The holy man warned him in solemn tones to refrain from the perpetration of such atrocities, and no longer to delight in
slaughter
and blood.
Universal Anthology - v07
The purpose of this election is not clouded by
356 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
any doubt. As Jornandes says, " The new king taking counsel with his people, decided to carve out for themselves new king doms rather than, through sloth, to continue the subjects of others. "
And little as they knew what they were doing, the flaxen- haired barbarians who in the Illyrian plains raised amid shouts of Thiudans, Thiudans, (" the king ! the king ! ") the shield upon which Alaric stood erect, were in fact upheaving into reality the stately monarchy of Spain, with her Pelayos and San Fernandos, her Alonzos and Conquistadors, her Ferdinand and Isabella, with Columbus landing at Guanahani, and Vasco Nunez wading knee-deep into the new-found ocean of the Pacific to take possession of its waves and shores for Spain. All these sights, and, alas, also her Inquisition, her autos-da-fe, her wrecked Armada, the impotence and bankruptcy of Iberia in these latter days, might have passed before the unsealed eyes of a seer, had there been such an one among those Gothic warriors ; for all these things were to spring from that day's decision.
Alaric struck first at the East. In one, or more probably two, expeditions (395 and 396) he pushed south from the old outworn battlefield of Moesia, penetrated Thessaly, passed the unguarded defile of Thermopylae, and, according to the heathen enthusiast Zosimus, " having gathered all his troops round the sacred city of Athens, he was about to proceed to the assault. When lo ! he beheld Athene Promachus, just as she is repre sented in her statues, clothed in full armor, going round about the walls thereof, and Achilles standing upon the battlements, with that aspect of divine rage and thirst for battle which Homer ascribes to him when he heard of the death of Patroclus. Awestruck at the sight, Alaric desisted from his warlike enter prise, signaled for truce, and concluded a treaty with the Athenians. After which he entered the city in peaceful guise with a few of his followers, was hospitably entertained by the chief inhabitants, received presents from them, and departed, leaving both Athens and Attica untouched by the ravages of war. "
He did not turn homewards, however, but penetrated into Peloponnesus, where Corinth, Argos, and Sparta all fell before him.
The precise details of these campaigns are difficult to re cover, and happily lie beyond our horizon. What is important
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 357
for us is their bearing on the relations between the two minis ters, Stilicho and Rufinus. The latter is accused, and with too great a concurrence of testimony to allow us to reject it as a mere fabrication of his enemies, of having actually invited Alaric to invade his master's dominions, or, at any rate, of hav ing smoothed Alaric's passage into Greece in order to remove him from his too menacing neighborhood to Constantinople. He was jealous of the overshadowing power of Stilicho, he was too conscious of his own intense unpopularity with all classes ; even the dumb loyalty of his master was beginning to fail him. Surrounded by so many dangers, Rufinus seems to have con ceived the desperate idea of playing off one barbarian against another, of saving himself from the Vandal Stilicho by means of Alaric the Goth.
Stilicho, who still commanded the greater part of the united force of both empires, had come up with the Goth, and was on the point of giving battle, when letters arrived from Con stantinople, subscribed by the hand of Arcadius, commanding him to desist from further prosecution of the war, to withdraw the legions of Honorius within the limits of the Western Empire, and to send the other half of the army straight to Constantinople. This infatuated decree, which can only be explained by the supposition that Arcadius had really been persuaded of the disloyalty of Stilicho, and feared the rebel more than the barbarian, had been wrung from the Emperor by the cajolery and menaces of Rufinus.
Stilicho obeyed at once, notwithstanding the earnest dis suasions of the soldiers, with a promptness which must surely be allowed to count heavily in proof of his loyalty to the Theo- dosian line and his reluctance to weaken the commonwealth by civil war. The army of the whole Roman Empire had appeared for the last time in one common camp : the Western portion set off for Italy, the Eastern for Constantinople. With deep resentment in their hearts, the latter passed through Thessaly and Macedon, revolving silently a scheme of revenge which, if it passed from the domain of thought into that of uttered words, was faithfully kept from all outside, an army's secret.
[Rufinus was slain by them, the soldier who stabbed him saying, " With this sword Stilicho strikes thee. " Gainas the Goth was the chief agent, and for some years held Rufinus's power. ]
858 STTLICHO AND ALAEIO.
Again, in the year 396, did Stilicho, now commanding only the Western forces, volunteer to deliver Greece from the Visi goths. The outset of the campaign was successful. The greater part of Peloponnesus was cleared of the invader, who was shut up in the rugged mountain country on the confines of Elis and Arcadia. The Roman army was expecting soon to behold him forced by famine to an ignominious surrender, when they discovered that he had pierced the lines of circum- vallation at an unguarded point, and marched with all his plunder northwards to Epirus. What was the cause of this unlooked-for issue of the struggle ? " The disgraceful careless ness of Stilicho," says Zosimus. "He was wasting his time with harlots and buffoons when he should have been keeping close watch on the enemy. " " Treason," hints Orosius. " Orders from Constantinople, where a treaty had been concluded with Alaric," half suggests Claudian, but he does not tell the story as if he himself believed it. The most probable explanation of this and of some similar passages in Stilicho's subsequent career is that Fabian caution cooperated with the instinct of the condottiere against pushing his foe too hard. There was always danger for Rome in driving Alaric to desperation; there was danger privately for Stilicho if the dead Alaric should render him no longer indispensable.
Whatever might be the cause, by the end of 396 Alaric was back again in his Illyrian eyrie ; and thenceforward, what ever threats might be directed towards the East, the actual weight of his arms was felt only by the West. Partly, at least, this is to be accounted for by the almost sublime cowardice of the ministers of Arcadius, who rewarded his Grecian raids by clothing him with the sacred character of an officer of the Empire in their portion of Illyricum. During an interval of quiescence, which lasted apparently about four years, the Visi- gothic king was using the forms of Roman law, the machinery of Roman taxation, the almost unbounded authority of a Roman provincial governor, to prepare the weapon which was one day to pierce the heart of Rome herself.
In the year 400 Stilicho was raised to the consulship. The promotion seems to have come somewhat tardily to one whose power and whose services were so transcendent, but there was perhaps a reluctance to confer this peculiarly Roman office on one so recently sprung from a barbarian stock.
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 859
In the course of the year 400 Alaric descended into Italy with an army, which, as so often in the case of these barbaric campaigns, was not an army, but a nation. Determined not to return to Illyria, but to obtain, by force or persuasion, a settle ment for his people on the Italian soil, he brought with him his wife and children, the families of his warriors, all the spoil which he had taken in Greece, all the treasures which he had accumu lated during his rule in Eastern Illyricum. He marched from Belgrade up the valley of the Save by Laybach and the well- remembered pass of the Pear-Tree.
Because of the comparatively defenceless character of this part of the Italian frontier, the wise forethought of Senate and emperors had planted in this corner of the Venetian plain the great colony, port, and arsenal of Aquileia, whose towers were visible to the soldiers of Alaric's army as they wound round the last spurs of the Julian Alps, descending into the valley of the Isonzo. Aquileia was still the virgin fortress, the Metz of imperial Italy, and not even Alaric was to rob her of her impreg nable glory. A battle took place under her walls, in which the
Romans suffered a disastrous defeat; but the city — we may say with almost absolute certainty — did not surrender. Re membering, it may be, Fridigern's exclamation that " He did not make war upon stone walls," Alaric moved forward through Venetia. Across his road to Rome lay the strong city of Ravenna, guarded by a labyrinth of waters. He penetrated as far as the bridge, afterwards called the bridge of Candidianus, within three miles of the city ; but he eventually retired from the untaken stronghold, and abandoning it would seem for the present his designs on Rome, marched westwards toward Milan.
These operations may perhaps have occupied Alaric from the summer of 400 to that of 401. His progress seems slow and his movements uncertain, but some of the delay may be accounted for by the fact that he was acting in concert with another invader. This was " Radagaisus the Goth," who was operating from the North, and trying to descend into Italy by the Brenner or the Splugen Pass, while Alaric was carrying on the campaign in the East, and endeavoring to reduce the for tresses of Venetia. After several months had been consumed by the Visigoth in his operations before Aquileia and Ravenna, he advanced, in the year 401, up the valley of the Po, and besieged Honorius either in Milan or possibly in the strong
city of Asti (Asta in Piedmont).
860 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
Throughout the Roman world the consternation was extreme when it was known that the Goths, in overwhelming numbers, were indeed in Italy. A rumor like that of the fall of Sebas- topol after the battle of the Alma, born none knew where, prop agated none knew how, traveled fast over Britain, Gaul, and Spain, to the effect that the daring attempt of Alaric had already succeeded, that the city was even now his prey.
In the course of this Rhaetian campaign, Stilicho seems to have effectually repelled the invading hosts. He not only pushed them back into their settlements by the Danube, but he also raised, in these trans-Alpine provinces and among these half -rebellious tribes, an army which was suited in numbers to its work, " not so great as to be burdensome to Italy or formi dable to its ruler. "
The clouds which have gathered round the movements of both the rival chiefs at length lift, partially, and we find them face to face with one another at Pollentia during the season of Easter, 402. About twenty miles southeast of Turin, on the left bank of the Tanaro, in the great alluvial plain which is here Piedmont, but a little farther east will be Lombardy, still stands the little village of Pollenzo. This was the place which Alaric and his Goths were now besieging. It seems certain that Alaric was taken unawares and forced into a battle which he had not foreseen; and this from a cause which illustrates the strange reactions of the barbaric and civilized influences upon one another in this commencing chaos. On the 4th of
April, Good Friday occurred. Alaric, with his army, Chris tian though Arian, was keeping the day with the accustomed religious observances, when he was attacked and forced to fight by Stilicho's lieutenant, Saulus. This man, the same who fought under Theodosius at the battle of the Frigidus, was by birth an Alan, and was probably surrounded by many of his countrymen, that race of utter savages who once dwelt between the Volga and the Don, and arrested the progress of the Huns, but had now yielded to their uncouth conquerors and rolled on with them over Europe, as fierce and as heathenish as they. The pigmy body of Saulus was linked to a dauntless spirit; every limb was covered with the scars of battle, his face had been flattened by many a club stroke, and his little dark Tartar eyes glowed with angry fire. He knew that suspicions had been entertained of his loyalty to the Empire, and he burned to prove their falsity. Having forced Alaric and his warriors
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 361
to suspend their Paschal devotions, he dashed his cavalry with Hun-like impetuosity against their stately line of battle. At the first onset he fell, and his riderless horse, rushing through the ranks, carried dismay to the hearts of his followers.
The light cavalry on the wings were like to have fled in dis astrous rout, when Stilicho moved forward the steady foot sol diers of the legions from the center, and turned, says Claudian, defeat into victory. The Gothic rout (if we may trust Clau- dian's story of the battle) soon became a disastrous flight. The Roman soldiers, eager for revenge, were scarce diverted from their purpose by the rich stores of plunder which were thrown in their way by the despairing fugitives. Every trophy of the barbarian but added fury to the Roman pursuit, reviving as it did the bitter memories of Roman humiliation; and this fury reached its height when, amid a store of other splendid apparel, the purple garments of the murdered Valens were drawn forth to light. Crowds of captives who had followed the chariot of the Gothic king for years now received their freedom, kissed the gory hands of their deliverers, and, revisiting their long deserted homes, looked with wonder on the changes wrought there by Time.
