the Flaminian way, he successively despatched the bishops
of the towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace, and to conjure
the emperor, that he would save the city and its inhabitants from
hostile fire, and the sword of the Barbarians.  These impending
calamities were, however, averted, not indeed by the wisdom of Honorius,
but by the prudence or humanity of the Gothic king; who employed a
milder, though not less effectual, method of conquest. Instead of
assaulting the capital, he successfully directed his efforts against the
Portof Ostia, one of the boldest and most stupendous works of Roman
magnificence.  The accidents to which the precarious subsistence of the
city was continually exposed in a winter navigation, and an open road,
had suggested to the genius of the first Cæsar the useful design, which
was executed under the reign of Claudius. The artificial moles, which
formed the narrow entrance, advanced far into the sea, and firmly
repelled the fury of the waves, while the largest vessels securely rode
at anchor within three deep and capacious basins, which received the
northern branch of the Tyber, about two miles from the ancient colony of
Ostia.  The Roman Portinsensibly swelled to the size of an episcopal
city,  where the corn of Africa was deposited in spacious granaries for
the use of the capital. As soon as Alaric was in possession of that
important place, he summoned the city to surrender at discretion; and
his demands were enforced by the positive declaration, that a refusal,
or even a delay, should be instantly followed by the destruction of the
magazines, on which the life of the Roman people depended. The clamors
of that people, and the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the
senate; they listened, without reluctance, to the proposal of placing a
new emperor on the throne of the unworthy Honorius; and the suffrage of
the Gothic conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, præfect of the
city. The grateful monarch immediately acknowledged his protector as
master-general of the armies of the West; Adolphus, with the rank of
count of the domestics, obtained the custody of the person of Attalus;
and the two hostile nations seemed to be united in the closest bands of
friendship and alliance.

The gates of the city were thrown open, and the new emperor of the
Romans, encompassed on every side by the Gothic arms, was conducted, in
tumultuous procession, to the palace of Augustus and Trajan. After he
had distributed the civil and military dignities among his favorites and
followers, Attalus convened an assembly of the senate; before whom, in a
format and florid speech, he asserted his resolution of restoring the
majesty of the republic, and of uniting to the empire the provinces of
Egypt and the East, which had once acknowledged the sovereignty of Rome.
Such extravagant promises inspired every reasonable citizen with a just
contempt for the character of an unwarlike usurper, whose elevation was
the deepest and most ignominious wound which the republic had yet
sustained from the insolence of the Barbarians. But the populace, with
their usual levity, applauded the change of masters. The public
discontent was favorable to the rival of Honorius; and the sectaries,
oppressed by his persecuting edicts, expected some degree of
countenance, or at least of toleration, from a prince, who, in his
native country of Ionia, had been educated in the Pagan superstition,
and who had since received the sacrament of baptism from the hands of an
Arian bishop.  The first days of the reign of Attalus were fair and
prosperous. An officer of confidence was sent with an inconsiderable
body of troops to secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest part of
Italy submitted to the terror of the Gothic powers; and though the city
of Bologna made a vigorous and effectual resistance, the people of
Milan, dissatisfied perhaps with the absence of Honorius, accepted, with
loud acclamations, the choice of the Roman senate. At the head of a
formidable army, Alaric conducted his royal captive almost to the gates
of Ravenna; and a solemn embassy of the principal ministers, of Jovius,
the Prætorian præfect, of Valens, master of the cavalry and infantry, of
the quæstor Potamius, and of Julian, the first of the notaries, was
introduced, with martial pomp, into the Gothic camp. In the name of
their sovereign, they consented to acknowledge the lawful election of
his competitor, and to divide the provinces of Italy and the West
between the two emperors. Their proposals were rejected with disdain;
and the refusal was aggravated by the insulting clemency of Attalus, who
condescended to promise, that, if Honorius would instantly resign the
purple, he should be permitted to pass the remainder of his life in the
peaceful exile of some remote island.  So desperate indeed did the
situation of the son of Theodosius appear, to those who were the best
acquainted with his strength and resources, that Jovius and Valens, his
minister and his general, betrayed their trust, infamously deserted the
sinking cause of their benefactor, and devoted their treacherous
allegiance to the service of his more fortunate rival. Astonished by
such examples of domestic treason, Honorius trembled at the approach of
every servant, at the arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret
enemies, who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bed-chamber; and
some ships lay ready in the harbor of Ravenna, to transport the
abdicated monarch to the dominions of his infant nephew, the emperor of
the East.

But there is a Providence (such at least was the opinion of the
historian Procopius)  that watches over innocence and folly; and the
pretensions of Honorius to its peculiar care cannot reasonably be
disputed. At the moment when his despair, incapable of any wise or manly
resolution, meditated a shameful flight, a seasonable reenforcement of
four thousand veterans unexpectedly landed in the port of Ravenna. To
these valiant strangers, whose fidelity had not been corrupted by the
factions of the court, he committed the walls and gates of the city; and
the slumbers of the emperor were no longer disturbed by the apprehension
of imminent and internal danger. The favorable intelligence which was
received from Africa suddenly changed the opinions of men, and the state
of public affairs. The troops and officers, whom Attalus had sent into
that province, were defeated and slain; and the active zeal of Heraclian
maintained his own allegiance, and that of his people. The faithful
count of Africa transmitted a large sum of money, which fixed the
attachment of the Imperial guards; and his vigilance, in preventing the
exportation of corn and oil, introduced famine, tumult, and discontent,
into the walls of Rome. The failure of the African expedition was the
source of mutual complaint and recrimination in the party of Attalus;
and the mind of his protector was insensibly alienated from the interest
of a prince, who wanted spirit to command, or docility to obey. The most
imprudent measures were adopted, without the knowledge, or against the
advice, of Alaric; and the obstinate refusal of the senate, to allow, in
the embarkation, the mixture even of five hundred Goths, betrayed a
suspicious and distrustful temper, which, in their situation, was
neither generous nor prudent. The resentment of the Gothic king was
exasperated by the malicious arts of Jovius, who had been raised to the
rank of patrician, and who afterwards excused his double perfidy, by
declaring, without a blush, that he had only seemedto abandon the
service of Honorius, more effectually to ruin the cause of the usurper.
In a large plain near Rimini, and in the presence of an innumerable
multitude of Romans and Barbarians, the wretched Attalus was publicly
despoiled of the diadem and purple; and those ensigns of royalty were
sent by Alaric, as the pledge of peace and friendship, to the son of
Theodosius.  The officers who returned to their duty, were reinstated in
their employments, and even the merit of a tardy repentance was
graciously allowed; but the degraded emperor of the Romans, desirous of
life, and insensible of disgrace, implored the permission of following
the Gothic camp, in the train of a haughty and capricious Barbarian.

The degradation of Attalus removed the only real obstacle to the
conclusion of the peace; and Alaric advanced within three miles of
Ravenna, to press the irresolution of the Imperial ministers, whose
insolence soon returned with the return of fortune. His indignation was
kindled by the report, that a rival chieftain, that Sarus, the personal
enemy of Adolphus, and the hereditary foe of the house of Balti, had
been received into the palace. At the head of three hundred followers,
that fearless Barbarian immediately sallied from the gates of Ravenna;
surprised, and cut in pieces, a considerable body of Goths; reentered
the city in triumph; and was permitted to insult his adversary, by the
voice of a herald, who publicly declared that the guilt of Alaric had
forever excluded him from the friendship and alliance of the emperor.
The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna was expiated, a third time,
by the calamities of Rome. The king of the Goths, who no longer
dissembled his appetite for plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under
the walls of the capital; and the trembling senate, without any hopes of
relief, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to defray the ruin of their
country. But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of
their slaves and domestics; who, either from birth or interest, were
attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the
Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by
the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and
sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which
had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was
delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.

