e
Rhaetian Alps; and, directing his march through the territories of those
German tribes, whose alliance would restore his exhausted strength, to
invade, on the side of the Rhine, the wealthy and unsuspecting provinces
of Gaul. Ignorant of the treason which had already betrayed his bold and
judicious enterprise, he advanced towards the passes of the mountains,
already possessed by the Imperial troops; where he was exposed, almost
at the same instant, to a general attack in the front, on his flanks,
and in the rear. In this bloody action, at a small distance from the
walls of Verona, the loss of the Goths was not less heavy than that
which they had sustained in the defeat of Pollentia; and their valiant
king, who escaped by the swiftness of his horse, must either have been
slain or made prisoner, if the hasty rashness of the Alani had not
disappointed the measures of the Roman general. Alaric secured the
remains of his army on the adjacent rocks; and prepared himself, with
undaunted resolution, to maintain a siege against the superior numbers
of the enemy, who invested him on all sides. But he could not oppose the
destructive progress of hunger and disease; nor was it possible for
him to check the continual desertion of his impatient and capricious
Barbarians. In this extremity he still found resources in his own
courage, or in the moderation of his adversary; and the retreat of the
Gothic king was considered as the deliverance of Italy. [51] Yet the
people, and even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgment
of the business of peace and war, presumed to arraign the policy of
Stilicho, who so often vanquished, so often surrounded, and so often
dismissed the implacable enemy of the republic. The first momen of
the public safety is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is
diligently occupied by envy and calumny. [52]

[Footnote 49: Claudian and Prudentius must be strictly examined, to
reduce the figures, and extort the historic sense, of those poets.]

[Footnote 50:

Et gravant en airain ses freles avantages
De mes etats conquis enchainer les images.

The practice of exposing in triumph the images of kings and provinces
was familiar to the Romans. The bust of Mithridates himself was twelve
feet high, of massy gold, (Freinshem. Supplement. Livian. ciii. 47.)]

[Footnote 51: The Getic war, and the sixth consulship of Honorius,
obscurely connect the events of Alaric's retreat and losses.]