After the vivid and circumstantial account which Claudian gives us of the Roman victory at Pollentia, it is almost humili ating to be obliged to mention that there is some doubt whether it was a Roman victory at all. Probably it was one of those bloody but indecisive combats, like Borodino and Leipzig, in which he who is technically the victor is saved but as by a hair's breadth from defeat. That the battle was no crushing defeat for the Goths seems sufficiently proved by the events which immediately followed it. Stilicho concluded a treaty of some kind with Alaric, and the Gothic king, recrossing the Po, commenced a leisurely retreat through Lombardy. Having arrived at Verona and committed some act which was inter preted as a breach of the treaty, he there, according to Claudian, sustained another severe defeat ; but this engagement is not mentioned by any other writer. As it was, however, he suc ceeded in repassing the Alps, with what proportion of his forces we are quite unable to determine.
Claudian, who is our only authority for this part of the his tory, gives us no accurate details, only pages of declamation about the crushed spirits of the Gothic host, the despair of their leader, and his deep regret at ever having allowed himself
362 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
to be cajoled away from the nearer neighborhood of Rome by his fatal treaty with Stilicho. " Reading between the lines," we can see that all this declamation is but a labored defence of Stilicho's conduct in making a bridge of gold for a retreating foe. That much and angry criticism was excited by this and some similar passages of the great minister's career is evidenced by the words of the contemporary historian Orosius (immedi ately following the mention of Stilicho's name), "I will not speak of King Alaric with his Goths, often defeated, often hemmed in, and always allowed to escape. " Probably, how ever, the criticisms were unjust. Stilicho had a weapon of uncertain temper to wield: legionaries enervated and undis ciplined ; barbarian auxiliaries, some of whom might sym pathize with their northern brethren if they saw them too hardly pressed. It was by skill of fence rather than by mad clashing of sword against sword that the game was to be won ; and it would have been poor policy to have driven the Visi- gothic army to bay, and to have let them discover —
" What reinforcements they might gain from hope ; If not, what resolution from despair. "
The year 405 witnessed the second consulship of Stilicho, and another great inroad of barbarians. Alaric was not the leader in this new invasion ; he was at this time, according to one authority, quartered in Epirus, and concerting measures with Stilicho for a joint attack on the Eastern Empire. The new invader is a wild figure bearing the name of Radagaisus, a Goth, but not of Alaric's following, though formerly his con federate. This man, " far the most savage of all past or present enemies of Rome," was known to be fanatically devoted to the false deities of his heathen ancestors ; and as the tidings came that he, with his 200,000 or some said 400,000 followers, had crossed the Alps, and was vowing to satiate his fierce gods with the blood of all who bore the Roman name, a terrible despair seized all the fair cities of Italy.
However, Rome's hour of doom had not yet come. The fierce barbarian horde, instead of marching along the Lom bard plain to Rimini, and thence by the comparatively easy Flaminian Way to Rome, chose the nearer but difficult route across the Tuscan Apennines. Stilicho marched against them, and succeeded in hemming them in, in the rugged hill coun try, where, owing to the shortness of provisions, their very
STILICHO AND ALARTC. 363
numbers were their ruin. Without incurring any of the risks of battle, the Roman army, " eating, drinking, sporting " (says Orosius), for some days kept watch over 200,000 starving men, till at last Radagaisus gave up the game, and tried to steal away from his camp. He fell into the hands of the Roman soldiery, was kept prisoner for a little time, — perhaps with some thought of his decking the triumph of Consul Stilicho, — and then put to death. His unhappy followers were sold for an aureus (about twelve shillings sterling) apiece, like the poorest cattle ; but owing to the privations which they had endured, they died off so fast that the purchasers (as Orosius tells us with grim satisfaction) took no gain of money, having to spend on the burial of their captives the money which they had grudged for their purchase. And thus ended the invasion of Radagaisus.
The two great invasions of Alaric and Radagaisus effected little directly against Italy; but by compelling Stilicho to weaken his line on the Rhenish frontier, they indirectly caused the empire to lose three mighty provinces in the West. While those two chieftains have been crying "check" to the king, castles and knights and bishops have been ruthlessly swept off a distant portion of the board.
Such was the state of affairs when the scene was suddenly changed by the death of Arcadius, the Emperor of the East. For some months, perhaps years, before his death, strange and unintelligible transactions had taken place between Stilicho and Alaric. Stung by the repeated insults and embittered by the persistent hostility of the Eastern court, — anxious also to repay them in kind for their attempt, by means of Gildo's trea son, to separate Africa from the dominions of his master, — the Roman general appears to have actually contemplated the design of joining the Gothic king in the invasion of Epirus, and thus by barbarian aid uniting Eastern Illyricum to the Western Empire. This invasion, if ever in truth projected, was stopped by a false report of the death of Alaric, and by the too true intelligence of the revolt of the British army under Constantine. —
Alaric, who had actually entered Epirus,
an invader or ally, neither he himself nor any contemporary statesman could, perhaps, have accurately explained, — appear ing on the northeastern horizon of Italy, demanded pay for his unfinished enterprise.
but whether as
364 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
The Emperor, the Senate, Stilicho, assembled at Rome to consider what answer should be given to the ambassadors of the Visigoth. Many senators advised war rather than peace purchased by such disgraceful concessions. The Senator Lam- pridius, a man of high birth and character, exclaimed indig nantly, "iVon est ista pax sed pactio servitutu'" (That is no peace, but a mere selling of yourselves into slavery). Stilicho's voice, strange to say, was all for an amicable settlement. Partly persuaded that Alaric really deserved some reparation for the loss he had sustained through the fluctuation of the imperial counsels, but more unwilling to oppose a courageous " no " to the advice of the all-powerful minister, the Senate acquiesced in his decision, and ordered payment of 4000 pounds of gold (about £160,000 sterling) to the ambassadors of Alaric.
The position of Stilicho was at this time one of great appar ent stability. Though his daughter, the Empress Maria, was dead, her place had been supplied by another daughter, Ther- mantia, who, it might reasonably be supposed, could secure her feeble husband's loyalty to her father. With Alaric for his friend, with Arcadius, who had been drilled by his ministers into hostility, dead, it might have seemed that there was no quarter from whence danger could menace the supremacy of the great minister.
This security, however, was but in appearance. Honorius was beginning to chafe under the yoke ; perhaps even his brother's death made Stilicho seem less necessary to his safety. An adverse influence, too, of which the minister suspected nothing, had sprung up in the imperial court. Olympius, a native of some town on the Euxine shore, had ascended, through Stilicho's patronage, to some high position in the household. This man, who, according to Zosimus, " under the appearance of Christian piety concealed a great deal of rascal ity," was now whispering away the character of his benefactor. With him seem to have cooperated the clergy, who sincerely disapproved of Honorius's marriage with the sister of the late Empress; and who also had imbibed a strange notion that Eucherius, the son of Stilicho, was a pagan at heart, and medi tated, should he one day succeed to power, the restoration of the ancient idolatry. Strange to say, the pagans also had their reasons for disliking the same all-powerful family.
and Serena had despoiled heathen temples. ]
[Stilicho
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 365
Thus did the two religions, the old and the new, unite in muttered discontent against the great captain. The people also, wounded and perplexed by the strange scene in the Sen ate, and the consequent payment to Alaric, had perhaps lost some of their former confidence in the magic of his name. On the other hand, the army, whose demoralized condition was probably the real cause of his policy of non-resistance, and whom his stern rule had alone made in any measure efficacious against the barbarian, were some of them growing restive under the severity of his discipline. Partially, too, we can discern the workings of a spirit of jealousy among the Roman legionaries against the Teutonic comrades by whom they found themselves surrounded and often outstripped in the race for promotion. Stilicho's own Vandal origin would naturally exacerbate this feeling, and would render unpardonable in him preferences which might have been safely manifested by Theodosius. At Ticinum (the modern Pavia) the troops were thoroughly alien ated from Stilicho; and at Bologna, whither Honorius had journeyed from Ravenna, the soldiers broke out into open mutiny. Stilicho, being summoned by the Emperor, sup pressed the revolt, and either threatened or actually inflicted the dread punishment of decimation, the ultima ratio of a Roman general.
In the midst of this quicksand of suspicions and disaffec- tions three facts were clear and solid. The usurper Constan- tine (Britain's contribution to the difficulties of Rome) was steadily advancing through Gaul toward the capital, and had, in fact, already established himself at Aries. Alaric, though he had received the 4000 golden librae, hovered still nearer the frontier, and was evidently wearying for a fight with some enemy. Arcadius was dead : the guardianship of the little Theodosius was a tempting prize, and one which the dying words of his grandfather might possibly be held to confer upon the great Vandal minister. Honorius proposed to journey to the East, and assume this guardianship himself ; but Stilicho drew out so formidable an account of the expenditure necessary for the journey of so majestic a being, that the august cipher, who was probably at heart afraid of the dangers of the way, abandoned his project. Stilicho's scheme, we are told, was to employ Alaric in suppressing the revolt of Constantine, while he himself went eastwards to settle the affairs of the young Emperor at Constantinople. Honorius gave his consent to both
366 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
parts of the scheme, wrote the needed letters for Alaric and Theodosius, and then set off with Olympius for Ticinum. The minister, conscious that he was beset by some dangers, but ignorant of the treachery of Olympius, neither removed the mutinous soldiery from Ticinum, nor set forth to assume the command of the armies of the East, but, with strange irresolu tion, lingered on still at Ravenna. That irresolution proved his ruin.
[Olympius raised a mutiny among the soldiers at Ticinum, which ended in a massacre, in which many leading officers of Stilicho's party were slain,
with many citizens. ]
The best defence of Stilicho's loyalty is to be found in his own conduct when he heard of the mutiny of Ticinum. The news found him at Bologna ; perhaps he had escorted the Emperor so far on his westward journey. He called a council of war, composed of the generals of the barbarian auxiliaries. All felt themselves alike threatened by this murderous out break of bastard Roman patriotism. The first report stated that the Emperor himself was dead. " Then," said all, — and Stilicho approved the decision, — "on behalf of the violated taeramentum, let us march and avenge his murder on the mutineers. " But when a correcter version of the events reached them, Stilicho refused to avenge the massacre of his friends only, the Emperor being unharmed, and loudly declared that to lead barbarians to an attack on the Roman army was, in his opinion, neither righteous nor expedient.
To this resolution he steadfastly adhered, though the con viction forced itself upon his mind that Honorius was now incurably alienated from him. Then the barbarian generals, one by one, separated themselves from what they felt to be a doomed cause. Sarus, the Goth, who had fought under Stilicho's orders, now turned against his old chief, made a night attack on his quarters, slaughtered his still faithful Hunnish guards, but reached the general's tent only to find that he had taken horse and ridden off with a few followers for Ravenna. Not for the hand of the ungrateful Sarus was reserved that reward which Olympius was yearning to pay for the head of his rival.
Stilicho, though a fugitive, seems still to be more anxious for the safety of the Empire than for his own. As he passes city after city, where the wives and children of the barbarian
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 367
soldiers are kept as hostages for their fidelity, he adjures the magistrates not on any pretence to allow one of the barbarians to enter. He enters Ravenna ; shortly after his arrival come messengers bearing letters written by the Emperor, under the steady pressure of Olympius, commanding that Stilicho shall be arrested and kept in honorable confinement without bonds. Informed of the arrival of this mandate, he took refuge by night in a Christian church. When day dawned the soldiers entered the building ; on their solemn assurance, ratified by an oath, sworn in the presence of the bishop, that the Emperor's orders extended not to his death but only to the placing him under guard, Stilicho surrendered himself. Once out of the sanctuary, and entirely in the power of the soldiers, he learned the arrival of a second letter from Honorius, to the effect that his crimes against the state were judged deserving of death. The barbarian troops, who yet surrounded him, his slaves, his friends, wished still to resist with the sword ; but this he utterly forbade, and by threats, and the still lingering terror of his brow, he compelled his defenders to desist. Then, in some what of a martyr's spirit, and with a heart already broken by man's ingratitude, and weary of life, he offered his neck to the sword of the executioner, and in a moment "that good gray head, which all men knew," was rolling in the dust. [August
23, 408. ]
" So died," says Zosimus (v. 34), " the man who was more
moderate than any others who bore rule in that time. "
The circumstances of Stilicho's death naturally recall to
our minds "The Death of Wallenstein. " The dull, suspicious Honorius is replaced by Ferdinand II. , Olympius by the elder Piccolomini, Sarus by Butler, Alaric by Wrangel, Stilicho him self by the great Duke of Friedland. Only let not the parallel mislead us as to the merits of the chief actors. Wallenstein was at length disloyal to Ferdinand ; Stilicho was never untrue to Honorius.