The proclamation of Alaric, when he forced his entrance into a
vanquished city, discovered, however, some regard for the laws of
humanity and religion. He encouraged his troops boldly to seize the
rewards of valor, and to enrich themselves with the spoils of a wealthy
and effeminate people: but he exhorted them, at the same time, to spare
the lives of the unresisting citizens, and to respect the churches of
the apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, as holy and inviolable
sanctuaries. Amidst the horrors of a nocturnal tumult, several of the
Christian Goths displayed the fervor of a recent conversion; and some
instances of their uncommon piety and moderation are related, and
perhaps adorned, by the zeal of ecclesiastical writers.  While the
Barbarians roamed through the city in quest of prey, the humble dwelling
of an aged virgin, who had devoted her life to the service of the altar,
was forced open by one of the powerful Goths. He immediately demanded,
though in civil language, all the gold and silver in her possession; and
was astonished at the readiness with which she conducted him to a
splendid hoard of massy plate, of the richest materials, and the most
curious workmanship. The Barbarian viewed with wonder and delight this
valuable acquisition, till he was interrupted by a serious admonition,
addressed to him in the following words: "These," said she, "are the
consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter: if you presume to touch
them, the sacrilegious deed will remain on your conscience. For my part,
I dare not keep what I am unable to defend." The Gothic captain, struck
with reverential awe, despatched a messenger to inform the king of the
treasure which he had discovered; and received a peremptory order from
Alaric, that all the consecrated plate and ornaments should be
transported, without damage or delay, to the church of the apostle. From
the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal hill, to the distant quarter of
the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths, marching in order of battle
through the principal streets, protected, with glittering arms, the long
train of their devout companions, who bore aloft, on their heads, the
sacred vessels of gold and silver; and the martial shouts of the
Barbarians were mingled with the sound of religious psalmody. From all
the adjacent houses, a crowd of Christians hastened to join this
edifying procession; and a multitude of fugitives, without distinction
of age, or rank, or even of sect, had the good fortune to escape to the
secure and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican. The learned work,
concerning the City of God, was professedly composed by St. Augustin, to
justify the ways of Providence in the destruction of the Roman
greatness. He celebrates, with peculiar satisfaction, this memorable
triumph of Christ; and insults his adversaries, by challenging them to
produce some similar example of a town taken by storm, in which the
fabulous gods of antiquity had been able to protect either themselves or
their deluded votaries.

In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples of Barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the
Vatican, and the apostolic churches, could receive a very small
proportion of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially
of the Huns, who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to
the name, or at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect,
without any breach of charity or candor, that in the hour of savage
license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was
removed, the precepts of the Gospel seldom influenced the behavior of
the Gothic Christians. The writers, the best disposed to exaggerate
their clemency, have freely confessed, that a cruel slaughter was made
of the Romans;  and that the streets of the city were filled with dead
bodies, which remained without burial during the general consternation.
The despair of the citizens was sometimes converted into fury: and
whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the
promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless. The
private revenge of forty thousand slaves was exercised without pity or
remorse; and the ignominious lashes, which they had formerly received,
were washed away in the blood of the guilty, or obnoxious, families. The
matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in
the apprehension of chastity, than death itself; and the ecclesiastical
historian has selected an example of female virtue, for the admiration
of future ages.  A Roman lady, of singular beauty and orthodox faith,
had excited the impatient desires of a young Goth, who, according to the
sagacious remark of Sozomen, was attached to the Arian heresy.
Exasperated by her obstinate resistance, he drew his sword, and, with
the anger of a lover, slightly wounded her neck. The bleeding heroine
still continued to brave his resentment, and to repel his love, till the
ravisher desisted from his unavailing efforts, respectfully conducted
her to the sanctuary of the Vatican, and gave six pieces of gold to the
guards of the church, on condition that they should restore her
inviolate to the arms of her husband. Such instances of courage and
generosity were not extremely common. The brutal soldiers satisfied
their sensual appetites, without consulting either the inclination or
the duties of their female captives: and a nice question of casuistry
was seriously agitated, Whether those tender victims, who had inflexibly
refused their consent to the violation which they sustained, had lost,
by their misfortune, the glorious crown of virginity.  Their were other
losses indeed of a more substantial kind, and more general concern. It
cannot be presumed, that all the Barbarians were at all times capable of
perpetrating such amorous outrages; and the want of youth, or beauty, or
chastity, protected the greatest part of the Roman women from the danger
of a rape. But avarice is an insatiate and universal passion; since the
enjoyment of almost every object that can afford pleasure to the
different tastes and tempers of mankind may be procured by the
possession of wealth. In the pillage of Rome, a just preference was
given to gold and jewels, which contain the greatest value in the
smallest compass and weight: but, after these portable riches had been
removed by the more diligent robbers, the palaces of Rome were rudely
stripped of their splendid and costly furniture. The sideboards of massy
plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly
piled in the wagons, that always followed the march of a Gothic army.
The most exquisite works of art were roughly handled, or wantonly
destroyed; many a statue was melted for the sake of the precious
materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil, was shivered
into fragments by the stroke of a battle-axe. The acquisition of riches
served only to stimulate the avarice of the rapacious Barbarians, who
proceeded, by threats, by blows, and by tortures, to force from their
prisoners the confession of hidden treasure.  Visible splendor and
expense were alleged as the proof of a plentiful fortune; the appearance
of poverty was imputed to a parsimonious disposition; and the obstinacy
of some misers, who endured the most cruel torments before they would
discover the secret object of their affection, was fatal to many unhappy
wretches, who expired under the lash, for refusing to reveal their
imaginary treasures. The edifices of Rome, though the damage has been
much exaggerated, received some injury from the violence of the Goths.
At their entrance through the Salarian gate, they fired the adjacent
houses to guide their march, and to distract the attention of the
citizens; the flames, which encountered no obstacle in the disorder of
the night, consumed many private and public buildings; and the ruins of
the palace of Sallust  remained, in the age of Justinian, a stately
monument of the Gothic conflagration.  Yet a contemporary historian has
observed, that fire could scarcely consume the enormous beams of solid
brass, and that the strength of man was insufficient to subvert the
foundations of ancient structures. Some truth may possibly be concealed
in his devout assertion, that the wrath of Heaven supplied the
imperfections of hostile rage; and that the proud Forum of Rome,
decorated with the statues of so many gods and heroes, was levelled in
the dust by the stroke of lightning.

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians. -- Part V.

Whatever might be the numbers of equestrian or plebeian rank, who
perished in the massacre of Rome, it is confidently affirmed that only
one senator lost his life by the sword of the enemy.  But it was not
easy to compute the multitudes, who, from an honorable station and a
prosperous fortune, were suddenly reduced to the miserable condition of
captives and exiles. As the Barbarians had more occasion for money than
for slaves, they fixed at a moderate price the redemption of their
indigent prisoners; and the ransom was often paid by the benevolence of
their friends, or the charity of strangers.  The captives, who were
regularly sold, either in open market, or by private contract, would
have legally regained their native freedom, which it was impossible for
a citizen to lose, or to alienate.  But as it was soon discovered that
the vindication of their liberty would endanger their lives; and that
the Goths, unless they were tempted to sell, might be provoked to
murder, their useless prisoners; the civil jurisprudence had been
already qualified by a wise regulation, that they should be obliged to
serve the moderate term of five years, till they had discharged by their
labor the price of their redemption.  The nations who invaded the Roman
empire, had driven before them, into Italy, whole troops of hungry and
affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of servitude than of famine.
The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the inhabitants to the most
lonely, the most secure, the most distant places of refuge. While the
Gothic cavalry spread terror and desolation along the sea-coast of
Campania and Tuscany, the little island of Igilium, separated by a
narrow channel from the Argentarian promontory, repulsed, or eluded,
their hostile attempts; and at so small a distance from Rome, great
numbers of citizens were securely concealed in the thick woods of that
sequestered spot.  The ample patrimonies, which many senatorian families
possessed in Africa, invited them, if they had time, and prudence, to
escape from the ruin of their country, to embrace the shelter of that
hospitable province. The most illustrious of these fugitives was the
noble and pious Proba,  the widow of the præfect Petronius. After the
death of her husband, the most powerful subject of Rome, she had
remained at the head of the Anician family, and successively supplied,
from her private fortune, the expense of the consulships of her three
sons. When the city was besieged and taken by the Goths, Proba
supported, with Christian resignation, the loss of immense riches;
embarked in a small vessel, from whence she beheld, at sea, the flames
of her burning palace, and fled with her daughter Læta, and her
granddaughter, the celebrated virgin, Demetrias, to the coast of Africa.
The benevolent profusion with which the matron distributed the fruits,
or the price, of her estates, contributed to alleviate the misfortunes
of exile and captivity. But even the family of Proba herself was not
exempt from the rapacious oppression of Count Heraclian, who basely
sold, in matrimonial prostitution, the noblest maidens of Rome to the
lust or avarice of the Syrian merchants. The Italian fugitives were
dispersed through the provinces, along the coast of Egypt and Asia, as
far as Constantinople and Jerusalem; and the village of Bethlem, the
solitary residence of St. Jerom and his female converts, was crowded
with illustrious beggars of either sex, and every age, who excited the
public compassion by the remembrance of their past fortune.  This awful
catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire with grief and terror.
So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin, disposed the fond
credulity of the people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the
afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who applied to recent
events the lofty metaphors of oriental prophecy, were sometimes tempted
to confound the destruction of the capital and the dissolution of the
globe.

