140. No desire have I to recount the deaths,
tortures, and banishments of confessors, the offices of the faithful
made into presents for traitors. Orthodox
bishops and priests were expelled from their sees and offices to make
room for “betrayers of the faith,” i.e. men who had
apostatized to Arianism. The mingled tumult of blasphemy and
foreign onslaughts is a description of the condition of the eastern
provinces of the empire, where Arianism was rampant, and all was
overrun by the Goths. The latter was regarded by some as the
result of the former. Thus St. Jerome: “Our sins are
the strength of the barbarians, our vices bring defeat upon the arms of
Rome.”—H. The provinces here mentioned lay along the
right bank of the Danube, and took in what is now Lower Hungary,
Servia, and Bulgaria. The result of the disaster of Hadrianople
was to put all these countries in the power of the Goths. Have
we not heard, from all along the border,—from Thrace, and through
Dacia by the river, Mœsia, and all Valeria of the
Pannonians,—a mingled tumult of blasphemers preaching and
barbarians invading? What profit could neighbours so bloodthirsty
bring us, or how could the Roman State be safe with such
defenders? The Goths had
been driven in upon the Roman frontiers by the inroads of the Huns, who
expelled them from their former habitations in S. & S. W.
Russia. A treaty had been made between them and the Emperor
Valens, who agreed to take them under his protection, but the bad faith
with which the Goths soon found themselves treated led to hostilities,
and so to the great overthrow at Hadrianople in 378.