s seat, his manly grace and majestic figure taught the barbarians
to revere the person as well as the purple of their conqueror. The
ambassadors fell prostrate on the ground in silence. They were commanded
to rise, and permitted to speak. By the assistance of interpreters they
extenuated their perfidy, magnified their exploits, expatiated on
the vicissitudes of fortune and the advantages of peace, and, with an
ill-timed confidence, demanded a large subsidy, as the price of the
alliance which they offered to the Romans. The answer of the emperor
was stern and imperious. He treated their offer with contempt, and their
demand with indignation, reproached the barbarians, that they were
as ignorant of the arts of war as of the laws of peace, and finally
dismissed them with the choice only of submitting to this unconditional
mercy, or awaiting the utmost severity of his resentment. Aurelian had
resigned a distant province to the Goths; but it was dangerous to trust
or to pardon these perfidious barbarians, whose formidable power kept
Italy itself in perpetual alarms.

Immediately after this conference, it should seem that some unexpected
emergency required the emperor's presence in Pannonia. He devolved on
his lieutenants the care of finishing the destruction of the Alemanni,
either by the sword, or by the surer operation of famine. But an active
despair has often triumphed over the indolent assurance of success. The
barbarians, finding it impossible to traverse the Danube and the Roman
camp, broke through the posts in their rear, which were more feebly
or less carefully guarded; and with incredible diligence, but by a
different road, returned towards the mountains of Italy. Aurelian, who
considered the war as totally extinguished, received the mortifying
intelligence of the escape of the Alemanni, and of the ravage which they
already committed in the territory of Milan. The legions were commanded
to follow, with as much expedition as those heavy bodies were capable of
exerting, the rapid flight of an enemy whose infantry and cavalry moved
with almost equal swiftness. A few days afterwards, the emperor
himself marched to the relief of Italy, at the head of a chosen body of
auxiliaries, (among whom were the hostages and cavalry of the Vandals,)
and of all the Praetorian guards who had served in the wars on the
Danube.

As the light troops of the Alemanni had spread themselves from the Alps
to the Apennine, the incessant vigil