nd when the two armies, at a late hour of the evening,
retreated to their respective camps, neither of them could claim the
honors, or the effects, of a decisive victory. The real loss was more
severely felt by the Romans, in proportion to the smallness of their
numbers; but the Goths were so deeply confounded and dismayed by this
vigorous, and perhaps unexpected, resistance, that they remained seven
days within the circle of their fortifications. Such funeral rites, as
the circumstances of time and place would admit, were piously discharged
to some officers of distinguished rank; but the indiscriminate vulgar
was left unburied on the plain. Their flesh was greedily devoured by
the birds of prey, who in that age enjoyed very frequent and delicious
feasts; and several years afterwards the white and naked bones, which
covered the wide extent of the fields, presented to the eyes of Ammianus
a dreadful monument of the battle of Salices. [82]

[Footnote 79: The Itinerary of Antoninus (p. 226, 227, edit. Wesseling)
marks the situation of this place about sixty miles north of Tomi,
Ovid's exile; and the name of Salices (the willows) expresses the nature
of the soil.]

[Footnote 80: This circle of wagons, the Carrago, was the usual
fortification of the Barbarians. (Vegetius de Re Militari, l. iii.
c. 10. Valesius ad Ammian. xxxi. 7.) The practice and the name were
preserved by their descendants as late as the fifteenth century. The
Charroy, which surrounded the Ost, is a word familiar to the readers of
Froissard, or Comines.]

[Footnote 81: Statim ut accensi malleoli. I have used the literal sense
of real torches or beacons; but I almost suspect, that it is only one
of those turgid metaphors, those false ornaments, that perpetually
disfigure to style of Ammianus.]

[Footnote 82: Indicant nunc usque albentes ossibus campi. Ammian. xxxi.
7. The historian might have viewed these plains, either as a soldier, or
as a traveller. But his modesty has suppressed the adventures of his own
life subsequent to the Persian wars of Constantius and Julian. We are
ignorant of the time when he quitted the service, and retired to Rome,
where he appears to have composed his History of his Own Times.]

The progress of the Goths had been checked by the doubtful event of
that bloody day; and the Imperial generals, whose army would have been
consumed by the repetition of such a contest, embraced the more rational
plan of destroying the Barbarians