The chief figure of interest is Ælia Galla Placidia, the sister of Honorius, whom we found visiting Constantinople in 423. Her adventures began when the Goths invested Rome in 408. She is then mentioned as concurring with the Senate in the pitiful execution of her cousin, the widow of Stilicho. Placidia was then in her eighteenth year. Bearing a heavy ransom, the Gothic army went away to harass her useless and trembling brother at Ravenna, and Placidia thought fit to remain at Rome. It still contained wealth enough to capitulate to barbarians on fair terms. But the Goths returned in 410. Rome was awakened in the dead of night by the blare of their trumpets, and looked out to find palaces in flames, the streets filled with the terrible Goths, and the work of looting already begun. After six days of pillage they retreated northward, taking Placidia with them. We cannot follow her closely in that extraordinary march. She was treated as a princess, however, and two years later was sought in marriage by the new king of the Goths, Ataulph. Ataulph was a barbarian only in name; a large, handsome man, princely, intelligent, and amiable. He aspired to be a Roman Emperor. Honorius weakly resented the proposal, and demanded that he should prove the friendship he offered to Rome by returning Placidia. For two years she had wandered over Italy in the Gothic army. It appears that Placidia was attracted to the graceful and courtly Goth, and they were married at Narbonne--the Goths having now returned to Gaul--in 414. When she reflected on the splendour of the wedding gifts, she may have thought that even an alliance with a Roman prince could not be more magnificent. Fifty beautiful youths, clothed in silk, brought to her one hundred dishes laden with the gold and jewels which the Goths had brought from Rome. But Ataulph was assassinated in the following year, and Placidia sank again to the position of captive. She had to walk twelve miles on foot, amid a crowd of captives, before the victorious barbarian who had slain her husband. Within another year her persecutor was slain, and his more humane successor restored her--or sold her--to the court at Ravenna.