Siena, the story of a mediaeval commune . ruggle was foreshadowed as early as 410 ,when Alaric, chief of the West Goths, seized and plun-dered Rome, The story is told of how for years he hadheard an aerial voice which lured him with the whis-pered words, Penetrabis ad urbem, until, in spite of longinner resistance, he was forced to do its bidding. Ina letter of St. Jerome we catch the reverberation whichthis amazing event produced in the Mediterraneanworld; from afar, in his cell at Bethlehem, where thenews reached him and laid him prostrate with grief,he raised the despairing cry, Quid sa
Siena, the story of a mediaeval commune . ruggle was foreshadowed as early as 410 ,when Alaric, chief of the West Goths, seized and plun-dered Rome, The story is told of how for years he hadheard an aerial voice which lured him with the whis-pered words, Penetrabis ad urbem, until, in spite of longinner resistance, he was forced to do its bidding. Ina letter of St. Jerome we catch the reverberation whichthis amazing event produced in the Mediterraneanworld; from afar, in his cell at Bethlehem, where thenews reached him and laid him prostrate with grief,he raised the despairing cry, Quid salvum est siRoma petit?* Italy now became the prize of the Teu-tonic invaders, but it is still too often thoughtlesslyrepeated that a hitherto flourishing country was by thisoccupation first made acquainted with misery. True,the conquerors poured over the Alps in successivewaves; they brought not peace but war, and doubtlesstherefore, desolation followed in their path; but, before * Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Book I, Chs. 16 and The Abbey Church of Sant AntimoInterior view THE ORIGIN OF MEDLEVAL SIENA 13 it was possible for them—a rude and ill-disciplinedsavage host—to break into the garden of civilization, theinhabitants of that garden must have sunk into all butcomplete decay. The history of the later empire is thehistory of a prolonged sick-bed. Wherever the coveris lifted the eye meets the same evidence of incurabledisease. A central government hardened into a selfishbureaucracy, its financial agents an organized band ofspoliators, the local administration corrupt and indissolution, the army unpaid and mutinous—these aresome of the signs which declared with sound of brassthat the empire was sick, sick beyond recovery. Ifthe invasions brought the plundering of cities, richwith the accumulated treasure of the ages; if theybrought the harrying of fields and the slaughter of theirtillers, they did no more than to effect, in swift, dramaticform, a catastrophe whi
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