ictly justify his detention of the forces, which
ought to have been sent back to defend the provinces of Arcadius at the
very beginning of the year. Stilicho's march to Thessaly can scarcely
have taken place before October, and it is hard to interpret this long
delay in sending back the troops, over which he had no rightful
authority, if it were not dictated by a wish to implicate the government
of New Rome in difficulties and render his own intervention necessary.

We are told, too, that he selected the best soldiers from the eastern
regiments and enrolled them in the western corps. If we adopted the
Cassian maxim, _Cui bono fuerit_, we should be inclined to accuse
Stilicho of having been privy to the revolt of Alaric; such a
supposition would at least be far more plausible than the calumny which
was circulated charging Rufinus with having stirred up the Visigoths.
For such a supposition, too, we might find support in the circumstance
that the estates of Rufinus were spared by the soldiers of Alaric; it
would be intelligible that Stilicho suggested the plan in order to bring
odium upon Rufinus. To such a conjecture, finally, certain other
circumstances, soon to be related, point: but it remains nothing more
than a suspicion.

It seems that before Stilicho arrived Alaric had experienced a defeat at
the hands of garrison soldiers in Thessaly; at all events he shut
himself up in a fortified camp and declined to engage with the Roman
general. In the mean time Rufinus induced Arcadius to send a peremptory
order to Stilicho to despatch the eastern troops to Constantinople and
depart himself whence he had come; the Emperor resented, or pretended to
resent, the presence of his cousin as an officious interference.
Stilicho yielded so readily that his willingness seems almost
suspicious; but we shall probably never know whether he was responsible
for the events that followed. He consigned the eastern soldiers to the
command of a Gothic captain, Gainas, and himself departed to Salona,
allowing Alaric to proceed on his wasting way into the lands of Hellas.

Gainas and his soldiers marched by the Via Egnatia to Constantinople,
and it was arranged that, according to a usual custom, the Emperor and
his court should come forth from the city to meet the army in the Campus
Martius, which extended on the west side of the city near the Golden
Gate. We cannot trust the statement of a hostile writer that Rufinus
actually expected to be cr