Italy were pillaged or destroyed; and the siege
of Florence by Radagaisus, is one of the earliest events in the history of
that celebrated republic, whose firmness checked or delayed the unskilful
fury of the barbarians.

"While the peace of Germany was secured by the attachment of the Franks,
and the neutrality of the Alemanni, the subjects of Rome, unconscious of
the approaching calamities, enjoyed a state of quiet and prosperity, which
had seldom blessed the frontiers of Gaul. Their flocks and herds were
permitted to graze in the pastures of the barbarians: their huntsmen
penetrated, without fear or danger, into the darkest recesses of the
Hercynian wood. The banks of the Rhine were crowded, like those of the
Tiber, with elegant houses and well-cultivated farms; and if the poet
descended the river, he might express his doubt on which side was situated
the territory of the Romans. This scene of peace and plenty was suddenly
changed into a desert; and the prospect of the smoking ruins, could alone
distinguish the solitude of nature, from the desolation of man. The
flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed; and many thousand
Christians were inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms perished, after a
long and obstinate siege; Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournay, Arras,
Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German yoke; and the
consuming flames of war spread from the banks of the Rhine over the
greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive
country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was delivered to
the barbarians, who drove before them, in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop,
the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and
altars."--_Ibid._, vol. v., p. 224.

After this invasion of the empire by Radagaisus, Alaric again returned,
invaded Italy in 408, and in 410 he besieged, took, and sacked Rome, and
died the same year. In 412 the Goths voluntarily retired from Italy.

In this last year, "a public conference was held in Carthage, by order of
the magistrate;" and it was there agreed to inflict the most severe
penalties on those who dissented from the Catholic doctrines, in the
African part of the Roman empire. Says Gibbon:--"Three hundred bishops,
with many thousands of the inferior clergy, were torn from their churches,
stripped of their ecclesiastical possessions, banished to the islands, and
proscribed by the laws, if they presumed to c