Valens and his council: the emperor listened
with satisfaction to the flattering and eloquent remonstrance of the
senate of Constantinople, which assumed, for the first time, a share in
the public deliberations; and the same generals, Victor and Arintheus,
who had successfully directed the conduct of the war, were empowered to
regulate the conditions of peace. The freedom of trade, which the Goths
had hitherto enjoyed, was restricted to two cities on the Danube; the
rashness of their leaders was severely punished by the suppression of
their pensions and subsidies; and the exception, which was stipulated
in favor of Athanaric alone, was more advantageous than honorable to
the Judge of the Visigoths. Athanaric, who, on this occasion, appears to
have consulted his private interest, without expecting the orders of
his sovereign, supported his own dignity, and that of his tribe, in the
personal interview which was proposed by the ministers of Valens. He
persisted in his declaration, that it was impossible for him, without
incurring the guilt of perjury, ever to set his foot on the territory
of the empire; and it is more than probable, that his regard for the
sanctity of an oath was confirmed by the recent and fatal examples of
Roman treachery. The Danube, which separated the dominions of the two
independent nations, was chosen for the scene of the conference. The
emperor of the East, and the Judge of the Visigoths, accompanied by an
equal number of armed followers, advanced in their respective barges to
the middle of the stream. After the ratification of the treaty, and the
delivery of hostages, Valens returned in triumph to Constantinople; and
the Goths remained in a state of tranquillity about six years; till they
were violently impelled against the Roman empire by an innumerable
host of Scythians, who appeared to issue from the frozen regions of the
North. [149]

[Footnote 148: Eunapius, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 18, 19. The Greek sophist
must have considered as one and the same war, the whole series of Gothic
history till the victories and peace of Theodosius.]

[Footnote 149: The Gothic war is described by Ammianus, (xxvii. 6,)
Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 211-214,) and Themistius, (Orat. x. p. 129-141.)
The orator Themistius was sent from the senate of Constantinople to
congratulate the victorious emperor; and his servile eloquence compares
Valens on the Danube to Achilles in the Scamander. Jornandes forgets
a war peculiar to the