ls had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the
duty of obedience. The armies of the Eastern empire were vanquished in
three successive engagements; and the progress of Attila may be traced
by the fields of battle.

The two former, on the banks of the Utus, and under the walls of
Marcianopolis, were fought in the extensive plains between the Danube
and Mount Haemus. As the Romans were pressed by a victorious enemy, they
gradually, and unskilfully, retired towards the Chersonesus of Thrace;
and that narrow peninsula, the last extremity of the land, was marked by
their third, and irreparable, defeat. By the destruction of this army,
Attila acquired the indisputable possession of the field. From the
Hellespont to Thermopylae, and the suburbs of Constantinople, he
ravaged, without resistance, and without mercy, the provinces of Thrace
and Macedonia. Heraclea and Hadrianople might, perhaps, escape this
dreadful irruption of the Huns; but the words, the most expressive of
total extirpation and erasure, are applied to the calamities which they
inflicted on seventy cities of the Eastern empire. [20] Theodosius,
his court, and the unwarlike people, were protected by the walls of
Constantinople; but those walls had been shaken by a recent earthquake,
and the fall of fifty-eight towers had opened a large and tremendous
breach. The damage indeed was speedily repaired; but this accident was
aggravated by a superstitious fear, that Heaven itself had delivered
the Imperial city to the shepherds of Scythia, who were strangers to the
laws, the language, and the religion, of the Romans. [21]

[Footnote 18: Priscus, p. 331. His history contained a copious and
elegant account of the war, (Evagrius, l. i. c. 17;) but the extracts
which relate to the embassies are the only parts that have reached our
times. The original work was accessible, however, to the writers from
whom we borrow our imperfect knowledge, Jornandes, Theophanes, Count
Marcellinus, Prosper-Tyro, and the author of the Alexandrian, or
Paschal, Chronicle. M. de Buat (Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. vii.
c. xv.) has examined the cause, the circumstances, and the duration of
this war; and will not allow it to extend beyond the year 44.]

[Footnote 19: Procopius, de Edificiis, l. 4, c. 5. These fortresses
were afterwards restored, strengthened, and enlarged by the emperor
Justinian, but they were soon destroyed by the Abares, who succeeded to
the power and po