Cecil Deedes

“ Rome, impregnable while Stilicho, her Christian defender, lived, could submit only to the approach of Alaric, "a Christian and a soldier, the leader of a disciplined army, who understood the laws of war, and respected the sanctity of treaties." In the first siege of Rome both pagan and Christian historians relate the strange proposal to relieve the city by the magical arts of some Etruscan diviners, who were believed to have power to call down lightning from heaven, and direct it against Alaric's camp. ”

“ The inhabitants of Paris had resolved on flight, but the city was saved by the resolution and devotion of St. Geneviève (Genovefa) , the maiden of Nanterre who was warned in a vision that Paris would be spared (Act. SS. Boll. Jan. i. 143‒147) . Attila did not wish to wage war against Christianity, though doubtless some of his followers were stimulated by polemical rancour; he fought against Rome, not its church. Nor did he intend to give up Gaul to indiscriminate pillage; he hoped to crush the Visigoths first, and then to cope separately with Aetius and the Roman forces. ”

“ The book in which Zosimus related the fall of Rome has been lost, so that we have to gather information from Christian sources; but it is plain that the destruction and loss was chiefly on the side of Paganism, and that little escaped which did not shelter itself under the protection of Christianity. "The heathens fled to the churches, the only places of refuge. ”