of an unfeeling master; and these new associates conducted the barbarians, through the secret paths, to the most sequestered places, which had been chosen to secure the inhabitants, the cattle, and the magazines of corn. With the assistance of such guides, nothing could remain impervious or inaccessible; resistance was fatal; flight was impracticable; and the patient submission of helpless innocence seldom found mercy from the barbarian conqueror. In the course of these depredations, a great number of the children of the Goths, who had been sold into captivity, were restored to the embraces of their afflicted parents; but these tender interviews, which might have revived and cherished in their minds some sentiments of humanity, tended only to stimulate their native fierceness, by the desire of revenge. They listened, with eager attention, to the complaints of their captive children, who had suffered the most cruel indignities from the lustful or angry passions of their masters; and the same cruelties, the same indignities, were severely retaliated on the sons and daughters of the Romans.†

The imprudence of Valens and his ministers had introduced into the heart of the empire a nation of enemies; but the Visigoths might even yet have been reconciled, by the manly confession of past errors, and the sincere performance of former engagements. These healing and temperate measures seemed to concur with the timorous disposition of the sovereign of the east ; but, on this occasion alone, Valens was brave; and his unseasonable bravery was fatal to himself and to his subjects. He declared his intention of marching from Antioch to Constantinople, to subdue this dangerous rebellion; and, as he was not ignorant of the difficulties of the enterprise, he solicited the assistance of his nephew, the emperor Gratian, who commanded all the forces of the west. The veteran troops were hastily recalled from the defence of Armenia; that important frontier was abandoned to the discretion of Sapor; and the immediate conduct of the Gothic war was intrusted, during the absence of Valens, to his

accession, B.C. 358.-ED.] * As those unhappy workmen often ran away, Valens had enacted severe laws to drag them from their hiding-places. Cod. Theodosian. 1. 10, tit. 19, leg. 5. 7.

See Ammianus, 31, 5. 6. The historian of the Gothic war loses time and space, by an unseasonable recapitulation of the ancient

A.D. 377.]

OPERATIONS OF THE GOTHIC WAR.

177

lieutenants Trajan and Profuturus, two generals who indulged themselves in a very false and favourable opinion of their own abilities. On their arrival in Thrace, they were joined by Richomer, count of the domestics; and the auxiliaries of the west, that marched under his banner, were composed of the Gallic legions, reduced indeed by a spirit of desertion to the vain appearances of strength and numbers. In a council of war, which was influenced by pride rather than by reason, it was resolved to seek, and to encounter, the barbarians, who lay encamped in the spacious and fertile meadows near the most southern of the six mouths of the Danube.* Their camp was surrounded by he usual fortifications of wagons ;t and the barbarians, secure within the vast circle of the enclosure, enjoyed the fruits of their valour, and the spoils of the province. In the midst of riotous intemperance, the watchful Fritigern observed the motions, and penetrated the designs, of the Romans. He perceived that the numbers of the enemy were continually increasing; and, as he understood their intention of attacking his rear, as soon as the scarcity of forage should oblige him to remove his camp, he recalled to their standard his predatory detachments, which covered the adjacent country. As soon as they descried the flaming beacons, they obeyed, with incredible speed, the signal of their leader; the camp was filled with the martial crowd of barbarians; their impatient clamours demanded the battle, and their tumultuous zeal was approved and animated by the spirit of their chiefs. The evening was already far advanced; and the two armies prepared themselves for the approaching combat, which was deferred only till the dawn of day. While the trumpets sounded to arms, the undaunted courage of the Goths was confirmed by the mutual obligation inroads of the barbarians. * The Itinerary of Antoninus (p. 226, 227, edit. Wesseling) marks the situation of this place about sixty miles north of Tomi, Ovid's exile: and the name of Salices (the willows) expresses the nature of the soil. The circle of wagons, the Carrago, was the usual fortification of the barbarians. (Vegetius de Re Militari, 1. 3, c. 10. Valesius ad Ammian. 31, 7.) The practice and the name were preserved by their descendants as late as the fifteenth century. The Charroy, which surrounded the Ost, is a word familiar to the readers of Froissart, or Comines. Statim ut

accensi malleoli. I have used the literal sense of real torches or beacons; but I almost suspect that it is only one of those turgid metaphors, those false ornaments, that perpetually disfigure the style

VOL. III.

N

of a solemn oath; and as they advanced to meet the enemy, the rude songs which celebrated the glory of their forefathers, were mingled with their fierce and dissonant outcries, and opposed to the artificial harmony of the Roman shout. Some military skill was displayed by Fritigern to gain the advantage of a commanding eminence; but the bloody conflict, which began and ended with the light, was maintained, on either side, by the personal and obstinate efforts of strength, valour, and agility. The legions of Armenia supported their fame in arms, but they were oppressed by the irresistible weight of the hostile multitude: the left wing of the Romans was thrown into disorder, and the field was strewed with their mangled carcasses. This partial defeat was balanced, however, by partial success; and when the two armies, at a late hour of the evening, retreated to their respective camps, neither of them could claim the honours, or the effects, of a decisive victory. The real loss was more severely felt by the Romans, in proportion to the smallness of their numbers; but the Goths were so deeply confounded and dismayed by this vigorous, and perhaps unexpected, resistance, that they remained seven days within the circle of their fortifications. Such funeral rites as the circumstances of time and place would admit, were piously discharged to some officers of distinguished rank; but the indiscriminate vulgar was left unburied on the plain. Their flesh was greedily devoured by the birds of prey, who in that age enjoyed very frequent and delicious feasts; and several years afterwards, the white and naked bones which covered the wide extent of the fields, presented to the eyes of Ammianus a dreadful monument of the battle of Salices.*