That he was a brave and hardy soldier and a skillful general is virtually confessed by all. That his right hand was free from bribes and unjust exactions, only his flatterers assert, and we need not believe. That he was intensely tenacious of power, that he imposed his will in all things on the poor puppet Honorius, is clear, and also that the necessities of the state amply justified him in doing so. The inveterate hatred which existed between him and each successive minister of Arcadius
368 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
certainly hastened the downfall of the Empire, and it is difficult to believe that there might not have been a better understand ing between them had he so desired.
The accusations of secret confederacy with Alaric would seem mere calumnies if it were not for the painful scene in the Senate and Lampridius's indignant ejaculation, "JVon est ista pax sed pactio servitutis. " Without imputing actual disloyalty to Stilicho, we may perceive in him, ever after the terrible slaughter and doubtful combat of Pollentia, a disinclination to push Alaric to extremities, a feeling which seems to have been fully reciprocated by his great antagonist. Possibly some such involuntary tribute of respectful fear would have been mutually paid by Napoleon and Wellington had Waterloo been a drawn battle. Stilicho may also have remembered too faithfully that the East had given Alaric his first vantage ground against Rome ; and he may have been too ready to keep that barbaric weapon unblunted, to be used on occasion against Constanti nople. Yet on a review of his whole life, when contemplating the circumstances of his death, preeminently when observing the immediate change which his removal from the chessboard produced upon the whole fortunes of the game, with confidence we feel entitled to say, " This man remained faithful to his Emperor, and was the great defence of Rome. " Cruel tortures, inflicted by the command of Olympius, failed to elicit from any of Stilicho's party the least hint of his having conceived any treasonable designs.
It is plain, however, that justly or unjustly the name of the deceased minister was connected with the policy of conciliation towards the barbarians and employment of auxiliaries from among them. As soon as the death of Stilicho was announced, the purely Roman legionaries rose and took a noble revenge for the affronts which they may have received at the hands of their Teutonic fellow-soldiers. In every city where the wives and children of these auxiliaries were dwelling, the legionaries rushed in and murdered them. The inevitable result was, that the auxiliaries, a band of 30,000 men, inheriting the bar barian vigor, and adding to that whatever remained of Roman military skill, betook themselves to the camp of Alaric, and prayed him to lead them to the vengeance for which they hun gered.
But it is a characteristic of the strange period upon which we are now entering (408-410) that no one of the chief person
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 369
ages seems willing to play the part marked out for him. Alaric, who had before crossed mountains and rivers in obedience to the prophetic voice, " penetrabis ad urbem," now, when the game is clearly in his hands, hesitates and hangs back. Hono- rius shows a degree of firmness in his refusal to treat with the barbarians, which, had it been justified by the slightest traces of military capacity or of intelligent adaptation of means to ends, and had his own person not been safe from attack behind the ditches of Ravenna, might have been almost heroic. And both alike, the fears of the brave and the courage of the coward, have one result, to make the final catastrophe more complete and more appalling.
Alaric's Three Sieges of Rome.
A few weeks were probably spent in the fruitless negotia tions between Alaric and Honorius after the murder of Stilicho. Then the Visigothic king finally decided to play the great game, and while it was still early autumn crossed the Julian Alps and descended into the plains of Italy to try once more if that voice were true which was ever sounding in his ears, " penetrabis ad urbem. "
While he was proceeding by rapid marches towards Rome, laying waste all the open country, and plundering the towns and villages, none of which was strong enough to close its gates against him, a man in the garb of a monk suddenly appeared in the royal tent.
The holy man warned him in solemn tones to refrain from the perpetration of such atrocities, and no longer to delight in slaughter and blood. To whom Alaric replied, " I am impelled to this course in spite of myself : for something within urges me every day irresistibly onwards, saying, Proceed to Rome and make that city desolate. "
Alaric meanwhile pressed on, and soon, probably in the month of September, he stood before the walls of Rome and commenced his First Siege of the City.
The actual appearance of the skin-clothed barbarians within sight of the Capitol, so long the inviolate seat of Empire, found the Senate resourceless and panic-stricken. One only sugges tion, the cruel thought of coward hearts, was made. Serena, the widow of Stilicho, still lived in Rome. Her husband had made a league with Alaric : might not she traitorously open
to him the gates of the city ? Unable, apparently, among the vol. vii. — 24
370 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
million or so inhabitants of Rome to find a sufficient guard for one heartbroken widow, they decreed that Serena should be strangled. "
But (as Zosimus sarcastically remarks) not even the de struction of Serena caused Alaric to desist from the blockade. " The course of the Tiber was watched so that no provisions should be brought into the city from above or from below. Day after day they looked forth towards the northeastern horizon, expecting help from Ravenna, but it came not. The daily portion of food allotted to each citizen was reduced to one half, then to one third, of its ordinary quantity. To famine was added sickness ; and then, when the surrounding enemy made it impossible to bury the dead outside the walls, the city itself became one vast sepulchre, and pestilence arose from the streets and squares covered with decaying corpses.
At length, when they had tried every other loathsome means of satisfying hunger, and were not far from cannibalism, they determined to send an embassy to the enemy. The language which the ambassadors were directed to use had in it some what of the ring of the old world-conquering republic's voice : " The Roman people were prepared to make peace on moderate terms, but were yet more prepared for war. They had arms in their hands, and from long practice in their use had no reason to dread the result of battle. " These swelling words of vanity only provoked the mirth of Alaric, who had served under the eagles, and knew what the Roman populace's " practice in the use of arms " amounted to. With a loud Teutonic laugh he exclaimed, " Thick grass is easier mowed than thin. "
After much ridicule showered upon the ambassadors who had brought so magnanimous a message, business was resumed, and they contrived again to inquire as to the terms of a " mod erate peace. " The Goth's announcement of his conditions was, says Zosimus, "beyond even the insolence of a barbarian. " "Deliver to me all the gold that your city contains, all the silver, all the movable property that I may find there, and moreover all your slaves of barbarian origin: otherwise I desist not from the siege. " Said one of the ambassadors, "But if you take all these things, what do you leave to the citizens ? " Alaric, still in a mood for grim jesting, replied in one gruff word 8aivalo8, "your souls" [or "your lives"].
The ambassadors returned to the Senate with their message of despair. The Senate, enervated by centuries of powerless
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 371
sycophancy, found themselves compelled to look forth upon a horizon blacker than their heroic ancestors had seen after the terrible day of Cannae.
At length, after much discussion, Alaric consented to allow the city to ransom herself by a payment of 5000 pounds' weight of gold, 30,000 of silver, 4000 silken tunics, 3000 hides dyed scarlet, and 3000 pounds of pepper. It is a strange catalogue of the things which were objects of desire to a nation emerging from barbarism. The pepper suggests the conjecture that the Gothic appetite had already lost some of its original keenness in the fervent southern lands.
And so ended the First Gothic siege of Rome, a siege in which no swords were crossed, no blood drawn. Famine was the only weapon used by Alaric.
After this matter of the payment was settled, the future relations between the people of Rome and the Gothic king came under discussion. No one hinted now (nor for two gen erations later) at making the barbarian ruler of any part of Italy. But to constitute him the permanent champion of Rome; to conclude a strict offensive and defensive alliance with one whose sword weighed so heavily in the scale ; in fact, to revert to and carry further the policy of Stilicho, which these very Romans had probably been among the loud est in condemning, — this did seem to the Senate a wise rec ognition of existing facts, a chance of saving the majesty of Rome from further humiliation. And such doubtless it was, and Theodosius himself, or Constantine, seeing Alaric's un feigned eagerness for such an alliance, would have concluded it with gladness. But all the endeavors of statesmanship were foiled by the impenetrable stolidity of Honorius, who could not make either war or peace, nor could comprehend the existence of any danger to the Empire so long as his sacred person was unharmed.
The Senate sent an embassy to the Emperor to represent to him the piteous condition of the Mistress of the World, and implore him to consent to the treaty with Alaric. Honorius tore himself away for a few hours from his poultry, heard ap parently without emotion the sufferings of his people, gave a step in official rank to two of the ambassadors, and declined their request. As soon as the news of this refusal reached Alaric he recommenced the blockade of the city.
372 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
Practically all power centered in Jovius [who had supplanted Olympius] ; and Jovius, as having overthrown the enemy of StUicho, and also as having been of old "guest-friend" of Alaric in Epirus, had peculiar facilities for effecting that accommodation with the Visigothic king which the state imperatively required. With the Emperor's consent he invited Alaric to a conference, which was held at Rimini, about thirty Roman miles from Ravenna. [Terms were fixed for an accommodation . ]
In transmitting these demands to his master, Jovius gave a secret hint that probably if Alaric himself were gratified with some high official position, such as that of Magiiter Utriusque Militice (Captain-General of Horse and Foot), he would be found willing to abate considerably from the stringency of his demands. To this Honorius replied, — and for once we do hear a man's voice, though not a wise man's, — "You have behaved hastily in this matter. Payments of gold and subsi dies of corn belong to your duty as pretorian prefect, and I do not blame you for having arranged these according to your own judgment. But military command it is mine alone to bestow, and I hold it unfitting that such offices as you name should ever be held by Alaric or any of his race. "
This letter arrived when Jovius and Alaric were conversing. Was it pique against the Emperor, was it despair, was it mere folly, that impelled the minister to read it from the beginning to the end in the hearing of the Visigoth ? Alaric listened to all the rest of the letter patiently enough, but when he heard the scornful close he broke off the negotiations abruptly, and declared that he would revenge on Rome herself the insult offered to himself and his race.
Jovius, whose conduct is a perfect mystery of needless vil lainy, — who, in short, behaved exactly like an Italian states man of the sixteenth century who had lost his Machiavel, — rushed back to Ravenna, and induced the Emperor to take an oath that he would conclude no peace with Alaric, but would wage against him perpetual war. When Honorius had taken this oath, Jovius, touching the Emperor's head, repeated the same words, and all who held high office in the state were com pelled to follow his example. And yet every one of these men in his secret heart knew that a just and honorable peace with Alaric was the only chance of rescuing Rome from impending destruction.
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 373
Honorius made some feeble preparations for war, enrolled 10,000 Huns in his armies, imported cattle and sheep from Dalmatia for the provisionment of Ravenna, and sent some scouts to watch the progress of the Gothic army towards Rome.
But again Alaric, though duped and insulted, was seized by one of those strange qualms of awe or compassion which so often might have saved the Imperial City. He offered in fact to abate three provinces, Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia, from his former demand, and to be satisfied with the two Noricums alone [Austria proper, Styria, and Corinthia], provinces already so wasted by barbarian invasions as to be of very small value to the treasury. He asked for no office or dignity, civil or mili tary, nor even for gold, but only for such a supply of rations to his troops as the Emperor himself should consider reason able ; and in return for these slight concessions he promised friendship and military assistance against any enemy who might arise to trouble the peace of Honorius and his Romans. The moderation of Alaric excited general surprise, for in truth his demands were such as an Augustus might almost have con ceded to an Arminius, or a Trajan to a Decebalus ; but, for some reason hidden from us, Jovius and his creatures did not dare to advise their acceptance. The Visigoth, pale with rage at the tidings of the refusal of his request, set to work without further forbearance to commence the Second Siege of the City.
