ld be the man to do the deed at
last. There was a saga in which he trusted. Claudian gives it in an
hexameter,

'Alpibus Italiae ruptis penetrabis ad urbem.'

Yes, he would take The City, and avenge the treachery of Valens, and all
the wrongs which Teutons had endured from the Romans for now four
centuries. And he did it.

But not the first time. He swept over the Alps. Honorius fled to Asta,
and Alaric besieged him there. The faithful Stilicho came to the rescue;
and Alaric was driven to extremities. His warriors counselled him to
retreat. No, he would take Rome, or die. But at Pollentia, Stilicho
surprised him, while he and his Goths were celebrating Easter Sunday, and
a fearful battle followed. The Romans stormed his camp, recovered the
spoils of Greece, and took his wife, decked in the jewels in which she
meant to enter Rome. One longs to know what became of her.

At least, so say the Romans: the Goths tell a very different story; and
one suspects that Pollentia may be one more of those splendid paper
victories, in which the Teutons were utterly exterminated, only to rise
out of the ground, seemingly stronger and more numerous than ever. At
least, instead of turning his head to the Alps, he went on toward Rome.
Stilicho dared not fight him again, and bought him off. He turned
northward toward Gaul, and at Verona Stilicho got him at an advantage,
and fought him once more, and if we are to believe Rosino and Claudian,
beat him again. 'Taceo de Alarico, saepe victo, saepe concluso,
semperque dimisso.' 'It is ill work trapping an eagle,' says some one.
When you have caught him, the safest thing very often is to let him go
again.

Meanwhile poured down into Italy, as far as Florence (a merely
unimportant episode in those fearful days), another wave of German
invaders under one Radogast, 200,000 strong. Under the walls of Florence
they sat down, and perished of wine, and heat, and dysentery. Like water
they flowed in, and like water they sank into the soil: and every one of
them a human soul.

Stilicho and Honorius went to Rome, and celebrated their triumph over the
Goths, with (for the last time in history) gladiatorial sports. Three
years past, and then Stilicho was duly rewarded for having saved Rome, in
the approved method for every great barbarian who was fool enough to help
the treacherous Roman; namely, by being murdered.

Alaric rose instantly, and with him all the Gothic tribes. Down