But the populace, with
their usual levity, applauded the change of masters. The public
discontent was favorable to the rival of Honorius; and the sectaries,
oppressed by his persecuting edicts, expected some degree of
countenance, or at least of toleration, from a prince who, in his native
country of Ionia, had been educated in the pagan superstition, and who
had since received the sacrament of baptism from the hands of an Arian
bishop.
The first days of the reign of Attains were fair and prosperous. An
officer of confidence was sent with an inconsiderable body of troops to
secure the obedience of Africa; the greatest part of Italy submitted to
the terror of the Gothic powers; and though the city of Bologna made a
vigorous and effectual resistance, the people of Milan, dissatisfied
perhaps with the absence of Honorius, accepted, with loud acclamations,
the choice of the Roman senate. At the head of a formidable army, Alaric
conducted his royal captive almost to the gates of Ravenna; and a solemn
embassy of the principal ministers, of Jovius, the praetorian prefect, of
Valens, master of the cavalry and infantry, of the quaestor Potamius, and
of Julian, the first of the notaries, was introduced, with martial pomp,
into the Gothic camp.
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