In such a crisis a great man was imperatively needed, and a great man arose.  The dismayed emperor cast his eyes over the whole extent of his dominions to find a deliverer.  And he found the needed hero living quietly and in modest retirement on a farm in Spain.  This man was Theodosius the Great, a young man then,—­as modest as David amid the pastures, as unambitious as Cincinnatus at the plough.  “The vulgar,” says Gibbon, “gazed with admiration on the manly beauty of his face and the graceful majesty of his person, while in the qualities of his mind and heart intelligent observers perceived the blended excellences of Trajan and Constantine.”  As prudent as Fabius, as persevering as Alfred, as comprehensive as Charlemagne, as full of resources as Frederic II., no more fitting person could be found to wield the sceptre of Trajan his ancestor.  No greater man than he did the Empire then contain, and Gratian was wise and fortunate in associating with himself so illustrious a man in the imperial dignity.

If Theodosius was unassuming, he was not obscure and unimportant.  His father had been a successful general in Britain and Africa, and he himself had been instructed by his father in the art of war, and had served under him with distinction.  As Duke of Maesia he had vanquished an army of Sarmatians, saved the province, deserved the love of his soldiers, and provoked the envy of the court.  But his father having incurred the jealousy of Gratian and been unjustly executed, he was allowed to retire to his patrimonial estates near Valladolid, where he gave himself up to rural enjoyments and ennobling studies.  He was not long permitted to remain in this retirement; for the public dangers demanded the service of the ablest general in the Empire, and there was no one so illustrious as he.  And how lofty must have been his character, if Gratian dared to associate with himself in the government of the Empire a man whose father he had unjustly executed!  He was thirty-three when he was invested with imperial purple and intrusted with the conduct of the Gothic war.

The Goths, who under Fritigern had defeated the Roman army before the walls of Adrianople, were Germanic barbarians who lived between the Rhine and the Vistula in those forests which now form the empire of Germany.  They belonged to a family of nations which had the same natural characteristics,—­love of independence, passion for war, veneration for women, and religious tendency of mind.  They were brave, persevering, bold, hardy, and virtuous, for barbarians.  They cast their eyes on the Roman provinces in the time of Marius, and were defeated by him under the name of Teutons.  They had recovered strength when Caesar conquered the Gauls.  They were very formidable in the time of Marcus Aurelius, and had formed a general union for the invasion of the Roman world.  But a barrier had been made against their incursions by those good and warlike emperors who preceded Commodus,