Gibbon, whom every writer since has followed without question, tells
us, in one of his most scornful passages, that "the emperor Honorius
was distinguished, above his subjects, by the pre-eminence of fear, as
well as of rank. The pride and luxury in which he was educated had not
allowed him to suspect that there existed on the earth any power
presumptuous enough to invade the repose of the successor of Augustus.
The acts of flattery concealed the impending danger till Alaric
approached the palace of Milan. But when the sound of war had awakened
the young emperor, instead of flying to arms with the spirit, or even
the rashness, of his age, he eagerly listened to those timid
counsellors who proposed to convey his sacred person and his faithful
attendants to some secure and distant station in the provinces of
Gaul.... The recent danger to which the person of the emperor had been
exposed in the defenceless palace of Milan urged him to seek a retreat
in some inaccessible fortress of Italy, where he might securely remain
while the open country was covered by a deluge of barbarians."

No historian of Ravenna, and certainly no writer upon the fall of the
empire, has cared to understand what Ravenna was. Gibbon complains
that he lacks "a local antiquarian and a good topographical map;" yet
it is not so much the lack of local knowledge that leads him
unreservedly to censure Honorius for his retreat upon Ravenna, as the
fact that he has not perhaps really grasped what Ravenna was, what was
her relation to Italy and Cisalpine Gaul, and especially how she stood
to the sea, and what part that sea played in the geography and
strategy of the empire.

For my part I shall maintain that, whatever may be the truth as to the
private character of Honorius, which would indeed be difficult to