ht and extent of the walls, the myriads of wealthy and affrighted
citizens who crowded the ramparts, and the various prospect of the sea
and land. While they gazed with hopeless desire on the inaccessible
beauties of Constantinople, a sally was made from one of the gates by a
party of Saracens, [96] who had been fortunately engaged in the service
of Valens. The cavalry of Scythia was forced to yield to the admirable
swiftness and spirit of the Arabian horses: their riders were skilled
in the evolutions of irregular war; and the Northern Barbarians were
astonished and dismayed, by the inhuman ferocity of the Barbarians of
the South.

A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger of an Arab; and the hairy,
naked savage, applying his lips to the wound, expressed a horrid
delight, while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy. [97] The
army of the Goths, laden with the spoils of the wealthy suburbs and the
adjacent territory, slowly moved, from the Bosphorus, to the mountains
which form the western boundary of Thrace. The important pass of
Succi was betrayed by the fear, or the misconduct, of Maurus; and the
Barbarians, who no longer had any resistance to apprehend from the
scattered and vanquished troops of the East, spread themselves over
the face of a fertile and cultivated country, as far as the confines of
Italy and the Hadriatic Sea. [98]

[Footnote 96: Valens had gained, or rather purchased, the friendship
of the Saracens, whose vexatious inroads were felt on the borders of
Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt. The Christian faith had been lately
introduced among a people, reserved, in a future age, to propagate
another religion, (Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 104, 106,
141. Mem. Eccles. tom. vii. p. 593.)]

[Footnote 97: Crinitus quidam, nudus omnia praeter pubem, subraunum et
ugubre strepens. Ammian. xxxi. 16, and Vales. ad loc. The Arabs often
fought naked; a custom which may be ascribed to their sultry climate,
and ostentatious bravery. The description of this unknown savage is the
lively portrait of Derar, a name so dreadful to the Christians of Syria.
See Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 72, 84, 87.]

[Footnote 98: The series of events may still be traced in the last pages
of Ammianus, (xxxi. 15, 16.) Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 227, 231,) whom we
are now reduced to cherish, misplaces the sally of the Arabs before
the death of Valens. Eunapius (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 20) praises the
fertility of Thr