Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/81

 T MM! The German Invasions 45 I will keep silence concerning the rest, lest I seem to despair of the mercy of God. For a long time, from the Black Sea to the Julian Alps, those things which are ours have not been ours ; and for thirty years, since the Danube boundary was broken, war has been waged in the very midst of the Roman Empire. Our tears are dried by old age. Except a few old men, all were born in captivity and siege, and do not desire the liberty they never knew. Who could believe this? How could the whole tale be worthily told? How Rome has fought within her own bosom not for glory, but for preservation nay, how she has not even fought, but with gold and all her precious things has ransomed her life. . . . Who could believe [Jerome exclaims in another passage] that Rome, built upon the conquest of the whole world, would fall to the ground ? that the mother herself would become the tomb of her peoples ? that all the regions of the East, of Africa and Egypt, once ruled by the queenly city, would be filled with troops of slaves and handmaidens ? that to-day holy Bethlehem should shelter men and women of noble birth, who once abounded in wealth and are now beggars ? In regard to the conflicting impressions which we derive from thg writers of the time, Mr. Dill in his Roman Society makes the following sensible observations : It is probable that the slaughter and material damage 13. Dill's inflicted by Alaric have been exaggerated. The ancient ^rf o authorities give very different accounts of the matter. mat i n in According to some, there was wholesale massacre, and sena- regard to tors were tortured and put to death in large numbers ; the JJ^Jj city was ravaged with fire, and most of the great works of art were destroyed. On the other haixd, Orosius, 1 writing only a few years after the sack, states that, while some buildings were burned down, Alaric gave orders to his sol- diers to content themselves with plunder and to abstain i See below, p. 58.