he secure and rapid passage of Alaric; and the fertile fields of Phocis
and Boeotia were instantly covered with a deluge of barbarians, who
massacred the males of an age to bear arms, and drove away the beautiful
females, with the spoil and cattle of the flaming villages. The travellers
who visited Greece several years afterwards, could easily discover the
deep and bloody traces of the march of the Goths. The whole territory of
Attica was blasted by his baneful presence; and if we may use the
comparison of a cotemporary philosopher, Athens itself resembled the
bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim. Corinth, Argos, Sparta,
yielded without resistance to the arms of the Goths; and the most
fortunate of the inhabitants were saved, by death, from beholding the
slavery of their families, and the conflagration of their
cities."--_Gibbon's Rome_, vol. v., p. 177.

Being tempted by the fame of Rome, Alaric hastened to subjugate it. He put
to flight the Emperor of the West; but deliverance soon came, and Rome was
saved from his hands. Alaric was first conquered in 403. But another cloud
was gathering, and is thus described by Gibbon:--

"About four years after the victorious Toulan had assumed the title of
Khan of the Geougen, another barbarian, the haughty Rhodogast, or
Radagaisus, marched from the northern extremities of Germany almost to the
gates of Rome, and left the remains of his army to achieve the destruction
of the West. The Vandals, the Suevi, and the Burgundians, formed the
strength of this mighty host; but the Alani, who had found a hospitable
reception in their new seats, added their active cavalry to the heavy
infantry of the Germans; and the Gothic adventurers crowded so eagerly to
the standard of Radagaisus, that, by some historians, he has been styled
the King of the Goths. Twelve thousand warriors, distinguished above the
vulgar by their noble birth, or their valiant deeds, glittered in the van;
and the whole multitude, which was not less than two hundred thousand
fighting men, might be increased by the accession of women, of children,
and of slaves, to the amount of four hundred thousand persons.

"The correspondence of nations was, in that age, so imperfect and
precarious, that the revolutions of the North might escape the knowledge
of the court of Ravenna, till the dark cloud, which was collected along
the coast of the Baltic, burst in thunder upon the banks of the Upper
Danube, &c. Many cities of