of the towns of Italy to reiterate his offers of peace and to conjure
the Emperor that he would save the city and its inhabitants from hostile
fire and the sword of the Barbarians. These impending calamities were,
however, averted, not indeed by the wisdom of Honorius, but by the
prudence or humanity of the Gothic King; who employed a milder, though
not less effectual, method of conquest. Instead of assaulting the
capital, he successfully directed his efforts against the port of Ostia,
one of the boldest and most stupendous works of Roman magnificence.

The accidents to which the precarious subsistence of the city was
continually exposed in a winter navigation and an open road, had
suggested to the genius of the first Cæsar the useful design which was
executed under the reign of Claudius. The artificial moles, which formed
the narrow entrance, advanced far into the sea, and firmly repelled the
fury of the waves, while the largest vessels securely rode at anchor
within three deep and capacious basins, which received the northern
branch of the Tiber, about two miles from the ancient colony of Ostia.
The Roman port insensibly swelled to the size of an episcopal city,
where the corn of Africa was deposited in spacious granaries for the use
of the capital. As soon as Alaric was in possession of that important
place, he summoned the city to surrender at discretion; and his demands
were enforced by the positive declaration that a refusal, or even a
delay, should be instantly followed by the destruction of the magazines,
on which the life of the Roman people depended. The clamors of that
people, and the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the senate; they
listened, without reluctance, to the proposal of placing a new emperor
on the throne of the unworthy Honorius; and the suffrage of the Gothic
conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, prefect of the city. The
grateful monarch immediately acknowledged his protector as
master-general of the armies of the West; Adolphus, with the rank of