equate
proportion of transports and smaller vessels, was collected in the
secure and capacious harbor of Carthagena in Spain. The intrepid
countenance of Majorian animated his troops with a confidence of
victory; and, if we might credit the historian Procopius, his courage
sometimes hurried him beyond the bounds of prudence. Anxious to
explore, with his own eyes, the state of the Vandals, he ventured, after
disguising the color of his hair, to visit Carthage, in the character
of his own ambassador: and Genseric was afterwards mortified by the
discovery, that he had entertained and dismissed the emperor of the
Romans. Such an anecdote may be rejected as an improbable fiction; but
it is a fiction which would not have been imagined, unless in the life
of a hero.

Chapter XXXVI: Total Extinction Of The Western Empire.--Part III.

Without the help of a personal interview, Genseric was sufficiently
acquainted with the genius and designs of his adversary. He practiced
his customary arts of fraud and delay, but he practiced them without
success. His applications for peace became each hour more submissive,
and perhaps more sincere; but the inflexible Majorian had adopted the
ancient maxim, that Rome could not be safe, as long as Carthage existed
in a hostile state. The king of the Vandals distrusted the valor of
his native subjects, who were enervated by the luxury of the South; he
suspected the fidelity of the vanquished people, who abhorred him as an
Arian tyrant; and the desperate measure, which he executed, of reducing
Mauritania into a desert, could not defeat the operations of the Roman
emperor, who was at liberty to land his troops on any part of the
African coast. But Genseric was saved from impending and inevitable ruin
by the treachery of some powerful subjects, envious, or apprehensive,
of their master's success. Guided by their secret intelligence, he
surprised the unguarded fleet in the Bay of Carthagena: many of the
ships were sunk, or taken, or burnt; and the preparations of three years
were destroyed in a single day. After this event, the behavior of the
two antagonists showed them superior to their fortune. The Vandal,
instead of being elated by this accidental victory, immediately renewed
his solicitations for peace. The emperor of the West, who was capable
of forming great designs, and of supporting heavy disappointments,
consented to a treaty, or rather to a suspension of arms; in the full
assurance t