Meanwhile poured down into Italy, as far as Florence (a merely
unimportant episode in those fearful days), another wave of German
invaders under one Radogast, 200,000 strong. Under the walls of
Florence they sat down, and perished of wine, and heat, and
dysentery. Like water they flowed in, and like water they sank into
the soil: and every one of them a human soul.

Stilicho and Honorius went to Rome, and celebrated their triumph over
the Goths, with (for the last time in history) gladiatorial sports.
Three years past, and then Stilicho was duly rewarded for having
saved Rome, in the approved method for every great barbarian who was
fool enough to help the treacherous Roman; namely, by being murdered.

Alaric rose instantly, and with him all the Gothic tribes. Down
through Italy he past, almost without striking a blow. Ravenna,
infamous, according to Sidonius, for its profligacy, where the
Emperor's court was, he past disdainfully, and sat down before the
walls of Rome. He did not try to storm it. Probably he could not.
He had no such machines, as those with which the Romans battered
walls. Quietly he sat, he and his Goths, 'as wolves wait round the
dying buffalo;' waiting for the Romans within to starve and die.
They did starve and die; men murdered each other for food; mothers
ate their own babes; but they sent out embassies, boasting of their
strength and numbers. Alaric laughed,--'The thicker the hay, the
easier it is mowed.' What terms would he take? 'All your gold, all
your silver, the best of your precious things. All your barbarian
slaves.' That last is significant. He would deliver his own flesh
and blood. The Teuton man should be free. The trolls should drag no
more of the forest children into their accursed den. 'What then will
you leave us?' 'Your lives.'