But when the question was agitated in the senate; when it was proposed, as an essential condition, that those sacrifices should be performed in the Capitol, by the authority, and in the presence, of the magistrates, the majority of that respectable assembly, apprehensive either of the Divine or of the Imperial displeasure, refused to join in an act, which appeared almost equivalent to the public restoration of Paganism.

[78] [Footnote 74: For the events of the first siege of Rome, which are often confounded with those of the second and third, see Zosimus, l.

v.
p.

350-354, Sozomen, l.ix.c.6, Olympiodorus, ap.Phot.p.

180, Philostorgius, l.xii.c.3, and Godefroy, Dissertat.p.