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198 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxix victory and the vigour of his age. A reign of three and thirty years was consecrated to the duties of civil government, and the hostilities in which he was sometimes involved were speedily terminated by the conduct of his lieutenants, the discipline of his troops, the arms of his allies, and even by the terror of his name. He reduced, under a strong and regular government, the unprofitable countries of Ehaetia, Noricum, Dalmatia, and Pannonia, from the source of the Danube and the territory of the Bavarians, 52 to the petty kingdom erected by the Gepidae on the ruins of Sirmium. His prudence could not safely entrust the bulwark of Italy to such feeble and turbulent neighbours ; and his justice might claim the lands which they oppressed, either as a part of his kingdom or as the inheritance of his father. The greatness of a servant, who was named perfidious because he was successful, awakened the jealousy of the emperor Anastasius ; and a war was kindled on the Dacian frontier, by the protection which the Gothic king, in the vicissitude of human affairs, had granted to one of the descendants of Attila. Sabinian, a general illustrious by his own and father's merit, ad- vanced at the head of ten thousand Romans ; and the provisions and arms, which filled a long train of waggons, were distributed to the fiercest of the Bulgarian tribes. But, in the fields of Margus, the eastern powers were defeated by the inferior forces of the Goths and Huns ; 53 the flower, and even the hope, of the Boman armies was irretrievably destroyed ; and such was the temperance with which Theodoric had inspired his victorious troops, that, as their leader had not given the signal of pillage, the rich spoils of the enemy lay untouched at their feet. 54 Exasperated by this disgrace, the Byzantine court dispatched His navai two hundred ships and eight thousand men to plunder the sea- A r D! a 509 ent coast of Calabria and Apulia ; they assaulted the ancient city of Tarentum, interrupted the trade and agriculture of an happy 52 See the Hist, des Peuples Anciens, &c. torn. ix. p. 255-273, 396-501. The Count de Buat was French minister at the court of Bavaria : a liberal curiosity prompted his inquiries into the antiquities of the country, and that curiosity was the germ of twelve respectable volumes. 53 [The " Huns " are Bulgarians ; see Ennodius, Paneg., c. xii. p. 211, ed. Vogel.] 54 See the Gothic transactions on the Danube and in Illyrieum, in Jornandes (c. 58, p. 699), Ennodius (p. 1607-1610 [p. 210, 211, ed. Vogel]), Marcellinus (in Chron. p. 44, 47, 48), and Cassiodorius (in Chron. and Var. *ii. 23, 50 ; iv. 13 ; vii. 4, 24 ; viii. 9, 10, 11, 21 ; ix. 8, 9).