the battle of Hadrianople, so fatal to Valens and to the empire, may be described in a few words: the Roman cavalry fled; the infantry was abandoned, surrounded, and cut in pieces. The most skilful evolutions, the firmest courage, are scarcely sufficient to extricate a body of foot, encompassed on an open plain by superior numbers of horse; but the troops of Valens, oppressed by the weight of the enemy and their own fears, were crowded into a narrow space, where it was impossible for them to extend their ranks, or even to use, with effect, their swords and javelins. In the midst of tumult, of slaughter, and of dismay, the emperor, deserted by his guards, and wounded, as it was supposed, with an arrow, sought protection among the Lancearii and the Mattiarii, who still maintained their ground with some appearance of order and firmness. His faithful generals, Trajan and Victor, who perceived his danger, loudly exclaimed that all was lost, unless the person of the emperor could be saved. Some troops, animated by their exhortation, advanced to his relief; they found only a bloody spot, covered with a heap of broken arms and mangled bodies, without being able to discover their unfortunate prince, either among the living or the dead. Their search could not indeed be successful, if there is any truth in the circumstances with which some historians have related the death of the emperor. By the care of his attendants, Valens was removed from the field of battle to a neighbouring cottage, where they attempted to dress his wound, and to provide for his future safety. But this humble retreat was instantly surrounded by the enemy: they tried to force the door; they were provoked by a discharge of arrows from the roof, till at length, impatient of delay, they set fire to a pile of dry fagots, and consumed the cottage with the Roman emperor and his train. Valens perished in the flames; and a youth, who dropped from the window, alone escaped, to attest the melancholy tale, and to inform the Goths of the inestimable prize which they had lost by their own rashness. A great number of brave and distinguished officers perished in the battle of Hadrianople, which equalled, in the actual loss, and far surpassed, in the fatal consequences, the misfortune which Rome had formerly sustained in the fields of Cannæ.* Two pose a great army to be a mathematical point, without space or dimensions. * Nec ullis annalibus, præter Cannensem pugnam, ita ad

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master-generals of the cavalry and infantry, two great officers of the palace, and thirty-five tribunes, were found among the slain; and the death of Sebastian might satisfy the world that he was the victim, as well as the author, of the public calamity. Above two-thirds of the Roman army were destroyed: and the darkness of the night was esteemed a very favourable circumstance; as it served to conceal the flight of the multitude, and to protect the more orderly retreat of Victor and Richomer, who alone, amidst the general consternation, maintained the advantage of calm courage, and regular discipline.*

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While the impressions of grief and terror were still recent in the minds of men, the most celebrated rhetorician of the age composed the funeral oration of a vanquished army, and of an unpopular prince, whose throne was already occupied by a stranger. There are not wanting," says the candid Libanius, "those who arraign the prudence of the emperor, or who impute the public misfortune to the want of courage and discipline in the troops. For my own part, I reverence the memory of their former exploits: I reverence the glorious death which they bravely received, standing and fighting in their ranks: I reverence the field of battle, stained with their blood, and the blood of the barbarians. Those honourable marks have been already washed away by the rains; but the lofty monuments of their bones, the bones of generals, of centurions, and of valiant warriors, claim a longer period of duration. The king himself fought and fell in the foremost ranks of the battle. His attendants presented him with the fleetest horses of the imperial stable, that would soon have carried internecionem res legitur gesta. (Ammian. 31, 13.) According to the grave Polybius, no more than three hundred and seventy horse, and three thousand foot, escaped from the field of Canna: ten thousand were made prisoners: and the number of the slain amounted to five thousand six hundred and thirty horse, and seventy thousand foot. (Polyb. lib. 3, p. 371, edit. Casaubon, 8vo.) Livy (22, 49) is somewhat less bloody he slaughters only two thousand seven hundred horse, and forty thousand foot. The Roman army was supposed to consist of eighty-seven thousand two hundred effective men (22, 36).

*We have gained some faint light from Jerome (tom. i, p. 26, and in Chron. p. 188), Victor, in Epitome, Orosius (lib. 7, c. 33, p. 554), Jornandes (c. 27), Zosimus (lib. 4, p. 230), Socrates (lib. 4, c. 38), Sozomen (lib. 6, c. 40), Idatius (in Chron.). But their united evidence, if weighed against Ammianus alone, is light and unsubstantial.

him beyond the pursuit of the enemy. They vainly pressed him to reserve his important life for the future service of the republic. He still declared that he was unworthy to survive so many of the bravest and most faithful of his subjects; and the monarch was nobly buried under a mountain of the slain. Let none, therefore, presume to ascribe the victory of the barbarians to the fear, the weakness, or the imprudence of the Roman troops. The chiefs and the soldiers were animated by the virtue of their ancestors, whom they equalled in discipline, and the arts of war. Their generous emulation was supported by the love of glory, which prompted them to contend at the same time with heat and thirst, with fire and the sword; and cheerfully to embrace an honourable death, as their refuge against flight and infamy. The indignation of the gods has been the only cause of the success of our enemies." The truth of history may disclaim some parts of this panegyric, which cannot strictly be reconciled with the character of Valens, or the circumstances of the battle; but the fairest commendation is due to the eloquence, and still more to the generosity, of the sophist of Antioch.*

