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 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 249 our attempts to describe the circumstances of the first invasion of Italy by the arms of Alaric. His march, perhaps from Thessa- lonica, through the warhke and hostile country of Pannonia, as far as the foot of the Julian Alps ; his passage of those mountains, which were strongly guarded by troops and intrench- ments ; the siege of Aquileia, and the conquest of the provinces of Istria and Venetia, appear to have employed a considerable time. Unless his operations were extremely cautious and slow, the length of the inten^al would suggest a probable suspicion that the Gothic king retreated towards the banks of the Danube and reinforced his army with fresh swanns of Barbarians, before he again attempted to penetrate into the heart of Italy. Since the pubHc and important events escape the diligence of the historian, he may amuse himself with contemplating, for a moment, the influence of the arms of Alaric on the fortunes of two obscure individuals, a presbyter of Aquileia and an husband- man of Verona. The learned Rufinus, who was summoned by his enemies to appear before a Roman synod,-^ wisely preferred the dangers of a besieged city ; and the Barbarians, who furiously shook the walls of Aquileia, might save him ',from the cruel sentence of another heretic, who, at the request of the same bishops, was severely whipped and condemned to per- petual exile on a desert island.^^ The old man,^'^ who had passed his simple and innocent life in the neighbourhood of Verona, was a stranger to the quan-els both of kings and of bishops ; his pleasures, his desires, his knowledge, were confined within the little circle of his paternal farm ; and a staff sup- ported his aged steps, on the same ground where he had sported in his infancy. Yet even this humble and rustic felicity (which Claudian describes with so much truth and feeling) was still exposed to the undistinguishing rage of war. His trees, his old contemporary trees,^^ must blaze in the conflagration of the whole 23Tantum Rorr--^"'^ urbis judicium fugfis, ut magis obsidionem barbaricam, quam pacaice urbis judicium velis sustinere. Jerom, tom. iu p. 239. Rufinus understood his danger : the peaceful city was inflamed by the beldam Marcella and the rest of Jerom's faction. [Cp. Appendix i.] 2y Jovinian, the enemy of fasts and cehbacy, who was persecuted and insulted by the furious Jerom (Jortin's Remarks, voL iv. p. 104, &c. ). See the original edict of banishment in the Theodosian Code, 1. xvi. tit. v. leg. 43. i^This epigram (de Sene Veronensi qui suburbium nusquam egressus est) is one of the earliest and most pleasing compositions of Claudian. Cowley's imitation (Hurd's edition, vol. ii. p. 241) has some natural and happy strokes: but it is much inferior to the original portrait, which is evidently drawn from the life, ^^ Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum ^■Equajvumque vidct cousenuisse nemus.