base Romans should not dig up Alaric out of his barrow
and scatter his bones to the winds.

So they put no barrow over the great king; but under the walls of Cosenza
they turned the river-bed, and in that river-bed they set Alaric, armed
and mailed, upright upon his horse, with gold, and jewels, and arms, and
it may be captive youths and maids, that he might enter into Valhalla in
royal pomp, and make a worthy show among the heroes in Odin's hall. And
then they turned back the river into its bed, and slew the slaves who had
done the work, that no man might know where Alaric lies: and no man does
know till this day.

As I said, they had no plan left now. Two years they stayed in Campania,
basking in the villas and gardens, drinking their fill of the wine; and
then flowed away northward again, no one knows why. They had no wish to
settle, as they might have done. They followed some God-given instinct,
undiscoverable now by us. Ataulf, Alaric's kinsman, married Placidia,
the Emperor's beautiful young sister, and accepted from him some sort of
commission to fight against his enemies in Gaul. So to the south of Gaul
they went, and then into Spain, crushing before them Alans, Sueves, and
Vandals, and quarrelling among themselves. Ataulf was murdered, and all
his children; Placidia put to shame. Then she had her revenge. To me it
is not so much horrible as pitiful. They had got the Nibelungen hoard;
and with it the Nibelungen curse.

A hundred years afterwards, when the Franks pillaged the Gothic palace of
Narbonne, they found the remnants of it. Things inestimable,
indescribable; tables of solid emerald; the Missorium, a dish 2500 lbs.
weight, covered with all the gems of India. They had been in Solomon's
Temple, fancied the simple Franks--as indeed some of them may well have
been. The Arabs got the great emerald table at last, with its three rows
of great pearls. Where are they all now? What is become, gentlemen, of
the treasures of Rome? Jewels, recollect, are all but indestructible;
recollect, too, that vast quantities were buried from time to time, and
their places forgotten. Perhaps future generations will discover many
such hoards. Meanwhile, many of those same jewels must be in actual use
even now. Many a gem which hangs now on an English lady's wrist saw
Alaric sack Rome--and saw before and since--What not? The palaces of the
Pharaohs, or of Darius; then the pomp of the Ptolemies, or of the
Seleu