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the
advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. Yet, when
the first emotions had subsided, and a fair estimate was made of the
real damage, the more learned and judicious contemporaries were forced
to confess, that infant Rome had formerly received more essential injury
from the Gauls, than she had now sustained from the Goths in her
declining age.  The experience of eleven centuries has enabled posterity
to produce a much more singular parallel; and to affirm with confidence,
that the ravages of the Barbarians, whom Alaric had led from the banks
of the Danube, were less destructive than the hostilities exercised by
the troops of Charles the Fifth, a Catholic prince, who styled himself
Emperor of the Romans.  The Goths evacuated the city at the end of six
days, but Rome remained above nine months in the possession of the
Imperialists; and every hour was stained by some atrocious act of
cruelty, lust, and rapine. The authority of Alaric preserved some order
and moderation among the ferocious multitude which acknowledged him for
their leader and king; but the constable of Bourbon had gloriously
fallen in the attack of the walls; and the death of the general removed
every restraint of discipline from an army which consisted of three
independent nations, the Italians, the Spaniards, and the Germans. In
the beginning of the sixteenth century, the manners of Italy exhibited a
remarkable scene of the depravity of mankind. They united the sanguinary
crimes that prevail in an unsettled state of society, with the polished
vices which spring from the abuse of art and luxury; and the loose
adventurers, who had violated every prejudice of patriotism and
superstition to assault the palace of the Roman pontiff, must deserve to
be considered as the most profligate of the Italians. At the same æra,
the Spaniardswere the terror both of the Old and New World: but their
high- spirited valor was disgraced by gloomy pride, rapacious avarice,
and unrelenting cruelty. Indefatigable in the pursuit of fame and
riches, they had improved, by repeated practice, the most exquisite and
effectual methods of torturing their prisoners: many of the Castilians,
who pillaged Rome, were familiars of the holy inquisition; and some
volunteers, perhaps, were lately returned from the conquest of Mexico
The Germanswere less corrupt than the Italians, less cruel than the
Spaniards; and the rustic, or even savage, aspect of those
Tramontanewarriors, often disguised a simple and merciful disposition.
But they had imbibed, in the first fervor of the reformation, the
spirit, as well as the principles of Luther. It was their favorite
amusement to insult, or destroy, the consecrated objects of Catholic
superstition; they indulged, without pity or remorse, a devout hatred
against the clergy of every denomination and degree, who form so
considerable a part of the inhabitants of modern Rome; and their fanatic
zeal might aspire to subvert the throne of Antichrist, to purify, with
blood and fire, the abominations of the spiritual Babylon.

The retreat of the victorious Goths, who evacuated Rome on the sixth
day,  might be the result of prudence; but it was not surely the effect
of fear.  At the head of an army encumbered with rich and weighty
spoils, their intrepid leader advanced along the Appian way into the
southern provinces of Italy, destroying whatever dared to oppose his
passage, and contenting himself with the plunder of the unresisting
country. The fate of Capua, the proud and luxurious metropolis of
Campania, and which was respected, even in its decay, as the eighth city
of the empire,  is buried in oblivion; whilst the adjacent town of Nola
has been illustrated, on this occasion, by the sanctity of Paulinus,
who was successively a consul, a monk, and a bishop. At the age of
forty, he renounced the enjoyment of wealth and honor, of society and
literature, to embrace a life of solitude and penance; and the loud
applause of the clergy encouraged him to despise the reproaches of his
worldly friends, who ascribed this desperate act to some disorder of the
mind or body.  An early and passionate attachment determined him to fix
his humble dwelling in one of the suburbs of Nola, near the miraculous
tomb of St. Fælix, which the public devotion had already surrounded with
five large and populous churches. The remains of his fortune, and of his
understanding, were dedicated to the service of the glorious martyr;
whose praise, on the day of his festival, Paulinus never failed to
celebrate by a solemn hymn; and in whose name he erected a sixth church,
of superior elegance and beauty, which was decorated with many curious
pictures, from the history of the Old and New Testament. Such assiduous
zeal secured the favor of the saint,  or at least of the people; and,
after fifteen years' retirement, the Roman consul was compelled to
accept the bishopric of Nola, a few months before the city was invested
by the Goths. During the siege, some religious persons were satisfied
that they had seen, either in dreams or visions, the divine form of
their tutelar patron; yet it soon appeared by the event, that Fælix
wanted power, or inclination, to preserve the flock of which he had
formerly been the shepherd. Nola was not saved from the general
devastation;  and the captive bishop was protected only by the general
opinion of his innocence and poverty. Above four years elapsed from the
successful invasion of Italy by the arms of Alaric, to the voluntary
retreat of the Goths under the conduct of his successor Adolphus; and,
during the whole time, they reigned without control over a country,
which, in the opinion of the ancients, had united all the various
excellences of nature and art. The prosperity, indeed, which Italy had
attained in the auspicious age of the Antonines, had gradually declined
with the decline of the empire. The fruits of a long peace perished
under the rude grasp of the Barbarians; and they themselves were
incapable of tasting the more elegant refinements of luxury, which had
been prepared for the use of the soft and polished Italians. Each
soldier, however, claimed an ample portion of the substantial plenty,
the corn and cattle, oil and wine, that was daily collected and consumed
in the Gothic camp; and the principal warriors insulted the villas and
gardens, once inhabited by Lucullus and Cicero, along the beauteous
coast of Campania. Their trembling captives, the sons and daughters of
Roman senators, presented, in goblets of gold and gems, large draughts
of Falernian wine to the haughty victors; who stretched their huge limbs
under the shade of plane-trees,  artificially disposed to exclude the
scorching rays, and to admit the genial warmth, of the sun. These
delights were enhanced by the memory of past hardships: the comparison
of their native soil, the bleak and barren hills of Scythia, and the
frozen banks of the Elbe and Danube, added new charms to the felicity of
the Italian climate.

Whether fame, or conquest, or riches, were the object or Alaric, he
pursued that object with an indefatigable ardor, which could neither be
quelled by adversity nor satiated by success. No sooner had he reached
the extreme land of Italy, than he was attracted by the neighboring
prospect of a fertile and peaceful island. Yet even the possession of
Sicily he considered only as an intermediate step to the important
expedition, which he already meditated against the continent of Africa.
The Straits of Rhegium and Messina  are twelve miles in length, and, in
the narrowest passage, about one mile and a half broad; and the fabulous
monsters of the deep, the rocks of Scylla, and the whirlpool of
Charybdis, could terrify none but the most timid and unskilful mariners.
Yet as soon as the first division of the Goths had embarked, a sudden
tempest arose, which sunk, or scattered, many of the transports; their
courage was daunted by the terrors of a new element; and the whole
design was defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after
a short illness, the fatal term of his conquests. The ferocious
character of the Barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero whose
valor and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause. By the labor
of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the
Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia. The royal
sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was
constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were then restored to their
natural channel; and the secret spot, where the remains of Alaric had
been deposited, was forever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the
prisoners, who had been employed to execute the work.

