nds were enforced by
the positive declaration, that a refusal, or even a delay, should be
instantly followed by the destruction of the magazines, on which the
life of the Roman people depended. The clamors of that people, and
the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the senate; they listened,
without reluctance, to the proposal of placing a new emperor on
the throne of the unworthy Honorius; and the suffrage of the Gothic
conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, praefect of the city.
The grateful monarch immediately acknowledged his protector as
master-general of the armies of the West; Adolphus, with the rank of
count of the domestics, obtained the custody of the person of Attalus;
and the two hostile nations seemed to be united in the closest bands of
friendship and alliance. [91]

[Footnote 87: Zosimus, l. v. p. 368, 369. I have softened the
expressions of Alaric, who expatiates, in too florid a manner, on the
history of Rome]

[Footnote 88: See Sueton. in Claud. c. 20. Dion Cassius, l. lx. p. 949,
edit Reimar, and the lively description of Juvenal, Satir. xii. 75, &c.
In the sixteenth century, when the remains of this Augustan port were
still visible, the antiquarians sketched the plan, (see D'Anville, Mem.
de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxx. p. 198,) and declared, with
enthusiasm, that all the monarchs of Europe would be unable to execute
so great a work, (Bergier, Hist. des grands Chemins des Romains, tom.
ii. p. 356.)]

[Footnote 89: The Ostia Tyberina, (see Cluver. Italia Antiq. l. iii.
p. 870-879,) in the plural number, the two mouths of the Tyber, were
separated by the Holy Island, an equilateral triangle, whose sides
were each of them computed at about two miles. The colony of Ostia
was founded immediately beyond the left, or southern, and the Port
immediately beyond the right, or northern, branch of hte river; and the
distance between their remains measures something more than two miles
on Cingolani's map. In the time of Strabo, the sand and mud deposited by
the Tyber had choked the harbor of Ostia; the progress of the same cause
has added much to the size of the Holy Islands, and gradually left both
Ostia and the Port at a considerable distance from the shore. The dry
channels (fiumi morti) and the large estuaries (stagno di Ponente, di
Levante) mark the changes of the river, and the efforts of the sea.
Consult, for the present state of this dreary and desolate tract, the
excellent map of the e