Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/118

 98 THE DECLINE AND FALL criminal administration. Instead of obeying the orders of their sovereign and satisfying with decent liberality the demands of the Goths, they levied an ungenerous and oppressive tax on the wants of the hungry Barbarians. The vilest food was sold at an extravagant price ; and, in the room of wholesome and substantial provisions, the markets were filled with the flesh of dogs, and of unclean animals, who had died of disease. To obtain the valuable acquisition of a pound of bread, the Goths resigned the possession of an expensive, though serviceable, slave ; and a small quantity of meat was greedily purchased with ten pounds of a precious, but useless, metal. ^^ When their property was exhausted, they continued this necessary traffic by the sale of their sons and daughters ; and notwithstanding the love of freedom, which animated every Gothic breast, they submitted to the humiliating maxim that it was better for their children to be maintained in a servile condition than to perish in a state of wretched and helpless in- dependence. The most lively resentment is excited by the tyranny of pretended benefactors, who sternly exact the debt of gratitude which they have cancelled by subsequent injuries : a spirit of discontent insensibly arose in the camp of the Barbarians, who pleaded, without success, the merit of their patient and dutiftil behaviour ; and loudly complained of the inhospitable treatment which they had received from their new allies. They beheld around them the wealth and plenty of a fertile province, in the midst of which they suffered the intolerable hardships of artificial famine. But the means of relief, and even of revenge, were in their hands ; since the rapaciousness of their tyrants had left, to an injured people, the possession and the use of arms. The clamours of a multitude, untaught to disguise their sentiments, announced the first sjTnptoms of resistance, and alarmed the timid and guilty minds of Lupicinus and Maximus. Those crafty ministers, who substituted the cunning of temporary expedients to the wise and salutary counsels of general policy, attempted to remove the Goths from their dangerous station on the frontiers of the empire, and to disperse them in separate 71 Decern libras ; the word silver must be understood. Jomandes betrays the passions and prejudices of a Goth. The servile Greeks, Eunapius and Zosimus, disguise the Roman oppression and execrate the perfidy of the Barbarians. Aniniianus, a patriot historian, slightly, and reluctantly, touches on the odious subject. Jeroni, who wrote almost on the spot, is fair, though concise. Per avaritiam Maximi ducis ad rebellionem fame coacii sum (in Cbron.}.