into
the rich plains of Umbria; and, as they lay encamped on the banks of
the Clitumnus, might wantonly slaughter and devour the milk-white oxen,
which had been so long reserved for the use of Roman triumphs. [5] A
lofty situation, and a seasonable tempest of thunder and lightning,
preserved the little city of Narni; but the king of the Goths, despising
the ignoble prey, still advanced with unabated vigor; and after he had
passed through the stately arches, adorned with the spoils of Barbaric
victories, he pitched his camp under the walls of Rome. [6]

[Footnote 4: Addison (see his Works, vol. ii. p. 54, edit. Baskerville)
has given a very picturesque description of the road through the
Apennine. The Goths were not at leisure to observe the beauties of
the prospect; but they were pleased to find that the Saxa Intercisa, a
narrow passage which Vespasian had cut through the rock, (Cluver. Italia
Antiq. tom. i. p. 168,) was totally neglected.

Hine albi, Clitumne, greges, et maxima taurus
Victima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,
Romanos ad templa Deum duxere triumphos.
--Georg. ii. 147.

Besides Virgil, most of the Latin poets, Propertius, Lucan, Silius
Italicus, Claudian, &c., whose passages may be found in Cluverius and
Addison, have celebrated the triumphal victims of the Clitumnus.]

[Footnote 6: Some ideas of the march of Alaric are borrowed from the
journey of Honorius over the same ground. (See Claudian in vi. Cons.
Hon. 494-522.) The measured distance between Ravenna and Rome was
254 Roman miles. Itinerar. Wesseling, p. 126.] During a period of six
hundred and nineteen years, the seat of empire had never been violated
by the presence of a foreign enemy. The unsuccessful expedition of
Hannibal [7] served only to display the character of the senate and
people; of a senate degraded, rather than ennobled, by the comparison of
an assembly of kings; and of a people, to whom the ambassador of Pyrrhus
ascribed the inexhaustible resources of the Hydra. [8] Each of the
senators, in the time of the Punic war, had accomplished his term of the
military service, either in a subordinate or a superior station; and
the decree, which invested with temporary command all those who had
been consuls, or censors, or dictators, gave the republic the immediate
assistance of many brave and experienced generals. In the beginning of
the war, the Roman people consisted of two hundred and fifty thousand
citizens of an