OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 323 he had discovered ; and received a peremptory order from Alai'ic that all the consecrated plate and ornaments should be trans- ported, without damage or delay, to the church of the apostle. From the extremity, perhaps, of the Quirinal hill to the distant quarter of the Vatican, a numerous detachment of Goths, march- ing 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 pro- cession ; 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 Citi/ of God, was professedly composed by St. Augustin, 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. i*^* In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples ofpuiageand _. , , , ,, iiiT-j 111 ^^ °f Rome 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, moio especially of the Huns, who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangei's to the name, or at least to the faith, of Christ ; and we may suspect, without any breach of charity or candour, that in the hour of savage licence, when every passion was inflamed and every restraint was removed, the precepts of the gospel seldom influenced the behaviour 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 lO'i See Augustin, de Civitat. Dei, 1. i. c. i-6. He particularly appeals to the example of Troy, Syracuse and Tarentum. 10^ Jerom (torn. i. p. 121, ad Principiam [ep. 16]) has applied to the sack of Rome all the strong expressions of Virgil : Quis cladem illius noctis, quis funera fando, Explicet, &c. Procopius (1. i. c. 2) positively affirms that great numbers were slain by the Goths. Augustin (de Civ. Dei, 1. i. c. 12, 13) offers Christian comfort for the death of those whose bodies {miilta corpora] had remained (in tanta strage) unburied. Baronius, from the different writings of the Fathers, has thrown some light on the sack of Rome. Annal. Eccles. a.d. 410, No. 16-44.
