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The Emperor Valens arrived at Constantinople on the 30th of May,
in the sixth year of his own consulate, and the second of Valentinian
the Younger, and found the people in a very dejected state of mind:
for the barbarians, who had already desolated Thrace, were now laying
waste the very suburbs of Constantinople, there being no adequate
force at hand to resist them. But when they undertook to make near
approaches, even to the walls of the city, the people became
exceedingly troubled, and began to murmur against the emperor;
accusing him of having brought on the enemy thither, and then
indolently prolonging the struggle there, instead of at once marching
out against the barbarians. Moreover at the exhibition of the sports
of the Hippodrome, all with one voice clamored against the emperor's
negligence of the public affairs, crying out with great earnestness,
'Give us arms, and we ourselves will fight.' The emperor provoked
at these seditious clamors, marched out of the city, on the 11th of
June; threatening that if he returned, he would punish the citizens
not only for their insolent reproaches, but for having previously
favored the pretensions of the usurper Procopius; declaring also that
he would utterly demolish their city, and cause the plough to pass over
its ruins, he advanced against the barbarians, whom he routed with
great slaughter, and pursued as far as Adrianople, a city of
Thrace, situated on the frontiers of Macedonia. Having at that
place again engaged the enemy, who had by this time rallied, he lost
his life on the 9th of August, under the consulate just mentioned,
and in the fourth year of the 289th Olympiad. Some have asserted
that he was burnt to death in a village whither he had retired, which
the barbarians assaulted and set on fire. But others affirm that
having put off his imperial robe he ran into the midst of the main body
of infantry; and that when the cavalry revolted and refused to engage,
the infantry were surrounded by the barbarians, and completely
destroyed in a body. Among these it is said the emperor fell, but
could not be distinguished, in consequence of his not having on his
imperial habit. He died in the fiftieth year of his age, having
reigned in conjunction with his brother thirteen years, and three years
after the death of the brother. This book therefore contains [the
course of events during] the space of sixteen years.
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