great battle of Adrianople, of which more hereafter. The last five
remaining books of the honest soldier's story are a tissue of
horrors, from reading which one turns away as from a slaughter-house
or a witches' sabbath.

No one, again, will think these statements exaggerated who knows
Salvian's De Gubernatione Dei. It has been always and most justly
held in high esteem, as one great authority of the state of Gaul when
conquered by the Franks and Goths and Vandals.

Salvian was a Christian gentleman, born somewhere near Treves. He
married a Pagan lady of Cologne, converted her, had by her a
daughter, and then persuaded her to devote herself to celibacy, while
he did the like. His father-in-law, Hypatius, quarrelled with him on
this account; and the letter in which he tries to soothe the old man
is still extant, a curious specimen of the style of cultivated men in
that day. Salvian then went down to the south of France and became a
priest at Marseilles, and tutor to the sons of Eucherius, the Bishop
of Lyons. Eucherius, himself a good man, speaks in terms of
passionate admiration of Salvian, his goodness, sanctity, learning,
talents. Gennadius (who describes him as still living when he wrote,
about 490) calls him among other encomiums, the Master of Bishops;
and both mention familiarly this very work, by which he became
notorious in his own day, and which he wrote about 450 or 455, during
the invasion of the Britons. So that we may trust fully that we have
hold of an authentic contemporaneous work, written by a good man and
true.

Let me first say a few words on the fact of his having--as many good
men did then--separated from his wife in order to lead what was