The pride of the Goths was elated by this memorable victory; but their avarice was disappointed by the mortifying discovery, that the richest part of the imperial spoil had been within the walls of Hadrianople. They hastened to possess the reward of their valour; but they were encountered by the remains of a vanquished army, with an intrepid resolution, which was the effect of their despair, and the only hope of their safety. The walls of the city, and the ramparts of the adjacent camp, were lined with military engines, that threw stones of an enormous weight; and astonished the ignorant barbarians by the noise and velocity, still more than by the real effects, of the discharge. The soldiers, the citizens, the provincials, the domestics of the palace, were united in the danger and in the defence; the furious assault of the Goths was repulsed; their secret arts of treachery and treason were discovered; and, after an obstinate conflict of many hours, they retired to their tents; convinced, by experience, that it would be far more advisable to observe the treaty which their sagacious leader had tacitly stipulated with the fortifications of great and * Libanius, de ulciscend. Julian. nece, c. 3, in Fabricius, Biblioth.

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HADRIANOPLE.

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populous cities. After the hasty and impolitic massacre of three hundred deserters, an act of justice extremely useful to the discipline of the Roman armies, the Goths indignantly raised the siege of Hadrianople. The scene of war and tumult was instantly converted into a silent solitude: the multitude suddenly disappeared; the secret paths of the woods and mountains were marked with the footsteps of the trembling fugitives, who sought a refuge in the distant cities of Illyricum and Macedonia: and the faithful officers of the household and the treasury, cautiously proceeded in search of the emperor, of whose death they were still ignorant. The tide of the Gothic inundation rolled from the walls of Hadrianople to the suburbs of Constantinople. The barbarians were surprised with the splendid appearance of the capital of the east, the height and extent of the walls, the myriads of wealthy and affrighted citizens who crowded the ramparts, and the various prospect of the sea and land. While they gazed with hopeless desire on the inaccessible beauties of Constantinople, a sally was made from one of the gates by a party of Saracens,* who had been fortunately engaged in the service of Valens. The cavalry of Scythia was forced to yield to the admirable swiftness and spirit of the Arabian horses; their riders were skilled in the evolutions of irregular war: and the northern barbarians were astonished and dismayed by the inhuman ferocity of the barbarians of the south. A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger of an Arab; and the hairy, naked savage, applying his lips to the wound, expressed a horrid delight, while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy. The army of the Goths, laden with the spoils of the wealthy suburbs and the adjacent territory, slowly moved from the Bosphorus to the mountains which form the western boundary of Græc. tom. vii, p. 146-148. * Valens had gained, or rather purchased, the friendship of the Saracens, whose vexatious inroads were felt on the borders of Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt. The Christian faith had been lately introduced among a people, reserved in a future age, to propagate another religion. (Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v, p. 104, 106, 141. Mém. Ecclés. tom. vii, p. 593.)

Crinitus quidam, nudus omnia præter pubem, subraucum et lugubre strepens. (Ammian. 31, 16, and Vales. ad loc.) The Arabs often fought naked; a custom which may be ascribed to their sultry climate and ostentatious bravery. The description of this unknown savage is the lively portrait of Derar, a name so dreadful to the Christians of Syria.

Thrace. The important pass of Succi was betrayed by the fear, or the misconduct, of Maurus; and the barbarians, who no longer had any resistance to apprehend from the scattered and vanquished troops of the east, spread themselves over the face of a fertile and cultivated country, as far as the confines of Italy, and the Hadriatic sea. *

The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions,† reserve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful barbarians. The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family,‡ might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader. The same censure may be applied, though not perhaps in an equal degree, to the profane and the ecclesiastical writers of this unhappy period; that their minds were inflamed by popular and religious animosity; and that the true size and colour of every object is falsified by the exaggerations of their corrupt eloquence. The vehement Jeromes might justly deplore the calamities inflicted by the Goths and their barbarous allies, on his native country of Pannonia, and the wide extent of the provinces, from the walls of Constantinople to the foot of the Julian Alps; the See Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i, p. 72, 84, 87. * The series of events may still be traced in the last pages of Ammianus (31, 15, 16). Zosimus (lib. 4, p. 227, 231) whom we are now reduced to cherish, misplaces the sally of the Arabs before the death of Valens. Eunapius (in Excerpt. Legation. p. 20) praises the fertility of Thrace, Macedonia, &c. Observe with how much indifference Cæsar relates, in the Commentaries on the Gallic war, that he put to death the whole senate of the Veneti, who had yielded to his mercy (3, 16); that he laboured to extirpate the whole nation of the Eburones (6, 31); that forty thousand persons were massacred at Bourges by the just revenge of his soldiers, who spared neither age nor sex (7, 27), &c. Such are the accounts of the sack of Magdeburg, by the ecclesiastic and the fisherman, which Mr. Harte has transcribed (Hist. of Gustavus Adolphus, vol. i, p. 313-320) with some apprehension of violating the dignity of history. § Et vastatis urbibus hominibusque interfectis, solitudinem et raritatem bestiarum quoque fieri, et volatilium, pisciumque: testis Illyricum est, testis Thracia, testis in quo ortus sum solum (Pannnonia); ubi præter cœlum et terram, et crescentes vepres, et condensa sylvarum cuncta perierunt. (tom. vii, p. 250, ad 1 cap.