From the far-distant days
when Odin was driven from his territories by the romans, to the night
polluted by the massacre of the hostages in Aquileia, the hour of just
and terrible retribution for Gothic wrongs had been delayed through the
weary lapse of years, and the warning convulsion of bitter strifes, to
approach at last under him. He looked on the towering walls before him,
the only invader since Hannibal by whom they had been beheld; and he
felt as he looked, that his new aspirations did not deceive him, that
his dreams of dominion were brightening into proud reality, that his
destiny was gloriously linked with the overthrow of Imperial Rome!
But even in the moment of approaching triumph, the leader of the Goths
was still wily in purpose and moderate in action. His impatient
warriors waited but the word to commence the assault, to pillage the
city, and to slaughter the inhabitants; but he withheld it. Scarcely
had the army halted before the gates of Rome, when the news was
promulgated among their ranks, that Alaric, for purposes of his own, had
determined to reduce the city by a blockade.
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