aifalae,
transporting them to lands about Modena and Parma in Italy. He rejected
Count Ricimer's advice to wait till Gratian reinforced him with the
victorious western legions, and determined to give battle a few miles
from Adrianople. Had he waited for Gratian, the history of the whole
world might have been different.

For on the ninth of August, A.D. 378, the fatal day, the second Cannae,
from which Rome never recovered as from that first, the young world and
the old world met, and fought it out; and the young world won. The light
Roman cavalry fled before the long lances and heavy swords of the German
knights. The knights turned on the infantry, broke them, hunted them
down by charge after charge, and left the footmen to finish the work.

Two-thirds of the Roman army were destroyed; four Counts of the Empire;
generals and officers without number. Valens fled wounded to a cottage.
The Goths set it on fire, and burned him and his staff therein, ignorant
that they had in their hands the Emperor of Rome. Verily there is a God
who judgeth the earth.

So thought the Catholics of that day, who saw in the fearful death of
Valens a punishment for his having forced the Goths to become Arians. 'It
was just,' says one, 'that he should burn on earth, by whose counsels so
many barbarians will burn in hell for ever.' There are (as I have shewn)
still darker counts in the conduct of the Romans toward the Goths; enough
(if we believe our Bibles) to draw down on the guilty the swift and
terrible judgments of God.

At least, this was the second Cannae, the death-wound of Rome. From that
day the end was certain, however slow. The Teuton had at last tried his
strength against the Roman. The wild forest-child had found himself
suddenly at death-grips with the Enchanter whom he had feared, and almost
worshipped, for so long; and behold, to his own wonder, he was no more a
child, but grown into a man, and the stronger, if not the cunninger of
the two. There had been a spell upon him; the 'Romani nominis umbra.'
But from that day the spell was broken. He had faced a Roman Emperor, a
Divus Caesar, the man-god by whose head all nations swore, rich with the
magic wealth, wise with the magic cunning, of centuries of superhuman
glory; and he had killed him, and behold he died, like other men. That
he had done. What was there left for him now that he could not do?

The stronger he was, but not yet the cunninger of the two. The