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 328 THE DECLINE AND FALL the death of her husband, the most powerful subject of Rome, she had remained at the head of the Anician family, and successively supplied, from her private fortune, the expense of the consulships of her three sons. When the city was besieged and taken by the Goths, Proba supported, with Christian resignation, the loss of immense riches ; embarked in a small vessel, from whence she beheld, at sea, the flames of her burning palace ; and fled with her daughter La^ta, and her grand daughter, the celebrated virgin Demetrias, to the coast of Africa. The benevolent profusion with which the matron distributed the fruits, or the price, of her estates contributed to alleviate the misfortunes of exile and captivity. But even the family of Proba herself was not exempt from the rapacious oppression of Count Heraclian, who basely sold, in matrimonial prostitution, the noblest maidens of Rome to the lust or avarice of the Syrian merchants. The Italian fugitives were dispersed through the provinces, along the coast of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constanti- nople and Jeinisalem ; and the village of Bethlem, the solitary residence of St. Jerom and his female converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars of either sex and eveiy age, who excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their past fortune. i^'^ This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin disposed the fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of Oriental prophecy, were sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the capital and the dissolution of the globe. Sack of Rome There cxists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate of cha. v""^" the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. Yet, when the first emotions had subsided, and a fair estimate "was made of the real damage, the more learned and judicious contemporaries were forced to confess that infant Rome had formerly received more essential injury from the Gauls than she had now sustained from the Goths in her declining age.^^-' The experience of eleven centuries has enabled posterity to produce I'S See the pathetic complaint of Jerom (torn. v. p. 400), in his preface to the second book of his Commentaries on the prophet FIzekiel. 119 Orosins, though with some theological partiality, states this comparison, I. ii. c. 19, p. 142, 1. vii. c. 39, p. 575. But in the history of the taking of Rome by the Gauls everything is uncertain, and perhaps fabulous. See Beaufort sur T Incerti- tude, &c. , de I'Histoire Romaine, p. 356 ; and Melot, in the Mdm. de l'.cad6mie des Inscript. tom. xv. p. 1-21.