ledonian wall. With the army thus raised he
met the Gothic host at Pollentia, and defeated them with frightful
slaughter, recovering from their camp many of the spoils of Greece.
Another battle was fought at Verona, and the Goths were again defeated.
They were now forced to retire from Italy, Stilicho and the emperor
entered Rome, and that capital saw its last great triumph, and gloried
in a revival of its magnificent ancient games.

[Illustration: THE LAST COMBAT OF THE GLADIATORS.]

In these games the cruel combat of gladiators was shown for the last
time to the blood-thirsty populace of Rome. The edict of Constantine had
failed to stop these frightful sports. The appeal of a Christian poet
was equally without effect. A more decisive action was necessary, and it
came. In the midst of these bloody contests an Asiatic monk, named
Telemachus, rushed into the arena and attempted to separate the
gladiators. He paid for his rashness with his life, being stoned to
death by the furious spectators, with whose pleasure he had dared to
interfere. But his death had its effect. The fury of the people was
followed by shame. Telemachus was looked upon as a martyr, and the
gladiatorial shows came to an end, the emperor abolishing forever the
spectacle of human slaughter and human cruelty in the amphitheatre of
Rome.

Rome triumphed too soon. Its ovation to victory was the expiring gleam
in its long career of glory and dominion. Its downfall was at hand.
Fight as it might in Italy, the gate-ways of the empire lay open in the
north, and through them still poured barbarian hordes. The myriads of
the Huns, rushing in a devouring wave from the borders of China, made a
mighty stir in the forest region of the Baltic and the Danube. In the
year 406 a vast host of Germans, known by the names of Vandals,
Burgundians, and Suevi, under a leader named Rhodogast, or Radagaisus,
crossed the Danube and made its way unopposed to Italy. Multitudes of
Goths joined them, till the army numbered not less than two hundred
thousand fighting men.

As the flood of barbarians rushed southward through Italy, many cities
were pillaged or destroyed, and the city of Florence sustained its first
recorded siege. Alaric and his Goths were Christians. Radagaisus and his
Germans were half-savage pagans. Florence, which had dared oppose them,
was threatened with utter ruin. It was to be reduced to stones and
ashes, and its noblest senators were to be sacrificed on t