of the audacious and wanton cruelty of the people of Thessalonica. The
sentence of a dispassionate judge would have inflicted a severe
punishment on the authors of the crime; and the merit of Botheric
might contribute to exasperate the grief and indignation of his
master. The fiery and choleric temper of Theodosius was impatient of
the dilatory forms of a judicial inquiry; and he hastily resolved,
that the blood of his lieutenant should be expiated by the blood of
the guilty people. Yet his mind still fluctuated between the counsels
of clemency and of revenge; the zeal of the bishops had almost
extorted from the reluctant emperor the promise of a general pardon;
his passion was again inflamed by the flattering suggestions of his
minister Rufinus; and, after Theodosius had despatched the messengers
of death, he attempted, when it was too late, to prevent the execution
of his orders. The punishment of a Roman city was blindly committed to
the undistinguishing sword of the Barbarians; and the hostile
preparations were concerted with the dark and perfidious artifice of
an illegal conspiracy. The people of Thessalonica were treacherously
invited, in the name of their sovereign, to the games of the Circus;
and such was their insatiate avidity for those amusements, that every
consideration of fear, or suspicion, was disregarded by the numerous
spectators. As soon as the assembly was complete, the soldiers, who
had secretly been posted round the Circus, received the signal, not of
the races, but of a general massacre. The promiscuous carnage
continued three hours, without discrimination of strangers or natives,
of age or sex, of innocence or guilt; the most moderate accounts state
the number of the slain at seven thousand; and it is affirmed by some
writers that more than fifteen thousand victims were sacrificed to the
names of Botheric. A foreign merchant, who had probably no concern in
his murder, offered his own life, and all his wealth, to supply the
place of one of his two sons; but, while the father hesitated with