) Livy (xxii. 49) is somewhat less bloody: he slaughters
only 2,700 horse, and 40,000 foot. The Roman army was supposed to
consist of 87,200 effective men, (xxii. 36.)]

[Footnote 94: We have gained some faint light from Jerom, (tom. i. p. 26
and in Chron. p. 188,) Victor, (in Epitome,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 33, p.
554,) Jornandes, (c. 27,) Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 230,) Socrates, (l. iv.
c. 38,) Sozomen, (l. vi. c. 40,) Idatius, (in Chron.) But their
united evidence, if weighed against Ammianus alone, is light and
unsubstantial.]

While the impressions of grief and terror were still recent in the minds
of men, the most celebrated rhetorician of the age composed the funeral
oration of a vanquished army, and of an unpopular prince, whose throne
was already occupied by a stranger. "There are not wanting," says the
candid Libanius, "those who arraign the prudence of the emperor, or who
impute the public misfortune to the want of courage and discipline in
the troops. For my own part, I reverence the memory of their former
exploits: I reverence the glorious death, which they bravely received,
standing, and fighting in their ranks: I reverence the field of battle,
stained with their blood, and the blood of the Barbarians. Those
honorable marks have been already washed away by the rains; but the
lofty monuments of their bones, the bones of generals, of centurions,
and of valiant warriors, claim a longer period of duration. The king
himself fought and fell in the foremost ranks of the battle. His
attendants presented him with the fleetest horses of the Imperial
stable, that would soon have carried him beyond the pursuit of the
enemy. They vainly pressed him to reserve his important life for the
future service of the republic. He still declared that he was unworthy
to survive so many of the bravest and most faithful of his subjects; and
the monarch was nobly buried under a mountain of the slain. Let none,
therefore, presume to ascribe the victory of the Barbarians to the fear,
the weakness, or the imprudence, of the Roman troops. The chiefs and
the soldiers were animated by the virtue of their ancestors, whom they
equalled in discipline and the arts of war. Their generous emulation was
supported by the love of glory, which prompted them to contend at the
same time with heat and thirst, with fire and the sword; and cheerfully
to embrace an honorable death, as their refuge against flight and
infamy. The indignation of the gods has been