the city,
and the gates being opened to him by some Gothic slaves, his troops
began at night a fearful scene of pillage and destruction. Men, women,
and children were involved in a general massacre; nobles and plebeians
suffered under a common fate. The Goths, as they entered, set fire to
the houses in order to light their path, and the flames consumed a large
part of the city. Great numbers of the citizens were driven away in
hordes to be sold as slaves; others escaped to Africa, or to the islands
on the coast of Italy, where the Goths, having no ships, were unable to
follow them. But Alaric, who was an Arian, spared the churches of Rome,
and was anxious to save the city from destruction. From this time,
however, A.D. 410, began that rapid decay which soon converted Rome into
a heap of ruins.

Alaric, after six days given to plunder, marched out of the city, to the
southern part of Italy, where he died. His body was buried under the
waters of a rivulet, which was turned from its course in order to
prepare his tomb; and, the waters being once more led back to their
channel, the captives who had performed the labor were put to death,
that the Romans might never discover the remains of their Gothic
scourge.

The brother of Alaric, Adolphus, who succeeded him, was married to the
Princess Placidia, and now became the chief ally of Honorius. He
restored Gaul to the empire, but was murdered while upon an expedition
into Spain. Wallia, the next Gothic king, reduced all Spain and the
eastern part of Gaul under the yoke of the Visigoths. The empire of the
West was now rapidly dismembered. The Franks and Burgundians took
possession of Gaul. Britain, too, was from this time abandoned by the
Romans, and was afterward, in A.D. 448, overrun and conquered by the
Angles and the Saxons, and thus the two great races, the English and the
French, began.

Arcadius, the Eastern emperor, governed by his minister, the eunuch
Eutropius, and by the Empress Eudoxia, was led into many cruelties; and
St. Chrysostom, the famous bishop and orator, was one of the illustrious
victims of their persecutions. Arcadius died in A.D. 408, and was
succeeded by the young Theodosius, who was controlled in all his
measures by his sister Pulcheria, and for forty years Pulcheria ruled
the East with uncommon ability. Honorius died in A.D. 423, when
Valentinian III., son of Placidia, his sister, was made Emperor of the
West. He was wholly governed by his mother,