empire as fugitives and suppliants, and had humbly sought permission to settle in the waste lands lying to the south of the Danube; but mutual jealousies had subsequently arisen, and in the reign of the emperor Valens, the Goths had risen in arms, and in the year 378, under the command of a chief named Fritigern, they had defeated and killed the emperor Valens, and 60,000 of his best soldiers, in a great battle fought under the walls of Adrianople. They had subsequently themselves been defeated by Theodosius in more than one battle; but in the year 382, they had concluded a peace, which left them in possession of Mæsia, and other provinces on the banks of the Danube, and in the position of allies rather than subjects of the Greek and Roman emperors. They agreed to furnish the emperor Theodosius with an army of 40,000 men, under the command of their own officers, and it was in this army and in the service of the Greek and Roman emperors, that Alaric acquired that knowledge of the art of war which he afterwards turned with such fatal effect against the inhabitants of Greece and Italy. Before these events, the Goths had become converts to Christianity, though with a strong leaning to Arian doctrines; and it is clear, from a translation of the gospels into the Mæso-Gothic language, considerable part of which still exists, that these first conquerors of Rome were of the same Teutonic or Gothic race which at that time or subsequently peopled Germany, Scandinavia, and the British islands.
On the death of Theodosius, in the year 393, the empire devolved on his two sons, Arcadius and Honorius, both youths of feeble minds. One of the first acts of Arcadius was to drive Alaric from his service and to rouse him to revenge, by an insulting refusal of all promotion. The fiery Goth returned to his own countrymen, who received him with enthusiasm, raised him on a shield (according to their custom), saluted him king, and vehemently urged him to lead them to an attack on the dominions of Arcadius. As soon as the news of the proposed expedition was spread abroad, multitudes of Scythians crossed the Danube to share in the plunder of the empire.
In the beginning of the year 396, Alaric advanced at the head of an immense army to the walls of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern empire, laying waste the whole country as he advanced. Constantinople being too strong to be taken without a regular siege, the Goths next threw themselves into Greece, plundering all the cities, except Athens, to which Alaric granted a capitulation on payment of a large ransom, and laying waste the country on every side. Before he had entirely wasted this beautiful region, Stilicho, the commander of the legions of Honorius, arrived from Italy, and by a series of masterly movements, placed Alaric and his army in a position of extreme difficulty, from which there seemed to be no escape; but the treachery and mean jealousy of the ministers of Arcadius saved Alaric and his army, for, rather than allow Stilicho to acquire the glory of conquering Alaric, they allowed the latter to escape, and concluded a treaty with him, by which Alaric was again taken into the service of Arcadius, and appointed master-general of the emperor's infantry in Illyricum.
By this arrangement Alaric was placed in possession of the four greatest arsenals of arms in the empire, and had the opportunity of thoroughly arming and training his soldiers. After doing so, he crossed the Alps of Frieul into Italy, in the autumn of the year 402, and advanced rapidly on Milan, where Honorius then resided. My prodigious efforts, Stilicho brought together an army of 30,000 men from Gaul and Britain. With this army he attacked Alaric at Pollentia, on the 29th March, 403, defeated and drove him back on Verona, where he defeated him a second time, and compelled him to retire from Italy.
After this second defeat, Alaric remained quiet for some years, and in this interval, in the year 406, Stilicho, his old rival, had the opportunity of again saving the empire, by defeating an immense army of Germans which had advanced into Italy in that year. Radogast, the leader of this army, was taken prisoner, and delivered up to Honorius, who put him to death; and two years later, Stilicho himself, having become an object of envy, jealousy, and hatred to the feeble-minded Honorius and his courtiers, was beheaded at Ravenna, by order of the emperor, on the 23rd August, 408.
By this act of insane cruelty, Italy was deprived of its last defender; and in the month of October, in the same year, Alaric again crossed the Alps, and advanced to Ravenna without any resistance. Ravenna was at that time protected by swamps and lagoons, like those which have so long defended Venice. Behind these the cowardly Honorius and his vile courtiers remained in safety, leaving Italy at the mercy of Alaric.
