Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/364

 344 THE DECLINE AND FALL his fijreat ally, he invested with the purple his brother Sebastian ; and that he most imprudently accepted the service of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the soldier of Honorius, was provoked to desert the court of a prince who knew not how to reward or punish. Adolphus, educated among a race of warriors, who esteemed the duty of revenge as the most precious and sacred portion of their inheritance, advanced with a body of ten thousand Goths to encounter the hereditary enemy of the house of Balti. He attacked Sarus at an unguarded moment, when he was accompanied only by eighteen or twenty of his valiant followers. United by friendship, animated by despair, but at length oppressed by multitudes, this band of heroes deserved the esteem, without exciting the compassion, of their enemies ; and the lion was no sooner taken in the toils ^^'' than he was instantly dispatched. The death of Sarus dissolved the loose alliance which Adolphus still maintained with the usurpei-s of Gaul. He again listened to the dictates of love and prudence ; and soon satisfied the brother of Placidia, by the assurance that he Avould immediately transmit to the palace of Ravenna the heads of the two tyrants, Jovinus and Sebastian. The king of the Goths executed his promise without difficulty or delay ; the helpless brothers, unsupported by any personal merit, were abandoned by their Barbarian auxiliaries ; and the short opposition of Valentia was expiated by the ruin of one of the noblest cities of Gaul. The emperor, chosen by the Roman senate, who had been promoted, degraded, insulted, restored, again degraded, and again insulted, was finally abandoned to his fate ; but, when the Gothic king withdrew his protection, he was restrained by pity or contempt from offering any violence to the person of Attalus. The unfortunate Attalus, who was left without subjects or allies, embarked in one of the ports of Spain, in search of some secure and solitaiy retreat ; but he was intercepted at sea, conducted to the presence of Honorius, led in triumph through the streets of Rome or Ravenna, and publicly exposed to the gazing multitude, on the second step of the throne of his mvi)icible conqueror. The same measure of punishment with which, in the days of his prosperity, he was accused of menacing his rival was inflicted on Attalus him- 1^9 The expression may be understood almost literally ; Olympiodorus says [fr. 17], ixoKi^ o-aicicois efw-ypTjo-af. SaKKos (or craicos) may signify a sack, or a loose garment ; and this method of entangling and catching an enem)', laciniis contortis, was much practised by the Huns (Ammian. xxxi. 2). II tut pris if avecdes filets, is the translation of Tillemont, Hist, des Empereurs, torn. v. p. $08.