The second siege of Rome by Alaric is one of the surprises of history. With the remembrance of the terrible famine and pestilence which accompanied the first siege vividly before us, with the knowledge of the repeated insults since then inflicted upon the Visigothic king, we expect to see some great and dole ful tragedy enacted upon the Seven Hills. Far from it : the curtain is drawn up, and we behold, instead of a tragedy, a burlesque, the title whereof is " The Ten Months' Emperor, or Attalus the ^Esthetic. "
The citizens of Rome saw once more the Gothic army encamped around their walls, Ostia occupied, the large stores of provisions there collected taken possession of by the barba rians. They had no desire to see the experiments of last year as to the possible articles of human diet repeated ; they began to ask themselves, very naturally, "Since Honorius does nothing to protect us, and since he can neither make war nor peace with Alaric, but only shuts himself up behind the ditches of Ravenna, leaving us to bear all the burden of the war, why should we
374 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
suffer any more in his quarrel ? " They explained their feelings to the king of the Goths, and speedily an arrangement was made which seemed likely to satisfy all parties. The Imperial City formally renounced her allegiance to Honorius, and be stowed the purple and the diadem on Attalus, the Prefect of the City, who as Augustus at once concluded the long-desired treaty of peace with Alaric.
[Attalus' head was turned, and he tried to act as a real — and foolish — emperor. ]
The patience of Alaric gave way. He marched back to Rimini, his nearest outpost towards Ravenna, commanded Attalus to wait upon him, and there, in the plain outside the town, in sight of the Gothic army and the Roman inhabitants, he stripped him of his diadem and purple robe, and proclaimed that he was degraded to the condition of a private citizen. The unhappy Greek, so proudly self-inflated and so ignominiously collapsing, had reigned for something less than a year.
Alaric, in order to give Honorius visible tokens of the change in his policy, sent to the court of Ravenna the imperial ensigns which he had stripped from his dethroned client. The officers also who had received their commands from the usurper, restored their military belts to the legitimate Emperor, and humbly implored his forgiveness. "And now, surely," any discriminating observer might have thought "a just and honorable peace will be concluded between Alaric and Hono rius, and Italy will rest from her anguish. " The hindrance to the fulfillment of these hopes came this time from Sarus the Goth. With 300 chosen warriors he entered Ravenna and exerted all his influence to break off the negotiations between Honorius and the Visigoths. He succeeded: Alaric retired from the conferences and marched southwards, this time in deadly earnest, intent upon the Third Siege of Rome.
Of this, the crowning act of the great drama, the real end of old Rome, the real beginning of modern history, it must be confessed that we scarcely know more than we do of the fall of Babylon. Rome, which had described with such eager minute ness the death pangs of a hundred cities which she had taken, has left untold the story of her own overthrow.
Alaric was spared, this time, the necessity of reducing the city by a slow blockade. On the night of the 24th of August, it would seem almost immediately after his appearance before the walls, his troops burst in by the Salarian Gate. The splendid palace of Sallust was set on fire.
STUJCHO AND ALARIC.
375
It was said in a preceding chapter that we must not think of the Visigoths as savages, scarcely even, except in the classi cal sense of the word, as barbarians. Now, however, that they have entered Rome, now that, after years of waiting and march ing and diplomatizing, the prize is at last theirs, the accumu lated treasures of the world at their feet, and few days in which to pick them up, we may have to fall back for a time upon that more popular conception of their character. Though the soldiers of Alaric were ministers of mercy when compared with those of Alva or Tilly, we cannot doubt that brutality and outrage of every kind marked their entrance into the con quered city.
The amount of injury done by the Goths to the city itself it is not easy to determine. Writers who were remote from the scene and declamatory in their style speak as if the whole city had been wrapped in flames, every building shattered, nothing left but ruins. It is easy to see from subsequent descriptions of the appearance of the city that this is a gross exaggeration ; and it is a priori most improbable that the Goths, who only stayed a short time in Rome, and had much plundering to accomplish in that time, should have devoted so large a part of their energies to the destruction of mere buildings. Orosius, writing history as an advocate, and having to maintain the thesis that Rome had not suffered since her conversion to Christianity greater calami ties than befell her in her pagan times, is not, it must be ad mitted, an entirely trustworthy witness on this point. But he, a contemporary writer, distinctly says that " the destruction wrought by fire at the hands of the Gothic conqueror was not to be compared with that caused by accident in the 700th year from the foundation of the city. " This verdict seems a probable one, and may support a conjecture that Rome suffered less, externally, from the barbarians in 410, than Paris from the leaders of the Commune in 1871.
Alaric and his Goths pressed on still southwards into Brut- tii, the modern Calabria. They collected some ships at Reggio — intending to invade Sicily, some historians say ; to pass on thence into Africa, says Jornandes the Goth. There can be lit tle doubt that he is right, that Africa was the present object of Alaric's attack. Not necessarily, however, the ultimate object. His military instinct showed him that there, in the great gran ary of Rome, must the question of dominion over the Eternal City be decided. He was going, then, to Africa, but doubtless with the intention of returning to Rome.
376 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
But whatever might be his intentions, they were frustrated. This wave of Teutonic invasion had reached its extreme limit at Reggio, and was henceforward to recede. " Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind " was perhaps the jubi lant cry of the inhabitants of Messina, when they saw a great storm arise, by which Alaric's fleet was dashed to pieces, and a considerable part of his army, already embarked thereon,
The Visigothic king could not bring himself to ac knowledge defeat, even by the elements. He lingered near Reggio, still perhaps dreaming of conquests beyond the seas. Suddenly, in the midst of his warlike schemes, Death surprised him. We are told nothing as to the nature of his malady, ex cept that it was of short duration. It is probable that in his case, as in that of so many other Northern invaders of Italy, climate proved itself mightier than armies, and that Fever was the great avenger.
The well-known story of the burial of Alaric derives some additional interest from the remembrance of his birthplace. He was born, as the reader may remember, on an island at the mouth of one of the greatest rivers of Europe. The flow of the broad but sluggish Danube, the sound of the wind in the pine trees, the distant thunder of the Euxine upon its shore, — these were the sounds most familiar to the ear of the young Visigoth. Now that he had swept with resistless force from the Black Sea to the Straits of Messina, a river must flow over his grave as it had encircled his cradle. Forth from the high pine woods of the Calabrian mountain range of Sila leaps the stream of the Bu- sento, which, meeting the larger river Crati coming from the Apennines, encircles the town of Cosenza, where the great Visi goth met his death. To provide their leader with a tomb which no Italian hand should desecrate, the barbarians compelled a number of their captives to labor at diverting the Busento from its ordinary channel. In the dry bed of the river they dug the grave, in which, amid many of the chosen spoils of Rome, the body of Alaric was laid. The captives were then ordered to turn the river back into its ancient course, and their faithful guardianship of the grim secret was secured by the inviolable seal of death printed upon their lips. So, under the health-bring ing waters of the rapid Busento, sleeps Ala-Reiks the Visigoth, equaled, may it not be said, by only three men in succeeding times as a changer of the course of history. And these three are Mohammed, Columbus, Napoleon.
destroyed.
Upon the Ruins
From the painting by Jean Paul Laurens
THE RUINS OF ROME. 377
THE RUINS OF ROME. By LORD BYRON.
(From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. ")
[Lord George Noel Gordow Byron : A famous English poet ; born in London, January 22, 1788. At the age of ten he succeeded to the estate and title of his granduncle William, fifth Lord Byron. He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, and in 1807 published his first volume of poems, " Hours of Idleness. " After a tour through eastern Europe he brought out two cantos of "Childe Harold," which met with instantaneous success, and soon after he married the heiress Miss Millbanke. The union proving unfortunate, Byron left England, and passed several years in Italy. In 1823 he joined the Greek insur gents in Cephalonia, and later at Missolonghi, where he died of a fever April 19, 1824. His chief poetical works"are : "Childe Harold," "Don Juan," "Manfred," "Cain," "Marino Faliero," Sardanapalus," "The Giaour," "Bride of Aby- dos," "The Corsair," "Lara," and "Mazeppa. "]
0 Eome, my country ! city of the soul !
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires ! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferings ? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and empires, Ye
Whose agonies are creatures of a day !
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
The Niobe of nations ! There she stands, Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe ;
An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago : The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now ;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow,
Old Tiber ! through a marble wilderness ?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress !
The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride ;
She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol ; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site : Chaos of ruins ! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, " Here was, or is," where all is doubly night ?
378 THE RUINS OF ROME.
' The double night of ages, and of her,
Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap
All around us ; we but feel our way to err :
The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap :
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer Stumbling o'er recollections : now we clap"
Our hands, and cry, "Eureka ! it is clear — When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.
Alas, the lofty city ! and alas,
The trebly hundred triumphs, and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away ! Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page ! but these shall be Her resurrection : all beside, decay.
Alas for earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! . . .
Cypress and ivy, weed and wall flower grown. Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped
On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steeped In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,
Deeming it midnight : — Temples, baths, or halls ? Pronounce who can ; for all that Learning reaped
From her research hath been, that these are walls — Behold the Imperial Mount ! 'tis thus the mighty falls.
There is the moral of all human tales ; 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First Freedom and then Glory — when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last. And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page, — 'tis better written here , Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed
All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask — Away with words ! draw near,
Admire, exult — despise — laugh, weep — for here There is such matter for all feeling : — Man !
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear, Ages and realms are crowded in this span,
THE RUINS OF ROME.
This mountain, whose obliterated plan The pyramid of empires pinnacled,
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van
Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled !
Where are its golden roofs ! where those who dared to build ?
Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou nameless column with the buried base !
What are the laurels of the Caesars' brow ? Crown me with ivy from his dwelling place. Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
Titus' or Trajan's ? No — 'tis that of Time : Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace
Scoffing ; and apostolic statues climb
To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,
Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
And looking to the stars : they had contained
A spirit which with these would find a home,
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned, The Roman globe, for after none sustained,
But yielded back his conquests : — he was more Than a mere Alexander, and, unstained
With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues — still we Trajan's name adore.
Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place
Where Rome embraced her heroes ? where the steep
Tarpeian ? fittest goal of Treason's race,
The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap Cured all ambition. Did the conquerors heap
Their spoils here ? Yes ; and in yon field below, A thousand years of silenced factions sleep —
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes — burns with Cicero !
The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood : Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of empire in the bud
To that when further worlds to conquer failed ; But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes ; Till every lawless soldier who assailed
Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes, Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. . . .
380
THE RUINS OF ROME.
Arches on arches ! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands ; the moonbeams shine As 'twere its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation ; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, Floats o'er this vast and wonderous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. . . .
A ruin — yet what ruin ! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared ;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared ?
Alas ! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared :
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man have reft away.
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there ;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night breeze waves along the air. The garland forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head;
When the light shines serene but doth not glare,
Then in this magic circle raise the dead :
Heroes have trod this spot — 'tis on their dust ye tread.
" While stands the Coliseum, Eome shall stand ; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall ;
And when Rome falls — the World. " From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
THE PASSING OF HUMANITY. 881
Ancient ; and these three mortal things are still On their foundations, and unaltered all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
The World, the same wide den — of thieves, or what ye will.
THE PASSING OF HUMANITY.
