ancient limits, by the minister of Honorius. The execution
of the ambitious design, which was either stipulated, or implied, in the
articles of the treaty, appears to have been suspended by the formidable
irruption of Radagaisus; and the neutrality of the Gothic king may
perhaps be compared to the indifference of Caesar, who, in the conspiracy
of Catiline, refused either to assist, or to oppose, the enemy of
the republic. After the defeat of the Vandals, Stilicho resumed his
pretensions to the provinces of the East; appointed civil magistrates
for the administration of justice, and of the finances; and declared his
impatience to lead to the gates of Constantinople the united armies of
the Romans and of the Goths. The prudence, however, of Stilicho, his
aversion to civil war, and his perfect knowledge of the weakness of the
state, may countenance the suspicion, that domestic peace, rather than
foreign conquest, was the object of his policy; and that his principal
care was to employ the forces of Alaric at a distance from Italy. This
design could not long escape the penetration of the Gothic king, who
continued to hold a doubtful, and perhaps a treacherous, correspondence
with the rival courts; who protracted, like a dissatisfied mercenary,
his languid operations in Thessaly and Epirus, and who soon returned to
claim the extravagant reward of his ineffectual services. From his camp
near AEmona, on the confines of Italy, he transmitted to the emperor of
the West a long account of promises, of expenses, and of demands; called
for immediate satisfaction, and clearly intimated the consequences of
a refusal. Yet if his conduct was hostile, his language was decent and
dutiful. He humbly professed himself the friend of Stilicho, and the
soldier of Honorius; offered his person and his troops to march, without
delay, against the usurper of Gaul; and solicited, as a permanent
retreat for the Gothic nation, the possession of some vacant province of
the Western empire.

The political and secret transactions of two statesmen, who labored to
deceive each other and the world, must forever have been concealed in
the impenetrable darkness of the cabinet, if the debates of a popular
assembly had not thrown some rays of light on the correspondence of
Alaric and Stilicho. The necessity of finding some artificial support
for a government, which, from a principle, not of moderation, but of
weakness, was reduced to negotiate with its own subject