he
head of the long line of march. Too anxious perhaps for her safety, and
fearing to meet the reproachful looks of Theodoric if aught of harm
happened to her, he hurried her across the last bridge, spanning a deep
defile, which intervened between the mountains and the plain, and then
broke down the bridge behind him to prevent pursuit. Pursuit was indeed
rendered impossible, and the mother of Theodoric was saved, but at what
a cost! The Goths turned back to fight, with the courage of despair, the
pursuing cavalry. At that moment the infantry in ambush, having received
the signal, began to attack them from the rocks above. The position was
a terrible one, and many brave men fell in the hopeless battle. Quarter,
however, was given by the Imperial soldiers, for we are told that more
than five thousand of the Goths were taken prisoners. The booty was
large; and all the waggons of the barbarians, two thousand in number,
were of course captured, but the soldiers, misliking the toil of
dragging them back over all those jagged passes to Lychnidus, burned
them there as they stood upon the Candavian mountains.

I have copied with some minuteness the account given us by the Greek
historian of this mountain march of Theodoric, because it brings before
us with more than usual vividness the conditions under which the
campaigns of the barbarians were conducted. It will have been noticed
that the Gothic army is not only an army but a nation, and that the
campaign is also a migration. The mother and the sister of Theodoric are
accompanying him. There is evidently a long train of non-combatants, old
men, women, and children, following the army in those two thousand
Gothic waggons. The character attributed by Horace to the

Campestres Scythae,
Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos

still survives.

"The waggon holds the Scythian's wandering home".

The Goth, a terrible enemy to those outside the pale of his kinship, is
a home-lover at heart, and even in war will not separate himself from
his wife and children. This makes his impact slow, his campaigns
unscientific. It prepares for him frequent defeats, such as that of the
Candavian mountains, which a celibate army would have avoided. But it
makes his conquests, when he does conquer, more enduring, while it
explains those perpetual demands for land, for a settlement within the
Empire, almost on any terms, with which, as was before shown, the
barbarian inroads so often