The vases and statues were distributed among the Barbarians, with more regard to the value of the materials, than to the elegance of the workmanship; the female captives submitted to the laws of war; the enjoyment of beauty was the reward of valor; and the Greeks could not reasonably complain of an abuse which was justified by the example of the heroic times.

The descendants of that extraordinary people, who had considered valor and discipline as the walls of Sparta, no longer remembered the generous reply of their ancestors to an invader more formidable than Alaric.

"If thou art a god, thou wilt not hurt those who have never injured thee; if thou art a man, advance:--and thou wilt find men equal to thyself." From Thermopylae to Sparta, the leader of the Goths pursued his victorious march without encountering any mortal antagonists: but one of the advocates of expiring Paganism has confidently asserted, that the walls of Athens were guarded by the goddess Minerva, with her formidable AEgis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles; and that the conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the hostile deities of Greece.

In an age of miracles, it would perhaps be unjust to dispute the claim of the historian Zosimus to the common benefit: yet it cannot be dissembled, that the mind of Alaric was ill prepared to receive, either in sleeping or waking visions, the impressions of Greek superstition.

The songs of Homer, and the fame of Achilles, had probably never reached the ear of the illiterate _Barbarian_; and the _Christian_ faith, which he had devoutly embraced, taught him to despise the imaginary deities of Rome and Athens.