ishment of a Roman city was blindly committed to the undistinguishing
sword of the Barbarians; and the hostile preparations were concerted
with the dark and perfidious artifice of an illegal conspiracy. The
people of Thessalonica were treacherously invited, in the name of their
sovereign, to the games of the Circus; and such was their insatiate
avidity for those amusements, that every consideration of fear, or
suspicion, was disregarded by the numerous spectators. As soon as the
assembly was complete, the soldiers, who had secretly been posted round
the Circus, received the signal, not of the races, but of a general
massacre. The promiscuous carnage continued three hours, without
discrimination of strangers or natives, of age or sex, of innocence or
guilt; the most moderate accounts state the number of the slain at seven
thousand; and it is affirmed by some writers that more than fifteen
thousand victims were sacrificed to the names of Botheric. A foreign
merchant, who had probably no concern in his murder, offered his own
life, and all his wealth, to supply the place of one of his two sons;
but, while the father hesitated with equal tenderness, while he was
doubtful to choose, and unwilling to condemn, the soldiers determined
his suspense, by plunging their daggers at the same moment into the
breasts of the defenceless youths. The apology of the assassins, that
they were obliged to produce the prescribed number of heads, serves only
to increase, by an appearance of order and design, the horrors of the
massacre, which was executed by the commands of Theodosius. The guilt
of the emperor is aggravated by his long and frequent residence at
Thessalonica. The situation of the unfortunate city, the aspect of the
streets and buildings, the dress and faces of the inhabitants, were
familiar, and even present, to his imagination; and Theodosius possessed
a quick and lively sense of the existence of the people whom he
destroyed. [91]

[Footnote 91: The original evidence of Ambrose, (tom. ii. Epist. li. p.
998.) Augustin, (de Civitat. Dei, v. 26,) and Paulinus, (in Vit. Ambros.
c. 24,) is delivered in vague expressions of horror and pity. It is
illustrated by the subsequent and unequal testimonies of Sozomen, (l.
vii. c. 25,) Theodoret, (l. v. c. 17,) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p.
62,) Cedrenus, (p. 317,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xiii. p. 34.) Zosimus
alone, the partial enemy of Theodosius, most unaccountably passes over
in silence