310 THE DECLINE AND FALL a numerous people ; and the progress of famine invaded the marble palaces of the senators themselves. The persons of both sexes, who had been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is requisite to supply the demands of nature; and lavished their unavailing treasures of gold and silver, to obtain the coarse and scanty sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain. The food the most repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the most un- wholesome and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured and fiercely disputed by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained that some desperate wretches fed on the bodies of their fellow-creatures, whom they had secretly murdered ; and even mothers (such was the horrid conflict of the two most powerful instincts implanted by nature in the human breast) — even mothers are said to have tasted the flesh of their slaughtered infants ! "" Many thousands of the inhabi- tants of Rome expired in their houses, or in the streets, for want of sustenance ; and, as the public sepulchres without the walls were in the power of the enemy, the stench which arose from so many putrid and unburied carcases infected the air, and the miseries of famine were succeeded and aggravated by the Plague contagion of pestilential disease. The assurances of speedy and effectual relief, which were repeatedly transmitted from the court of Ravenna, supported for some time the fainting resolu- tion of the Romans, till at length the despair of any human aid saperstition tempted them to accept the offers of a praeternatural deliverance. Pompeianus, praefect of the city, had been persuaded, by the art or fanaticism of some Tuscan diviners, that, by the mysterious force of spells and sacrifices, they could extract the lightning from the clouds, and point those celestial fires against the camp of the Barbarians."^ The important secret was communicated "'Ad nefandos ciboserupitesurientium rabies, et sua invicein membra laniarunt, dum mater non parcit lactenti infantise; et recipit utero, quem paullo ante eftuderat. Jerom ad Principiam, tom. i. p. 221 [ep. 127; Migne, i. p. 1094]. The same horrid circumstance is likewise told of the sieges of Jerusalem and Paris. For the latter, compare the tenth book of the Henriade, and the Journal de Henri IV. tom. i. p. 47-83 ; and observe that a plain narrative of facts is much more pathetic than the most laboured descriptions of epic poetry. "** Zosimus (1. V. p. 355, 356 [c. 41]) speaks of these ceremonies like a Greek unacquainted with the national superstition of Rome and Tuscany. I susjject that they consisted of two parts, the secret and the public ; the former were pro- bably an imitation of the arts and spells by which Numa had drawn down Jupiter and his thunder on Mount Aventine. Quid agant laqueis, quae carniina dicant, Quaque trahant superis sedibus arte Jovem, Scire nefas horaini. The ancilia, or shields of Mars, he pignora Imperii, which were carried in solemn
