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After he had swept the province of Moesia bare, he was defeated by one of Domitian's lieutenants, but the position of affairs on the Danubio-Rhenish border was still so threatening, that the emperor was glad to conclude a treaty which conferred extraordinary advantages on his foe.
The inhabitants paid a heavy ransom for their town; and the Goths were persuaded for the present to return home. But sooner than was expected, they returned to Moesia, under their king, Kniva; and they were already engaged in the siege of Nicopolis, when Decius came in sight at the head of the Roman army.
Fridigern, their king, kept them quiet till the time was ripe for revenge. Then at Marcianopolis, the capital of Lower Moesia, Lupicinus asked Fridigern and his chiefs to a feast. The starving Goths outside were refused supplies from the market, and came to blows with the guards. Lupicinus, half drunk, heard of it, and gave orders for a massacre. Fridigern escaped from the palace, sword in hand.
It was in the third century of the Christian era that these Goths, who had been for some time subsidised by the Roman emperors on the condition that they kept the peace, crossed the Danube and devastated Moesia and Thrace. An incident of this invasion was the successful resistance of the garrison of Marcianople now Schumla to the invaders.
After mature deliberation the Council of Valens granted the prayer, and some five hundred thousand Germans were cantoned in Moesia.
The Bulgars taking command over the Slav population in Bulgaria began a warfare against the enfeebled Greek Empire. That Empire gave up Moesia to the Bulgarian King, Isperich, and agreed to pay him a tribute, it being the custom of the degenerate descendants of the Roman Empire of the period thus to attempt to buy safety with bribes.
Four legions kept in subjection all the mighty range of country, extending from the next limits of Syria, as far as the Euphrates, and bordering upon the Iberians, Albanians, and other Principalities, who by our might are protected against Foreign Powers. Thrace was held by Rhoemetalces, and the sons of Cotys; and both banks of the Danube by four legions; two in Pannonia, two in Moesia.
AEmilianus, the governor of Moesia and Pannonia, inflicted some check or defeat upon the Goths; and in the enthusiasm of sudden pride, upon an occasion which contrasted so advantageously for himself with the military conduct of Decius and Gallus, the soldiers of his own legion raised AEmilianus to the purple. No time was to be lost.
How long the sarcophagus was deposited in the church of San Pellegrino, we do not know; but it is recorded to have been there in the year 1650. We may suppose that the saint's relics were transferred for safety to Ancona at some time in the troubled centuries which followed his martyrdom, when Moesia was occupied and ravaged by successive hordes of barbarian invaders.
In the talons of that eagle were clutched at one time Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Rhactia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Egypt, and all Northern Africa, and all the islands of the Mediterranean, indeed, all the world that was worth having, an hundred and twenty millions of people under the wings of that one eagle.
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