If we could depend upon the dates in the Theodosian Code we should be able to say that Honorius finally retreated upon Ravenna before December 402;[1] unhappily the dates we find there must not be relied upon with absolute confidence.  We may take it that Alaric entered Venetia in November 401, and that at the same time Radagaisus invaded Rhaetia.  Stilicho, Honorius’ great general and the hero of the whole defence, advanced against Radagaisus.  Upon Easter Day in the following year, however, he met Alaric at Pollentia and defeated him, but the Gothic king was allowed to withdraw from that field with the greater part of his cavalry entire and unbroken.  Stilicho hoping to annihilate him forced him to retreat, overtook him at Asta (Asti), but again allowed him to escape and this time to retreat into Istria.

[Footnote 1:  Cf.  Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, vol. i. pt. 2, p. 712.]

In the summer of 403 Alaric again entered Italy and laid siege to Verona; Stilicho, however, met him and defeated him, but again allowed him to retreat.  Well might Orosius, his contemporary, exclaim that this king with his Goths, though often hemmed in, often defeated, was always allowed to escape.

The battle of Verona was followed by a peace of two years duration.  But in 405 the other barbarian Radagaisus came down into Cisalpine Gaul as Alaric had done, and Stilicho, knowing that the pass through which the great road entered Italy was secured by Ravenna, assailed him at Ticinum (Pavia).  Radagaisus, however, did a bold and perhaps an unexpected thing.  He attempted to cross the Apennines themselves by the difficult and neglected route that ran over them and led to Fiesole.[2] But the Romans had been right in their judgment.  That way was barred by nature.  It needed no defence.  Before the barbarian had quite pierced the mountains Stilicho caught him, slew him, and annihilated his already starving bands at Fiesole.  Cisalpine Gaul and the fortress of Ravenna, its key, still held Italy secure.

[Footnote 2:  Livy asserts that C. Flamimus, the colleague of M. Aemilius Lepidus in B.C. 187, built a road direct from Arezzo to Bologna across the Tuscan Apennines.  This road early fell into disuse and ruin.  We hear nothing of it (but see Cicero, Phil. xii. 9) till this raid of Radagaisus.  Later, Totila came this way to besiege Rome.  Cf.  Repetti, Dizionavio della Toscana, vol. v. 713-715.]

Honorius and his great general and minister now essayed what perhaps should have been attempted earlier, namely, to employ Alaric in the service of Rome, as the East had known how to employ him, at a distance from the capital.  He was first offered the province of Illyricum; but the senate refused to hear of any such treaty, and though at last it consented to pay the Goth 4000 pounds in gold “to secure the peace of Italy and conciliate the friendship of the Gothic king,” Lampadius, one of the most illustrious