Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/353

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 333 the teiTors of a new element ; and the whole design was defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after a short ill- ness, the fatal term of his conquests. The ferocious character of the Barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero, whose valour and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause. By the labour of a captive multitude they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls ofrBusento] Consentia. The royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed ; the watei's were then restored to their natural channel, and the secret spot, where the remains of Alaric had been deposited, was for ever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners who had been employed to execute the work.^^s The personal animosities and hereditary feuds of the Barba- AdoiphM, rians were suspended by the strong necessity of their affairs ; ootis" con^ and the brave Adolphus, the brother-in-law of the deceased pJactfwith monarch, was unanimously elected to succeed to his throne, and marches The character and political system of the new king of the Goths a.d. 412 ' may be best understood from his own conversation with an illus- trious citizen of Narbonne, who aftei'wards, in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerom, in the presence of the historian Orosius. " In the full confidence of valour and victory I once aspired " (said Adolphus) " to change the face of the universe ; to obliterate the name of Rome ; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths ; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder of a new empire. By repeated experiments I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a well-constituted state, and that the fierce untractable humour of the Goths was incapable of bearing the salutaiy yoke of laws and civil government. From that moment I proposed to myself a different object of glory and ambition ; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman empire." ^^^ With these pacific views the successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war, and seriously negotiated with the Imperial court a treaty of friendship and alliance. It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were now released '^'■^ Jornandes, de Reb. Get. c. 30, p. 654. i340rosius, 1. vii. c. 43, p. 584, 585. He was sent by St. Augustin, in the year 415, from .Africa to Palestine, to visit St. Jerom, and to consult with him on the subject of the Pelagian controversy.