of Ravenna, and his perfidious execution. The Christians accuse him of a design to depose the emperor, who was both his brother-in-law and his son-in-law, and to elevate his own heir Eucherius to the Imperial throne. Eucherius, it is asserted, but with no proof, and with all probability against it, was a pagan; the public restoration of paganism, as the religion of the Empire, was to be the first act of the new dynasty. The ungrateful pagans seem to have been ignorant of this magnificent scheme in their favour; they too brand Stilicho with the name of traitor, and ascribe to his perfidious dealings with Alaric the final ruin of Rome. They hated him as the enemy, the despoiler of their religion; as having robbed the temples of their treasures, burned the Sibylline books, stripped from the doors of the Capitol the plates of gold. Stilicho knew the weakness as well as the strength of Rome; that may have been but wise and necessary policy, in order, by timely concession and tribute under the honourable name of boon or largess, to keep the formidable barbarian beyond the frontiers of Italy, which may have seemed treasonable degradation to the haughty court, blind to its own impotence." The death of Stilicho was the signal for the reappear- Alaric's ance of Alaric again in arms in the centre of sion. Italy. His pretext for this second invasion is the violation of the treaties entered into by Stilicho. At all events, the unanswerable testimony to the abilities of Stilicho, if not to his fidelity, is that which seemed to be the immediate, inevitable consequence of his disgrace and execution. No sooner was Stilicho dead, than Rome lay open to the barbarian conqueror. Unopposed, almost without a skirmish, laughing to scorn the slow and inefficient preparations of the emperor, and of Olympius, who ruled the emperor, and who had misguided him to the ruin of Stilicho, Alaric advanced from the Alps to the walls of Rome. The first act of defence adopted by the senate of Rome was the Orosius, vii. 38. second inva Crudelis summis miscuit ima furor. So Rutilius Numatianus, who hated Dumque timet, quicquid se fecerat ante timeri, Christianity Quo magis est facinus diri Stilichonis iniquum, Romano generi dum nititur esse superstes, Rutil. Itin. ii. 41. A.D. 408. Siege of judicial murder of Serena, the widow of Stilicho. She was accused of a design to betray the city to the Goth. Both parties seem to have consented to this deed. The heathens remembered that when Theodosius the Great had struck the deadly blow against the rites and the temples of paganism, by prohibiting all public expenditure on heathen ceremonies, Serena had stripped a costly necklace from the statue of Rhea, the most ancient and venerable of Rome's goddesses, and herself ostentatiously wore the precious spoil; that neck was now given up to strangulation, a righteous and appropriate punishment for her impiety. The historian.seems to intimate that the Romans were surprised that the death of Serena produced no effect on the remorseless Goth. The siege of Rome was formed; the vast population, accustomed to live, the wealthy in luxury perhaps to no great extent moderated by Christianity, the poor by gratuitous distributions at the expense of the public or of the rich, to which Christian charity had now come in aid, were suddenly reduced to the worst extremities of famine. The public distributions were diminished to one half, to one third. The heaps of dead bodies, which there wanted space to bury, produced a pestilence. In vain the Senate endeavoured to negotiate an honourable capitulation. Alaric scorned alike their money, their despair, their pride. When they spoke of their immense population, he burst out into laughter,-"The thicker the hay, the easier it is mown." On his demand of an exorbitant ransom, the Senate humbly inquired, "What, then, do you leave us?" "Your lives!" replied the insulting Goth. A.D. 408. During this first siege Innocent was in Rome. The strange story of the desperate proposition to deliver the city by the magical arts of certain Etruscan diviners, who had power, it was supposed, to call down and direct the lightnings of heaven, appears, in different forms, in the pagan and Christian historians." Innocent Etruscan diviners. * Zosimus-Sozomen, ix. 6. Læta, the wife of Gratian, and her mother, were distinguished by their abundant charities, which at least mitigated the sufferings of multitudes. Compare Hist. of Christianity, iii. 181. Zosimus, v. 41. Sozomen, ix. 6. a himself is said, by the heathen Zosimus, to have assented to the idolatrous ceremony. If this be true, it is possible that the mind of the Christian Prelate may have been so entirely unhinged by the terrors of the siege, and the dreadful sufferings of the people, that he may have yielded to any hope, however wild, of averting the ruin. It is possible, though less probable, that he may have known or supposed the Etruscans to be possessed of some skilful, and by no means supernatural, means of producing apparent wonders, which might awe the ignorant barbarians, and of which the use might be justified by the dreadful crisis; and if these arts were thought supernatural, it was not for him to expose, at least for the present, the useful delusion. At all events, to judge the conduct of Innocent, we must throw ourselves completely back into the terror and affliction, the confusion and prostration of that disastrous time. The whole history is obscure and contradictory. The Christian writer asserts that the ceremony did take place, but that the Christians (he does not name Innocent) stood aloof from the profane and ineffectual rite. The heathen aver, that the Senate, after grave deliberation, refused to sanction its public performance, and that, in fact, it did not take place. The barbarian, at length, condescended to accept Capitulation. a ransom, in some proportion to the wealth of the city5000 pounds of gold, 30,000 of silver, four thousand silken robes, 3000 pieces of scarlet cloth, 3000 pounds of pepper. To make up the deficiency of the precious metals, the heathen temples, to the horror of that party, were despoiled; the time-honoured statues of gods melted to make up the amount demanded by the barbarian. The last fatal sign and omen of the departure of Roman greatness was, that the statue of Fortitude, or Virtue, was thrown into the common mass.b Alaric retired from Rome, his army increased by multitudes of slaves from the city and the neighbourhood, who, a See Eusebe Salverte, on the know. ledge possessed by the ancients in conducting lightning.