eir liberty would endanger their lives; and that
the Goths, unless they were tempted to sell, might be provoked to
murder, their useless prisoners; the civil jurisprudence had been
already qualified by a wise regulation, that they should be obliged to
serve the moderate term of five years, till they had discharged by their
labor the price of their redemption. The nations who invaded the Roman
empire, had driven before them, into Italy, whole troops of hungry and
affrighted provincials, less apprehensive of servitude than of famine.
The calamities of Rome and Italy dispersed the inhabitants to the most
lonely, the most secure, the most distant places of refuge. While the
Gothic cavalry spread terror and desolation along the sea-coast of
Campania and Tuscany, the little island of Igilium, separated by a
narrow channel from the Argentarian promontory, repulsed, or eluded,
their hostile attempts; and at so small a distance from Rome, great
numbers of citizens were securely concealed in the thick woods of that
sequestered spot. The ample patrimonies, which many senatorian families
possessed in Africa, invited them, if they had time, and prudence, to
escape from the ruin of their country, to embrace the shelter of that
hospitable province. The most illustrious of these fugitives was the
noble and pious Proba, the widow of the praefect Petronius. After
the death of her husband, the most powerful subject of Rome, she had
remained at the head of the Anician family, and successively supplied,
from her private fortune, the expense of the consulships of her
three sons. When the city was besieged and taken by the Goths, Proba
supported, with Christian resignation, the loss of immense riches;
embarked in a small vessel, from whence she beheld, at sea, the
flames of her burning palace, and fled with her daughter Laeta, and her
granddaughter, the celebrated virgin, Demetrias, to the coast of Africa.
The benevolent profusion with which the matron distributed the fruits,
or the price, of her estates, contributed to alleviate the misfortunes
of exile and captivity. But even the family of Proba herself was not
exempt from the rapacious oppression of Count Heraclian, who basely
sold, in matrimonial prostitution, the noblest maidens of Rome to the
lust or avarice of the Syrian merchants. The Italian fugitives were
dispersed through the provinces, along the coast of Egypt and Asia, as
far as Constantinople and Jerusalem; and the village of Beth