Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/341

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 321 pledge of peace and friendship, to the son of Theodosius.^^ The officers who returned to their duty were reinstated in their employments, and even the merit of a tardy repentance was graciously allowed ; but the degraded emperor of the Romans, desirous of life and insensible of disgrace, implored the per- mission of following the Gothic camp in the train of a haughty and capricious Barbarian. ^•''^ The degradation of Attains removed the only real obstacle to Third siege the conclusion of the peace ; and Alaric advanced within three ^mrtv °' miles of Ravenna, to press the irresolution of the Imperial a'd.'^Sio, " ministers, whose insolence soon returned with the return of ^"^' ^ fortune. His indignation was kindled by the report that a rival chieftain, that Sarus, the personal enemy of Adolphus and the hereditary foe of the house of Balti, had been received into the palace. At the head of three hundred followers, that fear- less Barbarian immediately sallied from the gates of Ravenna; surprised, and cut in pieces, a considerable body of Goths ; re- entered the city in triumph ; and was permitted to insult his adversary by the voice of a herald, who publicly declared that the guilt of Alaric had for ever excluded him fi-om the friend- ship and alliance of the emperor. ^^^ The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna was expiated a third time by the calamities of Rome. The king of the Goths, who no longer dissembled his appetite for plunder and revenge, appeared in arms under the walls of the capital ; and the trembling senate, without any hopes of reK'^f, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country. But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics ; who, either from birth or interest, were attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was 99 See the cause and circumstances of the fall of Attalus in Zosimus, 1. vi. p. 380-383 [12] ; Sozomen, 1. ix. c. 8 ; Philostorg. 1. xii. c. 3. The two acts of indemnity in the Theodosian Code, 1. ix. tit. xxxviii. leg. 11, 12, which were pub- lished the i2th of February and the 8th of August, a.d. 410, evidently relate to this usurper. 100 In hoc, Alaricus, imperatore facto, infecto, refecto, ac defecto. . . . Mimum risit, et ludum spectavit imperii. Orosius, 1. vii. c. 42, p. 582. 101 Zosimus, 1. vi. p. 384 [13] ; Sozomen, 1. ix. c. 9 ; Philostorgius, 1. xii. c. 3. In this place the text of Zosimus is mutilated, and we have lost the remainder of his sixth and last book, which ended with the sack of Rome. Credulous and partial as he is, we must take our leave of that historian with some regret. VOL. III. 21