The speech of the Emperor was received with military applause, and Theodotus, the president of the council of Hierapolis, requested, with tears of adulation, that his city might be adorned with the head of the vanquished rebel. A chosen detachment was despatched away in post-wagons, to secure, if it were yet possible, the pass of Succi; the recruits, the horses, the arms, and the magazines, which had been prepared against Sapor, were appropriated to the service of the civil war; and the domestic victories of Constantius inspired his partisans with the most sanguine assurances of success. The notary Gaudentius had occupied in his name the provinces of Africa; the subsistence of Rome was intercepted; and the distress of Julian was increased by an unexpected event, which might have been productive of fatal consequences. Julian had received the submission of two legions and a cohort of archers, who were stationed at Sirmium; but he suspected with reason the fidelity of those troops which had been distinguished by the Emperor; and it was thought expedient, under the pretence of the exposed state of the Gallic frontier, to dismiss them from the most important scene of action.
They advanced, with reluctance, as far as the confines of Italy; but as they dreaded the length of the way and the savage fierceness of the Germans, they resolved, by the instigation of one of their tribunes, to halt at Aquileia, and to erect the banners of Constantius on the walls of that impregnable city. The vigilance of Julian perceived at once the extent of the mischief, and the necessity of applying an immediate remedy. By his order, Jovinus led back a part of the army into Italy; and the siege of Aquileia was formed with diligence and prosecuted with vigor. But the legionaries, who seemed to have rejected the yoke of discipline, conducted the defence of the place with skill and perseverance; invited the rest of Italy to imitate the example of their courage and loyalty; and threatened the retreat of Julian, if he should be forced to yield to the superior numbers of the armies of the East.
But the humanity of Julian was preserved from the cruel alternative which he pathetically laments, of destroying or of being himself destroyed; and the seasonable death of Constantius delivered the Roman Empire from the calamities of civil war. The approach of winter could not detain the monarch at Antioch; and his favorites durst not oppose his impatient desire of revenge. A slight fever, which was perhaps occasioned by the agitation of his spirits, was increased by the fatigues of the journey; and Constantius was obliged to halt at the little town of Mopsucrene, twelve miles beyond Tarsus, where he expired, after a short illness, in the forty-fifth year of his age and the twenty-fourth of his reign. Julian thus became master of the Roman world.
THE HUNS AND THEIR WESTERN MIGRATION
A.D. 374-376
MARCELLINUS
The Huns, whose incursions into Europe constituted the first "yellow peril," were a nomadic Mongolian race. In the fourth century before Christ they successfully invaded China. From that country, about a.d. 90, they were driven by Hiong-nu, and the Huns then proceeded, joined by hordes of their fellows from the steppes of Tartary, to make their way to the Caspian Sea.
Previous to the incursion of the Huns another Tartar tribe, the Alani—the first of that race known to the Romans—had ravaged Media and Armenia, a.d. 75, carrying off a vast number of prisoners and an enormous booty. They later settled themselves in the country between the Volga and the Tanais, at an equal distance from the Black Sea and the Caspian. The Huns, having crossed the Volga, drove the Alani before them to the Danube. Valens, the then Emperor of the East, was a weak, incapable ruler; he failed to recognize the peril by which his empire would ere long be threatened, and permitted the Alani to find a refuge in his dominions. These were in turn followed and absorbed by the Huns, and the whole Roman Empire was finally faced by Mongol foes.