ed with all the pomp
and sensuality of the East; the hall resounded with cheerful music, and
the company was already heated with wine; when the count retired for an
instant, drew his sword, and gave the signal of the murder. A robust and
desperate Barbarian instantly rushed on the king of Armenia; and though
he bravely defended his life with the first weapon that chance offered
to his hand, the table of the Imperial general was stained with the
royal blood of a guest, and an ally. Such were the weak and wicked
maxims of the Roman administration, that, to attain a doubtful object
of political interest the laws of nations, and the sacred rights of
hospitality were inhumanly violated in the face of the world. [139]

[Footnote 138a: On the reconquest of Armenia by Para, or rather by
Mouschegh, the Mamigonian see St. M. iii. 375, 383.--M.]

[Footnote 138b: On planks floated by bladders.--M.]

[Footnote 138c: It is curious enough that the Armenian historian,
Faustus of Byzandum, represents Para as a magician. His impious mother
Pharandac had devoted him to the demons on his birth. St. M. iv.
23.--M.]

[Footnote 139: See in Ammianus (xxx. 1) the adventures of Para. Moses of
Chorene calls him Tiridates; and tells a long, and not improbable story
of his son Gnelus, who afterwards made himself popular in Armenia, and
provoked the jealousy of the reigning king, (l. iii. c 21, &c., p. 253,
&c.) * Note: This note is a tissue of mistakes. Tiridates and Para are
two totally different persons. Tiridates was the father of Gnel first
husband of Pharandsem, the mother of Para. St. Martin, iv. 27--M.]

V. During a peaceful interval of thirty years, the Romans secured their
frontiers, and the Goths extended their dominions. The victories of the
great Hermanric, [140] king of the Ostrogoths, and the most noble of
the race of the Amali, have been compared, by the enthusiasm of his
countrymen, to the exploits of Alexander; with this singular, and almost
incredible, difference, that the martial spirit of the Gothic hero,
instead of being supported by the vigor of youth, was displayed with
glory and success in the extreme period of human life, between the age
of fourscore and one hundred and ten years. The independent tribes were
persuaded, or compelled, to acknowledge the king of the Ostrogoths as
the sovereign of the Gothic nation: the chiefs of the Visigoths, or
Thervingi, renounced the royal title, and assumed the more humble
appellatio