He had immolated all his affections and all his hopes, all his
faculties of body and mind, his happiness in boyhood, his enthusiasm in
youth, his courage in manhood, his reason in old age, at the altar of
his gods; and now they were to exact from him, in their defence, lonely
criminal, maddened, as he already was in their cause, more than all
this! The decree had gone forth from the Senate which devoted to
legalised pillage the treasures in the temples of Rome.
Rulers of a people impoverished by former exactions, and comptrollers
only of an exhausted treasury, the government of the city had searched
vainly among all ordinary resources for the means of paying the heavy
ransom exacted by Alaric as the price of peace. The one chance of
meeting the emergency that remained was to strip the Pagan temples of
the mass of jewelled ornaments and utensils, the costly robes, the idols
of gold and silver which they were known to contain, and which, under
that mysterious hereditary influence of superstition, whose power it is
the longest labour of truth to destroy, had remained untouched and
respected, alike by the people and the senate, after the worship that
they represented had been interdicted by the laws, and abandoned by the
nation.
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