Zeno decided that to
take _both_ the Theodorics into his pay would be too heavy a charge on
the treasury; that there was no reason for breaking with the young Amal,
his ally, and therefore that the request of his rival must be refused.
Open war followed, consisting chiefly of devastating raids by the son of
Triarius into the valleys of Moesia and Thrace. A message was sent to
Theodoric the Amal, who was dwelling quietly with his people by the
Danube. "Why are you lingering in your home? Come forth and do great
deeds worthy of a Master of Roman Soldiery". "But if I take the field
against the son of Triarius", was the answer, "I fear that you will make
peace with him behind my back". The Emperor and Senate bound themselves
by solemn oaths that he should never be received back into favour, and
an elaborate plan of campaign was arranged, according to which the Amal
marching with his host from Marcianople, (_Shumla_) was to be met by one
general with twelve thousand troops, on the southern side of the
Balkans, and by another with thirty thousand in the valley of the Hebrus
(_Maritza_).

But the Roman Empire, in its feeble and flaccid old age, seemed to have
lost all capacity for making war. Theodoric the Amal performed his share
of the compact; but when with his weary army, encumbered with many women
and children, he emerged from the passes of the Balkans he found no
Imperial generals there to meet him, but, instead, Theodoric the
Squinter with a large army of Goths encamped on an inaccessible hill.
Neither chief gave the signal for combat; perhaps both were restrained
by a reluctance to urge the fratricidal strife; but there were daily
skirmishes between the light-armed horsemen at the foraging grounds and
places for watering. Every day, too, the son of Triarius rode round the
hostile camp, shouting forth reproaches against his rival, calling him
"a perjured boy, a madman, a traitor to his race, a fool who could not
see whither the Imperial plans were tending. The Romans would stand by
and look quietly on while Goth wore out Goth in deadly strife". Murmurs
from the Amal's troops showed that these words struck home. Next day the
son of Triarius climbed a hill overlooking the camp, and again raised
his voice in bitter defiance. "Scoundrel! why are you leading so many of
my kinsmen to destruction? why have you made so many Gothic wives
widows? What has become of that wealth and plenty which they had when
they first took servic