story of Rome 
2. A formidable enemy now appears on the scene, Al’aric, 
Auaric, King of the Visigoths, Under him the Goths settled 
within the Danube had already overrun Mace- 
donia and Greece, and in A.D. 402 Alaric attacked Italy in 
zreat force. Stilicho hurried to the rescue, and drove out the 
Visigoths, gaining decisive victories in two desperate battles 
(403). After his general’s success Honorius, the emperor, 
celebrated at Rome the last /r{umph ever seen there, the event 
being sung in stirring verse (which has come down to us) by 
Claudian, the last of the Latin classic poets, a writer of pure 
style and real genius. 
3. In A.D. 405 a leader named Radagaisus invaded Italy with 
Stiliche a vast host of barbarians from the interior of Ger- 
jefeatsthe many—Swevi and Alemannt, Ald'ni and Vandals, 
Jarbarians, (ots and Huns. At Fee’sule, near Florence (in 
406), Stilicho encountered and defeated the enemy. Stilicho 
was put to death in 408 on a charge of aspiring to the empire. 
4. In A.D. 408 Alaric came again into Italy, this time with an 
Saptureor irresistible force, and after extorting an enormous 
Romeby ransom on condition of sparing Rome, captured the 
. city in 410, and gave it up to a six days’ plunder 
by his warriors, without any cruel slaughter of the people. This 
was exactly 800 years after the taking of Rome by the Gauls 
under Brennus. Alaric died shortly afterwards, 
5. Early in the fifth century the Roman forces were with- 
Progressive drawn from Britain, which was left open to con. 
barbarian en- quest by the Ang/es and their kinsmen from north- 
>roachments. „ost Germany. Soon after Alaric’s time the Visz- 
yofhs established themselves in the south of Gaul and the north 
af Spain, while hordes of Swevi and Ala'ni, Vandals and 
Burgun'dians (a German nation akin to the Goths) swarmed 
over the rest of both those great provinces, In 429 Gem'seric, 
King of the Vandals, passed over from Spain into Africa, and 
made himself master of the whole north-west of Rome’s domi- 
nions there. His fleet swept the Mediterranean, conveying 
troops who conquered the chief islands, and made descents on 
the shores of Italy and Greece. The Western Empire was thus 
gradually absorbed and repeopled by swarms of new inhabitants, 
many years before its formal and final extinction as a political 
act, 
6. We come next to the re-appearance of the savage and 
formidable Huns, under the most famous cf barbarian con-