ENTRY OF HONORIUS INTO ROME AT THE END OF THE YEAR 403—HIS RESIDENCE IN THE PALACE OF THE CAESARS—THE LAST GLADIATORIAL CONTESTS IN THE AMPHITHEATRE—DEPARTURE OF HONORIUS FOR RAVENNA—INCURSION AND DEFEAT OF THE BARBARIANS UNDER RADAGAISUS—FALL OF STILICHO

Honorius enters Rome, A.D. 403

The reader will have learnt the condition of the Roman Empire in the beginning of the fifth century. Since it had been divided into an Eastern and Western Empire, and the continued pressure of the nomadic hordes had broken down the frontiers and the feeble legions who defended them, the great structure fell gradually to pieces. The city of Rome itself was no longer the seat of the Emperors of the West, who had long before deserted her, to take up their abode in Milan. The Romans, trembling before the invasions of Sarmatians and Germans, and deprived, through the absence of the Imperial court, of the most fertile sources of their prosperity, besieged their feeble Emperor with entreaties for his return to their deserted city, just as, nearly a thousand years after, their descendants implored the Popes to leave Avignon and return to declining Rome.

The young Honorius yielded to the universal appeal, and, at the end of 403, made his solemn entry into Rome. North Italy was now free from the Goths, who, marching from Illyria under the leadership of the dreaded Alaric, had made their appearance in the country in the winter of 400. For through their defeat by Stilicho, the minister, general, and father-in-law of Honorius, in the bloody battle-fields of Pollentia and Verona in 402, Rome was spared the horrors of a Gothic conquest.