Bt PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
356 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
any doubt. As Jornandes says, " The new king taking counsel with his people, decided to carve out for themselves new king doms rather than, through sloth, to continue the subjects of others. "
And little as they knew what they were doing, the flaxen- haired barbarians who in the Illyrian plains raised amid shouts of Thiudans, Thiudans, (" the king ! the king ! ") the shield upon which Alaric stood erect, were in fact upheaving into reality the stately monarchy of Spain, with her Pelayos and San Fernandos, her Alonzos and Conquistadors, her Ferdinand and Isabella, with Columbus landing at Guanahani, and Vasco Nunez wading knee-deep into the new-found ocean of the Pacific to take possession of its waves and shores for Spain. All these sights, and, alas, also her Inquisition, her autos-da-fe, her wrecked Armada, the impotence and bankruptcy of Iberia in these latter days, might have passed before the unsealed eyes of a seer, had there been such an one among those Gothic warriors ; for all these things were to spring from that day's decision.
Alaric struck first at the East. In one, or more probably two, expeditions (395 and 396) he pushed south from the old outworn battlefield of Moesia, penetrated Thessaly, passed the unguarded defile of Thermopylae, and, according to the heathen enthusiast Zosimus, " having gathered all his troops round the sacred city of Athens, he was about to proceed to the assault. When lo ! he beheld Athene Promachus, just as she is repre sented in her statues, clothed in full armor, going round about the walls thereof, and Achilles standing upon the battlements, with that aspect of divine rage and thirst for battle which Homer ascribes to him when he heard of the death of Patroclus. Awestruck at the sight, Alaric desisted from his warlike enter prise, signaled for truce, and concluded a treaty with the Athenians. After which he entered the city in peaceful guise with a few of his followers, was hospitably entertained by the chief inhabitants, received presents from them, and departed, leaving both Athens and Attica untouched by the ravages of war. "
He did not turn homewards, however, but penetrated into Peloponnesus, where Corinth, Argos, and Sparta all fell before him.
The precise details of these campaigns are difficult to re cover, and happily lie beyond our horizon. What is important
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 357
for us is their bearing on the relations between the two minis ters, Stilicho and Rufinus. The latter is accused, and with too great a concurrence of testimony to allow us to reject it as a mere fabrication of his enemies, of having actually invited Alaric to invade his master's dominions, or, at any rate, of hav ing smoothed Alaric's passage into Greece in order to remove him from his too menacing neighborhood to Constantinople. He was jealous of the overshadowing power of Stilicho, he was too conscious of his own intense unpopularity with all classes ; even the dumb loyalty of his master was beginning to fail him. Surrounded by so many dangers, Rufinus seems to have con ceived the desperate idea of playing off one barbarian against another, of saving himself from the Vandal Stilicho by means of Alaric the Goth.
Stilicho, who still commanded the greater part of the united force of both empires, had come up with the Goth, and was on the point of giving battle, when letters arrived from Con stantinople, subscribed by the hand of Arcadius, commanding him to desist from further prosecution of the war, to withdraw the legions of Honorius within the limits of the Western Empire, and to send the other half of the army straight to Constantinople. This infatuated decree, which can only be explained by the supposition that Arcadius had really been persuaded of the disloyalty of Stilicho, and feared the rebel more than the barbarian, had been wrung from the Emperor by the cajolery and menaces of Rufinus.
Stilicho obeyed at once, notwithstanding the earnest dis suasions of the soldiers, with a promptness which must surely be allowed to count heavily in proof of his loyalty to the Theo- dosian line and his reluctance to weaken the commonwealth by civil war. The army of the whole Roman Empire had appeared for the last time in one common camp : the Western portion set off for Italy, the Eastern for Constantinople. With deep resentment in their hearts, the latter passed through Thessaly and Macedon, revolving silently a scheme of revenge which, if it passed from the domain of thought into that of uttered words, was faithfully kept from all outside, an army's secret.
[Rufinus was slain by them, the soldier who stabbed him saying, " With this sword Stilicho strikes thee. " Gainas the Goth was the chief agent, and for some years held Rufinus's power. ]
858 STTLICHO AND ALAEIO.
Again, in the year 396, did Stilicho, now commanding only the Western forces, volunteer to deliver Greece from the Visi goths. The outset of the campaign was successful. The greater part of Peloponnesus was cleared of the invader, who was shut up in the rugged mountain country on the confines of Elis and Arcadia. The Roman army was expecting soon to behold him forced by famine to an ignominious surrender, when they discovered that he had pierced the lines of circum- vallation at an unguarded point, and marched with all his plunder northwards to Epirus. What was the cause of this unlooked-for issue of the struggle ? " The disgraceful careless ness of Stilicho," says Zosimus. "He was wasting his time with harlots and buffoons when he should have been keeping close watch on the enemy. " " Treason," hints Orosius. " Orders from Constantinople, where a treaty had been concluded with Alaric," half suggests Claudian, but he does not tell the story as if he himself believed it. The most probable explanation of this and of some similar passages in Stilicho's subsequent career is that Fabian caution cooperated with the instinct of the condottiere against pushing his foe too hard. There was always danger for Rome in driving Alaric to desperation; there was danger privately for Stilicho if the dead Alaric should render him no longer indispensable.
Whatever might be the cause, by the end of 396 Alaric was back again in his Illyrian eyrie ; and thenceforward, what ever threats might be directed towards the East, the actual weight of his arms was felt only by the West. Partly, at least, this is to be accounted for by the almost sublime cowardice of the ministers of Arcadius, who rewarded his Grecian raids by clothing him with the sacred character of an officer of the Empire in their portion of Illyricum. During an interval of quiescence, which lasted apparently about four years, the Visi- gothic king was using the forms of Roman law, the machinery of Roman taxation, the almost unbounded authority of a Roman provincial governor, to prepare the weapon which was one day to pierce the heart of Rome herself.
In the year 400 Stilicho was raised to the consulship. The promotion seems to have come somewhat tardily to one whose power and whose services were so transcendent, but there was perhaps a reluctance to confer this peculiarly Roman office on one so recently sprung from a barbarian stock.
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In the course of the year 400 Alaric descended into Italy with an army, which, as so often in the case of these barbaric campaigns, was not an army, but a nation. Determined not to return to Illyria, but to obtain, by force or persuasion, a settle ment for his people on the Italian soil, he brought with him his wife and children, the families of his warriors, all the spoil which he had taken in Greece, all the treasures which he had accumu lated during his rule in Eastern Illyricum. He marched from Belgrade up the valley of the Save by Laybach and the well- remembered pass of the Pear-Tree.
Because of the comparatively defenceless character of this part of the Italian frontier, the wise forethought of Senate and emperors had planted in this corner of the Venetian plain the great colony, port, and arsenal of Aquileia, whose towers were visible to the soldiers of Alaric's army as they wound round the last spurs of the Julian Alps, descending into the valley of the Isonzo. Aquileia was still the virgin fortress, the Metz of imperial Italy, and not even Alaric was to rob her of her impreg nable glory. A battle took place under her walls, in which the
Romans suffered a disastrous defeat; but the city — we may say with almost absolute certainty — did not surrender. Re membering, it may be, Fridigern's exclamation that " He did not make war upon stone walls," Alaric moved forward through Venetia. Across his road to Rome lay the strong city of Ravenna, guarded by a labyrinth of waters. He penetrated as far as the bridge, afterwards called the bridge of Candidianus, within three miles of the city ; but he eventually retired from the untaken stronghold, and abandoning it would seem for the present his designs on Rome, marched westwards toward Milan.
These operations may perhaps have occupied Alaric from the summer of 400 to that of 401. His progress seems slow and his movements uncertain, but some of the delay may be accounted for by the fact that he was acting in concert with another invader. This was " Radagaisus the Goth," who was operating from the North, and trying to descend into Italy by the Brenner or the Splugen Pass, while Alaric was carrying on the campaign in the East, and endeavoring to reduce the for tresses of Venetia. After several months had been consumed by the Visigoth in his operations before Aquileia and Ravenna, he advanced, in the year 401, up the valley of the Po, and besieged Honorius either in Milan or possibly in the strong
city of Asti (Asta in Piedmont).
860 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
Throughout the Roman world the consternation was extreme when it was known that the Goths, in overwhelming numbers, were indeed in Italy. A rumor like that of the fall of Sebas- topol after the battle of the Alma, born none knew where, prop agated none knew how, traveled fast over Britain, Gaul, and Spain, to the effect that the daring attempt of Alaric had already succeeded, that the city was even now his prey.
In the course of this Rhaetian campaign, Stilicho seems to have effectually repelled the invading hosts. He not only pushed them back into their settlements by the Danube, but he also raised, in these trans-Alpine provinces and among these half -rebellious tribes, an army which was suited in numbers to its work, " not so great as to be burdensome to Italy or formi dable to its ruler. "
The clouds which have gathered round the movements of both the rival chiefs at length lift, partially, and we find them face to face with one another at Pollentia during the season of Easter, 402. About twenty miles southeast of Turin, on the left bank of the Tanaro, in the great alluvial plain which is here Piedmont, but a little farther east will be Lombardy, still stands the little village of Pollenzo. This was the place which Alaric and his Goths were now besieging. It seems certain that Alaric was taken unawares and forced into a battle which he had not foreseen; and this from a cause which illustrates the strange reactions of the barbaric and civilized influences upon one another in this commencing chaos. On the 4th of
April, Good Friday occurred. Alaric, with his army, Chris tian though Arian, was keeping the day with the accustomed religious observances, when he was attacked and forced to fight by Stilicho's lieutenant, Saulus. This man, the same who fought under Theodosius at the battle of the Frigidus, was by birth an Alan, and was probably surrounded by many of his countrymen, that race of utter savages who once dwelt between the Volga and the Don, and arrested the progress of the Huns, but had now yielded to their uncouth conquerors and rolled on with them over Europe, as fierce and as heathenish as they. The pigmy body of Saulus was linked to a dauntless spirit; every limb was covered with the scars of battle, his face had been flattened by many a club stroke, and his little dark Tartar eyes glowed with angry fire. He knew that suspicions had been entertained of his loyalty to the Empire, and he burned to prove their falsity. Having forced Alaric and his warriors
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to suspend their Paschal devotions, he dashed his cavalry with Hun-like impetuosity against their stately line of battle. At the first onset he fell, and his riderless horse, rushing through the ranks, carried dismay to the hearts of his followers.
The light cavalry on the wings were like to have fled in dis astrous rout, when Stilicho moved forward the steady foot sol diers of the legions from the center, and turned, says Claudian, defeat into victory. The Gothic rout (if we may trust Clau- dian's story of the battle) soon became a disastrous flight. The Roman soldiers, eager for revenge, were scarce diverted from their purpose by the rich stores of plunder which were thrown in their way by the despairing fugitives. Every trophy of the barbarian but added fury to the Roman pursuit, reviving as it did the bitter memories of Roman humiliation; and this fury reached its height when, amid a store of other splendid apparel, the purple garments of the murdered Valens were drawn forth to light. Crowds of captives who had followed the chariot of the Gothic king for years now received their freedom, kissed the gory hands of their deliverers, and, revisiting their long deserted homes, looked with wonder on the changes wrought there by Time.
After the vivid and circumstantial account which Claudian gives us of the Roman victory at Pollentia, it is almost humili ating to be obliged to mention that there is some doubt whether it was a Roman victory at all. Probably it was one of those bloody but indecisive combats, like Borodino and Leipzig, in which he who is technically the victor is saved but as by a hair's breadth from defeat. That the battle was no crushing defeat for the Goths seems sufficiently proved by the events which immediately followed it. Stilicho concluded a treaty of some kind with Alaric, and the Gothic king, recrossing the Po, commenced a leisurely retreat through Lombardy. Having arrived at Verona and committed some act which was inter preted as a breach of the treaty, he there, according to Claudian, sustained another severe defeat ; but this engagement is not mentioned by any other writer. As it was, however, he suc ceeded in repassing the Alps, with what proportion of his forces we are quite unable to determine.
