Still the barbarian hordes from all directions were crowding upon the crumbling Roman empire. While Valentinian was struggling against their locust legions in the West, Valens was making an equally desperate and equally unavailing struggle against them in the East. The Huns came howling on from the wilds of Tartary, fierce as the wolves, and in numbers which no man could count. They could not be resisted. In an impetuous flood they surged along, till all the plains of Greece were swept by the inundation. Even the Goths fled in terror before these shaggy and merciless warriors.
Valens entered into an alliance with the Goths, hoping by their aid to resist the still more dreaded Huns. He allowedhis barbarian allies to take possession of all the waste lands of Thrace. Availing themselves of this advantageous base of operations, the treacherous Goths ravaged the whole country to the shores of the Adriatic, menacing even Italy with their arms. They laid siege to both the cities of Adrianople and Constantinople. Terror reigned everywhere. Tears and blood, through man’s demoniac ferocity, deluged this whole world. In an awful battle before the walls of Adrianople, the army of Valens was cut to pieces. Valens himself perished upon the bloody field. How little can we imagine, seated by our peaceful firesides, the dimensions of that wail of misery ascending from a whole army perishing beneath the sabres and the battle-axes of merciless barbarians! This is indeed a lost world. Surely history proves that man is a depraved animal. How happy might this world have been had man been the friend, instead of the foe, of his brother-man!
For twelve years Valentinian was engaged in almost an incessant battle. The Picts and Scots were rushing down upon Britain from the mountains of Caledonia. All along the Rhine and the Danube, tribes of uncouth names and habits were desolating, in plundering bands, every unprotected region. Worn down with care, toil, and sorrow, Valentinian fell a victim to a sudden attack of apoplexy in the year 375, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.
Valentinian had a son, Gratian, who, at the time of his father’s death, was but seventeen years old. He succeeded his father on the throne of the Western empire, without inheriting either his virtues or his energy. Retiring to Paris, the boy-emperor surrendered himself to voluptuous indulgence. Discontent created an insurrection, which was led by Maximus, Governor of Britain. Gratian, abandoned by his troops, fled to Lyons, where he was overtaken and slain.
A Christian general by the name of Theodosius had succeeded Valens in the East. Difficulties had arisen between Theodosius and Maximus. War ensued. Maximus was slain. Valentinian, a mere boy, younger brother of Gratian, was placed upon the throne of the Western empire. The poor childwas almost immediately assassinated. Theodosius marched to the West to avenge his death, and assumed the government of the whole united empire of the East and of the West. But he was a sick man, and the hand of death was already upon him: in less than four months he breathed his last at Milan.
Theodosius was a zealous Christian: in character he was one of the purest of men, and was earnestly devoted to the welfare of his realms; but his reign was sullied by intolerance,—doubtless conscientious, but none the less bigoted. He issued severe edicts against those Christians who swerved from the established faith as enunciated by the Council of Nice. He unrelentingly demolished or closed all the temples of paganism. He instituted that office of inquisitors of the faith, which, revived in subsequent centuries, became the fruitful source of so much crime and woe.
It was indeed a dark day, in the year of our Lord 379, when Theodosius ascended the throne. There was no stable government anywhere, no protection from violence. The Roman power, which, oppressive as it had been, was far better than anarchy, was now but a crumbling ruin, which no human energy or skill could rebuild.
As we look back through the gloomy centuries upon these dim, tumultuous scenes, a new vision of appalling grandeur rises before the eye. Alaric—the world-renowned Alaric the Goth—appears in the arena at the head of his fierce legions. Like gaunt and famished beasts of prey, his savage hordes swept over Greece, entered Italy, and besieged Milan. These barbarians were a short, chunky, broad-shouldered race of men, of herculean strength. A contemporary writer thus describes their general aspect:—
“Their high cheek-bones, and small, twinkling eyes, gave them a savage and cruel expression, which was increased by their want of nose; for the only visible appearance of that organ consisted of two holes sunk in the square expanse of their faces.”
Onward, ever onward, rolled this flood of hideous and pitiless foes. While this inundation was sweeping along from theEast, another similar flood came surging down from the North: the two torrents, blending, eddied around the walls of Rome. For six hundred years the city of Rome had not been insulted by the presence of a foreign foe.