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians. -- Part VI.

The personal animosities and hereditary feuds of the Barbarians were
suspended by the strong necessity of their affairs; and the brave
Adolphus, the brother-in-law of the deceased monarch, was unanimously
elected to succeed to his throne. The character and political system of
the new king of the Goths may be best understood from his own
conversation with an illustrious citizen of Narbonne; who afterwards, in
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerom, in the presence
of the historian Orosius. "In the full confidence of valor and victory,
I once aspired (said Adolphus) to change the face of the universe; to
obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the
Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder
of a new empire. By repeated experiments, I was gradually convinced,
that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a
well-constituted state; and that the fierce, untractable humor of the
Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of laws and civil
government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different object of
glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of
future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger, who employed the
sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain, the
prosperity of the Roman empire."  With these pacific views, the
successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war; and seriously
negotiated with the Imperial court a treaty of friendship and alliance.
It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were now released
from the obligation of their extravagant oath, to deliver Italy from the
intolerable weight of the Gothic powers; and they readily accepted their
service against the tyrants and Barbarians who infested the provinces
beyond the Alps.  Adolphus, assuming the character of a Roman general,
directed his march from the extremity of Campania to the southern
provinces of Gaul. His troops, either by force of agreement, immediately
occupied the cities of Narbonne, Thoulouse, and Bordeaux; and though
they were repulsed by Count Boniface from the walls of Marseilles, they
soon extended their quarters from the Mediterranean to the Ocean. The
oppressed provincials might exclaim, that the miserable remnant, which
the enemy had spared, was cruelly ravished by their pretended allies;
yet some specious colors were not wanting to palliate, or justify the
violence of the Goths. The cities of Gaul, which they attacked, might
perhaps be considered as in a state of rebellion against the government
of Honorius: the articles of the treaty, or the secret instructions of
the court, might sometimes be alleged in favor of the seeming
usurpations of Adolphus; and the guilt of any irregular, unsuccessful
act of hostility might always be imputed, with an appearance of truth,
to the ungovernable spirit of a Barbarian host, impatient of peace or
discipline. The luxury of Italy had been less effectual to soften the
temper, than to relax the courage, of the Goths; and they had imbibed
the vices, without imitating the arts and institutions, of civilized
society.

The professions of Adolphus were probably sincere, and his attachment to
the cause of the republic was secured by the ascendant which a Roman
princess had acquired over the heart and understanding of the Barbarian
king. Placidia,  the daughter of the great Theodosius, and of Galla, his
second wife, had received a royal education in the palace of
Constantinople; but the eventful story of her life is connected with the
revolutions which agitated the Western empire under the reign of her
brother Honorius. When Rome was first invested by the arms of Alaric,
Placidia, who was then about twenty years of age, resided in the city;
and her ready consent to the death of her cousin Serena has a cruel and
ungrateful appearance, which, according to the circumstances of the
action, may be aggravated, or excused, by the consideration of her
tender age.  The victorious Barbarians detained, either as a hostage or
a captive,  the sister of Honorius; but, while she was exposed to the
disgrace of following round Italy the motions of a Gothic camp, she
experienced, however, a decent and respectful treatment. The authority
of Jornandes, who praises the beauty of Placidia, may perhaps be
counterbalanced by the silence, the expressive silence, of her
flatterers: yet the splendor of her birth, the bloom of youth, the
elegance of manners, and the dexterous insinuation which she
condescended to employ, made a deep impression on the mind of Adolphus;
and the Gothic king aspired to call himself the brother of the emperor.
The ministers of Honorius rejected with disdain the proposal of an
alliance so injurious to every sentiment of Roman pride; and repeatedly
urged the restitution of Placidia, as an indispensable condition of the
treaty of peace. But the daughter of Theodosius submitted, without
reluctance, to the desires of the conqueror, a young and valiant prince,
who yielded to Alaric in loftiness of stature, but who excelled in the
more attractive qualities of grace and beauty. The marriage of Adolphus
and Placidia  was consummated before the Goths retired from Italy; and
the solemn, perhaps the anniversary day of their nuptials was afterwards
celebrated in the house of Ingenuus, one of the most illustrious
citizens of Narbonne in Gaul. The bride, attired and adorned like a
Roman empress, was placed on a throne of state; and the king of the
Goths, who assumed, on this occasion, the Roman habit, contented himself
with a less honorable seat by her side. The nuptial gift, which,
according to the custom of his nation,  was offered to Placidia,
consisted of the rare and magnificent spoils of her country. Fifty
beautiful youths, in silken robes, carried a basin in each hand; and one
of these basins was filled with pieces of gold, the other with precious
stones of an inestimable value. Attalus, so long the sport of fortune,
and of the Goths, was appointed to lead the chorus of the Hymeneal song;
and the degraded emperor might aspire to the praise of a skilful
musician. The Barbarians enjoyed the insolence of their triumph; and the
provincials rejoiced in this alliance, which tempered, by the mild
influence of love and reason, the fierce spirit of their Gothic lord.

The hundred basins of gold and gems, presented to Placidia at her
nuptial feast, formed an inconsiderable portion of the Gothic treasures;
of which some extraordinary specimens may be selected from the history
of the successors of Adolphus. Many curious and costly ornaments of pure
gold, enriched with jewels, were found in their palace of Narbonne, when
it was pillaged, in the sixth century, by the Franks: sixty cups, caps,
or chalices; fifteen patens, or plates, for the use of the communion;
twenty boxes, or cases, to hold the books of the Gospels: this
consecrated wealth  was distributed by the son of Clovis among the
churches of his dominions, and his pious liberality seems to upbraid
some former sacrilege of the Goths. They possessed, with more security
of conscience, the famous missorium, or great dish for the service of
the table, of massy gold, of the weight of five hundred pounds, and of
far superior value, from the precious stones, the exquisite workmanship,
and the tradition, that it had been presented by Ætius, the patrician,
to Torismond, king of the Goths. One of the successors of Torismond
purchased the aid of the French monarch by the promise of this
magnificent gift. When he was seated on the throne of Spain, he
delivered it with reluctance to the ambassadors of Dagobert; despoiled
them on the road; stipulated, after a long negotiation, the inadequate
ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold; and preserved the
missorium, as the pride of the Gothic treasury.  When that treasury,
after the conquest of Spain, was plundered by the Arabs, they admired,
and they have celebrated, another object still more remarkable; a table
of considerable size, of one single piece of solid emerald,  encircled
with three rows of fine pearls, supported by three hundred and
sixty-five feet of gems and massy gold, and estimated at the price of
five hundred thousand pieces of gold.  Some portion of the Gothic
treasures might be the gift of friendship, or the tribute of obedience;
but the far greater part had been the fruits of war and rapine, the
spoils of the empire, and perhaps of Rome.

After the deliverance of Italy from the oppression of the Goths, some
secret counsellor was permitted, amidst the factions of the palace, to
heal the wounds of that afflicted country.  By a wise and humane
regulation, the eight provinces which had been the most deeply injured,
Campania, Tuscany, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Calabria, Bruttium, and
Lucania, obtained an indulgence of five years: the ordinary tribute was
reduced to one fifth, and even that fifth was destined to restore and
support the useful institution of the public posts. By another law, the
lands which had been left without inhabitants or cultivation, were
granted, with some diminution of taxes, to the neighbors who should
occupy, or the strangers who should solicit them; and the new possessors
were secured against the future claims of the fugitive proprietors.
About the same time a general amnesty was published in the name of
Honorius, to abolish the guilt and memory of all the involuntaryoffences
which had been committed by his unhappy subjects, during the term of the
public disorder and calamity A decent and respectful attention was paid
to the restoration of the capital; the citizens were encouraged to
rebuild the edifices which had been destroyed or damaged by hostile
fire; and extraordinary supplies of corn were imported from the coast of
Africa. The crowds that so lately fled before the sword of the
Barbarians, were soon recalled by the hopes of plenty and pleasure; and
Albinus, præfect of Rome, informed the court, with some anxiety and
surprise, that, in a single day, he had taken an account of the arrival
of fourteen thousand strangers.  In less than seven years, the vestiges
of the Gothic invasion were almost obliterated; and the city appeared to
resume its former splendor and tranquillity. The venerable matron
replaced her crown of laurel, which had been ruffled by the storms of
war; and was still amused, in the last moment of her decay, with the
prophecies of revenge, of victory, and of eternal dominion.

