Undisciplined and restless this nation of near a million Barbarians suddenly introduced into civilisation was a constant anxiety and danger. Ignorant of the laws they had sworn to keep, as well as of the obligations and privileges of civilisation, the Goths were at the mercy of their masters, who exploited them without scruple, till driven to madness they revolted and began the fatal march through Moesia, entering Thrace at last not as the guests of the Empire but as its victorious enemy. They encamped under the walls of Hadrianople which presently they besieged, laying waste the provinces; and it was not till Theodosius had ascended the Imperial throne that they were successfully dealt with, forced to submit, and settled in Thrace and Asia Minor. But such a result could not endure. The Barbarians but awaited a leader, and when he appeared, as he did in the person of Alaric, after the death of Theodosius, they turned on Constantinople itself, which they were able to approach but not to blockade. In 396 Alaric marched southward into Greece; from Thermopylae to Sparta he pursued his victorious way, avoiding Athens rather from superstition than from fear of any mortal foe. Early in 396, however, Stilicho, who was later to win such fame in the Italian campaign, set sail from Italy, met Alaric in Arcadia, turned him back and seemed about to compel his surrender in the prison of the Peloponnesus. In this, however, he was not successful. Alaric was able to cut his way out and by rapid marches to reach the Gulf of Corinth and to transport his troops, his captives and his spoil to the opposite shore. There he succeeded in negotiating a treaty with Constantinople whereby he entered its pay and was declared Master General of Eastern Illyricum. This befell in 399. The intervention of Stilicho, successful though it had been, had proved one thing before all others; the political separation of the East and the West. The sailing of Stilicho and his army was the intervention of the West to save the East, for it was the East that was then in danger. The West was betrayed. The East made terms with the Barbarian and employed him. It behoved the West to look to itself, for it was obvious that the East would save itself at last by sacrificing the West. The West was ready. A scheme of defence had been prepared which, as we shall see, was the best that could in the circumstances have been devised. With a directness and a clarity worthy of Rome the advisers of Honorius, then in Milan, determined to sacrifice everything if need be to the defence of the European citadel, of Italy that is; and, after all, considering the position of Alaric in Illyricum, it was that which was chiefly threatened. If it fell it was certain that the whole of the West must collapse.