190

THE DECLINE AND FALL

CHAP.

XIX.

all that encountered his march, penetrated intothe heart of the country of the Quadi, and se-verely retaliated the calamities which they hadinflicted on the Roman province. The dismay-ed barbarians were soon reduced to sue forpeace: they offered the restitution of his cap-tive subjects, as an atonement for the past, andthe noblest hostages as a pledge of their futureconduct. The generous courtesy which wasshewii to the first among their chieftains whoimplored the clemency of Constantius , encou-raged the more timid, or the more obstinate, toimitate their example; and the imperial campwas crowded with the princes and ambassadorsof the most distant tribes, who occupied theplains of the Lesser Poland , and who mighthave deemed themselves secure behind the lof-ty ridge of the Carpathian mountains. WhileConstantius gave laws to the barbarians beyondthe Danube , he distinguished with speciouscompassion the Sarmatian exiles, who had beenexpelled from their native country by the rebel-lion of their slaves, and who formed a very con-siderable accession to the power of the Quadi.The emperor, embracing a generous but artfulsystem of policy, released the Sarmatians fromthe bands of this humiliating dependence, andrestored them, by a separate treaty, to the dig-nity of a nation united under the government ofa king, the friend and ally of the republic. Hedeclared his resolution of asserting the justiceof their cause, and of securing the peace of theprovinces by the extirpation, or at least the ba-nishment. of the Limigantes, whose manners