drawing down fire from heaven, provided sacrifices were offered to the gods. Pope Innocent, it is said, was inclined to prefer the welfare of the city to the purity of the Christian faith, and to have secretly given them permission to do as they liked (πosĩν άπeρ lao);1 but as the sacrifices were to be performed publicly in the Capitol, in the presence of the magistrates, the senate refused to sanction an act which would have amounted to a solemn restoration of paganism. It was therefore determined to resort to negotiation. The ambassador despatched for that purpose attempted to alarm Alaric by an exaggerated picture of the numbers and the despair of the Romans; but the barbarian chief, with a loud contemptuous laugh, only answered, The thicker grows the hay, the more easily is it mown.' The Romans now attempted to bargain with Alaric, as their ancestors had done many centuries before with Brennus; but they found the Gothic chief even more exorbitant than the Gaul. Alaric would be content with nothing less than all their gold, silver, and precious moveables; and when the ambassadors humbly asked what then he proposed to leave them, the conqueror haughtily exclaimed, 'Your lives!' He afterwards somewhat abated his demands; but in order to supply the 5,000 pounds weight of gold, which formed only part of them, the Romans were compelled to strip the statues of the gods of that precious metal. Alaric withdrew before the close of the year. His retiring host is said to have been joined by 40,000 barbarian slaves from the city; a fact which shows how wealthy and populous Rome must still have been at that time.2 The Emperor Honorius, who resided at Ravenna, having refused to listen to the conditions proposed by Alaric, however modified, that conqueror again appeared before 1 Zosimus, v. 41. 2 For this siege of Rome see Zosi mus, lib.v.c.38-42; Sozomen, lib. ix. c. 6; Philostorgius, lib. xii. c. 3. Rome in the year 409, and took possession of the port of. Ostia. The Roman senate now submitted, and, at the dictation of Alaric, acknowledged the prefect Attalus for their emperor, who, though baptised by an Arian bishop, still adhered to the heathen worship. Attalus appointed Alaric generalissimo of the Western Empire, and bestowed other posts on the relations of that conqueror; but this shadow of an emperor was very soon uncrowned by the barbarian who had set him up. Coins of his reign are, however, still extant. In August, 410, Alaric, irritated at his treatment by the court of Ravenna, appeared for the third time before Rome, and fixed his head-quarters before the Porta Salaria, on the side of the Pincian Hill. Treachery procured for the Goths entrance into the city; but the method in which it was effected is not satisfactorily ascertained. According to Procopius,' Alaric had given three hundred young Goths as pages to the senators, who, on an appointed day, cut down the guard at the Porta Salaria, and let in the soldiers of Alaric; but the same author also mentions a story that the Goths were admitted by Proba, widow of the celebrated Petronius Probus. Even the date of the capture is not quite certain. Some authors place the event in the year 409; but it most probably occurred August 24th, 410.2 The Goths entered in the night, and set fire to some houses adjoining the gate, including the magnificent palace which had belonged to Sallust. Alaric had commanded his Goths to spare the lives of the Romans; nevertheless, many massacres were perpetrated, though their number has perhaps been greatly exaggerated by historians. St. Augustin3 says that but few senators were put to death; Socrates alcne speaks of many having been murdered. The city, however, ex 1 Bell. Vand. i. 2. 2 See Gregorovius, B. i. S. 148. this work Augustin justifies the decrees of Providence in the destruction of the city and of Roman greatness. cept St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and the district of the Vatican, was abandoned to plunder.1 Alaric, from whatever motive, suffered his hordes to remain only three days at Rome; a period which would not have sufficed for perpetrating much mischief on the monuments of the city. They could have carried away only portable articles of value; but they may also, perhaps, have wantonly broken a few statues. Considerable damage may however have been done by fire, although the palace of Sallust, already mentioned, is the only one known by name to have suffered in this way. The expressions of ecclesiastical historians are doubtless exaggerated on this head; as when Socrates asserts that the greater part of the wonderful monuments of the city was destroyed, and when St. Jerome, in his epistle to Gaudentius,2 even goes so far as to say that the famous city, the capital of the Roman Empire, was exhausted by a single fire. The truth is, perhaps, to be sought between these authors and Jornandes, who admits only plunder and not arson; and Orosius, a contemporary historian, has probably hit the true mean. We may gather from him that some destruction was caused by fire, and he points to the Forum, with its false idols, as the scene of the conflagration, which, however, he attributes to the agency of lightning. Alaric, however, undoubtedly carried off a great booty, and a vast number of prisoners in his wagons, among them Placidia, the sister of Honorius, whom, however, he treated with respect. According to Procopius, the Jewish spoils which Titus had brought from Jerusalem were among the booty, and appear to 1 Orosius, lib. ii. c. 19; Socr. H. Eccl. lib. vii. c. 10. 