OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 117 and that the universal desolation, announced by the prophet Zephaniah, was accomplished, in the scarcity of the beasts, the birds, and even of the fish ". These complaints were pronounced about twenty years after the death of Valens ; and the Illyrian provinces, which were constantly exposed to the invasion and passage of the Barbarians, still continued, after a calamitous period of ten centuries, to supply new materials for rapine and destruction. Could it even be supposed that a large tract of country had been left without cultivation and without inhabi- tants, the consequences might not have been so fatal to the inferior productions of animated nature. The useful and feeble animals, which are nourished by the hand of man, might suffer and perish, if they were deprived of his protection ; but the beasts of the forest, his enemies, or his victims, would multiply in the free and undisturbed possession of their solitary domain. The various tribes that people the air, or the waters, are still less connected w4th the fate of the human species ; and it is highly probable that the fish of the Danube would have felt more terror and distress from the approach of a voracious pike than from the hostile inroad of a Gothic army. Whatever may have been the just measure of the calamities Massacre of of Europe, there was reason to fear that the same calamities youth in Asia. .-r-i A D 378 would soon extend to the peaceful countries of Asia. The sons of the Goths had been judiciously disti'ibuted through the cities of the East ; and the arts of education were employed to polish and subdue the native fierceness of their temper. In the space of about twelve years, their numbers had continually in- creased ; and the children, who, in the first emigration, were sent over the Hellespont, had attained, with rapid growth, the strength and spirit of perfect manhood.^*^^ It was impossible to conceal from their knowledge the events of the Gothic war ; and, as those daring youths had not studied the language of dissimulation, they betrayed their wish, their desire, perhaps their intention, to emulate the glorious example of their fathers. The danger of the times seemed to justify the jealous suspicions of the provincials ; and these suspicions were admitted as unquestionable evidence that the Goths of Asia had formed a secret and dangerous conspiracy against the public safety. The death of Valens had left the East without a sovereign ; 1^ Eunapius (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 20 [F. H. G. iv. p. 32]) foolishly supposes a preternatural growth of the young Goths ; that he may introduce Cadmus's armed men, who sprung from the dragon's teeth, &c. Such was the Greek eloquence of the times.
