oned by a writer of the lower empire. Three
hundred thousand are said to have been vanquished, in a battle near
Milan, by Gallienus in person, at the head of only ten thousand Romans.
We may, however, with great probability, ascribe this incredible
victory either to the credulity of the historian, or to some exaggerated
exploits of one of the emperor's lieutenants. It was by arms of a very
different nature, that Gallienus endeavored to protect Italy from the
fury of the Germans. He espoused Pipa, the daughter of a king of the
Marcomanni, a Suevic tribe, which was often confounded with the
Alemanni in their wars and conquests. To the father, as the price of his
alliance, he granted an ample settlement in Pannonia. The native charms
of unpolished beauty seem to have fixed the daughter in the affections
of the inconstant emperor, and the bands of policy were more firmly
connected by those of love. But the haughty prejudice of Rome still
refused the name of marriage to the profane mixture of a citizen and a
barbarian; and has stigmatized the German princess with the opprobrious
title of concubine of Gallienus.

III. We have already traced the emigration of the Goths from
Scandinavia, or at least from Prussia, to the mouth of the Borysthenes,
and have followed their victorious arms from the Borysthenes to the
Danube. Under the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the frontier of the
last-mentioned river was perpetually infested by the inroads of Germans
and Sarmatians; but it was defended by the Romans with more than usual
firmness and success. The provinces that were the seat of war, recruited
the armies of Rome with an inexhaustible supply of hardy soldiers;
and more than one of these Illyrian peasants attained the station, and
displayed the abilities, of a general. Though flying parties of
the barbarians, who incessantly hovered on the banks of the Danube,
penetrated sometimes to the confines of Italy and Macedonia, their
progress was commonly checked, or their return intercepted, by the
Imperial lieutenants. But the great stream of the Gothic hostilities
was diverted into a very different channel. The Goths, in their new
settlement of the Ukraine, soon became masters of the northern coast of
the Euxine: to the south of that inland sea were situated the soft and
wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which possessed all that could attract,
and nothing that could resist, a barbarian conqueror.

The banks of the Borysthenes are onl