119 (return) [ Horrescit.... ratibus...._The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes)

nec falso nomine Pictos Edomuit. Scotumque vago mucrone secutus,

Fregit Hyperboreas remis audacibus undas. Claudian, in iii. Cons.

Honorii, ver. 53, &c—Madurunt Saxone fuso Orcades: incaluit

Pictorum sanguine Thule, Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis Ierne.

In iv. Cons. Hon. ver. 31, &c. ——See likewise Pacatus, (in

Panegyr. Vet. xii. 5.) But it is not easy to appreciate the

intrinsic value of flattery and metaphor. Compare the _British_

victories of Bolanus (Statius, Silv. v. 2) with his real

character, (Tacit. in Vit. Agricol. c. 16.)]

III. The prince who refuses to be the judge, instructs the people

to consider him as the accomplice, of his ministers. The military

command of Africa had been long exercised by Count Romanus, and

his abilities were not inadequate to his station; but, as sordid

interest was the sole motive of his conduct, he acted, on most

occasions, as if he had been the enemy of the province, and the

friend of the Barbarians of the desert. The three flourishing

cities of Oea, Leptis, and Sobrata, which, under the name of

Tripoli, had long constituted a federal union, 120 were obliged,

for the first time, to shut their gates against a hostile

invasion; several of their most honorable citizens were surprised

and massacred; the villages, and even the suburbs, were pillaged;

and the vines and fruit trees of that rich territory were

extirpated by the malicious savages of Getulia. The unhappy

provincials implored the protection of Romanus; but they soon

found that their military governor was not less cruel and

rapacious than the Barbarians. As they were incapable of

furnishing the four thousand camels, and the exorbitant present,

which he required, before he would march to the assistance of

Tripoli; his demand was equivalent to a refusal, and he might

justly be accused as the author of the public calamity. In the

annual assembly of the three cities, they nominated two deputies,

to lay at the feet of Valentinian the customary offering of a

gold victory; and to accompany this tribute of duty, rather than

of gratitude, with their humble complaint, that they were ruined

by the enemy, and betrayed by their governor. If the severity of

Valentinian had been rightly directed, it would have fallen on

the guilty head of Romanus. But the count, long exercised in the

arts of corruption, had despatched a swift and trusty messenger

to secure the venal friendship of Remigius, master of the

offices. The wisdom of the Imperial council was deceived by

artifice; and their honest indignation was cooled by delay. At

length, when the repetition of complaint had been justified by

the repetition of public misfortunes, the notary Palladius was

sent from the court of Treves, to examine the state of Africa,

and the conduct of Romanus. The rigid impartiality of Palladius

was easily disarmed: he was tempted to reserve for himself a part

of the public treasure, which he brought with him for the payment

of the troops; and from the moment that he was conscious of his

own guilt, he could no longer refuse to attest the innocence and

merit of the count. The charge of the Tripolitans was declared to

be false and frivolous; and Palladius himself was sent back from

Treves to Africa, with a special commission to discover and

prosecute the authors of this impious conspiracy against the

representatives of the sovereign. His inquiries were managed with

so much dexterity and success, that he compelled the citizens of

Leptis, who had sustained a recent siege of eight days, to

contradict the truth of their own decrees, and to censure the

behavior of their own deputies. A bloody sentence was pronounced,

without hesitation, by the rash and headstrong cruelty of

Valentinian. The president of Tripoli, who had presumed to pity

the distress of the province, was publicly executed at Utica;

four distinguished citizens were put to death, as the accomplices

of the imaginary fraud; and the tongues of two others were cut

out, by the express order of the emperor. Romanus, elated by

impunity, and irritated by resistance, was still continued in the

military command; till the Africans were provoked, by his

avarice, to join the rebellious standard of Firmus, the Moor. 121

120 (return) [ Ammianus frequently mentions their concilium

annuum, legitimum, &c. Leptis and Sabrata are long since ruined;

but the city of Oea, the native country of Apuleius, still

flourishes under the provincial denomination of _Tripoli_. See

Cellarius (Geograph. Antiqua, tom. ii. part ii. p. 81,)

D’Anville, (Geographie Ancienne, tom. iii. p. 71, 72,) and

Marmol, (Arrique, tom. ii. p. 562.)]

