told horrid tales; and the Goths, maddened, avenged themselves on the
Romans of every age and sex. 'They left,' says St. Jerome, 'nothing
alive--not even the beasts of the field; till nothing was left but
growing brambles and thick forests.'

Valens, the Emperor, was at Antioch. Now he hurried to
Constantinople, but too late. The East Goths had joined the West
Goths; and hordes of Huns, Alans, and Taifalae (detestable savages,
of whom we know nothing but evil) had joined Fridigern's confederacy.

Gratian, Valens' colleague and nephew, son of Valentinian the bear-
ward, had just won a great victory over the Allemanni at Colmar in
Alsace; and Valens was jealous of his glory. He is said to have been
a virtuous youth, whose monomania was shooting. He fell in love with
the wild Alans, in spite of their horse-trappings of scalps, simply
because of their skill in archery; formed a body-guard of them, and
passed his time hunting with them round Paris. Nevertheless, he won
this great victory by the help, it seems, of one Count Ricimer
('ever-powerful'), Count of the Domestics, whose name proclaims him a
German.

Valens was jealous of Gratian's fame; he was stung by the reproaches
of the mob of Constantinople; and he undervalued the Goths, on
account of some successes of his lieutenants, who had recovered much
of the plunder taken by them, and had utterly overpowered the foul
Taifalae, transporting them to lands about Modena and Parma in Italy.
He rejected Count Ricimer's advice to wait till Gratian reinforced
him with the victorious western legions, and determined to give
battle a few miles from Adrianople. Had he waited for Gratian, the
history of the whole world might have been different.