Sn THE DECLINE AND FALL tions from their sight. They resented the injurious precaution ; and some alai-ming attempts -were made, during the night, to jniy ao attack and destroy with fire the Imperial palace.^^ In this state of mutual and suspicious hostility, the guards and the people of Constantinople shut the gates, and rose in arms to prevent, or to punish, the conspiracy of the Goths. During the absence of Gainas, his troops were surprised and oppressed ; seven thousand Barbarians perished in this bloody massacre. In the fury of the pursuit, the catholics uncovered the roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they overwhelmed their adver- saries, who had retreated to the church or conventicle of the Arians. Gainas was either innocent of the design or too confident of his success ; he was astonished by the intelligence that the flower of his army had been ingloriously destroyed ; that he himself was declared a public enemy ; and that his countryman, Fravitta, a brave and loyal confederate, had assumed the management of the war by sea and land. The enterprises of the rebel against tlie cities of Thrace were encountered by a firm and well-ordered defence ; his hungiy soldiers were soon reduced to the grass that grew on the margin of the fortifications ; and Gainas, who vainly regretted the wealth and luxuiy of Asia, embraced a desperate resolution of forcing the passage of the Hellespont. He was destitute of vessels ; but the woods of the Chersonesus afforded materials for rafts, and his intrepid Barbarians did not refuse to trust themselves to the Dec.s waves. But Fravitta attentively watched the progress of their undertaking. As soon as they had gained the middle of the stream, the Roman galleys,^ impelled by the full force of oars, of the current, and of the favourable wind, rushed forwards in compact order and with irresistible weight ; and the Helles- pont was covered Avith the fi-agments of the Gothic shipwreck. After the destruction of his hopes, and the loss of many thousands of his bravest soldiers, Gainas, who could no longer aspire to govern, or to subdue, the Romans, determined to resume the
- ^ The ecclesiastical historians, who sometimes guide, and sometimes follow,
the public opinion, most confidently assert that the palace of Constantinople was guarded by legions of angels. 3'? Zosinms (1. v. p. 319 [20, op. Eunap. fr. 81]) mentions these galleys by the name oi l.ihvmic.ns, and observes that they were as swift (without explaining the difference between them) as the vessels with fifty oars; but that they were far inferior in speed to the tj-iretnes, which had been long disused. Yet he reasonably concludes, from the testimony of Polybius, that galleys of a still larger size had been constructed in the Punic wars. Since the establishment of the Roman empire over the Mediterranean, the useless art of building large ships of war had probably been neglected and at length forgotten.
