Hitherto, with the unimportant exception of the raid of the Kostobokes as far as Elateia, Greece had never been submitted to the terrors of a barbarian inroad since the Roman Conquest, The Roman Empire had protected Achaia from foreign attack, and even the least friendly of the Emperors had allowed no one to plunder the art treasures of the Greek cities except their own occasional emissaries. Hence the Greece of the middle of the third century preserved in many respects the same external appearance as that of the same country four hundred years earlier. But this blessing of peace, which Rome had conferred upon the Greeks, had had the bad effect of training up a nation which was a stranger to the arts of war. Caracalla, indeed, had raised a couple of Spartan regiments; but the local militia of the Greek cities had had no experience of fighting, and the fortifications of the country had been allowed to fall into ruin. Such was the state of the Greek defences when in 250 the Goths crossed the Balkans and entered what is now South Bulgaria. Measures were at once taken to defend the Greek provinces. Claudius, afterwards Emperor, was ordered to occupy the historic pass of Thermopylæ, but his forces were small and most of them had been newly enrolled. The death of the Emperor Decius, fighting against the Goths, increased the alarm, and the siege of Salonika thoroughly startled the Greeks. No sooner had Valerian mounted the Imperial throne, than they signalised his reign by repairing the walls of Athens, which had been neglected since the siege of Sulla[16], and it was perhaps at the same time that a fort and a new gate were erected for the defence of the Akropolis[17]. As a second line of defence the fortifications across the Isthmus were restored, and occupied, just as by Peloponnesian troops of old on the approach of the Persian host. But these preparations did not long preserve the country from the attacks of the Goths. Distracted by the rival claims of self-styled Emperors, Valens in Achaia, and Piso in Thessaly, who had availed themselves of the general confusion to declare their independence, and visited by a terrible plague which followed in the wake of the Roman armies, the Greeks soon had the Gothic hosts upon them. A first raid was repulsed, only to be repeated in 267 on a far larger scale. This time the Goths and fierce Heruli arrived by sea, and, after ravaging the storied island of Skyros, captured Argos, Sparta, and the lower city of Corinth. Athens herself was surprised by the enemy, before the Emperor Gallienus, whose admiration for the ancient city had been shown by his initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries and his acceptance of the Athenian citizenship with the office of Archon Eponymos, could send troops to her assistance. But at this crisis in her history, Athens showed herself worthy of her glorious past. At that time one of her leading citizens was the historian