but hope. Alone with my children, I was wont to look forth over the sea
towards the camp of our king; but day succeeded to day, and his warriors
appeared not on the plains; nor did Priulf return with the legions to
encamp before the gates of the town. So I mourned in my loneliness; for
my heart yearned towards the homes of my people; I longed once more to
look upon my husband's face, and to behold again the ranks of our
warriors, and the majesty of their battle array.


'But already, when the great day of despair was quickly drawing near, a
bitter outrage was preparing for me alone. The men who had hitherto
watched us were changed, and of the number of the new guards was one who
cast on me the eyes of lust. Night after night he poured his entreaties
into my unwilling ear; for, in his vanity and shamelessness, he believed
that I, who was Gothic and the wife of a Goth, might be won by him whose
parentage was but Roman! Soon from prayers he rose to threats; and one
night, appearing before me with smiles, he cried out that Stilicho,
whose desire was to make peace with the Goths, had suffered, for his
devotion to our people, the penalty of death; that a time of ruin was
approaching for us all, and that he alone--whom I despised--could
preserve me from the anger of Rome. As he ceased he approached me; but
I, who had been in many battle-fields, felt no dread at the prospect of
war, and I spurned him with laughter from my presence.

'Then, for a few nights more, my enemy approached me not again. Until
one evening, as I sat on the terrace before the house, with the child
that you have beheld, a helmet-crest suddenly fell at my feet, and a
voice cried to me from the garden beneath: 'Priulf thy husband has been
slain in a quarrel by the soldiers of Rome! Already the legions with
whom he served are on their way to the town; for a massacre of the