Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/136

 A.D. 378, 379 116 THE DECLINE AND FALL themselves over the face of a fertile and cultivated country, as far as the confines of Italy and the Hadriatic Sea.i^o They ravage The Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention the acts proJJ^cr." ofju^stice which were exercised by the legions,ioi reserve their A n «7« ,7., ^^jj^pj^ggjj^jj j^j-^jj their eloquence for their own suffermgs, 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 mis- fortunes of a single family,i02 might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners ; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the atten- tion 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 coiTupt eloquence. The vehement Jerom ^^^ 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 con- temptuous 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 destruc- tion of the cities and the extirpation of the human race, the land was overgrown with thick forests and inextricable brambles ; 100 The series of events may still be traced in the last pages of Ammianus (xxxi. m, i6). Zosimus (1. iv. p. 227, 231 [22, 24]), whom we are now reduced to" cherish, misplaces the sally of the Arabs before the death of Valens. Eunapms (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 20 [fr. 42, F. H. G. iv. p. 32]) praises the fertility of Thrace, Macedonia, &c. , ., -, . ■ , 101 Observe with how much indifference Csesar relates, in the Commentaries ot the Gallic war : Ma/ he put to death the whole senate of the Veneti, who had yielded to his mercy (iii. 16); z-//*?/ he laboured to extirpate the whole nation of the Eburones (vi. 31 s>/n/y of history. 103 Et vastatis urbibus, hominibusque interfectis, solitudinem et ran(a/em bcstiarum quoque fieri, r; volar 'ni"!, fhciunujue : testis Illyricum est, testis Thracia. testis in quo ortus sum solum C^annonia); ubi praster cxlum et terram et cres- centes vepres, et condensa sylva-nm cuncta perierunt. Tom. vu. p. 250 ad i . Cap. Sophonias; and torn. i. p. 26. [Ep. 60, i6.]