by their own rashness. A great
number of brave and distinguished officers perished in the battle of
Hadrianople, which equalled in the actual loss, and far surpassed in the
fatal consequences, the misfortune which Rome had formerly sustained in
the fields of Cannae. Two master-generals of the cavalry and infantry,
two great officers of the palace, and thirty-five tribunes, were found
among the slain; and the death of Sebastian might satisfy the world,
that he was the victim, as well as the author, of the public calamity.
Above two thirds of the Roman army were destroyed: and the darkness of
the night was esteemed a very favorable circumstance, as it served to
conceal the flight of the multitude, and to protect the more orderly
retreat of Victor and Richomer, who alone, amidst the general
consternation, maintained the advantage of calm courage and regular
discipline.

While the impressions of grief and terror were still recent in the minds
of men, the most celebrated rhetorician of the age composed the funeral
oration of a vanquished army, and of an unpopular prince, whose throne
was already occupied by a stranger. "There are not wanting," says the
candid Libanius, "those who arraign the prudence of the emperor, or who
impute the public misfortune to the want of courage and discipline in
the troops. For my own part, I reverence the memory of their former
exploits: I reverence the glorious death, which they bravely received,
standing, and fighting in their ranks: I reverence the field of battle,
stained with their blood, and the blood of the Barbarians. Those
honorable marks have been already washed away by the rains; but the
lofty monuments of their bones, the bones of generals, of centurions,
and of valiant warriors, claim a longer period of duration. The king
himself fought and fell in the foremost ranks of the battle. His
attendants presented him with the fleetest horses of the Imperial
stable, that would soon have carried him beyond the pursuit of the
enemy. They vainly pressed him to reserve his important life for the
future service of the republic. He still declared that he was unworthy
to survive so many of the bravest and most faithful of his subjects; and
the monarch was nobly buried under a mountain of the slain. Let none,
therefore, presume to ascribe the victory of the Barbarians to the fear,
the weakness, or the imprudence, of the Roman troops. The chiefs and
the soldiers were animated by the virtue of their