worshipper of demons, was conquered in one day, with all his
mighty forces._
Nevertheless they do not mention with thanksgiving what God has very
recently, and within our own memory, wonderfully and mercifully done,
but as far as in them lies they attempt, if possible, to bury it in
universal oblivion. But should we be silent about these things, we
should be in like manner ungrateful. When Radagaisus, king of the
Goths, having taken up his position very near to the city, with a
vast and savage army, was already close upon the Romans, he was in
one day so speedily and so thoroughly beaten, that, whilst not even
one Roman was wounded, much less slain, far more than a hundred
thousand of his army were prostrated, and he himself and his sons,
having been captured, were forthwith put to death, suffering the
punishment they deserved. For had so impious a man, with so great and
so impious a host, entered the city, whom would he have spared? what
tombs of the martyrs would he have respected? in his treatment of what
person would he have manifested the fear of God? whose blood would
he have refrained from shedding? whose chastity would he have wished
to preserve inviolate? But how loud would they not have been in the
praises of their gods! How insultingly they would have boasted, saying
that Radagaisus had conquered, that he had been able to achieve such
great things, because he propitiated and won over the gods by daily
sacrifices,--a thing which the Christian religion did not allow the
Romans to do! For when he was approaching to those places where he
was overwhelmed at the nod of the Supreme Majesty, as his fame was
everywhere increasing, it was being told us at Carthage that the
pagans were believing, publishing, and boasting, that he, on account
of the help and protection of the gods friendly to him, because of
the sacrifices which he was said to be daily offering to them, would
certainly not be conquered by those who were not performing such
sacrifices to the Roman gods, and did not even permit that they should
be offered by any one. And now these wretched men do not give thanks
to God for His great mercy, who, having determined to chastise the
corruption of men, which was worthy of far heavier chastisement than
the corruption of the barbarians, tempered His indignation with such
mildness as, in the first instance, to cause that the king of the Goths
should be conquered in a wonderful manner, lest glory should accrue to
demons, whom he was known to be supplicating, and thus the minds of
the weak should be overthrown; and then, afterwards, to cause that,
when Rome was to be taken, it should be taken by those barbarians
who, contrary to any custom of all former wars, protected, through
reverence for the Christian religion, those who fled for refuge to
the sacred places, and who so opposed the demons themselves, and the
rites of impious sacrifices, that they seemed to be carrying on a far
more terrible war with them than with men. Thus did the true Lord
and Governor of things both scourge the Romans mercifully, and, by
the marvellous defeat of the worshippers of demons, show that those
sacrifices were not necessary even for the safety of present things;
so that, by those who do not obstinately hold out, but prudently
consider the matter, true religion may not be deserted on account of
the urgencies of the present time, but may be more clung to in most
confident expectation of eternal life.