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 OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 103 secure the inhabitants, the cattle, and the magazines of com. With the assistance of such guides, nothing could remain imper- vious 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 senti- ments 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 operations ct into the heart of the empire a nation of enemies; but the wm'. °A.i).377 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. His declared his intention of marching from Antioch to Con- stantinople, 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 com- manded 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 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 80 See Ammianus, xxxi. 5, 6. The historian of the Gothic war loses time and space by an unseasonable recapitulation of the ancient inroads of the Barbarians.