This last disaster was the cause of what immediately followed. When in 408 Alaric invaded Venetia he looted and destroyed as he wished, for there was no one to meet him. He took the great road southward and found the gate open; passed Ravenna without opposition, marched to Rome and after three sieges entered and pillaged it and was on his way southward to enjoy and to loot the South and Sicily, Placidia, the Emperor’s sister, a captive in his train, when he died at Cosenza in 410. His brother-in-law Adolphus, erected as king upon the shields of the Goths--there by the monstrous grave of his predecessor--concluded a peace with Honorius similar to that which years before Alaric had made with Constantinople. He was received into the Imperial service, consented to cross the Alps, and, what was to become a precedent for a yet more outrageous demand, received the hand of Placidia, the Emperor’s sister, in marriage. Thus the retreat of the Barbarian was secured, the peace of Italy restored and a repose obtained which endured for some forty-two years. It is interesting to observe the extraordinary likeness between Alaric’s attack upon the East and his invasion of the West. Indeed, the only difference between them is the fact that Constantinople was never really in danger, whereas Rome was entered and looted. The intention of both invasions was the same--loot; the result of both was the same--tribute and service in return for the evacuation of the immediate provinces by the Barbarian. The Imperial failure East and West was a failure in morale and in politics; it was not rightly understood a military failure: Alaric had always been defeated when he was attacked. It was the failure of the West to attack him that gave him Rome at last. The Imperial advisers perhaps thought they had solved the question he had propounded to them, when, after Alaric’s death, they had obtained the retreat of the Barbarian across the Alps--a retreat he was as glad to carry out as they to order, for he was in a sort of trap--and had secured at least his neutrality by admitting him into the service of the Empire. But the peace of more than a generation which followed their act was as illusory as it was contemptible.