I shudder when I think of the calamities of our time. For twenty years the blood of Romans has been shed daily between Constantinople and the Alps. Scythia, Thrace, Macedon, Thessaly, Dacia, Achaea, Epirus — all these regions have been sacked and pillaged by Goths and Alans, Huns and Vandals. How many noble and virtuous women have been made the sport1 of these beasts! Churches have been overthrown, horses stalled in the holy places, the bones of the saints dug up and scattered.
Indeed, the Roman world is falling; yet we still hold up our heads instead of bowing them. The East, indeed, seemed to be free from these perils; but now, in the year just past, the wolves of the North have been let loose from their remotest fastnesses, and have overrun great provinces. They have laid siege to Antioch, and invested cities that were once the capitals of no mean2 states.
Non mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum,
Ferrea vox, omnes scelerum comprendere formas,
Omnia poenarum percurrere nomine possim.*
Well may we be unhappy, for it is our sins that have made the barbarians strong; as in the days of Hezekiah, so today is God using the fury of the barbarians to execute His fierce anger. Rome’s army, once the lord of the world, trembles today at sight of the foe.
Who will hereafter believe that Rome has to fight now within her own borders, not for glory but for life? and, as the poet Lucan says, “If Rome be weak, where shall strength be found?”
And now a dreadful rumor has come to hand.3 Rome has been besieged, and its citizens have been forced to buy off their lives with gold. My voice cleaves to my throat; sobs choke my utterance. The city which had taken the whole world captive is itself taken. Famine too has done its awful work.