f their
fathers. Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot of a
vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the Romans themselves,
not only in the insolence of foreign conquest, but in the madness of
civil discord. The Triumvirs proscribed eighteen of the most flourishing
colonies of Italy; and distributed their lands and houses to the
veterans who revenged the death of Caesar, and oppressed the liberty
of their country. Two poets of unequal fame have deplored, in similar
circumstances, the loss of their patrimony; but the legionaries of
Augustus appear to have surpassed, in violence and injustice, the
Barbarians who invaded Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not
without the utmost difficulty that Virgil escaped from the sword of the
Centurion, who had usurped his farm in the neighborhood of Mantua;
[170] but Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of money from his Gothic
purchaser, which he accepted with pleasure and surprise; and though it
was much inferior to the real value of his estate, this act of rapine
was disguised by some colors of moderation and equity. [171] The odious
name of conquerors was softened into the mild and friendly appellation
of the guests of the Romans; and the Barbarians of Gaul, more especially
the Goths, repeatedly declared, that they were bound to the people by
the ties of hospitality, and to the emperor by the duty of allegiance
and military service. The title of Honorius and his successors, their
laws, and their civil magistrates, were still respected in the provinces
of Gaul, of which they had resigned the possession to the Barbarian
allies; and the kings, who exercised a supreme and independent authority
over their native subjects, ambitiously solicited the more honorable
rank of master-generals of the Imperial armies. [172] Such was the
involuntary reverence which the Roman name still impressed on the minds
of those warriors, who had borne away in triumph the spoils of the
Capitol.

[Footnote 170: O Lycida, vivi pervenimus: advena nostri (Quod nunquam
veriti sumus) ut possessor agelli Diseret: Haec mea sunt; veteres
migrate coloni. Nunc victi tristes, &c.----See the whole of the ninth
eclogue, with the useful Commentary of Servius. Fifteen miles of the
Mantuan territory were assigned to the veterans, with a reservation, in
favor of the inhabitants, of three miles round the city. Even in this
favor they were cheated by Alfenus Varus, a famous lawyer, and one
of