OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 115 After the hasty and impolitic massacre of three hundred deserters, an act of justice extremely useful to the discipline of the Roman armies, the Goths indignantly raised the siege of Hadrianople. The scene of war and tumult was instantly converted into a silent solitude ; the multitude suddenly dis- appeared ; the sacred paths of the wood and mountains were marked with the footsteps of the trembling fugitives, who sought a refuge in the distant cities of Illyricum and Macedonia ; and the faithful officers of the household and the treasury cautiously proceeded in search of the emperor, of whose death they were still ignorant. The tide of the Gothic inundation rolled from the walls of Hadrianople to the suburbs of Con- stantinople. The Barbarians were surprised with the splendid appearance of the capital of the East, the height and extent of the walls, the myriads of wealthy and affrighted citizens who crowded the ramparts, and the vai'ious prospect of the sea and land. While they gazed with hopeless desire on the inacces- sible beauties of Constantinople, a sally was made from one of the gates by a party of Saracens,^^ who had been fortunately engaged in the service of Valens. The cavalry of Scythia was forced to yield to the admirable swiftness and spirit of the Arabian horses ; their riders were skilled in the evolutions of irregular war ; and the Northern Barbarians were astonished, and dismayed, by the inhuman ferocity of the Barbarians of the South. A Gothic soldier was slain by the dagger of an Arab ; and the hairy, naked savage, applying his lips to the "wound, expressed a horrid delight, while he sucked the blood of his vanquished enemy. ^^ The army of the Goths, laden with the spoils of the wealthy suburbs and the adjacent territory, slowly moved from the Bosphorus to the mountains which form the western boundary of Thrace. The important pass of Succi was betrayed by the fear, or the misconduct, of Maurus ; and the Barbarians, who no longer had any resistance to apprehend from the scattered and vanquished troops of the East, spread 98 Valens had gained, or rather purchased, the friendship of the Saracens, whose vexatious inroads were felt on the borders of Phcenicia, Palestine, and Egypt. The Christian faith had been lately introduced among a people, reserved, in a future age, to propagate another religion (Tillemont, Hist, des Empereurs, t. v. p. 104, T06, 141. M6m Eccl. t. vii. p. 593). s^Crinitus quidam, nudus omnia prseter pubem, subraucum et lugubre strepens. Ammian. xxxi. 16, and Vales, ad loc. The Arabs often fought naked; a custom which may be ascribed to their sultry climate and ostentatious bravery. The description of this unknown savage is the lively portrait of Derar, a name so dreadful to the Christians of Syria. See Ockley's Hist, of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 72. 84, 87.