121 (return) [ Ammian. xviii. 6. Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs,

tom. v. p 25, 676) has discussed the chronological difficulties

of the history of Count Romanus.]

His father Nabal was one of the richest and most powerful of the

Moorish princes, who acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. But as

he left, either by his wives or concubines, a very numerous

posterity, the wealthy inheritance was eagerly disputed; and

Zamma, one of his sons, was slain in a domestic quarrel by his

brother Firmus. The implacable zeal, with which Romanus

prosecuted the legal revenge of this murder, could be ascribed

only to a motive of avarice, or personal hatred; but, on this

occasion, his claims were just; his influence was weighty; and

Firmus clearly understood, that he must either present his neck

to the executioner, or appeal from the sentence of the Imperial

consistory, to his sword, and to the people. 122 He was received

as the deliverer of his country; and, as soon as it appeared that

Romanus was formidable only to a submissive province, the tyrant

of Africa became the object of universal contempt. The ruin of

Cæsarea, which was plundered and burnt by the licentious

Barbarians, convinced the refractory cities of the danger of

resistance; the power of Firmus was established, at least in the

provinces of Mauritania and Numidia; and it seemed to be his only

doubt whether he should assume the diadem of a Moorish king, or

the purple of a Roman emperor. But the imprudent and unhappy

Africans soon discovered, that, in this rash insurrection, they

had not sufficiently consulted their own strength, or the

abilities of their leader. Before he could procure any certain

intelligence, that the emperor of the West had fixed the choice

of a general, or that a fleet of transports was collected at the

mouth of the Rhone, he was suddenly informed that the great

Theodosius, with a small band of veterans, had landed near

Igilgilis, or Gigeri, on the African coast; and the timid usurper

sunk under the ascendant of virtue and military genius. Though

Firmus possessed arms and treasures, his despair of victory

immediately reduced him to the use of those arts, which, in the

same country, and in a similar situation, had formerly been

practised by the crafty Jugurtha. He attempted to deceive, by an

apparent submission, the vigilance of the Roman general; to

seduce the fidelity of his troops; and to protract the duration

of the war, by successively engaging the independent tribes of

Africa to espouse his quarrel, or to protect his flight.

