Les Goths ravagerent tout depuis le Danube jusqu'au Bosphore; exterminerent Valens et son armee; et ne repasserent le Danube que pour abandonner l'affreuse solitude qu'ils avoient faite (Oeuvres de Montesquieu, tom. iii. p. 479; Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur et de la Decadence des Romains, c. xvii.).
The president Montesquieu seems ignorant that the Goths, after the defeat of Valens, never abandoned the Roman territory. It is now thirty years, says Claudian (de Bello Getico, 166, etc., A.D. 404),
Ex quo jam patrios gens haec oblita Triones,
Atque Istrum transvecta semel, vestigia fixit
Threicio funesta solo___
The error is inexcusable; since it disguises the principal and immediate cause of the fall of the Western empire of Rome.