arms, and drove away the beautiful females, with the spoil
and cattle of the flaming villages. The travellers, who visited Greece
several years afterwards, could easily discover the deep and bloody
traces of the march of the Goths; and Thebes was less indebted for her
preservation to the strength of her seven gates, than to the eager haste
of Alaric, who advanced to occupy the city of Athens, and the important
harbor of the Piraeus. The same impatience urged him to prevent the delay
and danger of a siege, by the offer of a capitulation; and as soon as
the Athenians heard the voice of the Gothic herald, they were easily
persuaded to deliver the greatest part of their wealth, as the ransom
of the city of Minerva and its inhabitants. The treaty was ratified by
solemn oaths, and observed with mutual fidelity. The Gothic prince, with
a small and select train, was admitted within the walls; he indulged
himself in the refreshment of the bath, accepted a splendid banquet,
which was provided by the magistrate, and affected to show that he
was not ignorant of the manners of civilized nations. But the whole
territory of Attica, from the promontory of Sunium to the town of
Megara, was blasted by his baleful presence; and, if we may use the
comparison of a contemporary philosopher, Athens itself resembled the
bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim. The distance between
Megara and Corinth could not much exceed thirty miles; but the _bad
road_, an expressive name, which it still bears among the Greeks, was,
or might easily have been made, impassable for the march of an enemy.
The thick and gloomy woods of Mount Cithaeron covered the inland country;
the Scironian rocks approached the water's edge, and hung over the
narrow and winding path, which was confined above six miles along the
sea-shore. The passage of those rocks, so infamous in every age, was
terminated by the Isthmus of Corinth; and a small a body of firm
and intrepid soldiers might have successfully defended a temporary
intrenchment of five or six miles from the Ionian to the AEgean Sea. The
confidence of the cities of Peloponnesus in their natural rampart, had
tempted them to neglect the care of their antique walls; and the avarice
of the Roman governors had exhausted and betrayed the unhappy province.
Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms of the
Goths; and the most fortunate of the inhabitants were saved, by death,
from beholding the slavery