This apparent tranquillity was soon disturbed by the approach of a
hostile armament from the country which afforded the daily subsistence
of the Roman people. Heraclian, count of Africa, who, under the most
difficult and distressful circumstances, had supported, with active
loyalty, the cause of Honorius, was tempted, in the year of his
consulship, to assume the character of a rebel, and the title of
emperor. The ports of Africa were immediately filled with the naval
forces, at the head of which he prepared to invade Italy: and his fleet,
when it cast anchor at the mouth of the Tyber, indeed surpassed the
fleets of Xerxes and Alexander, if all the vessels, including the royal
galley, and the smallest boat, did actually amount to the incredible
number of three thousand two hundred.  Yet with such an armament, which
might have subverted, or restored, the greatest empires of the earth,
the African usurper made a very faint and feeble impression on the
provinces of his rival. As he marched from the port, along the road
which leads to the gates of Rome, he was encountered, terrified, and
routed, by one of the Imperial captains; and the lord of this mighty
host, deserting his fortune and his friends, ignominiously fled with a
single ship.  When Heraclian landed in the harbor of Carthage, he found
that the whole province, disdaining such an unworthy ruler, had returned
to their allegiance. The rebel was beheaded in the ancient temple of
Memory his consulship was abolished:  and the remains of his private
fortune, not exceeding the moderate sum of four thousand pounds of gold,
were granted to the brave Constantius, who had already defended the
throne, which he afterwards shared with his feeble sovereign. Honorius
viewed, with supine indifference, the calamities of Rome and Italy;  but
the rebellious attempts of Attalus and Heraclian, against his personal
safety, awakened, for a moment, the torpid instinct of his nature. He
was probably ignorant of the causes and events which preserved him from
these impending dangers; and as Italy was no longer invaded by any
foreign or domestic enemies, he peaceably existed in the palace of
Ravenna, while the tyrants beyond the Alps were repeatedly vanquished in
the name, and by the lieutenants, of the son of Theodosius.  In the
course of a busy and interesting narrative I might possibly forget to
mention the death of such a prince: and I shall therefore take the
precaution of observing, in this place, that he survived the last siege
of Rome about thirteen years.

The usurpation of Constantine, who received the purple from the legions
of Britain, had been successful, and seemed to be secure. His title was
acknowledged, from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules;
and, in the midst of the public disorder he shared the dominion, and the
plunder, of Gaul and Spain, with the tribes of Barbarians, whose
destructive progress was no longer checked by the Rhine or Pyrenees.
Stained with the blood of the kinsmen of Honorius, he extorted, from the
court of Ravenna, with which he secretly corresponded, the ratification
of his rebellious claims Constantine engaged himself, by a solemn
promise, to deliver Italy from the Goths; advanced as far as the banks
of the Po; and after alarming, rather than assisting, his pusillanimous
ally, hastily returned to the palace of Arles, to celebrate, with
intemperate luxury, his vain and ostentatious triumph. But this
transient prosperity was soon interrupted and destroyed by the revolt of
Count Gerontius, the bravest of his generals; who, during the absence of
his son Constants, a prince already invested with the Imperial purple,
had been left to command in the provinces of Spain. From some reason, of
which we are ignorant, Gerontius, instead of assuming the diadem, placed
it on the head of his friend Maximus, who fixed his residence at
Tarragona, while the active count pressed forwards, through the
Pyrenees, to surprise the two emperors, Constantine and Constans, before
they could prepare for their defence. The son was made prisoner at
Vienna, and immediately put to death: and the unfortunate youth had
scarcely leisure to deplore the elevation of his family; which had
tempted, or compelled him, sacrilegiously to desert the peaceful
obscurity of the monastic life. The father maintained a siege within the
walls of Arles; but those walls must have yielded to the assailants, had
not the city been unexpectedly relieved by the approach of an Italian
army. The name of Honorius, the proclamation of a lawful emperor,
astonished the contending parties of the rebels. Gerontius, abandoned by
his own troops, escaped to the confines of Spain; and rescued his name
from oblivion, by the Roman courage which appeared to animate the last
moments of his life. In the middle of the night, a great body of his
perfidious soldiers surrounded and attacked his house, which he had
strongly barricaded. His wife, a valiant friend of the nation of the
Alani, and some faithful slaves, were still attached to his person; and
he used, with so much skill and resolution, a large magazine of darts
and arrows, that above three hundred of the assailants lost their lives
in the attempt. His slaves when all the missile weapons were spent, fled
at the dawn of day; and Gerontius, if he had not been restrained by
conjugal tenderness, might have imitated their example; till the
soldiers, provoked by such obstinate resistance, applied fire on all
sides to the house. In this fatal extremity, he complied with the
request of his Barbarian friend, and cut off his head. The wife of
Gerontius, who conjured him not to abandon her to a life of misery and
disgrace, eagerly presented her neck to his sword; and the tragic scene
was terminated by the death of the count himself, who, after three
ineffectual strokes, drew a short dagger, and sheathed it in his heart.
The unprotected Maximus, whom he had invested with the purple, was
indebted for his life to the contempt that was entertained of his power
and abilities. The caprice of the Barbarians, who ravaged Spain, once
more seated this Imperial phantom on the throne: but they soon resigned
him to the justice of Honorius; and the tyrant Maximus, after he had
been shown to the people of Ravenna and Rome, was publicly executed.

The general, (Constantius was his name,) who raised by his approach the
siege of Arles, and dissipated the troops of Gerontius, was born a
Roman; and this remarkable distinction is strongly expressive of the
decay of military spirit among the subjects of the empire. The strength
and majesty which were conspicuous in the person of that general,
marked him, in the popular opinion, as a candidate worthy of the throne,
which he afterwards ascended. In the familiar intercourse of private
life, his manners were cheerful and engaging; nor would he sometimes
disdain, in the license of convivial mirth, to vie with the pantomimes
themselves, in the exercises of their ridiculous profession. But when
the trumpet summoned him to arms; when he mounted his horse, and,
bending down (for such was his singular practice) almost upon the neck,
fiercely rolled his large animated eyes round the field, Constantius
then struck terror into his foes, and inspired his soldiers with the
assurance of victory. He had received from the court of Ravenna the
important commission of extirpating rebellion in the provinces of the
West; and the pretended emperor Constantine, after enjoying a short and
anxious respite, was again besieged in his capital by the arms of a more
formidable enemy. Yet this interval allowed time for a successful
negotiation with the Franks and Alemanni and his ambassador, Edobic,
soon returned at the head of an army, to disturb the operations of the
siege of Arles. The Roman general, instead of expecting the attack in
his lines, boldly and perhaps wisely, resolved to pass the Rhone, and to
meet the Barbarians. His measures were conducted with so much skill and
secrecy, that, while they engaged the infantry of Constantius in the
front, they were suddenly attacked, surrounded, and destroyed, by the
cavalry of his lieutenant Ulphilas, who had silently gained an
advantageous post in their rear. The remains of the army of Edobic were
preserved by flight or submission, and their leader escaped from the
field of battle to the house of a faithless friend; who too clearly
understood, that the head of his obnoxious guest would be an acceptable
and lucrative present for the Imperial general. On this occasion,
Constantius behaved with the magnanimity of a genuine Roman. Subduing,
or suppressing, every sentiment of jealousy, he publicly acknowledged
the merit and services of Ulphilas; but he turned with horror from the
assassin of Edobic; and sternly intimated his commands, that the camp
should no longer be polluted by the presence of an ungrateful wretch,
who had violated the laws of friendship and hospitality. The usurper,
who beheld, from the walls of Arles, the ruin of his last hopes, was
tempted to place some confidence in so generous a conqueror. He required
a solemn promise for his security; and after receiving, by the
imposition of hands, the sacred character of a Christian Presbyter, he
ventured to open the gates of the city. But he soon experienced that the
principles of honor and integrity, which might regulate the ordinary
conduct of Constantius, were superseded by the loose doctrines of
political morality. The Roman general, indeed, refused to sully his
laurels with the blood of Constantine; but the abdicated emperor, and
his son Julian, were sent under a strong guard into Italy; and before
they reached the palace of Ravenna, they met the ministers of death.

