Yet even this humble and rustic felicity (which Claudian
describes with so much truth and feeling) was still exposed to the
undistinguishing rage of war. His trees, his old contemporary trees,
[31] must blaze in the conflagration of the whole country; a detachment
of Gothic cavalry might sweep away his cottage and his family; and the
power of Alaric could destroy this happiness, which he was not able
either to taste or to bestow. "Fame," says the poet, "encircling with
terror her gloomy wings, proclaimed the march of the Barbarian army, and
filled Italy with consternation:" the apprehensions of each individual
were increased in just proportion to the measure of his fortune: and the
most timid, who had already embarked their valuable effects, meditated
their escape to the Island of Sicily, or the African coast. The public
distress was aggravated by the fears and reproaches of superstition.
[32] Every hour produced some horrid tale of strange and portentous
accidents; the Pagans deplored the neglect of omens, and the
interruption of sacrifices; but the Christians still derived some
comfort from the powerful intercession of the saints and martyrs. [33]

[Footnote 26: Our best materials are 970 verses of Claudian in the poem
on the Getic war, and the beginning of that which celebrates the sixth
consulship of Honorius. Zosimus is totally silent; and we are reduced
to such scraps, or rather crumbs, as we can pick from Orosius and the
Chronicles.]

[Footnote 27: Notwithstanding the gross errors of Jornandes, who
confounds the Italian wars of Alaric, (c. 29,) his date of the
consulship of Stilicho and Aurelian (A.D. 400) is firm and respectable.
It is certain from Claudian (Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 804)
that the battle of Polentia was fought A.D. 403; but we cannot easily
fill the interval.]

[Footnote 28: Tantum Romanae urbis judicium fugis, ut magis obsidionem
barbaricam, quam pacatoe urbis judicium velis sustinere. Jerom, tom.
ii. p. 239. Rufinus understood his own danger; the peaceful city was
inflamed by the beldam Marcella, and the rest of Jerom's faction.]

[Footnote 29: Jovinian, the enemy of fasts and of celibacy, who was
persecuted and insulted by the furious Jerom, (Jortin's Remarks, vol.
iv. p. 104, &c.) See the original edict of banishment in the Theodosian
Code, xvi. tit. v. leg. 43.]

[Footnote 30: This epigram (de Sene Veronensi qui suburbium nusquam
egres sus est) is one of the earliest and mo