cious harbor of Cagliari, at the distance of one hundred and forty
miles from the African shores.

Gildo was prepared to resist the invasion with all the forces of Africa.
By the liberality of his gifts and promises, he endeavored to secure the
doubtful allegiance of the Roman soldiers, whilst he attracted to his
standard the distant tribes of Gaetulia and AEthiopia. He proudly reviewed
an army of seventy thousand men, and boasted, with the rash presumption
which is the forerunner of disgrace, that his numerous cavalry would
trample under their horses' feet the troops of Mascezel, and involve,
in a cloud of burning sand, the natives of the cold regions of Gaul and
Germany. But the Moor, who commanded the legions of Honorius, was too
well acquainted with the manners of his countrymen, to entertain any
serious apprehension of a naked and disorderly host of Barbarians; whose
left arm, instead of a shield, was protected only by mantle; who were
totally disarmed as soon as they had darted their javelin from their
right hand; and whose horses had never He fixed his camp of five
thousand veterans in the face of a superior enemy, and, after the delay
of three days, gave the signal of a general engagement. As Mascezel
advanced before the front with fair offers of peace and pardon, he
encountered one of the foremost standard-bearers of the Africans, and,
on his refusal to yield, struck him on the arm with his sword. The arm,
and the standard, sunk under the weight of the blow; and the imaginary
act of submission was hastily repeated by all the standards of the line.
At this the disaffected cohorts proclaimed the name of their lawful
sovereign; the Barbarians, astonished by the defection of their Roman
allies, dispersed, according to their custom, in tumultuary flight; and
Mascezel obtained the of an easy, and almost bloodless, victory. The
tyrant escaped from the field of battle to the sea-shore; and threw
himself into a small vessel, with the hope of reaching in safety some
friendly port of the empire of the East; but the obstinacy of the wind
drove him back into the harbor of Tabraca, which had acknowledged, with
the rest of the province, the dominion of Honorius, and the authority
of his lieutenant. The inhabitants, as a proof of their repentance and
loyalty, seized and confined the person of Gildo in a dungeon; and his
own despair saved him from the intolerable torture of supporting the
presence of an injured and victorious br