Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/264

 244 THE DECLINE AND FALL Barbarians, with more regard to the value of the materials than to the elegance of the workmanship ; the female captives sub- mitted to the laws of war ; the enjoyment of beauty was the reward of valour ; 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 valour 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 Thermopylae to 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 ^Egis, 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 Zosiraus 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 Barhariau ; and the Christian faith, 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 honour, 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.^^ He iB at- The last hope of a people who could no longer depend on stuicho, their arms, their gods, or their sovereign, was placed in the [396] powerful assistance of the general of the West ; and Stilicho, 1- Homer perpetually describes the exemplary patience of those female captives, who gave their charms, and even their hearts, to the murderers of their fathers, brothers, &c. Such a passion (of Eriphile for Achilles) is touched with admirable delicacy by Racine. 13 Plutarch (in Pyrrho, torn. ii. p. 471, edit. Brian [c. 26, ad fin.']) gives the genuine answer in the Laconic dialect. Pyrrhus attacked Sparta, with 25,000 foot, 2000 horse, and 24 elephants : and the defence of that open town is a fine comment on the laws of I.ycurgus, even in the last stage of decay. 1^ Such, perhaps, as Homer (Iliad, xx. 164) has so nobly painted him. i'' Eunapius (in Vit. Philosoph. p. 90-93) intimates that a troop of Monks be- trayed Greece and folloscd the Gothic camp. [Cp. Appendix 15.]