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 honour, and too feeble for an 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.°

Change and succession of

Olympius might have continued to insult the just resentment of a people, who loudly acministers. cused him as the author of the public calamities; but his power was undermined by the secret intrigues of the palace. The favourite eunuchs transferred the government of Honorius, and the empire, to

n Zosimus, lib. 5. p. 367-369.

• Zosimus, lib. 5. p. 360–362. The bishop, by remaining at Ravenna, escaped the impending calamities of the city. Orosius, lib. 7. c. 39. p. 573.

P For the adventures of Olympius, and his successors in the ministry, see Zosimus, lib. 5. p. 363. 365, 366. and Olympiodor. ap. Phot. p. 180, 181.

Jovius, the prætorian prefect; 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 honourable 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 sevére 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 valour of Gennerid, formidable to the adjacent barbarians, was the firmest bulwark of the Illyrian frontier; and his vigilant care assisted the empire with a reinforce

Zosimus (lib. 5. p. 364.) relates this circumstance with visible complacency, and celebrates the character of Gennerid as the last glory of expiring Paganism. Very different were the sentiments of the council of Carthage, who deputed four bishops to the court of Ravenna, to complain of the law, which had been just enacted, that all conversions to Christianity should be free and voluntary. See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A. D. 409. no. 12. A. D. 410. no. 47, 48.

ment 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 prefect 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 ship-board, and privately executed; while the favour 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 bedchamber 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 dispatched to the prætorian prefect, granting him a free permission to dispose of the public money, but sternly refusing to prostitute the military honours of Rome to the proud demands of a bar

barian. 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 prefect 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 any circumstances, to any conditions 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 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."

Second

While the emperor and his court enjoyed, siege of with sullen pride, the security of the marshes and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned

Rome

by the Goths.

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 dispatched the bishops of the towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace, and to conjure the emperor, that he would save

Zosimus, lib. 5. p. 367–369. This custom of swearing by the head, or life, or safety, or genius, of the sovereign, was of the highest antiquity, both in Egypt (Genesis, xlii. 15.) and Scythia. It was soon transferred, by flattery, to the Cæsars; and Tertullian complains, that it was the only oath which the Romans of his time affected to reverence. See an elegant Dissertation of the abbé Massieu, on the Oaths of the Ancients, in the Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. 1. p. 208, 209.

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 successively directed his efforts against the Port of 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 basons, which received the northern branch of the Tyber, about two miles from the ancient colony of Ostia." The Roman Port insensibly swelled to the size of an episcopal city, where the corn of Africa was deposited in spa

X

Zosimus, lib. 5. p. 368, 369. I have softened the expressions of Alaric, who expatiates, in too florid a manner, on the history of Rome.

I See Sueton. in Claud. c. 20. Dion Cassius, lib. 60. p. 949. edit. Reimar, and the lively description of Juvenal, Satir. 12.75, &c. In the sixteenth century, when the remains of this Augustan port were still visible, the antiquarians sketched the plan, (see d'Anville, Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. 30. p. 198.) and declared, with enthusiasm, that all the monarchs of Europe would be unable to execute so great a work. (Bergier, Hist. des grands Chemins des Romains, tom. 2. p. 356.)

The Ostia Tyberina, (see Cluver. Italia Antiq. lib. 3. p. 870-879.) in the plural number, the two mouths of the Tyber were separated by the Holy Island, an equilateral triangle, whose sides were each of them computed at about two miles. The colony of Ostia was founded immediately beyond the left, or southern, and the Port immediately beyond the right, or northern branch of the river; and the distance between their remains measures something more than two miles on Cingolani's map. In the time of Strabo, the sand and mud deposited by the Tyber, had choked the harbour of Ostia; the progress of the same cause had added much to the size of the Holy Island, and gradually left both Ostia and the Port at a considerable distance from the shore. The dry channels (fiumi morti) and the large estuaries (stagno di Ponente, de Levante) mark the changes of the river, and the efforts of the sea. Consult, for the present state of this dreary and desolate tract, the excellent map of the ecclesiastical state by the mathematicians of Benedict XIV., an actual survey of the Agro Romano, in six sheets, by Cingolani, which contains one hundred and thirteen thousand eight hundred and nineteen rubbia (about five hundred and seventy thousand acres); the large topographical map of Ameti, in eight sheets.

As early as the third, (Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel, part 2. vol. 3.