The Goths gave way, and their defeat was
total. According to most accounts they left 50,000 dead upon the field.
The campaign still lingered, however, at other points, until at last the
emperor succeeded in driving back the relics of the Gothic host into the
fastnesses of the Balkan; and there the greater part of them died of
hunger and pestilence. These great services performed, within two years
from his accession to the throne, by the rarest of fates the Emperor
Claudius died in his bed at Sirmium, the capitol of Pannonia. His brother
Quintilius who had a great command at Aquileia, immediately assumed the
purple; but his usurpation lasted only seventeen days, for the last
emperor, with a single eye to the public good, had recommended Aurelian as
his successor, guided by his personal knowledge of that general's
strategic qualities. The army of the Danube confirmed the appointment; and
Quintilius committed suicide. Aurelian was of the same harsh and
forbidding character as the Emperor Severus: he had, however, the
qualities demanded by the times; energetic and not amiable princes were
required by the exigences of the state.
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