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 constitute the mainstay of a nation, had become comparatively insignificant, the still lower orders being reduced, in most instances, to abject poverty. Large allowances of bread were daily served out at the public expense; and, in one year, three millions six hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds of bacon are said to have been distributed to the needy masses, as well as oil, indispensable alike for the lamp and the bath, to the extent of three hundred thousand English gallons; but the poor citizens had become almost as indolent and depraved as their rulers. In the baths, constructed in every part of the city with imperial magnificence for the indiscriminate use of the senators and the people, the meanest Romans idled away their time. For a small copper coin they could there purchase the daily enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury which might well have excited the envy of princes. Baths, the extent of which we can now scarcely comprehend, surrounded with granite pillars from the quarries of Egypt and adorned with the precious green marble of Numidia, with streams of ever-running hot water from mouths of bright and massive silver, were the hourly resort of dirty and ragged plebeians without shoes or mantles.

Such was the state of the western capital of the once proud and powerful Roman empire, when the Gothic army first appeared before it. The barbarian Goths had greatly improved in discipline since they made their first invasion of Italy; they were well organised, and under the absolute control of Alaric,