Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/151

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 131 Notwithstanding these specious arguments and these sanguine Their hostile expectations, it was apparent to every discerning eye that the *^° Goths would long remain the enemies, and might soon become the conquerors, of the Roman empire. Their rude and insolent behaviour expressed their contempt of the citizens and pro- vincials, whom they insulted with impunity.i^o To the zeal and valour of the Barbarians Theodosius was indebted for the suc- cess of his arms ; but their assistance was precarious ; and they were sometimes seduced by a treacherous and inconstant dis- position to abandon his standard at the moment when their service was the most essential. During the civil war against Maximus, a great number of Gothic deserters retired into the morasses of Macedonia, wasted the adjacent provinces, and obliged the intrepid monarch to expose his person, and exert his power, to suppress the rising flame of rebellion. i'*! The public apprehensions were fortified by the strong suspicion that these tumults were not the effect of accidental passion, but the result of deep and premeditated design. It was generally believed that the Goths had signed the treaty of peace with an hostile and insidious spirit ; and that their chiefs had previously bound themselves, by a solemn and secret oath, never to keep faith with the Romans ; to maintain the fairest shew of loyalty and friend- ship, and to watch the favourable moment of rapine, of conquest and of revenge. But, as the minds of the Barbarians were not in- sensible to the power of gratitude, several of the Gothic leaders sincerely devoted themselves to the service of the empire, or, at least, of the emperor ; the whole nation was insensibly divided into two opposite factions, and much sophistry was em- ployed in conversation and dispute, to compare the obligations of their first and second engagements. The Goths, who con- sidered themselves as the friends of peace, of justice, and of Rome, were directed by the authority of Fravitta, a valiant and honourable youth, distinguished above the rest of his country- men by the politeness of his manners, the liberality of his sentiments, and the mild virtues of social life. But the more exempt from the puerilities of Greek rhetoric. Orpheus could only charm the wild beasts of Thrace ; but Theodosius enchanted the men and women whose predeces- sors in the same country had torn Orpheus in pieces, &c. ^0 Constantinople was deprived, half a day, of the public allowance of bread, to expiate the murder of a Gothic soldier : kivovvtc; to SkuSikoi/ was the guilt of the people. Libanius, Oral. xii. p. 394, edit. Morel. J"Zosimus, 1. iv. p. 267-271 [48, 49]. He tells a long and ridiculous story of the adventurous prince who roved the country with only five horsemen, of a spy whom they detected, whipped, and killed in an old woman's cottage, &c. [Giildenpenning, p. 196.]