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 OF THE EOMAK EMPIRE 243 and select train, was admitted within the walls ; he indu]o-ed 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 civilised nations.'^ But the whole territoiy 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 contemporar}'^ philsopher, 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 Citha?ron 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 seashore,^ The passage of those rocks, so infamous in every age, was tei*minated by the isthmus of Corinth ; and a small body of firm and intrepid soldiers might have successfully defended a temporary intrench- ment of five or six miles from the Ionian to the jEgean 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 s In obedience to Jerom and Claudian (in Rufin. 1. ii. 191), I have mixed some darker colours in the mild representation of Zosimus, who wished to soften the calamities of Athens. Nee fera Cecropias traxissent vincula matres. Synesius (Epist. clvi. [leg. 135], p. 272, edit. Petav. ) observes that Athens, whose sufferings he imputes to the proconsul's avarice, was at that time less famous for her schools of philosophy than for her trade of honey. ^ Vallata mari Scironia rupes Et duo continuo connectens asquora muro Isthmos Claudian de Bell. Getico, 188. The Scironian rocks are described by Pausanias (1. i. c. 44, p. 107, edit. Kuhn, [§ 10]), and our modern travellers, Wheeler (p. 436), and Chandler (p. 298). Hadrian made the road passable for two carriages. w Claudian (in Rufin. 1. ii. 186, and de Bello Getico, 611, &c.) vaguely, though forcibly, delineates the scene of rapine and destruction. 11 Tpts fioKapes Aaj/aot icai TerpaKis, &c. These generous lines of Homer (Odyss. 1. V. 306) were transcribed by one of the captive youths of Corinth ; and the tears of Mummius may prove that the rude conqueror, though he was ignorant of the value of an original picture, possessed the purest source of good taste, a benevolent heart (Plutarch, Symposiac. 1. ix. tom. ii. p. 737, edit. Wechel).