While such was the state of the upper, the middle classes, who derived their subsistence from their skill and industry, and who, in all communities, constitute the mainstay of a nation, had become comparatively insignificant, the still lower orders being reduced, in most instances, to abject poverty. Large allowances of bread were daily served out at the public expense; and, in one year, three millions six hundred and twenty-eight thousand pounds of bacon are said to have been distributed to the needy masses, as well as oil, indispensable alike for the lamp and the bath, to the extent of three hundred thousand English gallons; but the poor citizens had become almost as indolent and depraved as their rulers. In the baths, constructed in every part of the city with imperial magnificence for the indiscriminate use of the senators and the people, the meanest Romans idled away their time. For a small copper coin[343] they could there purchase the daily enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury which might well have excited the envy of princes. Baths, the extent of which we can now scarcely comprehend, surrounded with granite pillars from the quarries of Egypt and adorned with the precious green marble of Numidia, with streams of ever-running hot water from mouths of bright and massive silver, were the hourly resort of dirty and ragged plebeians without shoes or mantles. [Sidenote: Siege of Rome by Alaric and the Goths, A.D. 408.] Such was the state of the western capital of the once proud and powerful Roman empire, when the Gothic army first appeared before it. The barbarian Goths had greatly improved in discipline since they made their first invasion of Italy; they were well organised, and under the absolute control of Alaric, a commander in whom they had a confidence approaching to devotion. Their first action against the city itself was rather in the nature of a blockade, for they cut off all communication with it by land, while they held the mouths of the Tiber; hence, in spite of their rage and humiliation, the Romans saw at once that they had no alternative but submission, and it is to the credit of the victorious leader of the Goths that the terms he imposed were neither severe nor extravagant. From Rome Alaric continued his march into Tuscany, where vast numbers of enslaved barbarians flocked to his standard; so that with the reinforcement of a large body of Goths and Huns, who had fought their way from the banks of the Danube, he had now, under his command, an army sufficient to overawe the whole of Italy. By this time the _prestige_ of Rome had gone for ever; she was now destined to become the frequent prey of the barbarians of the north, till the tribes of Germany and Scythia, who had so long coveted her wealth, at length accomplished her destruction. [Sidenote: A.D. 409.] [Sidenote: A.D. 413.] [Sidenote: A.D. 427-439.] [Sidenote: A.D. 409-426.]