Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/391

 saviour by the populace, but from the magnates of the bureaucracy he experienced nothing but repellent looks and invidious utterances, and he relapsed at once into the obscurity from which he had emerged for the moment like a meteor.

As for the further efforts of Zabergan's expedition, they may be dismissed in a few words. At the Pass of Thermopylae the Huns were brought up by a wall from which they were repulsed by the garrison; and at the entrance to the Chersonnesus their career was similar checked. In the latter case, however, they constructed a fleet of rafts, by means of which six hundred of them tried to land on the peninsula from the waters of the Hellespont; but they were attacked by a number of Byzantine galleys during their perilous navigation, and almost all perished by drowning. Ultimately the survivors of both failures rejoined their leader, who still maintained his ground and proclaimed that he would not quit the Roman soil until he had been paid a large sum in gold. His captives were then reviewed and assessed at so much a head, and with the ransom thus accumulated Zabergan retreated to the Danube. Justinian, however, was determined to prevent his escaping at so little cost to himself; and he forthwith despatched an emissary to Sandichl, chief of another tribe of Huns, who had been heavily subsidized for guarding the approaches to the Empire from the north. Having upbraided him for negligence, he informed him that the funds which should have been his had now been paid out to Zabergan, wherefore he must be satisfied to lose the amount unless he could recover it by force. Hence an internecine war broke out between the two tribes,