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Modestus, have seen sterner sights than drunken women and dancing rocks. Simeon, Milo, Theudas’ (this was the other Thracian, a land-owner) ‘and you boys too, as soldiers to be, am I telling the truth, or am I not?’
    They acknowledge that he is telling the truth, and Theudas adds: ‘Indeed, Bessas, you are right, it must have been a terrible slaughter. Forty thousand Roman infantry butchered, with all their officers, andthe Emperor Valens himself at their head. It was on fields now owned by me about eight miles to the northward of this city that the battle was fought. The thirty-acre plough-land is still full of bones, skulls, and fragments of armour, and arrow and javelin heads, and shield bosses, and gold and silver coins: every spring we turn them up.’
    At this Modestus’s assurance suddenly deserts him. The great battle of Adrianople is an historical calamity that he has from time to time succeeded in forgetting, but never for long; and here it starts up again at his very table. He quavers, with an appealing glance at his supporters, and speaking for once in straight language: ‘We were betrayed. It was our Thracian light cavalry, on the left flank, that first gave way. We had almost won the battle. Our legionaries were cutting their way through the barricade of enemy wagons and in another half-hour we would have driven their main body off the field – but unexpectedly the Gothic heavy-cavalry squadrons returned from a foraging expedition and thundered upon these Thracians, who were driven off in all directions. So the Goths easily rode down our allied infantry, and pressed the survivors of these against our brave legionaries, who were busy enough already with the fight at the wagons. Next, the cavalry that was supposed to cover our right wing (Low Country horse, I believe) galloped off in disgraceful flight; and finally, out swarmed the whole barbarian mass from behind the wagons. Assailed in front, rear, and flank, we were hugged tight, as in the sudden embrace of an angry mountain she-bear…’
    Bessas agrees: ‘Most of the legionaries could not raise their arms to strike a blow, being pressed shoulder to shoulder, like a Hippodrome crowd, and some were lifted entirely off their feet. Spears snapped right and left, because the spearmen could not extricate them from the packed, swaying crowd, and many a man was accidentally impaled upon the sword-point of his rear-rank comrade. All day long until nightfall my ancestors, horsemen born, brave men, handy with the lance and the sword, killed and killed and killed. Our infantry poured in arrows. The dusty field was slippery with blood.’
    Modestus mutters again, a great tear splashing down his cheek into his cup: ‘Our allied cavalry betrayed us. That was all. The legions fought to the death.’
    Malthus asks: ‘But my dear Modestus, had not the same thing happened once before, in the war with Carthage? Did not Hannibal’s heavy cavalry at Cannae break the Roman light cavalry to pieces, sothat our allied cavalry on the other wing fled too? Were not the legions then also pressed together into a mass and slaughtered? The Romans should have profited by that lesson. For though they were not born horsemen, as it seems agreed, neither were they born seamen, as the Carthaginians were; yet finding a stranded Carthaginian war-vessel they built others like it, and practised sea-fighting in the safety of their own harbours, and finally sought out the enemy fleet off Sicily, and destroyed it. They should have bred big-boned draught-horses to replace their smart Gallic ponies, and climbed on their broad backs and disciplined themselves into heavy cavalry — within the safety of the walls of Rome if necessary.’
    Bessas takes pity on Modestus, who is weeping again: ‘Courage, Distinguished Lord Modestus! It was you Romans who first instructed us barbarians in the warfare by which we defeated you here at