were quite independent of the Roman empire, and always kept hostile to it; the Burgundians, on the other hand, who were a small nation in a large territory, submitted in some sort to the supremacy of the Roman emperor, as to a liege lord, in consideration of his allowing them to live there. Stilicho was loudly reviled because he could not save Gaul; and moreover he had awakened the mistrust of Honorius and his court ever since his son Eucherius was grown up. Honorius had married one after another two daughters of Stilicho, Maria and Thermantia; and as the former of these had died without issue, and no one thought that Thermantia would have children, it had been the more generally believed that Stilicho would make his son emperor. Yet there is not a shadow of proof that Stilicho sought the life of Honorius: he would much rather have waited for his death, when it would have been quite the regular course for Eucherius to succeed. Stilicho indeed was the mainstay of the empire: he alone kept Alaric in awe. Honorius notwithstanding conspired against him,—just as Louis XIII. did against one of his subjects,—and, after having first got up an insurrection of the army, he sent assassins to fall upon him in his palace. His friends having been slain before him, Stilicho fled into a church; but was dragged out of it and murdered, as was also his son: Serena his widow, was condemned to death by the base senate. To Alaric the murder of Stilicho became a pretext for again invading Italy. Honorius now took up his abode in the inaccessible city of Ravenna, which at that time was built on islands, like Venice now, being separated by lagunes from the main land, with which it was only connected by an isthmus. Without troubling himself to besiege Ravenna, Alaric marched on the Flaminian road against Rome, which he blockaded. Here, before long, the most horrible famine was seen: people murdered to feed on the corpses, so that even children are said to have been eaten by their own parents: besides which there broke out a plague, the necessary consequence of this state of things. At last a capitulation was concluded, though one cannot understand why Alaric acceded to it: perhaps he did so because the summer had already come on, and was severely felt by the army, which may likewise have suffered from epidemics. Rome having ransomed itself, negociations for peace were to be set on foot between the court of Ravenna and Alaric, it being proposed that the emperor should appoint Alaric commander-in-chief of the whole of the western empire. As these negociations did not lead to any result, Alaric turned himself for the second time towards Rome. The senate fell off from Honorius; Alaric proclaimed Attalus, the _præfectus prætorio_, emperor, and marched with him to Ravenna; and Honorius was so faint-hearted as to acknowledge Attalus as his colleague. When, however, in the meanwhile, reinforcements had landed in the port of Ravenna, and