-Sciences Occultes. ὁ ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐχώνευσάν τινα τῶν ἐκ χρυσού καὶ ἀργύρου πεποιημένων, ὧν ἦν καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀνδρίας, ἦν καλοῦσι Ῥωμαῖοι Οὐιρτούτεμ· οὔπερ διαφθαρέντος, ὅσα τῆς ἀνδρίας ἦν καὶ ἀρέτης παρὰ Ρωμαίοι; ἀπέσβη.... Zosimus, v. 41. it is said, to the number of 40,000, had found refuge in his camp. The infatuated pride, the insincerity, the treachery of the court of Ravenna, rendered impracticable all negotiations for peace. The minister Olympius, the chief agent in the assassination of Stilicho, has found favour, of which he seems to have been utterly unworthy, from Christian writers, on account of some letters addressed to him by St. Augustine. Even his fall produced no great change. Honorius, indeed, seems to have occupied his time at this crisis in framing edicts against Jews and heretics, and other decrees, as if for a peaceful and extensive empire. Under Olympius, he had promulgated the Imperial rescript, which deprived the heathen temples of their last revenue; it was confiscated for the use of the devout soldiers. The statues of the gods were ordered to be thrown down; the temples in the cities were seized for public uses, others were to be destroyed; the banquets (epulæ) prohibited. But he was compelled to repeal a law which deprived him of the services of all heathens. Generides, a valiant and able pagan, was permitted to resume the military belt, and to take the command of part of the Imperial forces. A second time Alaric appeared before Rome. He seized upon the port of Ostia, and this cut off at once almost all the supplies of the city. Rome opened her gates, and Alaric set up a pageant emperor, Attalus, as a rival to the emperor in Ravenna. The Christians beheld the elevation of Attalus, a pagan, who submitted to Arian baptism, but openly attempted to restore the party of paganism, with undisguised aversion. Lampadius, the Senator, at the head of this party, was Prætorian Præfect, Tertullus Consul. Tertullus boldly declared that to the Consulate he should add the High Priesthood. The pagan historian describes the universal joy of Rome at the elevation of such just and noble magistrates. The Christians looked eagerly to the court of Ravenna. Alaric was encamped between the Christian and pagan cities, between Ravenna and Rome. Attalus This law is dated the 17th of the calends of December, 408. Templorum detrahantur annonæ et rem annonariam jubent, expensis devotissimorum militum profuturæ, &c. Compare Beugnot, ii.p. 49, et seqq. Cod. Theodos. xvi. 10, 19. d As usual, the dealers in grain were accused of hoarding their stores, in order to possess themselves of all the remaining wealth of the city. e Sozom. ix. 9. The feeble government of Attalus had to encounter an enemy even more formidable than the Christians. The Count Heraclian closed the ports of Africa: a famine even more terrible than during the former siege, and even that had reduced men to the most loathsome and abominable food, afflicted the enfeebled and diminished population. A strange and revolting anecdote illustrates at once Roman manners and this dire calamity. The Romans, though they had no bread, had still their Circensian games. In the midst of the excitement, the ears of the Emperor were assailed with a wild cry-Fix the tariff for human flesh.5 All these calamities the Christians ascribed to the restoration of heathen rites. Attalus, at the word of his Gothic master, descended from his throne, and sank back to his former Third siege insignificance. But Rome, when Alaric appeared of Rome. a third time under its walls, prepared to close her gates, and to act on the defensive, (the Emperor Honorius had received the scanty succour of six cohorts from the East, and Rome was in frantic hope of rescue from Ravenna). Weakness or treachery baffled this desperate, if courageous, determination. At the dead of night, the Salarian gate was opened; the morning beheld Rome in the possession of the conqueror; but the conqueror, though a barbarian and a heretic, was a Christian. Over the fall of Rome, history might seem, in horror, to have dropped a veil." A.D. 410, However the first appalling intelligence of this event shook the Roman world to the centre; and the fearful Capture scene of pillage, violation, and destruction by fire of Rome. and sword, was imagined to surpass in its horrors Aug. 24. everything recorded in profane or sacred history, yet the shock passed away; and Rome quietly assumed her second, her Christian empire. When the first stunning tidings of the fall of the Imperial City reached Jerome in his retirement in Palestine, even some time after, when he had g Zosimus inserts the words in Latin -Pone pretium carni humanæ. The price of bread, as of all other articles, was fixed by the government. Zosimus, vi. 11. Rome may be said to have fallen without an historian. Her ruin was indeed described by the Greek Zosimus, but his sixth book is lost. Orosius cannot be dignified by the name-his work is but a summary of Augustine's City of God. |