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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
347
their vicinity to the empire; and the level country of Moldavia and Walachia was occupied by the Antes,[1] a Sclavonian tribe, which swelled the titles of Justinian with an epithet of conquest,[2] Against the Antes he erected the fortifications of the lower Danube; and laboured to secure the alliance of a people seated in the direct channel of northern inundation, an interval of two hundred miles between the mountains of Transylvania and the Euxine sea. But the Antes wanted power and inclination to stem the fury of the torrent; and the light-armed Sclavonians, from an hundred tribes, pursued, with almost equal speed, the footsteps of the Bulgarian horse. The payment of one piece of gold for each soldier procured a safe and easy retreat through the country of the Gepidæ, who commanded the passage of the upper Danube.[3] The hopes or fears of the Barbarians; their intestine union or discord; the accident of a frozen or shallow stream; the prospect of harvest or vintage; the prosperity or distress of the Romans; were the causes which produced the uniform repetition of annual visits,[4] tedious in the narrative and destructive in the event. The same year, and possibly the same month, in which Ravenna surrendered, was marked by an invasion of the Huns or Bulgarians, so dreadful that it almost effaced the memory of their past inroads. They spread from the suburbs of Constantinople to the Ionian gulf, destroyed thirty-two cities or castles, erazed Potidæa, which Athens had built and Philip had besieged, and repassed the Danube, dragging at their horses' heels one hundred and twenty thousand of the subjects of Justinian. In a subsequent inroad they pierced the wall of the Thracian Chersonesus, extirpated the habitations and the inhabitants, boldly traversed the Hellespont, and returned to their companions, laden with the spoils of Asia. Another party, which seemed a multitude in the eyes of the Romans, penetrated, without opposition, from the straits of Thermopylæ to the isthmus of Corinth; and the last ruin of Greece has appeared an object too minute for the attention of
- ↑ Antes eoruni fortissimi … Taysis qui rapidus et vorticosus in Histri fluenta furens devolvitur (Jornandes, c. 5, p. 194, edit. Murator. Procopius, Goth. l. iii. c. 14, et de Ædific. l. iv. c. 7). Yet the same Procopius mentions the Goths and Huns as neighbours, γειτονον̂ντα, to the Danube (de Ædific. l. iv. c. 1).
- ↑ The national title of Anticus, in the laws and inscriptions of Justinian, was adopted by his successors, and is justified by the pious Ludewig (in Vit. Justinian. p. 515). It had strangely puzzled the civilians of the middle age.
- ↑ Procopius, Goth. l. iv. c. 25.
- ↑ An inroad of the Huns is connected, by Procopius, with a comet; perhaps that of 531 (Persic. l. ii. c. 4). Agathias (l. v. p. 154, 155 [c. 11]) borrows from his predecessor some early facts.