At a time when it was universally confessed, that almost every man in
the empire was superior in personal merit to the princes whom the
accident of their birth had seated on the throne, a rapid succession of
usurpers, regardless of the fate of their predecessors, still continued
to arise. This mischief was peculiarly felt in the provinces of Spain
and Gaul, where the principles of order and obedience had been
extinguished by war and rebellion. Before Constantine resigned the
purple, and in the fourth month of the siege of Arles, intelligence was
received in the Imperial camp, that Jovinus has assumed the diadem at
Mentz, in the Upper Germany, at the instigation of Goar, king of the
Alani, and of Guntiarius, king of the Burgundians; and that the
candidate, on whom they had bestowed the empire, advanced with a
formidable host of Barbarians, from the banks of the Rhine to those of
the Rhone. Every circumstance is dark and extraordinary in the short
history of the reign of Jovinus. It was natural to expect, that a brave
and skilful general, at the head of a victorious army, would have
asserted, in a field of battle, the justice of the cause of Honorius.
The hasty retreat of Constantius might be justified by weighty reasons;
but he resigned, without a struggle, the possession of Gaul; and
Dardanus, the Prætorian præfect, is recorded as the only magistrate who
refused to yield obedience to the usurper.  When the Goths, two years
after the siege of Rome, established their quarters in Gaul, it was
natural to suppose that their inclinations could be divided only between
the emperor Honorius, with whom they had formed a recent alliance, and
the degraded Attalus, whom they reserved in their camp for the
occasional purpose of acting the part of a musician or a monarch. Yet in
a moment of disgust, (for which it is not easy to assign a cause, or a
date,) Adolphus connected himself with the usurper of Gaul; and imposed
on Attalus the ignominious task of negotiating the treaty, which
ratified his own disgrace. We are again surprised to read, that, instead
of considering the Gothic alliance as the firmest support of his throne,
Jovinus upbraided, in dark and ambiguous language, the officious
importunity of Attalus; that, scorning the advice of his great ally, he
invested with the purple his brother Sebastian; and that he most
imprudently accepted the service of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the
soldier of Honorius, was provoked to desert the court of a prince, who
knew not how to reward or punish. Adolphus, educated among a race of
warriors, who esteemed the duty of revenge as the most precious and
sacred portion of their inheritance, advanced with a body of ten
thousand Goths to encounter the hereditary enemy of the house of Balti.
He attacked Sarus at an unguarded moment, when he was accompanied only
by eighteen or twenty of his valiant followers. United by friendship,
animated by despair, but at length oppressed by multitudes, this band of
heroes deserved the esteem, without exciting the compassion, of their
enemies; and the lion was no sooner taken in the toils,  than he was
instantly despatched. The death of Sarus dissolved the loose alliance
which Adolphus still maintained with the usurpers of Gaul. He again
listened to the dictates of love and prudence; and soon satisfied the
brother of Placidia, by the assurance that he would immediately transmit
to the palace of Ravenna the heads of the two tyrants, Jovinus and
Sebastian. The king of the Goths executed his promise without difficulty
or delay; the helpless brothers, unsupported by any personal merit, were
abandoned by their Barbarian auxiliaries; and the short opposition of
Valentia was expiated by the ruin of one of the noblest cities of Gaul.
The emperor, chosen by the Roman senate, who had been promoted,
degraded, insulted, restored, again degraded, and again insulted, was
finally abandoned to his fate; but when the Gothic king withdrew his
protection, he was restrained, by pity or contempt, from offering any
violence to the person of Attalus. The unfortunate Attalus, who was left
without subjects or allies, embarked in one of the ports of Spain, in
search of some secure and solitary retreat: but he was intercepted at
sea, conducted to the presence of Honorius, led in triumph through the
streets of Rome or Ravenna, and publicly exposed to the gazing
multitude, on the second step of the throne of his invincible conqueror.
The same measure of punishment, with which, in the days of his
prosperity, he was accused of menacing his rival, was inflicted on
Attalus himself; he was condemned, after the amputation of two fingers,
to a perpetual exile in the Isle of Lipari, where he was supplied with
the decent necessaries of life. The remainder of the reign of Honorius
was undisturbed by rebellion; and it may be observed, that, in the space
of five years, seven usurpers had yielded to the fortune of a prince,
who was himself incapable either of counsel or of action.

Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By
Barbarians. -- Part VII.

The situation of Spain, separated, on all sides, from the enemies of
Rome, by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate provinces, had
secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country;
and we may observe, as a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that, in a
period of four hundred years, Spain furnished very few materials to the
history of the Roman empire. The footsteps of the Barbarians, who, in
the reign of Gallienus, had penetrated beyond the Pyrenees, were soon
obliterated by the return of peace; and in the fourth century of the
Christian æra, the cities of Emerita, or Merida, of Corduba, Seville,
Bracara, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most illustrious of the
Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, the vegetable, and the
mineral kingdoms, was improved and manufactured by the skill of an
industrious people; and the peculiar advantages of naval stores
contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade.  The arts and
sciences flourished under the protection of the emperors; and if the
character of the Spaniards was enfeebled by peace and servitude, the
hostile approach of the Germans, who had spread terror and desolation
from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, seemed to rekindle some sparks of
military ardor. As long as the defence of the mountains was intrusted to
the hardy and faithful militia of the country, they successfully
repelled the frequent attempts of the Barbarians. But no sooner had the
national troops been compelled to resign their post to the Honorian
bands, in the service of Constantine, than the gates of Spain were
treacherously betrayed to the public enemy, about ten months before the
sack of Rome by the Goths.  The consciousness of guilt, and the thirst
of rapine, prompted the mercenary guards of the Pyrenees to desert their
station; to invite the arms of the Suevi, the Vandals, and the Alani;
and to swell the torrent which was poured with irresistible violence
from the frontiers of Gaul to the sea of Africa. The misfortunes of
Spain may be described in the language of its most eloquent historian,
who has concisely expressed the passionate, and perhaps exaggerated,
declamations of contemporary writers.  "The irruption of these nations
was followed by the most dreadful calamities; as the Barbarians
exercised their indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes of the Romans and
the Spaniards, and ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open
country. The progress of famine reduced the miserable inhabitants to
feed on the flesh of their fellow-creatures; and even the wild beasts,
who multiplied, without control, in the desert, were exasperated, by the
taste of blood, and the impatience of hunger, boldly to attack and
devour their human prey. Pestilence soon appeared, the inseparable
companion of famine; a large proportion of the people was swept away;
and the groans of the dying excited only the envy of their surviving
friends. At length the Barbarians, satiated with carnage and rapine, and
afflicted by the contagious evils which they themselves had introduced,
fixed their permanent seats in the depopulated country. The ancient
Gallicia, whose limits included the kingdom of Old Castille, was divided
between the Suevi and the Vandals; the Alani were scattered over the
provinces of Carthagena and Lusitania, from the Mediterranean to the
Atlantic Ocean; and the fruitful territory of Btica was allotted to the
Silingi, another branch of the Vandalic nation. After regulating this
partition, the conquerors contracted with their new subjects some
reciprocal engagements of protection and obedience: the lands were again
cultivated; and the towns and villages were again occupied by a captive
people. The greatest part of the Spaniards was even disposed to prefer
this new condition of poverty and barbarism, to the severe oppressions
of the Roman government; yet there were many who still asserted their
native freedom; and who refused, more especially in the mountains of
Gallicia, to submit to the Barbarian yoke."

