And now people came streaming in on all the roads; on foot, on horseback, and in wagons. A noisy and turbulent crowd filled all the plain. On the shores of the river, where stood most of the tents, the horses were unharnessed, and the wagons pushed together to form a barricade. Through the lanes of the camp the ever-increasing crowd now streamed. There friends and acquaintances, who had not met for years, sought and greeted each other. It was a gay and chequered scene, for the old Germanic equality had long since disappeared from the kingdom. There stood near the aristocratic noble, who had settled in one of the rich Italian towns, who lived in the palaces of senatorial families, and had adopted the more luxuriant and polite customs of the Italians; near the duke or earl from Mediolanum or Ticinum, who wore a shoulder-belt of purple silk across his richly-gilt armour; near such a dainty lord towered some rough, gigantic Gothic peasant, who lived in the thick oak-forests on the Margus in M[oe]sia, or who had fought the wolf in the forests by the rushing [OE]nus for the ragged skin which he carried over his bear-like shoulders, and whose harsh-sounding speech struck strangely on the ear of his half-Romanised companion. There came strong and war-hardened men from the distant Augusta Vindelicorum on the Licus, who day and night defended the rotten walls of that outermost northern fortress of the Gothic kingdom against the wild Su[=e]vi. And here were peaceful shepherds from Dacia, who, possessing neither field nor house, wandered with their flocks from pasture to pasture, still living in the manner introduced into the West by their ancestors from Asia a thousand years ago. There was a rich Goth, who, in Rome or Ravenna, had married the daughter of some Italian moneychanger, and had soon learned to do business like his father-in-law, and reckon his profits by thousands. And here stood a poor Alpine shepherd, who drove his meagre goats on to the meagre pastures near the noisy Isarcus, and who erected his hut of planks close to the den of the bear. So differently had the die been cast for the thousands who were here met together, since their fathers had followed the call of the great Theodoric to the West, away from the valleys of the Hæmus. But still they felt that they were brothers, the sons of one nation; they spoke the same proud language, they had the same golden locks, the same snowy skins, the same light and sparkling eyes, and--above all--the same feeling in their hearts: "We stand as victors on the ground that our fathers forced from the Roman Empire, and which we will defend to the death." Like an immense swarm of bees the masses hummed and buzzed, greeting each other, seeking old acquaintances and concluding new friendships; and the chaotic tumult seemed as if it would never end.