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 318 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xli temptible obstacle ; as soon as the columns ascended the hills, the naked and disorderly crowd was dazzled by glittering arms and regular evolutions ; and the menace of their female prophets was repeatedly fulfilled, that the Moors should be discomfited by a beardless antagonist. The victorious eunuch advanced thirteen days' journey from Carthage, to besiege mount Aurasius, 53 the citadel, and at the same time the garden, of Numidia. That range of hills, a branch of the great Atlas, contains within a circumference of one hundred and twenty miles, a rare variety of soil and climate ; the intermediate valleys and elevated plains abound with rich pastures, perpetual streams, and fruits of a delicious taste and uncommon magnitude. This fair solitude is decorated with the ruins of Lambesa, a Roman city, once the seat of a legion, and the residence of forty thou- sand inhabitants. The Ionic temple of iEsculapius is encom- passed with Moorish huts; and the cattle now graze in the midst of an amphitheatre, under the shade of Corinthian columns. A sharp perpendicular rock rises above the level of the mountain, where the African princes deposited their wives and treasures ; and a proverb is familiar to the Arabs, that the man may eat fire, who dares to attack the craggy cliffs and inhospitable natives of mount Aurasius. This hardy enterprise was twice attempted by the eunuch Solomon : from the first he retreated with some disgrace ; and in the second, his patience and provisions were almost exhausted ; and he must again have retired, if he had not yielded to the impetuous courage of his troops, who audaciously scaled, to the astonishment of the Moors, the mountain, the hostile camp, and the summit of the Geminian Eock. A citadel was erected to secure this im- portant conquest, and to remind the Barbarians of their defeat ; [a.d. 539] and, as Solomon pursued his march to the west, the long-lost province of Mauritanian Sitifi was again annexed to the Roman empire. The Moorish war continued several years after the departure of Belisarius; but the laurels which he resigned to a faithful lieutenant may be justly ascribed to his own triumph. Neutrality The experience of past faults, which may sometimes correct Visigoths the mature age of an individual, is seldom profitable to the 63 Procopius is the first who describes mount Aurasius (Vandal. 1. ii. c. 13. De iEdific. 1. vi. c. 7). He may be compared with Leo Africanus (dell' Africa, parte v. in Ramusio [Navigationi et Viaggi, 1563], torn. i. fol. 77 [leg. 71] recto), Marmol (torn. ii. p. 430), and Shaw (p. 56-59). [Cp. Diehl, L'Afrique byzantine, p. 237 sqq.]