re terrified as their
kinsmen had been, and knew not how to plan for safety
against the race of the Huns. After long deliberation by
common consent they finally sent ambassadors into Romania
to the Emperor Valens, brother of Valentinian,
the elder Emperor, to say that if he would give them part
of Thrace or Moesia to keep, they would submit themselves
to his laws and commands. That he might have
greater confidence in them, they promised to become
Christians, if he would give them teachers who spoke
their language. When Valens learned this, he gladly and 132
promptly granted what he had himself intended to ask.
He received the Getae into the region of Moesia and
placed them there as a wall of defense for his kingdom
against other tribes. And since at that time the Emperor
Valens, who was infected with the Arian perfidy, had
closed all the churches of our party, he sent as preachers
to them those who favored his sect. They came and
straightway filled a rude and ignorant people with the
poison of their heresy. Thus the Emperor Valens made
the Visigoths Arians rather than Christians. Moreover 133
from the love they bore them, they preached the gospel
both to the Ostrogoths and to their kinsmen the Gepidae,
teaching them to reverence this heresy, and they invited
all people of their speech everywhere to attach themselves
to this sect. They themselves as we have said, crossed
the Danube and settled Dacia Ripensis, Moesia and
Thrace by permission of the Emperor.

[Sidenote: FAMINE 376-377]

XXVI Soon famine and want came upon them, as 134
often happens to a people not yet well settled in a country.
Their princes and the leaders who ruled them in
place of kings, that is Fritigern, Alatheus and Safrac,
began to lament the plight of their army and begged
Lupicinus and Maximus, the Roman commanders, to
open a market. But to what will not the "cursed lust for
gold" compel men to assent? The generals, swayed by
avarice, sold them at a high price not only the flesh of
sheep and oxen, but even the carcasses of dogs and unclean
animals, so that a slave would be bartered for a loaf
of bread or ten pounds of meat. When their goods and 135
chattels failed, the greedy trader demanded their sons in
return for the necessities of life. And the parents consented
even to this, in order to provide for the safety of
their children, arguing that it was better to lose liberty
than life; and indeed it is better that one be