ice of the
emperor of the East, Alaric concluded, with the court of Ravenna, a
treaty of peace and alliance, by which he was declared master-general
of the Roman armies throughout the praefecture of Illyricum; as it was
claimed, according to the true and ancient limits, by the minister of
Honorius. [101] The execution of the ambitious design, which was either
stipulated, or implied, in the articles of the treaty, appears to
have been suspended by the formidable irruption of Radagaisus; and
the neutrality of the Gothic king may perhaps be compared to the
indifference of Caesar, who, in the conspiracy of Catiline, refused
either to assist, or to oppose, the enemy of the republic. After the
defeat of the Vandals, Stilicho resumed his pretensions to the provinces
of the East; appointed civil magistrates for the administration of
justice, and of the finances; and declared his impatience to lead to
the gates of Constantinople the united armies of the Romans and of the
Goths. The prudence, however, of Stilicho, his aversion to civil war,
and his perfect knowledge of the weakness of the state, may countenance
the suspicion, that domestic peace, rather than foreign conquest, was
the object of his policy; and that his principal care was to employ the
forces of Alaric at a distance from Italy. This design could not long
escape the penetration of the Gothic king, who continued to hold a
doubtful, and perhaps a treacherous, correspondence with the rival
courts; who protracted, like a dissatisfied mercenary, his languid
operations in Thessaly and Epirus, and who soon returned to claim the
extravagant reward of his ineffectual services. From his camp near
Aemona, [102] on the confines of Italy, he transmitted to the emperor of
the West a long account of promises, of expenses, and of demands; called
for immediate satisfaction, and clearly intimated the consequences of
a refusal. Yet if his conduct was hostile, his language was decent and
dutiful. He humbly professed himself the friend of Stilicho, and the
soldier of Honorius; offered his person and his troops to march, without
delay, against the usurper of Gaul; and solicited, as a permanent
retreat for the Gothic nation, the possession of some vacant province of
the Western empire.

[Footnote 100:

Comitatur euntem
Pallor, et atra fames; et saucia lividus ora
Luctus; et inferno stridentes agmine morbi.
---Claudian in vi. Cons. Hon. 821, &c.]

[Footnote 101: The