by the wants and pressure of their own
multitudes. They prepared to confine the Visigoths in the narrow angle
of land between the Danube, the desert of Scythia, and the mountains of
Haemus, till their strength and spirit should be insensibly wasted by
the inevitable operation of famine. The design was prosecuted with
some conduct and success: the Barbarians had almost exhausted their
own magazines, and the harvests of the country; and the diligence of
Saturninus, the master-general of the cavalry, was employed to improve
the strength, and to contract the extent, of the Roman fortifications.
His labors were interrupted by the alarming intelligence, that new
swarms of Barbarians had passed the unguarded Danube, either to
support the cause, or to imitate the example, of Fritigern. The just
apprehension, that he himself might be surrounded, and overwhelmed,
by the arms of hostile and unknown nations, compelled Saturninus to
relinquish the siege of the Gothic camp; and the indignant Visigoths,
breaking from their confinement, satiated their hunger and revenge by
the repeated devastation of the fruitful country, which extends above
three hundred miles from the banks of the Danube to the straits of the
Hellespont. [83] The sagacious Fritigern had successfully appealed to
the passions, as well as to the interest, of his Barbarian allies; and
the love of rapine, and the hatred of Rome, seconded, or even prevented,
the eloquence of his ambassadors. He cemented a strict and useful
alliance with the great body of his countrymen, who obeyed Alatheus and
Saphrax as the guardians of their infant king: the long animosity of
rival tribes was suspended by the sense of their common interest; the
independent part of the nation was associated under one standard; and
the chiefs of the Ostrogoths appear to have yielded to the superior
genius of the general of the Visigoths. He obtained the formidable aid
of the Taifalae, [83a] whose military renown was disgraced and polluted
by the public infamy of their domestic manners. Every youth, on his
entrance into the world, was united by the ties of honorable friendship,
and brutal love, to some warrior of the tribe; nor could he hope to
be released from this unnatural connection, till he had approved his
manhood by slaying, in single combat, a huge bear, or a wild boar of the
forest. [84] But the most powerful auxiliaries of the Goths were drawn
from the camp of those enemies who had expelled them fr