uns 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 confest 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 virgins of Rome were exposed to
injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death
itself....

The want of youth, or beauty, or chastity protected the greatest part
of the Roman women from the danger of a rape. But avarice is an
insatiate and universal passion, since the enjoyment of almost every
object that can afford pleasure to the different tastes and tempers of
mankind may be procured by the possession of wealth. In the pillage of
Rome, a just preference was given to gold and jewels, which contain
the greatest value in the smallest compass and weight; but after these
portable riches had been removed by the more diligent robbers, the
palaces of Rome were rudely stript of their splendid and costly
furniture. The sideboards of massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes
of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons that always
followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art
were roughly handled or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted
for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in the
division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke of a
battle-ax. The acquisition of riches served only to stimulate the
avarice of the rapacious Barbarians, who proceeded by threats, by
blows, and by tortures to force from their prisoners the confession of
hidden treasure. Visible splendor and expense were alleged as the
proof of a plent