nd their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an
enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent
victim. Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected
the niece of Theodosius, the aunt, nay, even the adoptive mother, of the
reigning Emperor; but they abhorred the widow of Stilicho; and they
listened with credulous passion to the tale of calumny, which accused
her of maintaining a secret and criminal correspondence with the Gothic
invader. Actuated or overawed by the same popular frenzy, the senate,
without requiring any evidence of her guilt, pronounced the sentence of
her death. Serena was ignominiously strangled; and the infatuated
multitude were astonished to find that this cruel act of injustice did
not immediately produce the retreat of the Barbarians and the
deliverance of the city.

That unfortunate city gradually experienced the distress of scarcity,
and at length the horrid calamities of famine. The daily allowance of
three pounds of bread was reduced to one-half, to one-third, to nothing;
and the price of corn still continued to rise in a rapid and extravagant
proportion. The poorer citizens, who were unable to purchase the
necessaries of life, solicited the precarious charity of the rich; and
for a while the public misery was alleviated by the humanity of Laeta,
the widow of the emperor Gratian, who had fixed her residence at Rome,
and consecrated to the use of the indigent the princely revenue which
she annually received from the grateful successors of her husband. But
these private and temporary donatives were insufficient to appease the
hunger of a numerous people; and the progress of famine invaded the
marble palaces of the senators themselves. The persons of both sexes,
who had been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered
how little is requisite to supply the demands of nature, and lavished
their unavailing treasures of gold and silver to obtain the coarse and
scanty sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain.
The food the most repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the
most unwholesome and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly
devoured, and fiercely disputed, by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion
was entertained that some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their
fellow-creature, whom they had secretly murdered; and even mothers--such
was the horrid conflict of the two most powerful instincts impla