rudely treated by the Roman officials, especially their women, and treachery was added to their other wrongs.  Filled with indignation, they made a combination and swept everything before them,—­plundering cities, and sparing neither age nor sex.  These ravages continued for a year.  Valens, aroused, advanced against them, and was slain in the memorable battle on the plains of Adrianople, 9th of August, 378,—­the most disastrous since the battle of Cannae, and from which the Empire never recovered.

To save the crumbling world, Theodosius was now made associate emperor.  And in that great crisis prudence was more necessary than valor.  No Roman army at that time could contend openly in the field, face to face, with the conquering hordes who assembled under the standard of Fritigern,—­the first historic name among the Visigoths.  Theodosius “fixed his headquarters at Thessalonica, from whence he could watch the irregular actions of the barbarians and direct the movements of his lieutenants.”  He strengthened his defences and fortifications, from which his soldiers made frequent sallies,—­as Alfred did against the Danes,—­and accustomed themselves to the warfare of their most dangerous enemies.  He pursued the same policy that Fabius did after the battle of Cannae, to whose wisdom the Romans perhaps were more indebted for their ultimate success than to the brilliant exploits of Scipio.  The death of Fritigern, the great predecessor of Alaric, relieved Theodosius from many anxieties; for it was followed by the dissension and discord of the barbarians themselves, by improvidence and disorderly movements; and when the Goths were once more united under Athanaric, Theodosius succeeded in making an honorable treaty with him, and in entertaining him with princely hospitalities in his capital, whose glories alike astonished and bewildered him.  Temperance was not one of the virtues of Gothic kings under strong temptation, and Athanaric, yielding to the force of banquets and imperial seductions, soon after died.  The politic emperor gave his late guest a magnificent funeral, and erected to his memory a stately monument; which won the favor of the Goths, and for a time converted them to allies.  In four years the entire capitulation of the Visigoths was effected.

Theodosius then turned his attention to the Ostro or East Goths, who advanced, with other barbarians, to the banks of the lower Danube, on the Thracian frontier.  Allured to cross the river in the night, the barbarians found a triple line of Roman war-vessels chained to each other in the middle of the river, which offered an effectual resistance to their six thousand canoes, and they perished with their king.