This design could not long escape the penetration of the Gothic king, who continued to hold a doubtful, and perhaps a treacherous, correspondence with the rival courts; who protracted, like a dissatisfied mercenary, his languid operations in Thessaly and Epirus, and who soon returned to claim the extravagant reward of his ineffectual services.

From his camp near Aemona, [102] on the confines of Italy, he transmitted to the emperor of the West a long account of promises, of expenses, and of demands; called for immediate satisfaction, and clearly intimated the consequences of a refusal.

Yet if his conduct was hostile, his language was decent and dutiful.

He humbly professed himself the friend of Stilicho, and the soldier of Honorius; offered his person and his troops to march, without delay, against the usurper of Gaul; and solicited, as a permanent retreat for the Gothic nation, the possession of some vacant province of the Western empire.
[Footnote 100: Comitatur euntem Pallor, et atra fames; et saucia lividus ora Luctus; et inferno stridentes agmine morbi.
-- -Claudian in vi.Cons.Hon.821, &c.] [Footnote 101: These dark transactions are investigated by the Count de Bual (Hist.

des Peuples de l'Europe, tom.vii.c.