CHAPTER XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By Barbarians .-- Part I.
Invasion Of Italy By Alaric .-- Manners Of The Roman Senate And People .-- Rome Is Thrice Besieged, And At Length Pillaged, By The Goths .-- Death Of Alaric .-- The Goths Evacuate Italy .-- Fall Of Constantine .-- Gaul And Spain Are Occupied By The Barbarians .-- Independence Of Britain.
The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.

If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.

The king of the Goths would have conspired, perhaps with some reluctance, to destroy the formidable adversary, by whose arms, in Italy, as well as in Greece, he had been twice overthrown.

_Their_ active and interested hatred laboriously accomplished the disgrace and ruin of the great Stilicho.
The valor of Sarus, his fame in arms, and his personal, or hereditary, influence over the confederate Barbarians, could recommend him only to the friends of their country, who despised, or detested, the worthless characters of Turpilio, Varanes, and Vigilantius.

By the pressing instances of the new favorites, these generals, unworthy as they had shown themselves of the names of soldiers, were promoted to the command of the cavalry, of the infantry, and of the domestic troops.