by interchanging the metaphors
and properties of liquid water, and solid ice. Much false wit has been
expended in this easy exercise.]

[Footnote 3: Jerom, tom. i. p. 26. He endeavors to comfort his friend
Heliodorus, bishop of Altinum, for the loss of his nephew, Nepotian, by
a curious recapitulation of all the public and private misfortunes of
the times. See Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xii. p. 200, &c.]

[Footnote 4: Baltha or bold: origo mirifica, says Jornandes, (c. 29.)
This illustrious race long continued to flourish in France, in the
Gothic province of Septimania, or Languedoc; under the corrupted
appellation of Boax; and a branch of that family afterwards settled in
the kingdom of Naples (Grotius in Prolegom. ad Hist. Gothic. p. 53.) The
lords of Baux, near Arles, and of seventy-nine subordinate places, were
independent of the counts of Provence, (Longuerue, Description de la
France, tom. i. p. 357).]

[Footnote 5: Zosimus (l. v. p. 293-295) is our best guide for the
conquest of Greece: but the hints and allusion of Claudian are so many
rays of historic light.]

The character of the civil and military officers, on whom Rufinus had
devolved the government of Greece, confirmed the public suspicion, that
he had betrayed the ancient seat of freedom and learning to the Gothic
invader. The proconsul Antiochus was the unworthy son of a respectable
father; and Gerontius, who commanded the provincial troops, was much
better qualified to execute the oppressive orders of a tyrant, than to
defend, with courage and ability, a country most remarkably fortified by
the hand of nature. Alaric had traversed, without resistance, the plains
of Macedonia and Thessaly, as far as the foot of Mount Oeta, a steep and
woody range of hills, almost impervious to his cavalry. They stretched
from east to west, to the edge of the sea-shore; and left, between the
precipice and the Malian Gulf, an interval of three hundred feet, which,
in some places, was contracted to a road capable of admitting only a
single carriage. [6] In this narrow pass of Thermopylae, where Leonidas
and the three hundred Spartans had gloriously devoted their lives, the
Goths might have been stopped, or destroyed, by a skilful general; and
perhaps the view of that sacred spot might have kindled some sparks of
military ardor in the breasts of the degenerate Greeks. The troops which
had been posted to defend the Straits of Thermopylae, retired, as
they were directed,