2 Epist. cxxviii.; cf. Cassiod. Hist. Eccl. Tripart. lib. ii. c. 9; Philostorg. lib. xii. c. 3. 3Alarico jubente spoliant tantum; non autem, ut solent gentes, ignem supponunt.'-De Reb. Get. c. 30. 4 Lib. ii. c. 19, p. 143. In another place he limits the fire to a few houses, or temples: facto quidem aliquantarum ædium incendio.'- Lib. vii. c. 39. 5 Zosim. lib. vi. c. 12; Oros. lib. ii. c. 19; Isidor. Chron. Goth. have been conveyed into Gaul. But the whole of them at least cannot have been carried off, since part was plundered by Genseric, as we shall presently have occasion to relate. Alaric did not long survive the capture of Rome. He died in 410, and was buried by his followers in the river Busentinus. The Goths then chose his brother-in-law Ataulf, or Adolphus, for their king; who, in 411, agreed with Honorius to leave Italy and march into Gaul against the usurper Jovinus. According to Jornandes, Ataulf again plundered Rome.1 Earlier writers, however, do not mention such an occurrence, which appears improbable from the league which he had formed with Honorius, whose sister Placidia he had married. In 417 Honorius again entered Rome in triumph, when the ex-emperor Attalus was compelled to march before his chariot, and was afterwards banished to Lipara.2 Honorius appears to have aided in restoring the city. Fugitives were recalled from all parts of the world. Olympiodorus asserts that fourteen thousand returned in one day; but that, no doubt, is an exaggeration.* We find about this time edicts for the destruction of the heathen temples, or for their conversion to other purposes. Those situated on the property of private persons were to be destroyed; those in towns or cities, or in the imperial domains, were either to be converted into Christian churches, or applied to some other use. This must have given a heavy blow to paganism. Meanwhile the church flourished. Its temporalities had been endowed by donations of landed property called patrimonia, whilst its dogmatical system had been built up and consolidated by the talents and learning of the Fathers. But the functions of the Bishop of the Lateran were 1 De Reb. Get. c. 31. 2 Prosper Aquit. Chron. ap. Gregorov. B. i. S. 171. 3 Philostorg. lib. xii. c. 5. 4 Ap. Photium. 5 Cod. Theod. xvi. 10, 19, &c. still almost exclusively confined to the administration of the church, though already, in the fifth century, he began to exercise a certain influence in civic affairs. The absence of the emperors from Rome contributed to increase the authority of the bishop; and as the city sank deeper and deeper in poverty and misery, he began gradually to be regarded as its father and protector. Under a prefect and senate, Rome assumed more and more every day a municipal character. Hence the bishop became its chief distinction, and his election, which was often contested, formed the most important business of the inhabitants. Honorius died at Ravenna August 15th, 423, but his remains were buried at Rome near those of St. Peter. After this event, while Theodosius was debating whether he should unite the Eastern and Western Empires, or bestow the latter on Valentinian, the minor son of Placidia by her second husband Constantius, he was surprised by the news that the purple had been seized by John, Primicerius of the Notaries of Ravenna, who was acknowledged as emperor by the Romans. But in 425 John was defeated and captured by Ardaburius and Aspar, Theodosius' generals; when Valentinian and Placidia were established at Ravenna, and the usurper was executed. Placidia now proceeded with Valentinian, who was only seven years old, to Rome. Here he received the imperial purple from the hands of a plenipotentiary of Theodosius, and, under the guardianship of his mother, was declared Augustus, or emperor, with the title of Valentinian III. He then returned to Ravenna to conduct the government under the guidance of his mother. The reign of Valentinian III. was marked by the advancing encroachments of the barbarians. Between the years 429 and 439, Africa was wrested from the Empire by the Vandals. Between the years 433 and 454, Aëtius must be regarded as the bulwark of the Empire. Rome, alarmed at the approach of the Huns, formed a league with the |