ld
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.

The historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote racily of these events at
the time of their occurrence.

The swift wheel of fortune, which continually alternates adversity with
prosperity, was giving Bellona the Furies for her allies, and arming her
for war; and now transferred our disasters to the east, as many presages
and portents foreshowed by undoubted signs.

For after many true prophecies uttered by diviners and augurs, dogs were
seen to recoil from howling wolves, and the birds of night constantly
uttered querulous and mournful cries; and lurid sunrises made the
mornings dark. Also, at Antioch, among the tumults and squabbles of the
populace, it had com