94 THE DECLINE AND FALL were employed to watch, from a secure distance, the hostile designs of the Persian monarch • to check the depredations of the Saracens and Isaurians ; "'^ to enforce, by arguments more prevalent than those of reason and eloquence, the belief of the Arian theology ; and to satisfy his anxious suspicions by the promiscuous execution of the innocent and the guilty. But the attention of the emperor was most seriously engaged by the important intelligence which he received from the civil and military officers who were intrusted with the defence of the Danube. He was informed that the North was agitated by a furious tempest ; that the irruption of the Huns, an unknown and monstrous race of savages, had subverted the power of the Goths ; and that the suppliant multitudes of that warlike nation, whose pride was now humbled in the dust, covered a space of many miles along the banks of the river. With out- stretched arms and pathetic lamentations, they loudly deplored their past misfortunes and their present danger ; acknowledged that their only hope of safety was in the clemency of the Roman government : and most solemnly protested that, if the gracious liberality of the emperor would permit them to cultivate the waste lands of Thrace, they should ever hold themselves bound, by the strongest obligations of duty and gratitude, to obey the laws, and to guard the limits, of the republic. These assurances were confirmed by the ambassadors of the Goths, who impatiently expected, from the mouth of Valens, an answer that must finally determine the fate of their unhappy countrymen. The emperor of the East was no longer guided by the wisdom and authority of his elder brother, whose death happened towards the end of the ])receding year : and, as the distressful situation of the Goths required an instant and peremptory decision, he was deprived of the favourite resource of feeble and timid minds ; who consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as the most admirable efforts of consummate prudence. As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which were debated in the councils of antiquity, will frequently present themselves as the subject of modern deliberation. But the most experienced statesman of Europe has never been summoned to consider the propriety or the danger of admitting or rejecting an innumerable multitude ^ Zosimus, 1. iv. p. 223 [c. 20]. Sozomen, 1. vi. c. 38. The Isaurians, each winter, infested the roads of Asia Minor, as far as the neighbourhood of Constantinople. Basil, Epist. ccl. apud Tillemont, Hist, des Empereurs, torn. v. p. 106.
