Note 30 — MODERN GREECE.
Reading edition
“From Thermopylæ to Sparta, the leader of the Goths (Alaric) pursued his victorious march without encountering any mortal antagonist; but one of the advocates of expiring paganism has confidently asserted that the walls of Athens were guarded by the goddess Minerva, with her formidable ægis, and by the angry phantom of Achilles, and that the conqueror was dismayed by the presence of the hostile deities of Greece.”—Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, &c. vol. v. p. 183.