upon him; the 'Romani nominis umbra.' But from that day the spell
was broken. He had faced a Roman Emperor, a Divus Caesar, the man-
god by whose head all nations swore, rich with the magic wealth, wise
with the magic cunning, of centuries of superhuman glory; and he had
killed him, and behold he died, like other men. That he had done.
What was there left for him now that he could not do?

The stronger he was, but not yet the cunninger of the two. The Goths
could do no more. They had to leave Adrianople behind them, with the
Emperor's treasures safe within its walls; to gaze with childish
wonder at the Bosphorus and its palaces; to recoil in awe from the
'long walls' of Constantinople, and the great stones which the
engines thereon hurled at them by 'arsmetricke and nigromancy,' as
their descendants believed of the Roman mechanicians, even five
hundred years after; to hear (without being able to avenge) the
horrible news, that the Gothic lads distributed throughout Asia, to
be educated as Romans, had been decoyed into the cities by promises
of lands and honours, and then massacred in cold blood; and then to
settle down, leaving their children unavenged, for twenty years on
the rich land which we now call Turkey in Europe, waiting till the
time was come.

Waiting, I say, till the time was come. The fixed idea that Rome, if
not Constantinople, could be taken at last, probably never left the
minds of the leading Goths after the battle of Adrianople. The
altered policy of the Caesars was enough of itself to keep that idea
alive. So far from expelling them from the country which they had
seized, the new Emperor began to flatter and to honour them.

They had been heretofore regarded as savages, either to be driven