256 THE DECLINE AND FALL cessant diligence of Stilicho : but he respected the despair of his enemy ; and, instead of committing the fate of the republic to the chance of another battle, he proposed to purchase the absence of the Barbarians, The spirit of Alaric would have rejected such terms, the permission of a retreat and the offer of a pension, with contempt and indignation ; but he exercised a limited and precarious authority over the independent chieftains, who had raised him, for tlteir service, above the rank of his equals; they were still less disposed to follow an unsuccessful general, and many of them w^ere tempted to consult their interest by a private negotiation with the minister of Honorius. The king submitted to the voice of his people, ratified the treaty with the empire of the West, and repassed the Po, vdth the remains of the flourishing army which he had led into Italy. A considerable part of the Roman forces still continued to attend his motions ; and Stilicho, who iTiaintained a secret correspondence with some of the Barbarian chiefs, was punctually apprized of the designs that were formed in the camp and council of Alaric. The king of the Goths, ambitious to signalise his retreat by some splendid achievement, had resolved to occupy the important city of Verona, which commands the principal passage of the Rhaetian Alps ; and directing his march through the ten*itories of those German tribes, whose alliance would restore his exhausted strength, to invade, on the side of the Rhine, the wealthy and unsuspecting provinces of Gaul. Ignorant of the treason, which had already betrayed his bold and judicious enterprise, he ad- vanced 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 [A.D. 103] 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 rash- ness 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 ^ [Claudian alone mentions this battle. See, for date, Appendix 17.]
