e to be a custom for anyone who fancied himself
ill-treated to cry out, in a licentious manner: "May Valens be burned
alive." And the voices of the criers were constantly heard ordering
wood to be carried to warm the baths of Valens, which had been built
under the superintendence of the Emperor himself.

All which circumstances all but pointed out in express words that the
end of the Emperor's life was at hand. Besides all these things, the
ghost of the King of Armenia, and the miserable shades of those who had
lately been put to death in the affair of Theodorus, agitated numbers of
people with terrible alarms, appearing to them in their sleep, and
shrieking out verses of horrible import.

Last of all, when the ancient walls of Chalcedon were thrown down in
order to build a bath at Constantinople, and the stones were torn
asunder, on one squared stone which was hidden in the very centre of the
walls these Greek verses were found engraved, which gave a full
revelation of what was to happen:

"But when young wives and damsels blithe, in dances that delight,
Shall glide along the city streets, with garlands gayly bright;
And when these walls, with sad regrets, shall fall to raise a bath,
Then shall the Huns in multitude break forth with might and wrath,
By force of arms the barrier-stream of Ister they shall cross,
O'er Scythic ground and Moesian lands spreading dismay and loss;
They shall Pannonian horsemen brave, and Gallic soldiers slay,
And nought but loss of life and breath their course shall ever stay."

The following circumstances were the original cause of all the
destruction and various calamities which the fury of Mars roused up,
throwing everything into confusion by his usual ruinous violence: the
people called Huns, slightly mentioned in the ancient records, live
beyond the Sea of Azov, on the border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a
race savage beyond all parallel.

At the very moment of their birth the cheeks of their infant children
are deeply marked by an iron, in order that the usual vigor of their
hair, instead of growing at the proper season, may be withered by the
wrinkled scars; and accordingly they grow up without beards, and
consequently without any beauty, like eunuchs, though they all have
closely knit and strong limbs and plump necks; they are of great size,
and bow-legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or the
stout figures which are hewn out in