The progress of the Goths had been checked by the doubtful event of that bloody day; and the imperial generals, whose army would have been consumed by the repetition of such a contest, embraced the more rational plan of destroying the barbarians by the wants and pressure of their own multitudes. They prepared to confine the Visigoths in the narrow angle of land, between the Danube, the desert of Scythia, and the mountains of Hamus, till their strength of Ammianus. *Indicant nunc usque albentes ossibus campi. Ammian. 31, 7. The historian might have viewed these plains, either as a soldier, or as a traveller. But his modesty has suppressed the adventures of his own life subsequent to the Persian wars of Constantius and Julian. We are ignorant of the time when he quitted the

A.D. 377.]

WITH THE HUNS AND ALANI.

179

and spirit should be insensibly wasted by the inevitable operation of famine. The design was prosecuted with some conduct and success: the barbarians had almost exhausted their own magazines, and the harvest of the country; and the diligence of Saturninus, the master general of the cavalry, was employed to improve the strength, and to contract the extent, of the Roman fortifications. His labours were interrupted by the alarming intelligence, that new swarms of barbarians had passed the unguarded Danube, either to support the cause, or to imitate the example, of Fritigern. The just apprehension, that he himself might be surrounded and overwhelmed, by the arms of hostile and unknown nations, compelled Saturninus to relinquish the siege of the Gothic camp: and the indignant Visigoths, breaking from their confinement, satiated their hunger and revenge by the repeated devastation of the fruitful country which extends above three hundred miles from the banks of the Danube to the straits of the Hellespont.* The sagacious Fritigern had successfully appealed to the passions, as well as to the interest, of his barbarian allies; and the love of rapine, and the hatred of Rome, seconded, or even prevented, the eloquence of his ambassadors. He cemented a strict and useful alliance with the great body of his countrymen, who obeyed Alatheus and Saphrax as the guardians of their infant king: the long animosity of rival tribes was suspended by the sense of their common interest; the independent part of the nation was associated under one standard; and the chiefs of the Ostrogoths appear to have yielded to the superior genius of the general of the Visigoths. He obtained the formidable aid of the Taifala, whose military renown was disgraced and polluted by the public infamy of their domestic manners. Every youth, on his entrance into the world, was united by the ties of honourable friendship, and brutal love, to some warrior of the tribe; nor could he hope to be released from this unnatural connexion, till he had approved his manhood, by slaying, in single combat, a huge bear, or a wild boar of the forest. But the most powerful auxiliaries of the Goths

service and retired to Rome, where he appears to have composed his history of his own times. *Ammian. 31, 8. + Hanc Taifalorum gentem turpem, et obscenæ vitæ flagitiis ita accipimus mersam; ut apud eos nefandi concubitus fœdere, copulentur

were drawn from the camp of those enemies who had expelled them from their native seats. The loose subordination, and extensive possessions, of the Huns and the Alani, delayed the conquests, and distracted the councils, of that victorious people. Several of the hordes were allured by the liberal promises of Fritigern; and the rapid cavalry of Scythia added weight and energy to the steady and strenuous efforts of the Gothic infantry. The Sarmatians, who could never forgive the successor of Valentinian, enjoyed and increased the general confusion: and a seasonable irruption of the Allemanni into the provinces of Gaul, engaged the attention, and diverted the forces, of the emperor of the west.*

One of the most dangerous inconveniences of the introduction of the barbarians into the army and the palace, was sensibly felt in their correspondence with their hostile countrymen; to whom they imprudently, or maliciously, revealed the weakness of the Roman empire. A soldier of the life-guards of Gratian was of the nation of the Allemanni, and of tribe of the Lentienses, who dwelt beyond the lake of Constance. Some domestic business obliged him to request a leave of absence. In a short visit to his family and friends, he was exposed to their curious inquiries; and the vanity of the loquacious soldier tempted him to display his intimate acquaintance with the secrets of the state and the designs of his master. The intelligence that Gratian was preparing to lead the military force of Gaul, and of the west, to the assistance of his uncle Valens, pointed out to the restless spirit of the Allemanni the moment and the mode of a successful invasion. The enterprise of some light detachments, who in the month of February passed the Rhine upon the ice, was the prelude of a more important war. The boldest hopes of rapine, perhaps of conquest, outweighed the considerations of timid prudence or national faith. Every forest, and every village, mares puberes, ætatis viriditatem in eorum pollutis usibus consumpturi. Porro, si qui jam adultus aprum exceperit solus, vel interemit ursum immanem, colluvione liberatur incesti. Ammian. 31, 9. Among the Greeks, likewise, more especially among the Cretans, the holy bands of friendship were confirmed, and sullied, by unnatural love.

* Ammian. 31, 8, 9. Jerome (tom. i, p. 26,) enumerates the nations, and marks a calamitous period of twenty years. This epistle to Heliodorus was composed in the year 397. (Tillemont, Mém. Ecclés