from one tribe, and
were distinguished later by the names of those who led each group. This
people used to dwell above the Ister River from of old. Later on the
Gepaedes got possession of the country about Singidunum[15] and
Sirmium,[16] on both sides of the Ister River, where they have remained
settled even down to my time.

But the Visigoths, separating from the others, removed from there and at
first entered into an alliance with the Emperor Arcadius, but at a later
time (for faith with the Romans cannot dwell in barbarians), under the
leadership of Alaric, they became hostile to both emperors, and,
beginning with Thrace, treated all Europe as an enemy's land. Now the
Emperor Honorius had before this time been sitting in Rome, with never a
thought of war in his mind, but glad, I think, if men allowed him to
remain quiet in his palace. But when word was brought that the
barbarians with a great army were not far off, but somewhere among the
Taulantii,[17] he abandoned the palace and fled in disorderly fashion to
Ravenna, a strong city lying just about at the end of the Ionian Gulf,
while some say that he brought in the barbarians himself, because an
uprising had been started against him among his subjects; but this does
not seem to me trustworthy, as far, at least, as one can judge of the
character of the man. And the barbarians, finding that they had no
hostile force to encounter them, became the most cruel of all men. For
they destroyed all the cities which they captured, especially those
south of the Ionian Gulf, so completely that nothing has been left to my
time to know them by, unless, indeed, it might be one tower or one gate
or some such thing which chanced to remain. And they killed all the
people, as many as came in their way, both old and young alike, sparing
neither women nor children. Wherefore even up to the present time Italy
is sparsely populated. They also gathered as plunder all the money out
of all Europe, and, most important of all, they left in Rome nothing
whatever of public or private wealth when they moved on to Gaul. But I
shall now tell how Alaric captured Rome.

After much time had been spent by him in the siege, and he had not been
able either by force or by any other device to capture the place, he
formed the following plan. Among the youths in the army whose beards had
not yet grown, but who had just come of age, he chose out three hundred
whom he knew to be of good birth and possessed of