revenge.

'Hardly had a year passed since you had been removed from the
settlements of the Goths when I wedded Priulf. The race of triflers to
whom he was then allied, spite of their Roman haughtiness, deferred to
him in their councils, and confessed among their legions that he was
brave. I saw myself with joy the wife of a warrior of renown; I
believed, in my pride, that I was destined to be the mother of a race of
heroes; when suddenly there came news to us that the Emperor Theodosius
was dead. Then followed anarchy among the people of the soil, and
outrages on the liberties of their allies, the Goths. Ere long the call
to arms arose among our nation. Soon our waggons of war were rolled
across the frozen Danube; our soldiers quitted the Roman camp; our
husbandmen took their weapons from their cottage walls; we that were
women prepared with our children to follow our husbands to the field;
and Alaric, the king, came forth as the leader of our hosts.

'We marched upon the territories of the Greeks. But how shall I tell
you of the events of those years of war that followed our invasion; of
the glory of our victories; of the hardships of our defences; of the
miseries of our retreats; of the hunger that we vanquished; of the
diseases that we endured; of the shameful peace that was finally
ratified, against the wishes of our king! How shall I tell of all this,
when my thoughts are on the massacre from which I have just escaped--
when these first evils, though once remembered in anguish, are, even
now, forgotten in the superior horrors that ensued!

'The truce was made. Alaric departed with the remnant of his army, and
encamped at AEmona, on the confines of that land which he had already
invaded, and which he is no prepared to conquer. Between our king and