th they were still
ignorant. The tide of the Gothic inundation rolled from the walls
of Hadrianople to the suburbs of Constantinople. The Barbarians were
surprised with the splendid appearance of the capital of the East, the
height and extent of the walls, the myriads of wealthy and affrighted
citizens who crowded the ramparts, and the various prospect of the sea
and land. While they gazed with hopeless desire on the inaccessible
beauties of Constantinople, a sally was made from one of the gates by
a party of Saracens, who had been fortunately engaged in the service
of Valens. The cavalry of Scythia was forced to yield to the admirable
swiftness and spirit of the Arabian horses: their riders were skilled
in the evolutions of irregular war; and the Northern Barbarians were
astonished and dismayed, by the inhuman ferocity of the Barbarians of
the South. A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger of an Arab; and the
hairy, naked savage, applying his lips to the wound, expressed a horrid
delight, while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy. The army of
the Goths, laden with the spoils of the wealthy suburbs and the adjacent
territory, slowly moved, from the Bosphorus, to the mountains which form
the western boundary of Thrace. The important pass of Succi was betrayed
by the fear, or the misconduct, of Maurus; and the Barbarians, who no
longer had any resistance to apprehend from the scattered and vanquished
troops of the East, spread themselves over the face of a fertile and
cultivated country, as far as the confines of Italy and the Hadriatic
Sea.

The Romans, who so coolly, and so concisely, mention the acts of justice
which were exercised by the legions, reserve their compassion, and their
eloquence, for their own sufferings, when the provinces were invaded,
and desolated, by the arms of the successful Barbarians. The simple
circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of
a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an
interesting and instructive picture of human manners: but the tedious
repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the
attention of the most patient reader. The same censure may be applied,
though not perhaps in an equal degree, to the profane, and the
ecclesiastical, writers of this unhappy period; that their minds were
inflamed by popular and religious animosity; and that the true size and
color of every object is falsified by the exaggerati