Early in the spring of the year 409, Alaric appeared before Rome, which had never been threatened by a foreign enemy since the time—619 years before—when it was threatened, but not taken, by Hannibal the Carthagenian. Rome, though somewhat diminished in power by the rivalry of Constantinople, and by the removal of the court to Ravenna, was still the most magnificent city in the world. It was eighteen miles in circumference, contained a population of at least a million of inhabitants, was adorned with 1780 senatorial palaces, and with innumerable temples, baths, amphitheatres, and churches, the proudest works of the republic and the empire. Many of the Roman nobility possessed incomes equal to from £100,000 to £160,000 a year of our money, and the wealth of the whole city was probably equal to that of London or Paris in the present age, whilst in the magnificence of its public buildings it greatly surpassed them both. But the free and warlike spirit of Rome was utterly dead, and this vast population, abounding in wealth, saw the approach of the army of Alaric without an effort to arrest its progress. After enduring all the horrors of famine, they concluded a treaty with Alaric, by which they agreed to pay to him the sum of five thousand pounds weight of gold, and a great mass of precious effects, on condition that he would spare the city. He consented to do so, and withdrew his army into Tuscany.
At this time, Alaric was willing to conclude peace on condition of receiving a province from Honorius, but that wretched puppet was alike incapable of defending his dominions by war or by policy. Several negotiations were begun and broken off, and at length Alaric advanced again upon Rome, seized the city of Porto, at the mouth of the Tiber, and after reducing the Roman capital to the verge of famine, compelled the Romans to choose another emperor, in the person of Attains, a prætorian prefect, in the place of Honorius. Attains, however, proved himself as imbecile as Honorius; before the lapse of a year he was deposed, and for the third time the army of the Goths appeared before Rome. After a short siege, the Salarian gate was thrown open in the night to the army of Alaric, and for six days and nights, Rome, the capital of the world, endured the horrors which it had itself been the means of inflicting on a thousand cities.
Although we commonly speak of the Goths as barbarians, yet it is only just to say that they did not inflict on Rome anything like the wholesale destruction which the Romans had inflicted on Carthage, and Numantium, or even on Corinth. Only a small part of the city was burnt, and that by accident; the churches, and all who had taken refuge in them, were spared. Alaric took precautions to preserve the public buildings, and at the end of the sixth day he withdrew his army from Rome, and marched into Campania. It was on the 24th April, a.d. 410, and in the year 1163 from the founding of the city, that Alaric and the Goths captured the capital of the world.
Alaric lived only a few months after the capture of Rome. After leaving that city he marched to the south of Italy, intending to conquer Sicily and the Roman provinces of Africa, but at Cozenza he was seized with a fatal disease, which cut him off in a few days. His body was buried in the bed of the river Bisentium, that it might not be torn up and desecrated after his army had left the country; and that the place of interment might not be discovered, the unfortunate captives who were employed in burying his remains were afterwards put to death.—T. B.
ALARIC II., King of the Spanish Goths, succeeded his father Evaric in the year 484. Clovis, the first of the Merovingian dynasty in France, slew him with his own hand in a battle fought near Poitiers in 507. The dominions of Alaric included, besides the peninsula, provinces in Gaul, Languedoc, and Provence, and it is recorded, to his credit, that he administered the affairs of his kingdom in a wise and temperate spirit. He continued the concord that had subsisted between the Goths and the Franks during his father's reign, and he had for his allies the kings Gondebaud and Theodoric. It was in defence of his provinces in Gaul that he led his forces against Clovis. Like his predecessors, Alaric was a zealous Arian; but from the fact of a council of bishops having been held with his consent in 506, it may be inferred that he exercised a laudable spirit of toleration in matters ecclesiastical. The celebrated code of laws