Claudian, who is our only authority for this part of the his tory, gives us no accurate details, only pages of declamation about the crushed spirits of the Gothic host, the despair of their leader, and his deep regret at ever having allowed himself
362 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
to be cajoled away from the nearer neighborhood of Rome by his fatal treaty with Stilicho. " Reading between the lines," we can see that all this declamation is but a labored defence of Stilicho's conduct in making a bridge of gold for a retreating foe. That much and angry criticism was excited by this and some similar passages of the great minister's career is evidenced by the words of the contemporary historian Orosius (immedi ately following the mention of Stilicho's name), "I will not speak of King Alaric with his Goths, often defeated, often hemmed in, and always allowed to escape. " Probably, how ever, the criticisms were unjust. Stilicho had a weapon of uncertain temper to wield: legionaries enervated and undis ciplined ; barbarian auxiliaries, some of whom might sym pathize with their northern brethren if they saw them too hardly pressed. It was by skill of fence rather than by mad clashing of sword against sword that the game was to be won ; and it would have been poor policy to have driven the Visi- gothic army to bay, and to have let them discover —
" What reinforcements they might gain from hope ; If not, what resolution from despair. "
The year 405 witnessed the second consulship of Stilicho, and another great inroad of barbarians. Alaric was not the leader in this new invasion ; he was at this time, according to one authority, quartered in Epirus, and concerting measures with Stilicho for a joint attack on the Eastern Empire. The new invader is a wild figure bearing the name of Radagaisus, a Goth, but not of Alaric's following, though formerly his con federate. This man, " far the most savage of all past or present enemies of Rome," was known to be fanatically devoted to the false deities of his heathen ancestors ; and as the tidings came that he, with his 200,000 or some said 400,000 followers, had crossed the Alps, and was vowing to satiate his fierce gods with the blood of all who bore the Roman name, a terrible despair seized all the fair cities of Italy.
However, Rome's hour of doom had not yet come. The fierce barbarian horde, instead of marching along the Lom bard plain to Rimini, and thence by the comparatively easy Flaminian Way to Rome, chose the nearer but difficult route across the Tuscan Apennines. Stilicho marched against them, and succeeded in hemming them in, in the rugged hill coun try, where, owing to the shortness of provisions, their very
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numbers were their ruin. Without incurring any of the risks of battle, the Roman army, " eating, drinking, sporting " (says Orosius), for some days kept watch over 200,000 starving men, till at last Radagaisus gave up the game, and tried to steal away from his camp. He fell into the hands of the Roman soldiery, was kept prisoner for a little time, — perhaps with some thought of his decking the triumph of Consul Stilicho, — and then put to death. His unhappy followers were sold for an aureus (about twelve shillings sterling) apiece, like the poorest cattle ; but owing to the privations which they had endured, they died off so fast that the purchasers (as Orosius tells us with grim satisfaction) took no gain of money, having to spend on the burial of their captives the money which they had grudged for their purchase. And thus ended the invasion of Radagaisus.
The two great invasions of Alaric and Radagaisus effected little directly against Italy; but by compelling Stilicho to weaken his line on the Rhenish frontier, they indirectly caused the empire to lose three mighty provinces in the West. While those two chieftains have been crying "check" to the king, castles and knights and bishops have been ruthlessly swept off a distant portion of the board.
Such was the state of affairs when the scene was suddenly changed by the death of Arcadius, the Emperor of the East. For some months, perhaps years, before his death, strange and unintelligible transactions had taken place between Stilicho and Alaric. Stung by the repeated insults and embittered by the persistent hostility of the Eastern court, — anxious also to repay them in kind for their attempt, by means of Gildo's trea son, to separate Africa from the dominions of his master, — the Roman general appears to have actually contemplated the design of joining the Gothic king in the invasion of Epirus, and thus by barbarian aid uniting Eastern Illyricum to the Western Empire. This invasion, if ever in truth projected, was stopped by a false report of the death of Alaric, and by the too true intelligence of the revolt of the British army under Constantine. —
Alaric, who had actually entered Epirus,
an invader or ally, neither he himself nor any contemporary statesman could, perhaps, have accurately explained, — appear ing on the northeastern horizon of Italy, demanded pay for his unfinished enterprise.
but whether as
364 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
The Emperor, the Senate, Stilicho, assembled at Rome to consider what answer should be given to the ambassadors of the Visigoth. Many senators advised war rather than peace purchased by such disgraceful concessions. The Senator Lam- pridius, a man of high birth and character, exclaimed indig nantly, "iVon est ista pax sed pactio servitutu'" (That is no peace, but a mere selling of yourselves into slavery). Stilicho's voice, strange to say, was all for an amicable settlement. Partly persuaded that Alaric really deserved some reparation for the loss he had sustained through the fluctuation of the imperial counsels, but more unwilling to oppose a courageous " no " to the advice of the all-powerful minister, the Senate acquiesced in his decision, and ordered payment of 4000 pounds of gold (about £160,000 sterling) to the ambassadors of Alaric.
The position of Stilicho was at this time one of great appar ent stability. Though his daughter, the Empress Maria, was dead, her place had been supplied by another daughter, Ther- mantia, who, it might reasonably be supposed, could secure her feeble husband's loyalty to her father. With Alaric for his friend, with Arcadius, who had been drilled by his ministers into hostility, dead, it might have seemed that there was no quarter from whence danger could menace the supremacy of the great minister.
This security, however, was but in appearance. Honorius was beginning to chafe under the yoke ; perhaps even his brother's death made Stilicho seem less necessary to his safety. An adverse influence, too, of which the minister suspected nothing, had sprung up in the imperial court. Olympius, a native of some town on the Euxine shore, had ascended, through Stilicho's patronage, to some high position in the household. This man, who, according to Zosimus, " under the appearance of Christian piety concealed a great deal of rascal ity," was now whispering away the character of his benefactor. With him seem to have cooperated the clergy, who sincerely disapproved of Honorius's marriage with the sister of the late Empress; and who also had imbibed a strange notion that Eucherius, the son of Stilicho, was a pagan at heart, and medi tated, should he one day succeed to power, the restoration of the ancient idolatry. Strange to say, the pagans also had their reasons for disliking the same all-powerful family.
and Serena had despoiled heathen temples. ]
[Stilicho
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Thus did the two religions, the old and the new, unite in muttered discontent against the great captain. The people also, wounded and perplexed by the strange scene in the Sen ate, and the consequent payment to Alaric, had perhaps lost some of their former confidence in the magic of his name. On the other hand, the army, whose demoralized condition was probably the real cause of his policy of non-resistance, and whom his stern rule had alone made in any measure efficacious against the barbarian, were some of them growing restive under the severity of his discipline. Partially, too, we can discern the workings of a spirit of jealousy among the Roman legionaries against the Teutonic comrades by whom they found themselves surrounded and often outstripped in the race for promotion. Stilicho's own Vandal origin would naturally exacerbate this feeling, and would render unpardonable in him preferences which might have been safely manifested by Theodosius. At Ticinum (the modern Pavia) the troops were thoroughly alien ated from Stilicho; and at Bologna, whither Honorius had journeyed from Ravenna, the soldiers broke out into open mutiny. Stilicho, being summoned by the Emperor, sup pressed the revolt, and either threatened or actually inflicted the dread punishment of decimation, the ultima ratio of a Roman general.
In the midst of this quicksand of suspicions and disaffec- tions three facts were clear and solid. The usurper Constan- tine (Britain's contribution to the difficulties of Rome) was steadily advancing through Gaul toward the capital, and had, in fact, already established himself at Aries. Alaric, though he had received the 4000 golden librae, hovered still nearer the frontier, and was evidently wearying for a fight with some enemy. Arcadius was dead : the guardianship of the little Theodosius was a tempting prize, and one which the dying words of his grandfather might possibly be held to confer upon the great Vandal minister. Honorius proposed to journey to the East, and assume this guardianship himself ; but Stilicho drew out so formidable an account of the expenditure necessary for the journey of so majestic a being, that the august cipher, who was probably at heart afraid of the dangers of the way, abandoned his project. Stilicho's scheme, we are told, was to employ Alaric in suppressing the revolt of Constantine, while he himself went eastwards to settle the affairs of the young Emperor at Constantinople. Honorius gave his consent to both
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parts of the scheme, wrote the needed letters for Alaric and Theodosius, and then set off with Olympius for Ticinum. The minister, conscious that he was beset by some dangers, but ignorant of the treachery of Olympius, neither removed the mutinous soldiery from Ticinum, nor set forth to assume the command of the armies of the East, but, with strange irresolu tion, lingered on still at Ravenna. That irresolution proved his ruin.
[Olympius raised a mutiny among the soldiers at Ticinum, which ended in a massacre, in which many leading officers of Stilicho's party were slain,
with many citizens. ]
The best defence of Stilicho's loyalty is to be found in his own conduct when he heard of the mutiny of Ticinum. The news found him at Bologna ; perhaps he had escorted the Emperor so far on his westward journey. He called a council of war, composed of the generals of the barbarian auxiliaries. All felt themselves alike threatened by this murderous out break of bastard Roman patriotism. The first report stated that the Emperor himself was dead. " Then," said all, — and Stilicho approved the decision, — "on behalf of the violated taeramentum, let us march and avenge his murder on the mutineers. " But when a correcter version of the events reached them, Stilicho refused to avenge the massacre of his friends only, the Emperor being unharmed, and loudly declared that to lead barbarians to an attack on the Roman army was, in his opinion, neither righteous nor expedient.
To this resolution he steadfastly adhered, though the con viction forced itself upon his mind that Honorius was now incurably alienated from him. Then the barbarian generals, one by one, separated themselves from what they felt to be a doomed cause. Sarus, the Goth, who had fought under Stilicho's orders, now turned against his old chief, made a night attack on his quarters, slaughtered his still faithful Hunnish guards, but reached the general's tent only to find that he had taken horse and ridden off with a few followers for Ravenna. Not for the hand of the ungrateful Sarus was reserved that reward which Olympius was yearning to pay for the head of his rival.
Stilicho, though a fugitive, seems still to be more anxious for the safety of the Empire than for his own. As he passes city after city, where the wives and children of the barbarian
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soldiers are kept as hostages for their fidelity, he adjures the magistrates not on any pretence to allow one of the barbarians to enter. He enters Ravenna ; shortly after his arrival come messengers bearing letters written by the Emperor, under the steady pressure of Olympius, commanding that Stilicho shall be arrested and kept in honorable confinement without bonds. Informed of the arrival of this mandate, he took refuge by night in a Christian church. When day dawned the soldiers entered the building ; on their solemn assurance, ratified by an oath, sworn in the presence of the bishop, that the Emperor's orders extended not to his death but only to the placing him under guard, Stilicho surrendered himself. Once out of the sanctuary, and entirely in the power of the soldiers, he learned the arrival of a second letter from Honorius, to the effect that his crimes against the state were judged deserving of death. The barbarian troops, who yet surrounded him, his slaves, his friends, wished still to resist with the sword ; but this he utterly forbade, and by threats, and the still lingering terror of his brow, he compelled his defenders to desist. Then, in some what of a martyr's spirit, and with a heart already broken by man's ingratitude, and weary of life, he offered his neck to the sword of the executioner, and in a moment "that good gray head, which all men knew," was rolling in the dust. [August
23, 408. ]
" So died," says Zosimus (v. 34), " the man who was more
moderate than any others who bore rule in that time. "
The circumstances of Stilicho's death naturally recall to
our minds "The Death of Wallenstein. " The dull, suspicious Honorius is replaced by Ferdinand II. , Olympius by the elder Piccolomini, Sarus by Butler, Alaric by Wrangel, Stilicho him self by the great Duke of Friedland. Only let not the parallel mislead us as to the merits of the chief actors. Wallenstein was at length disloyal to Ferdinand ; Stilicho was never untrue to Honorius.
