e
body of troops to secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest part of
Italy submitted to the terror of the Gothic powers; and though the
city of Bologna made a vigorous and effectual resistance, the people of
Milan, dissatisfied perhaps with the absence of Honorius, accepted,
with loud acclamations, the choice of the Roman senate. At the head of a
formidable army, Alaric conducted his royal captive almost to the gates
of Ravenna; and a solemn embassy of the principal ministers, of Jovius,
the Praetorian praefect, of Valens, master of the cavalry and infantry,
of the quaestor Potamius, and of Julian, the first of the notaries,
was introduced, with martial pomp, into the Gothic camp. In the name of
their sovereign, they consented to acknowledge the lawful election
of his competitor, and to divide the provinces of Italy and the West
between the two emperors. Their proposals were rejected with disdain;
and the refusal was aggravated by the insulting clemency of Attalus, who
condescended to promise, that, if Honorius would instantly resign the
purple, he should be permitted to pass the remainder of his life in the
peaceful exile of some remote island. [93] So desperate indeed did the
situation of the son of Theodosius appear, to those who were the best
acquainted with his strength and resources, that Jovius and Valens, his
minister and his general, betrayed their trust, infamously deserted
the sinking cause of their benefactor, and devoted their treacherous
allegiance to the service of his more fortunate rival. Astonished by
such examples of domestic treason, Honorius trembled at the approach of
every servant, at the arrival of every messenger. He dreaded the secret
enemies, who might lurk in his capital, his palace, his bed-chamber;
and some ships lay ready in the harbor of Ravenna, to transport the
abdicated monarch to the dominions of his infant nephew, the emperor of
the East.

[Footnote 92: We may admit the evidence of Sozomen for the Arian
baptism, and that of Philostorgius for the Pagan education, of Attalus.
The visible joy of Zosimus, and the discontent which he imputes to the
Anician family, are very unfavorable to the Christianity of the new
emperor.]

[Footnote 93: He carried his insolence so far, as to declare that
he should mutilate Honorius before he sent him into exile. But this
assertion of Zosimus is destroyed by the more impartial testimony
of Olympiodorus; who attributes the ungenerous proposal (whic