From the extremity, perhaps, of the
Quirinal hill, to the distant quarter of the Vatican, a numerous
detachment of Goths, marching in order of battle through the principal
streets, protected with glittering arms the long train of their devout
companions, who bore aloft on their heads the sacred vessels of gold and
silver; and the martial shouts of the Barbarians were mingled with the
sound of religious psalmody. From all the adjacent houses a crowd of
Christians hastened to join this edifying procession; and a multitude of
fugitives, without distinction of age, or rank, or even of sect, had the
good fortune to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the
Vatican. The learned work 'Concerning the City of God' was professedly
composed by St. Augustine to justify the ways of Providence in the
destruction of the Roman greatness. He celebrates with peculiar
satisfaction this memorable triumph of Christ, and insults his
adversaries by challenging them to produce some similar example of a
town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of antiquity had been
able to protect either themselves or their deluded votaries.

In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples of Barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the
Vatican and the Apostolic churches could receive a very small proportion
of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially of the Huns
who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to the name, or
at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect without any breach
of charity or candor that in the hour of savage license, when every
passion was inflamed and every restraint was removed, the precepts of
the gospel seldom influenced the behavior of the Gothic Christians. The
writers the best disposed to exaggerate their clemency have freely
confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans, and that the
streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which remained without
burial during the general consternation. The despair of the citizens was
sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the Barbarians were provoked
by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the
innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of forty thousand slaves
was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes which
they had formerly received were washed away in the blood of the guilty
or obnoxious families. The matrons and vi