Goths
could do no more. They had to leave Adrianople behind them, with the
Emperor's treasures safe within its walls; to gaze with childish wonder
at the Bosphorus and its palaces; to recoil in awe from the 'long walls'
of Constantinople, and the great stones which the engines thereon hurled
at them by 'arsmetricke and nigromancy,' as their descendants believed of
the Roman mechanicians, even five hundred years after; to hear (without
being able to avenge) the horrible news, that the Gothic lads distributed
throughout Asia, to be educated as Romans, had been decoyed into the
cities by promises of lands and honours, and then massacred in cold
blood; and then to settle down, leaving their children unavenged, for
twenty years on the rich land which we now call Turkey in Europe, waiting
till the time was come.

Waiting, I say, till the time was come. The fixed idea that Rome, if not
Constantinople, could be taken at last, probably never left the minds of
the leading Goths after the battle of Adrianople. The altered policy of
the Caesars was enough of itself to keep that idea alive. So far from
expelling them from the country which they had seized, the new Emperor
began to flatter and to honour them.

They had been heretofore regarded as savages, either to be driven back by
main force, or tempted to enlist in the Roman ranks. Theodosius regarded
them as a nation, and one which it was his interest to hire, to trust, to
indulge at the expense of his Roman subjects.

Theodosius has received the surname of Great--seemingly by comparison;
'Inter caecos luscus rex;' and it was highly creditable to a Roman
Emperor in those days to be neither ruffian nor villain, but a handsome,
highbred, courteous gentleman, pure in his domestic life, an orthodox
Christian, and sufficiently obedient to the Church to forgive the monks
who had burnt a Jewish synagogue, and to do penance in the Cathedral of
Milan for the massacre of Thessalonica. That the morals of the Empire
(if Zosimus is to be at all believed) grew more and more effeminate,
corrupt, reckless; that the soldiers (if Vegetius is to be believed)
actually laid aside, by royal permission, their helmets and cuirasses, as
too heavy for their degenerate bodies; that the Roman heavy infantry,
which had conquered the world, ceased to exist, while its place was taken
by that Teutonic heavy cavalry, which decided every battle in Europe till
the English yeoman, at Crecy and Poictiers, tu