Whether fame or conquest or riches were the object of Alaric, he pursued that object with an indefatigable ardor which could neither be quelled by adversity nor satiated by success.  No sooner had he reached the extreme land of Italy than he was attracted by the neighboring prospect of a fertile and peaceful island.  Yet even the possession of Sicily he considered only as an intermediate step to the important expedition which he already meditated against the continent of Africa.

The whole design was defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after a short illness, the fatal term of his conquests.  The ferocious character of the Barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero whose valor and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause.  By the labor of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia.  The royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were then restored to their natural channel, and the secret spot where the remains of Alaric had been deposited was forever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners who had been employed to execute the work.

The personal animosities and hereditary feuds of the Barbarians were suspended by the strong necessity of their affairs, and the brave Adolphus, the brother-in-law of the deceased monarch, was unanimously elected to succeed to his throne.  The character and political system of the new King of the Goths may be best understood from his own conversation with an illustrious citizen of Narbonne; who afterward, in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, related it to St. Jerome, in the presence of the historian Orosius.  “In the full confidence of valor and victory, I once aspired (said.  Adolphus) to change the face of the universe; to obliterate the name of Rome; to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths; and to acquire, like Augustus, the immortal fame of the founder of a new empire.  By repeated experiments I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a well-constituted state; and that the fierce, untractable humor of the Goths was incapable of bearing the salutary yoke of laws and civil government.  From that moment I proposed to myself a different object of glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merit of a stranger who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain, the prosperity of the Roman Empire.”  With these pacific views, the successor of Alaric suspended the operations of war, and seriously negotiated with the Imperial court a treaty of friendship and alliance.  It was the interest of the ministers of Honorius, who were now released from, the obligation of their extravagant oath, to deliver Italy from the intolerable weight of the Gothic powers; and they readily accepted their