That he was a brave and hardy soldier and a skillful general is virtually confessed by all. That his right hand was free from bribes and unjust exactions, only his flatterers assert, and we need not believe. That he was intensely tenacious of power, that he imposed his will in all things on the poor puppet Honorius, is clear, and also that the necessities of the state amply justified him in doing so. The inveterate hatred which existed between him and each successive minister of Arcadius
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certainly hastened the downfall of the Empire, and it is difficult to believe that there might not have been a better understand ing between them had he so desired.
The accusations of secret confederacy with Alaric would seem mere calumnies if it were not for the painful scene in the Senate and Lampridius's indignant ejaculation, "JVon est ista pax sed pactio servitutis. " Without imputing actual disloyalty to Stilicho, we may perceive in him, ever after the terrible slaughter and doubtful combat of Pollentia, a disinclination to push Alaric to extremities, a feeling which seems to have been fully reciprocated by his great antagonist. Possibly some such involuntary tribute of respectful fear would have been mutually paid by Napoleon and Wellington had Waterloo been a drawn battle. Stilicho may also have remembered too faithfully that the East had given Alaric his first vantage ground against Rome ; and he may have been too ready to keep that barbaric weapon unblunted, to be used on occasion against Constanti nople. Yet on a review of his whole life, when contemplating the circumstances of his death, preeminently when observing the immediate change which his removal from the chessboard produced upon the whole fortunes of the game, with confidence we feel entitled to say, " This man remained faithful to his Emperor, and was the great defence of Rome. " Cruel tortures, inflicted by the command of Olympius, failed to elicit from any of Stilicho's party the least hint of his having conceived any treasonable designs.
It is plain, however, that justly or unjustly the name of the deceased minister was connected with the policy of conciliation towards the barbarians and employment of auxiliaries from among them. As soon as the death of Stilicho was announced, the purely Roman legionaries rose and took a noble revenge for the affronts which they may have received at the hands of their Teutonic fellow-soldiers. In every city where the wives and children of these auxiliaries were dwelling, the legionaries rushed in and murdered them. The inevitable result was, that the auxiliaries, a band of 30,000 men, inheriting the bar barian vigor, and adding to that whatever remained of Roman military skill, betook themselves to the camp of Alaric, and prayed him to lead them to the vengeance for which they hun gered.
But it is a characteristic of the strange period upon which we are now entering (408-410) that no one of the chief person
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ages seems willing to play the part marked out for him. Alaric, who had before crossed mountains and rivers in obedience to the prophetic voice, " penetrabis ad urbem," now, when the game is clearly in his hands, hesitates and hangs back. Hono- rius shows a degree of firmness in his refusal to treat with the barbarians, which, had it been justified by the slightest traces of military capacity or of intelligent adaptation of means to ends, and had his own person not been safe from attack behind the ditches of Ravenna, might have been almost heroic. And both alike, the fears of the brave and the courage of the coward, have one result, to make the final catastrophe more complete and more appalling.
Alaric's Three Sieges of Rome.
A few weeks were probably spent in the fruitless negotia tions between Alaric and Honorius after the murder of Stilicho. Then the Visigothic king finally decided to play the great game, and while it was still early autumn crossed the Julian Alps and descended into the plains of Italy to try once more if that voice were true which was ever sounding in his ears, " penetrabis ad urbem. "
While he was proceeding by rapid marches towards Rome, laying waste all the open country, and plundering the towns and villages, none of which was strong enough to close its gates against him, a man in the garb of a monk suddenly appeared in the royal tent.
The holy man warned him in solemn tones to refrain from the perpetration of such atrocities, and no longer to delight in slaughter and blood. To whom Alaric replied, " I am impelled to this course in spite of myself : for something within urges me every day irresistibly onwards, saying, Proceed to Rome and make that city desolate. "
Alaric meanwhile pressed on, and soon, probably in the month of September, he stood before the walls of Rome and commenced his First Siege of the City.
The actual appearance of the skin-clothed barbarians within sight of the Capitol, so long the inviolate seat of Empire, found the Senate resourceless and panic-stricken. One only sugges tion, the cruel thought of coward hearts, was made. Serena, the widow of Stilicho, still lived in Rome. Her husband had made a league with Alaric : might not she traitorously open
to him the gates of the city ? Unable, apparently, among the vol. vii. — 24
370 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
million or so inhabitants of Rome to find a sufficient guard for one heartbroken widow, they decreed that Serena should be strangled. "
But (as Zosimus sarcastically remarks) not even the de struction of Serena caused Alaric to desist from the blockade. " The course of the Tiber was watched so that no provisions should be brought into the city from above or from below. Day after day they looked forth towards the northeastern horizon, expecting help from Ravenna, but it came not. The daily portion of food allotted to each citizen was reduced to one half, then to one third, of its ordinary quantity. To famine was added sickness ; and then, when the surrounding enemy made it impossible to bury the dead outside the walls, the city itself became one vast sepulchre, and pestilence arose from the streets and squares covered with decaying corpses.
At length, when they had tried every other loathsome means of satisfying hunger, and were not far from cannibalism, they determined to send an embassy to the enemy. The language which the ambassadors were directed to use had in it some what of the ring of the old world-conquering republic's voice : " The Roman people were prepared to make peace on moderate terms, but were yet more prepared for war. They had arms in their hands, and from long practice in their use had no reason to dread the result of battle. " These swelling words of vanity only provoked the mirth of Alaric, who had served under the eagles, and knew what the Roman populace's " practice in the use of arms " amounted to. With a loud Teutonic laugh he exclaimed, " Thick grass is easier mowed than thin. "
After much ridicule showered upon the ambassadors who had brought so magnanimous a message, business was resumed, and they contrived again to inquire as to the terms of a " mod erate peace. " The Goth's announcement of his conditions was, says Zosimus, "beyond even the insolence of a barbarian. " "Deliver to me all the gold that your city contains, all the silver, all the movable property that I may find there, and moreover all your slaves of barbarian origin: otherwise I desist not from the siege. " Said one of the ambassadors, "But if you take all these things, what do you leave to the citizens ? " Alaric, still in a mood for grim jesting, replied in one gruff word 8aivalo8, "your souls" [or "your lives"].
The ambassadors returned to the Senate with their message of despair. The Senate, enervated by centuries of powerless
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sycophancy, found themselves compelled to look forth upon a horizon blacker than their heroic ancestors had seen after the terrible day of Cannae.
At length, after much discussion, Alaric consented to allow the city to ransom herself by a payment of 5000 pounds' weight of gold, 30,000 of silver, 4000 silken tunics, 3000 hides dyed scarlet, and 3000 pounds of pepper. It is a strange catalogue of the things which were objects of desire to a nation emerging from barbarism. The pepper suggests the conjecture that the Gothic appetite had already lost some of its original keenness in the fervent southern lands.
And so ended the First Gothic siege of Rome, a siege in which no swords were crossed, no blood drawn. Famine was the only weapon used by Alaric.
After this matter of the payment was settled, the future relations between the people of Rome and the Gothic king came under discussion. No one hinted now (nor for two gen erations later) at making the barbarian ruler of any part of Italy. But to constitute him the permanent champion of Rome; to conclude a strict offensive and defensive alliance with one whose sword weighed so heavily in the scale ; in fact, to revert to and carry further the policy of Stilicho, which these very Romans had probably been among the loud est in condemning, — this did seem to the Senate a wise rec ognition of existing facts, a chance of saving the majesty of Rome from further humiliation. And such doubtless it was, and Theodosius himself, or Constantine, seeing Alaric's un feigned eagerness for such an alliance, would have concluded it with gladness. But all the endeavors of statesmanship were foiled by the impenetrable stolidity of Honorius, who could not make either war or peace, nor could comprehend the existence of any danger to the Empire so long as his sacred person was unharmed.
The Senate sent an embassy to the Emperor to represent to him the piteous condition of the Mistress of the World, and implore him to consent to the treaty with Alaric. Honorius tore himself away for a few hours from his poultry, heard ap parently without emotion the sufferings of his people, gave a step in official rank to two of the ambassadors, and declined their request. As soon as the news of this refusal reached Alaric he recommenced the blockade of the city.
372 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
Practically all power centered in Jovius [who had supplanted Olympius] ; and Jovius, as having overthrown the enemy of StUicho, and also as having been of old "guest-friend" of Alaric in Epirus, had peculiar facilities for effecting that accommodation with the Visigothic king which the state imperatively required. With the Emperor's consent he invited Alaric to a conference, which was held at Rimini, about thirty Roman miles from Ravenna. [Terms were fixed for an accommodation . ]
In transmitting these demands to his master, Jovius gave a secret hint that probably if Alaric himself were gratified with some high official position, such as that of Magiiter Utriusque Militice (Captain-General of Horse and Foot), he would be found willing to abate considerably from the stringency of his demands. To this Honorius replied, — and for once we do hear a man's voice, though not a wise man's, — "You have behaved hastily in this matter. Payments of gold and subsi dies of corn belong to your duty as pretorian prefect, and I do not blame you for having arranged these according to your own judgment. But military command it is mine alone to bestow, and I hold it unfitting that such offices as you name should ever be held by Alaric or any of his race. "
This letter arrived when Jovius and Alaric were conversing. Was it pique against the Emperor, was it despair, was it mere folly, that impelled the minister to read it from the beginning to the end in the hearing of the Visigoth ? Alaric listened to all the rest of the letter patiently enough, but when he heard the scornful close he broke off the negotiations abruptly, and declared that he would revenge on Rome herself the insult offered to himself and his race.
Jovius, whose conduct is a perfect mystery of needless vil lainy, — who, in short, behaved exactly like an Italian states man of the sixteenth century who had lost his Machiavel, — rushed back to Ravenna, and induced the Emperor to take an oath that he would conclude no peace with Alaric, but would wage against him perpetual war. When Honorius had taken this oath, Jovius, touching the Emperor's head, repeated the same words, and all who held high office in the state were com pelled to follow his example. And yet every one of these men in his secret heart knew that a just and honorable peace with Alaric was the only chance of rescuing Rome from impending destruction.
STILICHO AND ALARIC. 373
Honorius made some feeble preparations for war, enrolled 10,000 Huns in his armies, imported cattle and sheep from Dalmatia for the provisionment of Ravenna, and sent some scouts to watch the progress of the Gothic army towards Rome.
But again Alaric, though duped and insulted, was seized by one of those strange qualms of awe or compassion which so often might have saved the Imperial City. He offered in fact to abate three provinces, Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia, from his former demand, and to be satisfied with the two Noricums alone [Austria proper, Styria, and Corinthia], provinces already so wasted by barbarian invasions as to be of very small value to the treasury. He asked for no office or dignity, civil or mili tary, nor even for gold, but only for such a supply of rations to his troops as the Emperor himself should consider reason able ; and in return for these slight concessions he promised friendship and military assistance against any enemy who might arise to trouble the peace of Honorius and his Romans. The moderation of Alaric excited general surprise, for in truth his demands were such as an Augustus might almost have con ceded to an Arminius, or a Trajan to a Decebalus ; but, for some reason hidden from us, Jovius and his creatures did not dare to advise their acceptance. The Visigoth, pale with rage at the tidings of the refusal of his request, set to work without further forbearance to commence the Second Siege of the City.
