But, notwithstanding this abatement of the horrors connected with the taking of Rome, enough is recorded on the page of authentic history to convey a fearful idea of that memorable event. Numbers were slain, the houses of the wealthy were pillaged, their most costly treasures were unsparingly seized, many of the most beautiful works of art were destroyed; and if only a few of the buildings of Rome were reduced to ashes, they were all, no doubt, stripped of whatever was valuable, and capable of being removed in the heavy wagons which followed in the rear of the Gothic army. Multitudes of the people of rank were sold for slaves, or driven into exile. "Who would believe," exclaims Jerome, "that Rome, built up with the spoils of the whole world, and the very cradle of nations, should be turned into a sepulchre; that the shores of Egypt, Africa, and the east, should be crowded with the handmaids of the imperial city; that every day nobles of both sexes, who had lived in affluence, should come as beggars to the sanctuaries of Bethlehem."[4] But it is not the intention of the author to write a history of the invasion of Rome by Alaric: he has selected that event, simply as a starting-point in his introduction to a review of the state of society in the middle ages. That invasion forms the first grand epoch in the fall of Rome, which thenceforth became the prey of barbarian violence, till, at length, no traces of its greatness remained, and the eternal city itself became a field of ruins. And as it was the fall of Rome which prepared the way for the social phenomena of the mediæval period, it was natural, before entering upon an enumeration of those times, to glance at the event which appears so conspicuously among the causes which effected them. It will be proper, before we proceed further, briefly to notice the previous state of Roman civilisation, as this will in some measure explain the remarkable fact of so great an empire having been overrun by barbarians, and will also illustrate the character of that form of society which was succeeded by the social changes of the middle ages. [1] Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xvi. c. 10. [2] Socrates, Hist., lib. vii. c. 10. [3] Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xxxi. [4] Hieron., Pref. in Ezekiel. SECTION II. ROMAN CIVILISATION.