oman world
was exercised in the united names of Valens and his two nephews; but
the feeble emperor of the East, who succeeded to the rank of his elder
brother, never obtained any weight or influence in the councils of the
West.

Chapter XXVI: Progress of The Huns.--Part I.

Manners Of The Pastoral Nations.--Progress Of The Huns, From
China To Europe.--Flight Of The Goths.--They Pass The
Danube. --Gothic War.--Defeat And Death Of Valens.--Gratian
Invests Theodosius With The Eastern Empire.--His Character
And Success. --Peace And Settlement Of The Goths.

In the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on the
morning of the twenty-first day of July, the greatest part of the Roman
world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake. The impression
was communicated to the waters; the shores of the Mediterranean were
left dry, by the sudden retreat of the sea; great quantities of fish
were caught with the hand; large vessels were stranded on the mud; and a
curious spectator amused his eye, or rather his fancy, by contemplating
the various appearance of valleys and mountains, which had never, since
the formation of the globe, been exposed to the sun. But the tide soon
returned, with the weight of an immense and irresistible deluge, which
was severely felt on the coasts of Sicily, of Dalmatia, of Greece,
and of Egypt: large boats were transported, and lodged on the roofs of
houses, or at the distance of two miles from the shore; the people,
with their habitations, were swept away by the waters; and the city of
Alexandria annually commemorated the fatal day, on which fifty thousand
persons had lost their lives in the inundation. This calamity, the
report of which was magnified from one province to another, astonished
and terrified the subjects of Rome; and their affrighted imagination
enlarged the real extent of a momentary evil. They recollected the
preceding earthquakes, which had subverted the cities of Palestine and
Bithynia: they considered these alarming strokes as the prelude only of
still more dreadful calamities, and their fearful vanity was disposed to
confound the symptoms of a declining empire and a sinking world. It
was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the
particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected,
by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the
human mind; and the most sagacious divine