ch Rome ever lost, A.D.
378. Two-thirds of the imperial army was destroyed, the emperor was slain,
and the remainder fled in consternation. Sixty thousand infantry and six
thousand cavalry lay dead upon the fatal field. The victors, intoxicated
with their success, invested Hadrianople, but were unequal to the task,
being inexperienced in sieges. Laden with spoil, they retired to the
western boundaries of Thrace. From the shores of the Bosphorus to the
Julian Alps, nothing was seen but conflagration, murder, and devastation.
So great were the misfortunes of the Illyrian provinces, that they never
afterward recovered. Churches were turned into stables, palaces were
burned, works of art were destroyed, the relics of martyrs were
desecrated, the population decimated, and the provinces were overrun.

(M1158) In this day of calamity a hero and deliverer was needed. The
feeble Gratian, who ruled in the West, cast his eyes upon an exile, whose
father, an eminent general, had been unjustly murdered by the emperor
Valentinian. This man was Theodosius, then living in modest retirement on
his farm near Valladolid, in Spain, as unambitious as David among his
sheep, as contented as Cincinnatus at the plow. Even Gibbon does not sneer
at this great Christian emperor, who revived for a while the falling
empire. He accepted the sceptre of Valens, A.D. 370, and the conduct of
the Gothic war, being but thirty-three years of age. One of the greatest
of all the emperors, and the last great man who swayed the sceptre of
Trajan, his ancestor, he has not too warmly been praised by the Church,
whose defender he was--the last flickering light of an expiring
monarchy,--although his character has been assailed by modern critics of
great respectability.

(M1159) As soon as he was invested with the purple, he took up his
residence in Thessalonica, and devoted his energies to the task assigned
him by the necessities of the empire. He succeeded in putting a stop to
the progress of the Goths, disarmed them by treaties, and allowed them to
settle on the right bank of the Danube, within the limits of the empire.
He invited the aged Athanaric to his capital and table, who was astonished
by his riches and glory. Peace was favored by the death of Fritagern, and
forty thousand Goths were received as soldiers of the empire,--an impolitic
act.

(M1160) At this period the Goths settled in Moesia were visited by Uphilas,
a Christian missionary and Arian bishop,