Funeral ration of

Valens and his army.

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.93 Two 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.94 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 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

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93 Nec ulla, annalibus, præter Cannensem pugnam, ita ad internecionem res legitur gesta. Ammian. xxxi. 13. According to the grave Polybius, no more than 370 horse and 3000 foot escaped from the field of Cannæ; 10,000 were made prisoners; and the number of the slain amounted to 5630 horse and 70,000 foot (Polyb. 1. iii. [c. 117] p. 371, edit. Casaubon, in 8vo.). Livy (xxii. 49) is somewhat less bloody; he slaughters only 2700 horse and 40,000 foot. The Roman army was supposed to consist of 87,200 effective men (xxii. 36).

94 We have gained some faint light from Jerom (tom. i. p. 26 [tom. i. p. 342, ed. Vallars.], and in Chron. p. 188 [tom. viii. p. 817, ed. Vallars.]), Victor (in Epitome), Orosius (1. vii. c. 33, p. 554), Jornandes (c. 27), Zosimus (1. iv. [c. 24] p. 230), Socrates (1. iv. c. 38), Sozomen (1. vi. c. 40), Idatius (in Chron.). But their united evidence, if weighed against Ammianus alone, is light and unsubstantial.

"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.95

The Goths besiege

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 Hadrianople. 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 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

95 Libanius de ulciscend. Julian. Nece, c. 3, in Fabricius, Bibliot. Græc. tom. vii. p. 146-148.

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, 96 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.97 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 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.98

The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts of justice which were exercised by the legions," reserve their They ravage compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings the Roman when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the A.D. 378, 379. arms of the successful barbarians. The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of

96 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).

97 Crinitus quidam, nudus omnia præter pubem, subraucum et lugubre strepens. Ammian. xxxi. 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. See Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 72, 84, 87.

98 The series of events may still be traced in the last pages of Ammianus (xxxi. 15, 16). Zosimus (1. iv. [c. 22] p. 227, 231), whom we are now reduced to cherish, misplaces the sally of the Arabs before the death of Valens. Eunapius (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 20 [p. 51, ed. Bonn]) praises the fertility of Thrace, Macedonia, &c.

99 Observe with how much indifference Cæsar relates, in the Commentaries of the Gallic war, that he put to death the whole senate of the Veneti, who had yielded to his mercy (iii. 16); that he laboured to extirpate the whole nation of the Eburones (vi. 43); that forty thousand persons were massacred at Bourges by the just revenge of his soldiers, who spared neither age nor sex (vii. 27), &c.

the misfortunes of a single family,100 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 Jerom 101 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 rapes, the massacres, the conflagrations, and, above all, the profanation of the churches that were turned into stables, and the contemptuous treatment of the relics of holy martyrs. But the saint is surely transported beyond the limits of nature and history when he affirms, " that in those desert "countries nothing was left except the sky and the earth; that, after "the destruction of the cities and the extirpation of the human race, "the land was overgrown with thick forests and inextricable brambles; "and that the universal desolation, announced by the prophet Zepha"niah, was accomplished in the scarcity of the beasts, the birds, and "even of the fish." These complaints were pronounced about twenty years after the death of Valens; and the Illyrian provinces, which were constantly exposed to the invasion and passage of the barbarians, still continued, after a calamitous period of ten centuries, to supply new materials for rapine and destruction. Could it even be supposed that a large tract of country had been left without cultivation and without inhabitants, the consequences might not have been so fatal to the inferior productions of animated nature. The useful and feeble animals, which are nourished by the hand of man, might suffer and perish if they were deprived of his protection; but the beasts of the forest, his enemies or his victims, would multiply in the free and undisturbed possession of their solitary domain. The various tribes that people the air or the waters are still less connected with the fate of the human species; and it is highly probable that the fish of the Danube would have felt more terror and distress from the approach of a voracious pike than from the hostile inroad of a Gothic army.

100 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.

101 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 (Pannonia); ubi præter cælum et terram, et crescentes vepres, et condensa silvarum cuncta perierunt. Tom. vii. p. 250, ad 1. Cap. Sophonias; and tom. i. p. 26 [tom. i. p. 342, ed. Vallars.].

Massacre of

youth in

A.D. 378.

Whatever may have been the just measure of the calamities of Europe, there was reason to fear that the same calamities would soon extend to the peaceful countries of Asia. The the Gothic sons of the Goths had been judiciously distributed through Asia, the cities of the East, and the arts of education were employed to polish and subdue the native fierceness of their temper. In the space of about twelve years their numbers had continually increased; and the children who in the first emigration were sent over the Hellespont had attained with rapid growth the strength and spirit of perfect manhood.102 It was impossible to conceal from their knowledge the events of the Gothic war; and, as those daring youths had not studied the language of dissimulation, they betrayed their wish, their desire, perhaps their intention, to emulate the glorious example of their fathers. The danger of the times seemed to justify the jealous suspicions of the provincials; and these suspicions were admitted as unquestionable evidence that the Goths of Asia had formed a secret and dangerous conspiracy against the public safety. The death of Valens had left the East without a sovereign; and Julius, who filled the important station of master-general of the troops, with a high reputation of diligence and ability, thought it his duty to consult the senate of Constantinople, which he considered, during the vacancy of the throne, as the representative council of the nation. As soon as he had obtained the discretionary power of acting as he should judge most expedient for the good of the republic, he assembled the principal officers and privately concerted effectual measures for the execution of his bloody design. An order was immediately promulgated that, on a stated day, the Gothic youth should assemble in the capital cities of their respective provinces; and, as a report was industriously circulated that they were summoned to receive a liberal gift of lands and money, the pleasing hope allayed the fury of their resentment, and perhaps suspended the motions of the conspiracy. On the appointed day the unarmed crowd of the Gothic youth was carefully collected in the square or forum; the streets and avenues were occupied by the Roman troops, and the roofs of the houses were covered with archers and slingers. At the same hour, in all the cities of the East, the signal was given of indiscriminate slaughter; and the provinces of Asia were delivered, by the cruel prudence of Julius, from a domestic enemy, who, in a few months, might have carried fire and sword from the Hellespont to the Euphrates. The urgent consideration of the

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102 Eunapius (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 20 [p. 50, ed. Bonn]) foolishly supposes a præternatural growth of the young Goths, that he may introduce Cadmus's armed men, who sprung from the dragon's teeth, &c. Such was the Greek eloquence of the times. 103 Ammianus evidently approves this execution, efficacia velox et salutaris, which concludes his work (xxxi. 16). Zosimus, who is curious and copious (1. iv. [c. 26] p.