308 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAT, to have fixed the daughter in the affections of the in- • constant emperor, and the bands of poHcy were more firmly connected by those of love. But the haughty prejudice of Rome still refused the name of marriage to the profane mixture of a citizen and a barbarian ; and has stigmatized the German princess with the op- probrious title of concubine of Gallienus *. Inroads of HL We have already traced the emigration of the Goths from Scandinavia, or at least from Prussia, to the mouth of the Borysthenes, and have followed their victorious arms from the Borysthenes to the Danube. Under the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the fron- tier of the last mentioned river was perpetually infested by the inroads of Germans and Sarmatians ; but it was defended by the Romans with more than usual firmness and success. The provinces that were the seat of war, recruited the armies of Rome with an inexhaustible supply of hardy soldiers ; and more than one of these Illyrian peasants attained the station, and displayed the abilities, of a general. Though flying parties of the barbarians, who incessantly hovered on the banks of the Danube, penetrated sometimes to the confines of Italy and Macedonia; their progress was commonly checked, or their return intercepted, by the imperial lieutenants ^. But the great stream of the Gothic hos- tilities was diverted into a very different channel. The Goths, in their new settlement of the Ukraine, soon became masters of the northern coast of the Euxine : to the south of that inland sea, were situated the soft and wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which possessed all that could attract, and nothing that could resist, a barbarian conqueror. Conquest of The banks of the Borysthenes are only sixty miles the Bospho- -,. . r, i n ^ • ^ n rus by the distant trom the narrow entrance '^ of the penmsula of Goths; Crim Tartary, known to the ancients under the name
- See Tillemont, Hist, des Empereurs, torn. iii. p. 398, etc.
^ See the lives of Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus, in the Augustan History,
- = It is about half a league in breadth. Geneological History of the
Tartars, p. 598.
