rned again the balance of
arms in favour of the men who fought on foot; that the Goths became the
'foederati' or allies of the Empire, paid to fight its battles against
Maximus the Spaniard, and Arbogast the Frank, the rebels who, after the
murder of young Gratian, attempted to set up a separate empire in the
west; that Stilicho the Vandal was the Emperor's trusted friend, and
master of the horse; that Alaric the Balth, and other noble Goths, were
learning to combine with their native courage those Roman tactics which
they only needed to become masters of the world; that in all cities, even
in the Royal Palace, the huge Goth swaggered in Roman costume, his neck
and arms heavy with golden torcs and bracelets; or even (as in the case
of Fravitta and Priulf) stabbed his enemy with impunity at the imperial
table; that [Greek text], to disturb the Goths, was a deadly offence
throughout the Empire: all these things did not prevent a thousand new
statues from rising in honour of the great Caesar, and excited nothing
more than grumblings of impotent jealousy from a people whose maxim had
become, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'

Three anecdotes will illustrate sufficiently the policy of Theodosius
toward his inconvenient guests. Towards the beginning of his reign, when
the Goths, after the death of the great Fridigern, were broken up, and
quarreling among themselves, he tempted a royal Amal, Modar by name, by
the title of Master-General, to attack and slaughter in their sleep a
rival tribe of Goths, and carry off an immense spoil to the imperial
camp. To destroy the German by the German was so old a method of the
Roman policy, that it was not considered derogatory to the 'greatness' of
Theodosius.

The old Athanaric, the Therving--he who had sworn never to set foot on
Roman soil, and had burnt them who would not fall down and worship before
Woden's waggon, came over the Danube, out of the forests of 'Caucaland,'
and put himself at the head of the Goths. The great Caesar trembled
before the heathen hero; and they made peace together; and old Athanaric
went to him at Constantinople, and they became as friends. And the
Romani nominis umbra, the glamour of the Roman name, fell on the old man,
too feeble now to fight; and as he looked, says Jornandes, on the site of
the city, and on the fleets of ships, and the world-famous walls, and the
people from all the nations upon earth, he said, 'Now I behold what I
have of