“Xenophon says she is, but I don’t believe him. She has strange-colored eyes, I was told—the color of her gown, and is not pale and smooth as marble, but with rosy cheeks and a throat as white as snow; but she looked very stupid, and solemn, and proud. What she can have to be proud of, poor creature! I can not conceive; she has not the black eyes and bright smile of our girls.”
“That is a curious wool the men wear on their caps,” saith Xenophon; “it is curly, and of a light bluish-gray color. The barbarians seem to think it is very fine. I have not seen any thing like it: it is made of the skin of a peculiar breed of lambs, to be met with nowhere out of their country.”
“What in the world can they want so many fagots for?” asks another young lady. “I am sure the days are hot enough in the summer; perhaps they have no firewood in their own miserable regions; they have been doing nothing but cut bushes and make fagots of them on the hill-side above the citadel ever since they have been here.”
“Ah,” says Xenophon, “except the amusement of burning a few villages, though that could hardly repay them the trouble, for all the goods worth carrying away have been brought within the walls. However, here comes the little cup-bearer with the Chian and Falernian wine. Never mind these outer barbarians; let us go to supper.”
So they went to supper, and, affecting classic tastes, sang verses on heroic themes from Homer, accompanied by music on the lyre and the double pipe.
The Goths went to supper too outside, under the trees, and ate great pieces of beef cut from oxen roasted whole. The night was very dark, but the guards and the citizens lit up their rooms gayly within the city, which resounded with laughter, songs, and merriment.
The night advanced, and so did the Goths; each man bore a fagot, which he threw into the ditch below the wall. Thousands were piled upon those below, others were thrown on them; the heap of fagots rose, the upper ones were level with the battlements. Where were the city guards? Where were the legionaries and the 10,000 auxiliary troops? They were sleeping off the fatigues of the evening feast; they were any where but where they should be—upon the walls.
Down from the towers and the bastions poured a stream of fierce determined warriors; they closed the gates on that side, for fear the garrison should get out; but the alarm was spread; the legionaries, who were awakened by the cry, made off through the opposite side of the fortifications and escaped into the country. Those who were not quick enough were stabbed in the back and slain in heaps; fire and the sword commenced their fearful reign, blood ran in the streets, the massacre was horrible. The most holy temples, says the historian, the most splendid edifices, were involved in a common destruction. The booty that fell into the hands of the Goths was immense. The wealth of the adjacent countries, which had been deposited in Trebizond as a secure place of refuge, was added to the spoil. The number of captives was incredible; those who were left alive were gathered together by the Goths. Lais and Eudocia became the handmaids of the Gothic princess. Xenophon and 2000 able-bodied dandies were driven down to the port by 200 Goths, who made them chain each other to the oars of the galleys, on board of which the enormous plunder of Trebizond was embarked by the forced labor of the citizens, one or two being cut in half with a sweep of the long Gothic sword, to encourage the others if they did not hurry in their work under the burning rays of the sun. The Cimmerian Bosporus received the fleet of galleys laden with the treasures, and rowed by the slaves, of the noble city of Trebizond, now smouldering in a heap of smoking ruins.
Thus ended the first episode in the history of Trebizond.
For more than a thousand years the history of Trebizond remains enveloped in the mists of obscurity and insignificance; various dukes, princes, and counts succeeded each other in a long line of inglorious pride.