rst in thunder upon the banks of the
Upper Danube. The emperor of the West, if his ministers disturbed his
amusements by the news of the impending danger, was satisfied with being
the occasion, and the spectator, of the war. [70] The safety of Rome was
intrusted to the counsels, and the sword, of Stilicho; but such was
the feeble and exhausted state of the empire, that it was impossible to
restore the fortifications of the Danube, or to prevent, by a vigorous
effort, the invasion of the Germans. [71] The hopes of the vigilant
minister of Honorius were confined to the defence of Italy. He once more
abandoned the provinces, recalled the troops, pressed the new levies,
which were rigorously exacted, and pusillanimously eluded; employed the
most efficacious means to arrest, or allure, the deserters; and offered
the gift of freedom, and of two pieces of gold, to all the slaves who
would enlist. [72] By these efforts he painfully collected, from the
subjects of a great empire, an army of thirty or forty thousand men,
which, in the days of Scipio or Camillus, would have been instantly
furnished by the free citizens of the territory of Rome. [73] The
thirty legions of Stilicho were reenforced by a large body of Barbarian
auxiliaries; the faithful Alani were personally attached to his service;
and the troops of Huns and of Goths, who marched under the banners of
their native princes, Huldin and Sarus, were animated by interest
and resentment to oppose the ambition of Radagaisus. The king of the
confederate Germans passed, without resistance, the Alps, the Po, and
the Apennine; leaving on one hand the inaccessible palace of Honorius,
securely buried among the marshes of Ravenna; and, on the other, the
camp of Stilicho, who had fixed his head-quarters at Ticinum, or Pavia,
but who seems to have avoided a decisive battle, till he had assembled
his distant forces. Many cities of Italy were pillaged, or destroyed;
and the siege of Florence, [74] by Radagaisus, is one of the earliest
events in the history of that celebrated republic; whose firmness
checked and delayed the unskillful fury of the Barbarians. The senate
and people trembled at their approached within a hundred and eighty
miles of Rome; and anxiously compared the danger which they had escaped,
with the new perils to which they were exposed. Alaric was a Christian
and a soldier, the leader of a disciplined army; who understood the laws
of war, who respected the sanctity of tr