1747.) The triumvirs sent a colony
to Florence, which, under Tiberius, (Tacit. Annal. i. 79,) deserved the
reputation and name of a flourishing city. See Cluver. Ital. Antiq. tom.
i. p. 507, &c.]

[Footnote 75: Yet the Jupiter of Radagaisus, who worshipped Thor and
Woden, was very different from the Olympic or Capitoline Jove. The
accommodating temper of Polytheism might unite those various and remote
deities; but the genuine Romans ahhorred the human sacrifices of Gaul
and Germany.]

[Footnote 7511: Gibbon has rather softened the language of Augustine as
to this threatened insurrection of the Pagans, in order to restore the
prohibited rites and ceremonies of Paganism; and their treasonable hopes
that the success of Radagaisus would be the triumph of idolatry. Compare
ii. 25--M.]

Florence was reduced to the last extremity; and the fainting courage of
the citizens was supported only by the authority of St. Ambrose; who had
communicated, in a dream, the promise of a speedy deliverance. [76] On
a sudden, they beheld, from their walls, the banners of Stilicho, who
advanced, with his united force, to the relief of the faithful city; and
who soon marked that fatal spot for the grave of the Barbarian host. The
apparent contradictions of those writers who variously relate the defeat
of Radagaisus, may be reconciled without offering much violence to
their respective testimonies. Orosius and Augustin, who were intimately
connected by friendship and religion, ascribed this miraculous victory
to the providence of God, rather than to the valor of man. [77] They
strictly exclude every idea of chance, or even of bloodshed; and
positively affirm, that the Romans, whose camp was the scene of plenty
and idleness, enjoyed the distress of the Barbarians, slowly expiring
on the sharp and barren ridge of the hills of Faesulae, which rise above
the city of Florence. Their extravagant assertion that not a single
soldier of the Christian army was killed, or even wounded, may be
dismissed with silent contempt; but the rest of the narrative of
Augustin and Orosius is consistent with the state of the war, and the
character of Stilicho. Conscious that he commanded the last army of the
republic, his prudence would not expose it, in the open field, to the
headstrong fury of the Germans. The method of surrounding the enemy with
strong lines of circumvallation, which he had twice employed against the
Gothic king, was repeated on a larger scale, and