Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/393

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 373 independence of a savage life. A light and active body of Barbarian horse, disengaged from their infantry and baggage, might perform, in eight or ten days, a march of three hundred miles from the Hellespont to the Danube ; ^^ the garrisons of that important frontier had been gradually annihilated ; the river, in the month of December, would be deeply frozen ; and the unbounded prospect of Scythia was opened to the ambition of Gainas. This design was secretly communicated to the national troops, who devoted themselves to the fortunes of their leader ; and, before the signal of departure was given, a great number of provincial auxiliaries, whom he suspected of an attachment to their native countiy, were perfidiously massacred. The Goths advanced, by rapid marches, through the plains of Thrace ; and they were soon delivered from the fear of a pursuit by the vanity of Fravitta, who, instead of extinguishing the war, hastened to enjoy the popular applause and to assume the peaceful honours of the consulship. But a formidable ally appeared in arais to vindicate the majesty of the empire and to guard the peace and liberty of Scythia. ^^ The superior forces of Uldin, king of the Huns, opposed the progress of Gainas ; an hostile and ruined countiy prohibited his retreat ; he disdained to capitulate ; and, after repeatedly attempting to cut his way through the ranks of the enemy, he was slain, with his desperate followers, in the field of battle. Eleven days after the naval a.d. 4ci, victory of the Hellespont, the head of Gainas, the inestimable ^"'"^^^ gift of the conqueror, was received at Constantinople with the most liberal expressions of gratitude, and the public deliverance was celebrated by festivals and illuminations. The triumphs of Arcadius became the subject of epic poems ; ^^ and the monarch, no longer oppressed by any hostile terrors, resigned himself to the mild and absolute dominion of his wife, the fair and artful 38 Chishul (Travels, p. 61-63, 72-76) proceeded from Gallipoli, through Hadria- nople, to the Danube, in about fifteen days. He was in the train of an English ambassador, whose baggage consisted of seventy-one waggons. That learned traveller has the merit of tracing a curious and unfrequented route. 39 The narrative of Zosimus, who actually leads Gainas beyond the Danube, must be corrected by the testimony of Socrates and Sozomen, that he was killed in Thrace ; and, by the precise and authentic dates of the Alexandrian, or Paschal, Chronicle, p. 307. The naval victory of the Hellespont is fixed to the month ApellzEUS, the tenth of the calends of January (December 23) ; the head of Gainas was brought to Constantinople the third of the nones of January (January 3), in the month Audynasus. [These dates imply too short an interval; the second is probably wrong ; and we may accept from Marcelliaus the notice that Gainas was killed early in February.] •*o Eusebius Scholasticus acquired much fame by his poem on the Gothic war, in which he had serv^ed. Near forty years afterwards, Ammonius recited another poem on the same subject, in the presence of Theg^iosius, See Spcratos, 1. vi. c. 6,