While the Emperor and his court enjoyed, with sullen pride, the security
of the marshes and fortifications of Ravenna, they abandoned Rome,
almost without defence, to the resentment of Alaric. Yet such was the
moderation which he still preserved, or affected, that, as he moved with
his army along the Flaminian way, he successively despatched the bishops
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 Caesar the useful design which was
executed under the reign of Claudius.
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