The second siege of Rome by Alaric is one of the surprises of history. With the remembrance of the terrible famine and pestilence which accompanied the first siege vividly before us, with the knowledge of the repeated insults since then inflicted upon the Visigothic king, we expect to see some great and dole ful tragedy enacted upon the Seven Hills. Far from it : the curtain is drawn up, and we behold, instead of a tragedy, a burlesque, the title whereof is " The Ten Months' Emperor, or Attalus the ^Esthetic. "
The citizens of Rome saw once more the Gothic army encamped around their walls, Ostia occupied, the large stores of provisions there collected taken possession of by the barba rians. They had no desire to see the experiments of last year as to the possible articles of human diet repeated ; they began to ask themselves, very naturally, "Since Honorius does nothing to protect us, and since he can neither make war nor peace with Alaric, but only shuts himself up behind the ditches of Ravenna, leaving us to bear all the burden of the war, why should we
374 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
suffer any more in his quarrel ? " They explained their feelings to the king of the Goths, and speedily an arrangement was made which seemed likely to satisfy all parties. The Imperial City formally renounced her allegiance to Honorius, and be stowed the purple and the diadem on Attalus, the Prefect of the City, who as Augustus at once concluded the long-desired treaty of peace with Alaric.
[Attalus' head was turned, and he tried to act as a real — and foolish — emperor. ]
The patience of Alaric gave way. He marched back to Rimini, his nearest outpost towards Ravenna, commanded Attalus to wait upon him, and there, in the plain outside the town, in sight of the Gothic army and the Roman inhabitants, he stripped him of his diadem and purple robe, and proclaimed that he was degraded to the condition of a private citizen. The unhappy Greek, so proudly self-inflated and so ignominiously collapsing, had reigned for something less than a year.
Alaric, in order to give Honorius visible tokens of the change in his policy, sent to the court of Ravenna the imperial ensigns which he had stripped from his dethroned client. The officers also who had received their commands from the usurper, restored their military belts to the legitimate Emperor, and humbly implored his forgiveness. "And now, surely," any discriminating observer might have thought "a just and honorable peace will be concluded between Alaric and Hono rius, and Italy will rest from her anguish. " The hindrance to the fulfillment of these hopes came this time from Sarus the Goth. With 300 chosen warriors he entered Ravenna and exerted all his influence to break off the negotiations between Honorius and the Visigoths. He succeeded: Alaric retired from the conferences and marched southwards, this time in deadly earnest, intent upon the Third Siege of Rome.
Of this, the crowning act of the great drama, the real end of old Rome, the real beginning of modern history, it must be confessed that we scarcely know more than we do of the fall of Babylon. Rome, which had described with such eager minute ness the death pangs of a hundred cities which she had taken, has left untold the story of her own overthrow.
Alaric was spared, this time, the necessity of reducing the city by a slow blockade. On the night of the 24th of August, it would seem almost immediately after his appearance before the walls, his troops burst in by the Salarian Gate. The splendid palace of Sallust was set on fire.
STUJCHO AND ALARIC.
375
It was said in a preceding chapter that we must not think of the Visigoths as savages, scarcely even, except in the classi cal sense of the word, as barbarians. Now, however, that they have entered Rome, now that, after years of waiting and march ing and diplomatizing, the prize is at last theirs, the accumu lated treasures of the world at their feet, and few days in which to pick them up, we may have to fall back for a time upon that more popular conception of their character. Though the soldiers of Alaric were ministers of mercy when compared with those of Alva or Tilly, we cannot doubt that brutality and outrage of every kind marked their entrance into the con quered city.
The amount of injury done by the Goths to the city itself it is not easy to determine. Writers who were remote from the scene and declamatory in their style speak as if the whole city had been wrapped in flames, every building shattered, nothing left but ruins. It is easy to see from subsequent descriptions of the appearance of the city that this is a gross exaggeration ; and it is a priori most improbable that the Goths, who only stayed a short time in Rome, and had much plundering to accomplish in that time, should have devoted so large a part of their energies to the destruction of mere buildings. Orosius, writing history as an advocate, and having to maintain the thesis that Rome had not suffered since her conversion to Christianity greater calami ties than befell her in her pagan times, is not, it must be ad mitted, an entirely trustworthy witness on this point. But he, a contemporary writer, distinctly says that " the destruction wrought by fire at the hands of the Gothic conqueror was not to be compared with that caused by accident in the 700th year from the foundation of the city. " This verdict seems a probable one, and may support a conjecture that Rome suffered less, externally, from the barbarians in 410, than Paris from the leaders of the Commune in 1871.
Alaric and his Goths pressed on still southwards into Brut- tii, the modern Calabria. They collected some ships at Reggio — intending to invade Sicily, some historians say ; to pass on thence into Africa, says Jornandes the Goth. There can be lit tle doubt that he is right, that Africa was the present object of Alaric's attack. Not necessarily, however, the ultimate object. His military instinct showed him that there, in the great gran ary of Rome, must the question of dominion over the Eternal City be decided. He was going, then, to Africa, but doubtless with the intention of returning to Rome.
376 STILICHO AND ALARIC.
But whatever might be his intentions, they were frustrated. This wave of Teutonic invasion had reached its extreme limit at Reggio, and was henceforward to recede. " Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind " was perhaps the jubi lant cry of the inhabitants of Messina, when they saw a great storm arise, by which Alaric's fleet was dashed to pieces, and a considerable part of his army, already embarked thereon,
The Visigothic king could not bring himself to ac knowledge defeat, even by the elements. He lingered near Reggio, still perhaps dreaming of conquests beyond the seas. Suddenly, in the midst of his warlike schemes, Death surprised him. We are told nothing as to the nature of his malady, ex cept that it was of short duration. It is probable that in his case, as in that of so many other Northern invaders of Italy, climate proved itself mightier than armies, and that Fever was the great avenger.
The well-known story of the burial of Alaric derives some additional interest from the remembrance of his birthplace. He was born, as the reader may remember, on an island at the mouth of one of the greatest rivers of Europe. The flow of the broad but sluggish Danube, the sound of the wind in the pine trees, the distant thunder of the Euxine upon its shore, — these were the sounds most familiar to the ear of the young Visigoth. Now that he had swept with resistless force from the Black Sea to the Straits of Messina, a river must flow over his grave as it had encircled his cradle. Forth from the high pine woods of the Calabrian mountain range of Sila leaps the stream of the Bu- sento, which, meeting the larger river Crati coming from the Apennines, encircles the town of Cosenza, where the great Visi goth met his death. To provide their leader with a tomb which no Italian hand should desecrate, the barbarians compelled a number of their captives to labor at diverting the Busento from its ordinary channel. In the dry bed of the river they dug the grave, in which, amid many of the chosen spoils of Rome, the body of Alaric was laid. The captives were then ordered to turn the river back into its ancient course, and their faithful guardianship of the grim secret was secured by the inviolable seal of death printed upon their lips. So, under the health-bring ing waters of the rapid Busento, sleeps Ala-Reiks the Visigoth, equaled, may it not be said, by only three men in succeeding times as a changer of the course of history. And these three are Mohammed, Columbus, Napoleon.
destroyed.
Upon the Ruins
From the painting by Jean Paul Laurens
THE RUINS OF ROME. 377
THE RUINS OF ROME. By LORD BYRON.
(From "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. ")
[Lord George Noel Gordow Byron : A famous English poet ; born in London, January 22, 1788. At the age of ten he succeeded to the estate and title of his granduncle William, fifth Lord Byron. He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, and in 1807 published his first volume of poems, " Hours of Idleness. " After a tour through eastern Europe he brought out two cantos of "Childe Harold," which met with instantaneous success, and soon after he married the heiress Miss Millbanke. The union proving unfortunate, Byron left England, and passed several years in Italy. In 1823 he joined the Greek insur gents in Cephalonia, and later at Missolonghi, where he died of a fever April 19, 1824. His chief poetical works"are : "Childe Harold," "Don Juan," "Manfred," "Cain," "Marino Faliero," Sardanapalus," "The Giaour," "Bride of Aby- dos," "The Corsair," "Lara," and "Mazeppa. "]
0 Eome, my country ! city of the soul !
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires ! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferings ? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way O'er steps of broken thrones and empires, Ye
Whose agonies are creatures of a day !
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.
The Niobe of nations ! There she stands, Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe ;
An empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago : The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now ;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless
Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow,
Old Tiber ! through a marble wilderness ?
Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress !
The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride ;
She saw her glories star by star expire,
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol ; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site : Chaos of ruins ! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,
And say, " Here was, or is," where all is doubly night ?
378 THE RUINS OF ROME.
' The double night of ages, and of her,
Night's daughter, Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap
All around us ; we but feel our way to err :
The ocean hath its chart, the stars their map, And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap :
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer Stumbling o'er recollections : now we clap"
Our hands, and cry, "Eureka ! it is clear — When but some false mirage of ruin rises near.
Alas, the lofty city ! and alas,
The trebly hundred triumphs, and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away ! Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page ! but these shall be Her resurrection : all beside, decay.
Alas for earth, for never shall we see
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free! . . .
Cypress and ivy, weed and wall flower grown. Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped
On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steeped In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped,
Deeming it midnight : — Temples, baths, or halls ? Pronounce who can ; for all that Learning reaped
From her research hath been, that these are walls — Behold the Imperial Mount ! 'tis thus the mighty falls.
There is the moral of all human tales ; 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First Freedom and then Glory — when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last. And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page, — 'tis better written here , Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed
All treasures, all delights, that eye or ear,
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask — Away with words ! draw near,
Admire, exult — despise — laugh, weep — for here There is such matter for all feeling : — Man !
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear, Ages and realms are crowded in this span,
THE RUINS OF ROME.
This mountain, whose obliterated plan The pyramid of empires pinnacled,
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van
Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled !
Where are its golden roofs ! where those who dared to build ?
Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou nameless column with the buried base !
What are the laurels of the Caesars' brow ? Crown me with ivy from his dwelling place. Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face,
Titus' or Trajan's ? No — 'tis that of Time : Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace
Scoffing ; and apostolic statues climb
To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime,
Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome,
And looking to the stars : they had contained
A spirit which with these would find a home,
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned, The Roman globe, for after none sustained,
But yielded back his conquests : — he was more Than a mere Alexander, and, unstained
With household blood and wine, serenely wore
His sovereign virtues — still we Trajan's name adore.
Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place
Where Rome embraced her heroes ? where the steep
Tarpeian ? fittest goal of Treason's race,
The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap Cured all ambition. Did the conquerors heap
Their spoils here ? Yes ; and in yon field below, A thousand years of silenced factions sleep —
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow,
And still the eloquent air breathes — burns with Cicero !
The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood : Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of empire in the bud
To that when further worlds to conquer failed ; But long before had Freedom's face been veiled,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes ; Till every lawless soldier who assailed
Trod on the trembling Senate's slavish mutes, Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. . . .
380
THE RUINS OF ROME.
Arches on arches ! as it were that Rome, Collecting the chief trophies of her line,
Would build up all her triumphs in one dome, Her Coliseum stands ; the moonbeams shine As 'twere its natural torches, for divine
Should be the light which streams here, to illume This long-explored but still exhaustless mine
Of contemplation ; and the azure gloom
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume
Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, Floats o'er this vast and wonderous monument,
And shadows forth its glory. There is given
Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent, A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. . . .
A ruin — yet what ruin ! from its mass
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared ;
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass,
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared ?
Alas ! developed, opens the decay,
When the colossal fabric's form is neared :
It will not bear the brightness of the day,
Which streams too much on all years, man have reft away.
But when the rising moon begins to climb
Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there ;
When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low night breeze waves along the air. The garland forest, which the gray walls wear,
Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head;
When the light shines serene but doth not glare,
Then in this magic circle raise the dead :
Heroes have trod this spot — 'tis on their dust ye tread.
" While stands the Coliseum, Eome shall stand ; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall ;
And when Rome falls — the World. " From our own land
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
THE PASSING OF HUMANITY. 881
Ancient ; and these three mortal things are still On their foundations, and unaltered all;
Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,
The World, the same wide den — of thieves, or what ye will.
THE PASSING OF HUMANITY.
Bt PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
