purpose unaccomplished, and Zeno began
seriously to prepare for the apparently inevitable war with all the
Gothic _foederati_ in his land, commanded by both the Theodorics. He
summoned to the capital all the troops whom he could muster, and
delivered to them a spirited oration, in which he exhorted them to be of
good courage, declaring that he himself would go forth with them to war,
and would share all their hardships and dangers. For nearly a hundred
years, ever since the time of the great Theodosius, no Eastern Emperor
apparently had conducted a campaign in person; and the announcement that
this inactivity was to be ended and that a Roman Imperator was again,
like the Imperators of old time, to march with the legions and to
withstand the shock of battle, roused the soldiers to extraordinary
enthusiasm. The very men who, a little while before, had been bribing
the officers to procure exemption from service, now offered larger sums
of money in order to obtain an opportunity of distinguishing themselves
under the eyes of the Emperor. They pressed forward past the long wall
which at about sixty miles from Constantinople crossed the narrow
peninsula and defended the capital of the Empire; they caught some of
the forerunners of the Gothic host, the Uhlans, if we may call them so,
of Theodoric: everything foreboded an encounter, more serious and
perhaps more triumphant than any that had been seen since the days of
Theodosius. Then, as in a moment, all was changed. Zeno's old spirit of
sloth and cowardice returned. He would not undergo the fatigue of the
long marches through Thrace, he would not look upon the battle-field,
the very pictures of which he found so terrible; it was publicly
announced that the Emperor would not go forth to war. The soldiers,
enraged, began to gather in angry groups, rebuking one another for their
over-patience in submitting to be ruled by such a coward. "How? Are we
men, and have we swords in our hands, and shall we any longer bear with
such disgraceful effeminacy, by which the might of this great Empire is
sapped, so that every barbarian who chooses may carve out a slice from
it?"

These clamours were rapidly growing seditious, and in a few days an
anti-Emperor would probably have been proclaimed; but Zeno, more afraid
of his soldiers than even of the Goths, adroitly moved them into their
widely-scattered winter-quarters, leaving the invaded provinces to take
care of themselves for a little time