e the
manufactures of the provinces; which the Barbarians had acquired as the
spoils of war; or as the gifts, or merchandise, of peace.]

An undisciplined and unsettled nation of Barbarians required the firmest
temper, and the most dexterous management. The daily subsistence of near
a million of extraordinary subjects could be supplied only by constant
and skilful diligence, and might continually be interrupted by mistake
or accident. The insolence, or the indignation, of the Goths, if they
conceived themselves to be the objects either of fear or of contempt,
might urge them to the most desperate extremities; and the fortune of
the state seemed to depend on the prudence, as well as the integrity,
of the generals of Valens. At this important crisis, the military
government of Thrace was exercised by Lupicinus and Maximus, in whose
venal minds the slightest hope of private emolument outweighed every
consideration of public advantage; and whose guilt was only alleviated
by their incapacity of discerning the pernicious effects of their rash
and criminal administration.

Instead of obeying the orders of their sovereign, and satisfying, with
decent liberality, the demands of the Goths, they levied an ungenerous
and oppressive tax on the wants of the hungry Barbarians. The vilest
food was sold at an extravagant price; and, in the room of wholesome and
substantial provisions, the markets were filled with the flesh of dogs,
and of unclean animals, who had died of disease. To obtain the valuable
acquisition of a pound of bread, the Goths resigned the possession of an
expensive, though serviceable, slave; and a small quantity of meat was
greedily purchased with ten pounds of a precious, but useless metal,
[69] when their property was exhausted, they continued this necessary
traffic by the sale of their sons and daughters; and notwithstanding the
love of freedom, which animated every Gothic breast, they submitted
to the humiliating maxim, that it was better for their children to be
maintained in a servile condition, than to perish in a state of wretched
and helpless independence. The most lively resentment is excited by
the tyranny of pretended benefactors, who sternly exact the debt of
gratitude which they have cancelled by subsequent injuries: a spirit of
discontent insensibly arose in the camp of the Barbarians, who pleaded,
without success, the merit of their patient and dutiful behavior; and
loudly complained of the inhospita