of their families and the conflagration
of their cities. The vases and statues were distributed among the
Barbarians, with more regard to the value of the materials, than to the
elegance of the workmanship; the female captives submitted to the laws
of war; the enjoyment of beauty was the reward of valor; and the Greeks
could not reasonably complain of an abuse which was justified by the
example of the heroic times. The descendants of that extraordinary
people, who had considered valor and discipline as the walls of Sparta,
no longer remembered the generous reply of their ancestors to an invader
more formidable than Alaric. "If thou art a god, thou wilt not hurt
those who have never injured thee; if thou art a man, advance:--and thou
wilt find men equal to thyself." From Thermopylae to Sparta, the leader
of the Goths pursued his victorious march without encountering any
mortal antagonists: but one of the advocates of expiring Paganism has
confidently asserted, that the walls of Athens were guarded by the
goddess Minerva, with her formidable AEgis, and by the angry phantom of
Achilles; and that the conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the
hostile deities of Greece. In an age of miracles, it would perhaps
be unjust to dispute the claim of the historian Zosimus to the common
benefit: yet it cannot be dissembled, that the mind of Alaric was
ill prepared to receive, either in sleeping or waking visions, the
impressions of Greek superstition. The songs of Homer, and the fame
of Achilles, had probably never reached the ear of the illiterate
_Barbarian_; and the _Christian_ faith, which he had devoutly embraced,
taught him to despise the imaginary deities of Rome and Athens. The
invasion of the Goths, instead of vindicating the honor, contributed, at
least accidentally, to extirpate the last remains of Paganism: and the
mysteries of Ceres, which had subsisted eighteen hundred years, did not
survive the destruction of Eleusis, and the calamities of Greece.

The last hope of a people who could no longer depend on their arms,
their gods, or their sovereign, was placed in the powerful assistance
of the general of the West; and Stilicho, who had not been permitted to
repulse, advanced to chastise, the invaders of Greece. A numerous fleet
was equipped in the ports of Italy; and the troops, after a short and
prosperous navigation over the Ionian Sea, were safely disembarked
on the isthmus, near the ruins of Corinth. The woody and