The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian had approved
the friendship of Adolphus, and restored Gaul to the obedience of his
brother Honorius. Peace was incompatible with the situation and temper
of the king of the Goths. He readily accepted the proposal of turning
his victorious arms against the Barbarians of Spain; the troops of
Constantius intercepted his communication with the seaports of Gaul, and
gently pressed his march towards the Pyrenees:  he passed the mountains,
and surprised, in the name of the emperor, the city of Barcelona. The
fondness of Adolphus for his Roman bride, was not abated by time or
possession: and the birth of a son, surnamed, from his illustrious
grandsire, Theodosius, appeared to fix him forever in the interest of
the republic. The loss of that infant, whose remains were deposited in a
silver coffin in one of the churches near Barcelona, afflicted his
parents; but the grief of the Gothic king was suspended by the labors of
the field; and the course of his victories was soon interrupted by
domestic treason. He had imprudently received into his service one of
the followers of Sarus; a Barbarian of a daring spirit, but of a
diminutive stature; whose secret desire of revenging the death of his
beloved patron was continually irritated by the sarcasms of his insolent
master. Adolphus was assassinated in the palace of Barcelona; the laws
of the succession were violated by a tumultuous faction;  and a stranger
to the royal race, Singeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on
the Gothic throne. The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of
the six children of Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he
tore, without pity, from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop.  The
unfortunate Placidia, instead of the respectful compassion, which she
might have excited in the most savage breasts, was treated with cruel
and wanton insult. The daughter of the emperor Theodosius, confounded
among a crowd of vulgar captives, was compelled to march on foot above
twelve miles, before the horse of a Barbarian, the assassin of a husband
whom Placidia loved and lamented.

But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge, and the view of her
ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant people against the
tyrant, who was assassinated on the seventh day of his usurpation. After
the death of Singeric, the free choice of the nation bestowed the Gothic
sceptre on Wallia; whose warlike and ambitious temper appeared, in the
beginning of his reign, extremely hostile to the republic. He marched in
arms from Barcelona to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which the
ancients revered and dreaded as the boundary of the world. But when he
reached the southern promontory of Spain,  and, from the rock now
covered by the fortress of Gibraltar, contemplated the neighboring and
fertile coast of Africa, Wallia resumed the designs of conquest, which
had been interrupted by the death of Alaric. The winds and waves again
disappointed the enterprise of the Goths; and the minds of a
superstitious people were deeply affected by the repeated disasters of
storms and shipwrecks. In this disposition the successor of Adolphus no
longer refused to listen to a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were
enforced by the real, or supposed, approach of a numerous army, under
the conduct of the brave Constantius. A solemn treaty was stipulated and
observed; Placidia was honorably restored to her brother; six hundred
thousand measures of wheat were delivered to the hungry Goths;  and
Wallia engaged to draw his sword in the service of the empire. A bloody
war was instantly excited among the Barbarians of Spain; and the
contending princes are said to have addressed their letters, their
ambassadors, and their hostages, to the throne of the Western emperor,
exhorting him to remain a tranquil spectator of their contest; the
events of which must be favorable to the Romans, by the mutual slaughter
of their common enemies.  The Spanish war was obstinately supported,
during three campaigns, with desperate valor, and various success; and
the martial achievements of Wallia diffused through the empire the
superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the Silingi, who had
irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of the province of Btica. He
slew, in battle, the king of the Alani; and the remains of those
Scythian wanderers, who escaped from the field, instead of choosing a
new leader, humbly sought a refuge under the standard of the Vandals,
with whom they were ever afterwards confounded. The Vandals themselves,
and the Suevi, yielded to the efforts of the invincible Goths. The
promiscuous multitude of Barbarians, whose retreat had been intercepted,
were driven into the mountains of Gallicia; where they still continued,
in a narrow compass and on a barren soil, to exercise their domestic and
implacable hostilities. In the pride of victory, Wallia was faithful to
his engagements: he restored his Spanish conquests to the obedience of
Honorius; and the tyranny of the Imperial officers soon reduced an
oppressed people to regret the time of their Barbarian servitude. While
the event of the war was still doubtful, the first advantages obtained
by the arms of Wallia had encouraged the court of Ravenna to decree the
honors of a triumph to their feeble sovereign. He entered Rome like the
ancient conquerors of nations; and if the monuments of servile
corruption had not long since met with the fate which they deserved, we
should probably find that a crowd of poets and orators, of magistrates
and bishops, applauded the fortune, the wisdom, and the invincible
courage, of the emperor Honorius.

Such a triumph might have been justly claimed by the ally of Rome, if
Wallia, before he repassed the Pyrenees, had extirpated the seeds of the
Spanish war. His victorious Goths, forty-three years after they had
passed the Danube, were established, according to the faith of treaties,
in the possession of the second Aquitain; a maritime province between
the Garonne and the Loire, under the civil and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction of Bourdeaux. That metropolis, advantageously situated for
the trade of the ocean, was built in a regular and elegant form; and its
numerous inhabitants were distinguished among the Gauls by their wealth,
their learning, and the politeness of their manners. The adjacent
province, which has been fondly compared to the garden of Eden, is
blessed with a fruitful soil, and a temperate climate; the face of the
country displayed the arts and the rewards of industry; and the Goths,
after their martial toils, luxuriously exhausted the rich vineyards of
Aquitain.  The Gothic limits were enlarged by the additional gift of
some neighboring dioceses; and the successors of Alaric fixed their
royal residence at Thoulouse, which included five populous quarters, or
cities, within the spacious circuit of its walls. About the same time,
in the last years of the reign of Honorius, the Goths, the Burgundians,
and the Franks, obtained a permanent seat and dominion in the provinces
of Gaul. The liberal grant of the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian
allies, was confirmed by the lawful emperor; the lands of the First, or
Upper, Germany, were ceded to those formidable Barbarians; and they
gradually occupied, either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces
which still retain, with the titles of Duchyand County, the national
appellation of Burgundy.  The Franks, the valiant and faithful allies of
the Roman republic, were soon tempted to imitate the invaders, whom they
had so bravely resisted. Treves, the capital of Gaul, was pillaged by
their lawless bands; and the humble colony, which they so long
maintained in the district of Toxandia, in Brabant, insensibly
multiplied along the banks of the Meuse and Scheld, till their
independent power filled the whole extent of the Second, or Lower
Germany. These facts may be sufficiently justified by historic evidence;
but the foundation of the French monarchy by Pharamond, the conquests,
the laws, and even the existence, of that hero, have been justly
arraigned by the impartial severity of modern criticism.

The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the
establishment of these Barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous and
oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, by interest or passion,
to violate the public peace. A heavy and partial ransom was imposed on
the surviving provincials, who had escaped the calamities of war; the
fairest and most fertile lands were assigned to the rapacious strangers,
for the use of their families, their slaves, and their cattle; and the
trembling natives relinquished with a sigh the inheritance of their
fathers. Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot of a
vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the Romans themselves,
not only in the insolence of foreign conquest, but in the madness of
civil discord. The Triumvirs proscribed eighteen of the most flourishing
colonies of Italy; and distributed their lands and houses to the
veterans who revenged the death of Cæsar, and oppressed the liberty of
their country. Two poets of unequal fame have deplored, in similar
circumstances, the loss of their patrimony; but the legionaries of
Augustus appear to have surpassed, in violence and injustice, the
Barbarians who invaded Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not
without the utmost difficulty that Virgil escaped from the sword of the
Centurion, who had usurped his farm in the neighborhood of Mantua;  but
Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of money from his Gothic purchaser,
which he accepted with pleasure and surprise; and though it was much
inferior to the real value of his estate, this act of rapine was
disguised by some colors of moderation and equity.  The odious name of
conquerors was softened into the mild and friendly appellation of the
guests of the Romans; and the Barbarians of Gaul, more especially the
Goths, repeatedly declared, that they were bound to the people by the
ties of hospitality, and to the emperor by the duty of allegiance and
military service. The title of Honorius and his successors, their laws,
and their civil magistrates, were still respected in the provinces of
Gaul, of which they had resigned the possession to the Barbarian allies;
and the kings, who exercised a supreme and independent authority over
their native subjects, ambitiously solicited the more honorable rank of
master-generals of the Imperial armies.  Such was the involuntary
reverence which the Roman name still impressed on the minds of those
warriors, who had borne away in triumph the spoils of the Capitol.

Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble
tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British island
separated itself from the body of the Roman empire. The regular forces,
which guarded that remote province, had been gradually withdrawn; and
Britain was abandoned without defence to the Saxon pirates, and the
savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The Britons, reduced to this
extremity, no longer relied on the tardy and doubtful aid of a declining
monarchy. They assembled in arms, repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in
the important discovery of their own strength.  Afflicted by similar
calamities, and actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican provinces (a
name which comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul between the Seine
and the Loire ) resolved to imitate the example of the neighboring
island. They expelled the Roman magistrates, who acted under the
authority of the usurper Constantine; and a free government was
established among a people who had so long been subject to the arbitrary
will of a master. The independence of Britain and Armorica was soon
confirmed by Honorius himself, the lawful emperor of the West; and the
letters, by which he committed to the new states the care of their own
safety, might be interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication of
the exercise and rights of sovereignty. This interpretation was, in some
measure, justified by the event. After the usurpers of Gaul had
successively fallen, the maritime provinces were restored to the empire.
Yet their obedience was imperfect and precarious: the vain, inconstant,
rebellious disposition of the people, was incompatible either with
freedom or servitude;  and Armorica, though it could not long maintain
the form of a republic,  was agitated by frequent and destructive
revolts. Britain was irrecoverably lost.  But as the emperors wisely
acquiesced in the independence of a remote province, the separation was
not imbittered by the reproach of tyranny or rebellion; and the claims
of allegiance and protection were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary
offices of national friendship.

This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and military
government; and the independent country, during a period of forty years,
till the descent of the Saxons, was ruled by the authority of the
clergy, the nobles, and the municipal towns.  I. Zosimus, who alone has
preserved the memory of this singular transaction, very accurately
observes, that the letters of Honorius were addressed to the citiesof
Britain.  Under the protection of the Romans, ninety-two considerable
towns had arisen in the several parts of that great province; and, among
these, thirty-three cities were distinguished above the rest by their
superior privileges and importance.  Each of these cities, as in all the
other provinces of the empire, formed a legal corporation, for the
purpose of regulating their domestic policy; and the powers of municipal
government were distributed among annual magistrates, a select senate,
and the assembly of the people, according to the original model of the
Roman constitution.  The management of a common revenue, the exercise of
civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the habits of public counsel and
command, were inherent to these petty republics; and when they asserted
their independence, the youth of the city, and of the adjacent
districts, would naturally range themselves under the standard of the
magistrate. But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping
the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible
source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed, that the
restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The
preeminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently violated by
bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who complained that
they were become the subjects of their own servants,  would sometimes
regret the reign of an arbitrary monarch. II. The jurisdiction of each
city over the adjacent country, was supported by the patrimonial
influence of the principal senators; and the smaller towns, the
villages, and the proprietors of land, consulted their own safety by
adhering to the shelter of these rising republics. The sphere of their
attraction was proportioned to the respective degrees of their wealth
and populousness; but the hereditary lords of ample possessions, who
were not oppressed by the neighborhood of any powerful city, aspired to
the rank of independent princes, and boldly exercised the rights of
peace and war. The gardens and villas, which exhibited some faint
imitation of Italian elegance, would soon be converted into strong
castles, the refuge, in time of danger, of the adjacent country:  the
produce of the land was applied to purchase arms and horses; to maintain
a military force of slaves, of peasants, and of licentious followers;
and the chieftain might assume, within his own domain, the powers of a
civil magistrate. Several of these British chiefs might be the genuine
posterity of ancient kings; and many more would be tempted to adopt this
honorable genealogy, and to vindicate their hereditary claims, which had
been suspended by the usurpation of the Cæsars.  Their situation and
their hopes would dispose them to affect the dress, the language, and
the customs of their ancestors. If the princesof Britain relapsed into
barbarism, while the citiesstudiously preserved the laws and manners of
Rome, the whole island must have been gradually divided by the
distinction of two national parties; again broken into a thousand
subdivisions of war and faction, by the various provocations of interest
and resentment. The public strength, instead of being united against a
foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the
personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head of his
equals, might enable him to subdue the freedom of some neighboring
cities; and to claim a rank among the tyrants,  who infested Britain
after the dissolution of the Roman government. III. The British church
might be composed of thirty or forty bishops,  with an adequate
proportion of the inferior clergy; and the want of riches (for they seem
to have been poor ) would compel them to deserve the public esteem, by a
decent and exemplary behavior. The interest, as well as the temper of
the clergy, was favorable to the peace and union of their distracted
country: those salutary lessons might be frequently inculcated in their
popular discourses; and the episcopal synods were the only councils that
could pretend to the weight and authority of a national assembly. In
such councils, where the princes and magistrates sat promiscuously with
the bishops, the important affairs of the state, as well as of the
church, might be freely debated; differences reconciled, alliances
formed, contributions imposed, wise resolutions often concerted, and
sometimes executed; and there is reason to believe, that, in moments of
extreme danger, a Pendragon, or Dictator, was elected by the general
consent of the Britons. These pastoral cares, so worthy of the episcopal
character, were interrupted, however, by zeal and superstition; and the
British clergy incessantly labored to eradicate the Pelagian heresy,
which they abhorred, as the peculiar disgrace of their native country.

It is somewhat remarkable, or rather it is extremely natural, that the
revolt of Britain and Armorica should have introduced an appearance of
liberty into the obedient provinces of Gaul. In a solemn edict,  filled
with the strongest assurances of that paternal affection which princes
so often express, and so seldom feel, the emperor Honorius promulgated
his intention of convening an annual assembly of the seven provinces: a
name peculiarly appropriated to Aquitain and the ancient Narbonnese,
which had long since exchanged their Celtic rudeness for the useful and
elegant arts of Italy.  Arles, the seat of government and commerce, was
appointed for the place of the assembly; which regularly continued
twenty-eight days, from the fifteenth of August to the thirteenth of
September, of every year. It consisted of the Prætorian præfect of the
Gauls; of seven provincial governors, one consular, and six presidents;
of the magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of about sixty cities; and
of a competent, though indefinite, number of the most honorable and
opulent possessorsof land, who might justly be considered as the
representatives of their country. They were empowered to interpret and
communicate the laws of their sovereign; to expose the grievances and
wishes of their constituents; to moderate the excessive or unequal
weight of taxes; and to deliberate on every subject of local or national
importance, that could tend to the restoration of the peace and
prosperity of the seven provinces. If such an institution, which gave
the people an interest in their own government, had been universally
established by Trajan or the Antonines, the seeds of public wisdom and
virtue might have been cherished and propagated in the empire of Rome.
The privileges of the subject would have secured the throne of the
monarch; the abuses of an arbitrary administration might have been
prevented, in some degree, or corrected, by the interposition of these
representative assemblies; and the country would have been defended
against a foreign enemy by the arms of natives and freemen. Under the
mild and generous influence of liberty, the Roman empire might have
remained invincible and immortal; or if its excessive magnitude, and the
instability of human affairs, had opposed such perpetual continuance,
its vital and constituent members might have separately preserved their
vigor and independence. But in the decline of the empire, when every
principle of health and life had been exhausted, the tardy application
of this partial remedy was incapable of producing any important or
salutary effects. The emperor Honorius expresses his surprise, that he
must compel the reluctant provinces to accept a privilege which they
should ardently have solicited. A fine of three, or even five, pounds of
gold, was imposed on the absent representatives; who seem to have
declined this imaginary gift of a free constitution, as the last and
most cruel insult of their oppressors.