whom they reserved in their camp for
the occasional purpose of acting the part of a musician or a monarch.
Yet in a moment of disgust, (for which it is not easy to assign a cause,
or a date,) Adolphus connected himself with the usurper of Gaul; and
imposed on Attalus the ignominious task of negotiating the treaty, which
ratified his own disgrace. We are again surprised to read, that, instead
of considering the Gothic alliance as the firmest support of his
throne, Jovinus upbraided, in dark and ambiguous language, the officious
importunity of Attalus; that, scorning the advice of his great ally,
he invested with the purple his brother Sebastian; and that he most
imprudently accepted the service of Sarus, when that gallant chief, the
soldier of Honorius, was provoked to desert the court of a prince, who
knew not how to reward or punish. Adolphus, educated among a race of
warriors, who esteemed the duty of revenge as the most precious and
sacred portion of their inheritance, advanced with a body of ten
thousand Goths to encounter the hereditary enemy of the house of Balti.
He attacked Sarus at an unguarded moment, when he was accompanied only
by eighteen or twenty of his valiant followers. United by friendship,
animated by despair, but at length oppressed by multitudes, this band
of heroes deserved the esteem, without exciting the compassion, of their
enemies; and the lion was no sooner taken in the toils, [154] than
he was instantly despatched. The death of Sarus dissolved the loose
alliance which Adolphus still maintained with the usurpers of Gaul. He
again listened to the dictates of love and prudence; and soon satisfied
the brother of Placidia, by the assurance that he would immediately
transmit to the palace of Ravenna the heads of the two tyrants, Jovinus
and Sebastian. The king of the Goths executed his promise without
difficulty or delay; the helpless brothers, unsupported by any personal
merit, were abandoned by their Barbarian auxiliaries; and the short
opposition of Valentia was expiated by the ruin of one of the noblest
cities of Gaul. The emperor, chosen by the Roman senate, who had been
promoted, degraded, insulted, restored, again degraded, and again
insulted, was finally abandoned to his fate; but when the Gothic king
withdrew his protection, he was restrained, by pity or contempt, from
offering any violence to the person of Attalus. The unfortunate Attalus,
who was left without subjects or allies, embarked