of the treason which had already betrayed his bold and
judicious enterprise, he advanced towards the passes of the mountains,
already possessed by the Imperial troops; where he was exposed, almost
at the same instant, to a general attack in the front, on his flanks,
and in the rear. In this bloody action, at a small distance from the
walls of Verona, the loss of the Goths was not less heavy than that
which they had sustained in the defeat of Pollentia; and their valiant
king, who escaped by the swiftness of his horse, must either have been
slain or made prisoner, if the hasty rashness of the Alani had not
disappointed the measures of the Roman general. Alaric secured the
remains of his army on the adjacent rocks; and prepared himself, with
undaunted resolution, to maintain a siege against the superior numbers
of the enemy, who invested him on all sides. But he could not oppose the
destructive progress of hunger and disease; nor was it possible for
him to check the continual desertion of his impatient and capricious
Barbarians. In this extremity he still found resources in his own
courage, or in the moderation of his adversary; and the retreat of the
Gothic king was considered as the deliverance of Italy. Yet the people,
and even the clergy, incapable of forming any rational judgment of the
business of peace and war, presumed to arraign the policy of Stilicho,
who so often vanquished, so often surrounded, and so often dismissed the
implacable enemy of the republic. The first moment of the public safety
is devoted to gratitude and joy; but the second is diligently occupied
by envy and calumny.

The citizens of Rome had been astonished by the approach of Alaric;
and the diligence with which they labored to restore the walls of the
capital, confessed their own fears, and the decline of the empire.
After the retreat of the Barbarians, Honorius was directed to accept
the dutiful invitation of the senate, and to celebrate, in the Imperial
city, the auspicious aera of the Gothic victory, and of his sixth
consulship. The suburbs and the streets, from the Milvian bridge to the
Palatine mount, were filled by the Roman people, who, in the space of a
hundred years, had only thrice been honored with the presence of their
sovereigns. While their eyes were fixed on the chariot where Stilicho
was deservedly seated by the side of his royal pupil, they applauded the
pomp of a triumph, which was not stained, like that of Constantine, or
of