ous
of these fugitives was the noble and pious Proba, the widow of the
prefect Petronius. After the death of her husband, the most powerful
subject of Rome, she had remained at the head of the Anician family, and
successively supplied, from her private fortune, the expense of the
consulships of her three sons. When the city was besieged and taken by
the Goths, Proba supported, with Christian resignation, the loss of
immense riches; embarked in a small vessel, from whence she beheld, at
sea, the flames of her burning palace, and fled with her daughter Laeta,
and her granddaughter, the celebrated virgin Demetrias, to the coast of
Africa. The benevolent profusion with which the matron distributed the
fruits, or the price, of her estates, contributed to alleviate the
misfortunes of exile and captivity. But even the family of Proba herself
was not exempt from the rapacious oppression of Count Heraclian, who
basely sold, in matrimonial prostitution, the noblest maidens of Rome to
the lust or avarice of the Syrian merchants.

The Italian fugitives were dispersed through the provinces, along the
coast of Egypt and Asia, as far as Constantinople and Jerusalem; and the
village of Bethlehem, the solitary residence of St. Jerome and his
female converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars of either sex, and
every age, who excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their
past fortune. This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished
Empire with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and
ruin disposed the fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to
exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities. The clergy, who
applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of oriental prophecy, were
sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the capital and the
dissolution of the globe.

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the
advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times. Yet, when
the first emotions had subsided, and a fair estimate was made of the
real damage, the more learned and judicious contemporaries were forced
to confess that infant Rome had formerly received more essential injury
from the Gauls than she had now sustained from the Goths in her
declining age. The experience of eleven centuries has enabled posterity
to produce a much more singular parallel, and to affirm with confidence
that the ravages of the Barbarians, whom Alaric had led from the ba