After accomplishing this as related, the Goths, uncertain what to try next, sought for Frigeridus, with the intention of extirpating him, when they found him, as a powerful obstacle in their way; and after taking better food than usual and sleeping for a short time, they followed his trail like wild beasts; for they had learned that at Gratian’s advice he had returned to Thrace, and, having constructed a fortification near Beroea,A city of Thrace, according to xxvii. 4, 12; also called Beroia ( iii. 304), Beroa, Beroae. was watching the uncertain outcome of events.

And they indeed in rapid march hastened to the execution of their design. But he, knowing how both to command his soldiers and to preserve them, either suspected their purpose or had plain information of it from the report of the scouts that he had sent out; so he returned over lofty mountains and through dense forests to Illyricum, much uplifted in spirit by the passing great opportunity which an unhoped-for chance put in his way.

For while he was returning and, massedCongregatosque in cuneos of the MSS. gives a very strange accusative construction, which, however, does not seem to have troubled the editors or commentators. Cf. conferti in globos, 10, 4, below. into wedge-formations, slowly advancing, he came upon the Gothic chieftain Farnobius, who was freely ranging about with his predatory bands and leading the Taifali, whom he had lately received as allies. Since our people (if it is proper to say so) through fear of these unknown peoples had dispersed, they crossed the river, intending to pillage the unprotected country.

When their bands suddenly came in sight, our careful leader prepared for a hand-to-hand conflict and opened an attack upon these marauders of both nations, which even then were threatening cruel carnage; he killed a large number and he would have slaughtered them all to the last man, leaving not even anyone to report the disaster, had he not, after the fall of Farnobius, before this a dreaded inciter of turmoil, and many others with him, spared the survivors in response to their earnest entreaties. But though he spared their lives, he banished them to the neighbourhood of Mutina, Regium, and Parma, towns in Italy, where they were to work in the fields.

We have learned that these Taifali were a shameful folk, so sunken in a life of shame and obscenity, that in their country the boys are coupled with the men in a union of unmentionable lust, to consume the flower of their youth in the polluted intercourse of those paramours. We may add that, if any grown person alone catches a boar or kills a huge bear, he is purified thereby from the shame of unchastity.