Theodosius imitated the example, and obtained the success, of his

predecessor Metellus. When Firmus, in the character of a

suppliant, accused his own rashness, and humbly solicited the

clemency of the emperor, the lieutenant of Valentinian received

and dismissed him with a friendly embrace: but he diligently

required the useful and substantial pledges of a sincere

repentance; nor could he be persuaded, by the assurances of

peace, to suspend, for an instant, the operations of an active

war. A dark conspiracy was detected by the penetration of

Theodosius; and he satisfied, without much reluctance, the public

indignation, which he had secretly excited. Several of the guilty

accomplices of Firmus were abandoned, according to ancient

custom, to the tumult of a military execution; many more, by the

amputation of both their hands, continued to exhibit an

instructive spectacle of horror; the hatred of the rebels was

accompanied with fear; and the fear of the Roman soldiers was

mingled with respectful admiration. Amidst the boundless plains

of Getulia, and the innumerable valleys of Mount Atlas, it was

impossible to prevent the escape of Firmus; and if the usurper

could have tired the patience of his antagonist, he would have

secured his person in the depth of some remote solitude, and

expected the hopes of a future revolution. He was subdued by the

perseverance of Theodosius; who had formed an inflexible

determination, that the war should end only by the death of the

tyrant; and that every nation of Africa, which presumed to

support his cause, should be involved in his ruin. At the head of

a small body of troops, which seldom exceeded three thousand five

hundred men, the Roman general advanced, with a steady prudence,

devoid of rashness or of fear, into the heart of a country, where

he was sometimes attacked by armies of twenty thousand Moors. The

boldness of his charge dismayed the irregular Barbarians; they

were disconcerted by his seasonable and orderly retreats; they

were continually baffled by the unknown resources of the military

art; and they felt and confessed the just superiority which was

assumed by the leader of a civilized nation. When Theodosius

entered the extensive dominions of Igmazen, king of the

Isaflenses, the haughty savage required, in words of defiance,

his name, and the object of his expedition. “I am,” replied the

stern and disdainful count, “I am the general of Valentinian, the

lord of the world; who has sent me hither to pursue and punish a

desperate robber. Deliver him instantly into my hands; and be

assured, that if thou dost not obey the commands of my invincible

sovereign, thou, and the people over whom thou reignest, shall be

utterly extirpated.” 12211 As soon as Igmazen was satisfied, that

his enemy had strength and resolution to execute the fatal

menace, he consented to purchase a necessary peace by the

sacrifice of a guilty fugitive. The guards that were placed to

secure the person of Firmus deprived him of the hopes of escape;

and the Moorish tyrant, after wine had extinguished the sense of

danger, disappointed the insulting triumph of the Romans, by

strangling himself in the night. His dead body, the only present

which Igmazen could offer to the conqueror, was carelessly thrown

upon a camel; and Theodosius, leading back his victorious troops

to Sitifi, was saluted by the warmest acclamations of joy and

loyalty. 123

122 (return) [ The Chronology of Ammianus is loose and obscure;

and Orosius (i. vii. c. 33, p. 551, edit. Havercamp) seems to

place the revolt of Firmus after the deaths of Valentinian and

Valens. Tillemont (Hist. des. Emp. tom. v. p. 691) endeavors to

pick his way. The patient and sure-foot mule of the Alps may be

trusted in the most slippery paths.]

12211 (return) [ The war was longer protracted than this sentence

would lead us to suppose: it was not till defeated more than once

that Igmazen yielded Amm. xxix. 5.—M]

123 (return) [ Ammian xxix. 5. The text of this long chapter

(fifteen quarto pages) is broken and corrupted; and the narrative

is perplexed by the want of chronological and geographical

landmarks.]

Africa had been lost by the vices of Romanus; it was restored by

the virtues of Theodosius; and our curiosity may be usefully

directed to the inquiry of the respective treatment which the two

generals received from the Imperial court. The authority of Count

Romanus had been suspended by the master-general of the cavalry;

and he was committed to safe and honorable custody till the end

of the war. His crimes were proved by the most authentic

evidence; and the public expected, with some impatience, the

decree of severe justice. But the partial and powerful favor of

Mellobaudes encouraged him to challenge his legal judges, to

obtain repeated delays for the purpose of procuring a crowd of

friendly witnesses, and, finally, to cover his guilty conduct, by

the additional guilt of fraud and forgery. About the same time,

the restorer of Britain and Africa, on a vague suspicion that his

name and services were superior to the rank of a subject, was

ignominiously beheaded at Carthage. Valentinian no longer

reigned; and the death of Theodosius, as well as the impunity of

Romanus, may justly be imputed to the arts of the ministers, who

abused the confidence, and deceived the inexperienced youth, of

his sons. 124

124 (return) [ Ammian xxviii. 4. Orosius, l. vii. c. 33, p. 551,

552. Jerom. in Chron. p. 187.]

If the geographical accuracy of Ammianus had been fortunately

bestowed on the British exploits of Theodosius, we should have

traced, with eager curiosity, the distinct and domestic footsteps

of his march. But the tedious enumeration of the unknown and

uninteresting tribes of Africa may be reduced to the general

remark, that they were all of the swarthy race of the Moors; that

they inhabited the back settlements of the Mauritanian and

Numidian province, the country, as they have since been termed by

the Arabs, of dates and of locusts; 125 and that, as the Roman

power declined in Africa, the boundary of civilized manners and

cultivated land was insensibly contracted. Beyond the utmost

limits of the Moors, the vast and inhospitable desert of the

South extends above a thousand miles to the banks of the Niger.

The ancients, who had a very faint and imperfect knowledge of the

great peninsula of Africa, were sometimes tempted to believe,

that the torrid zone must ever remain destitute of inhabitants;

126 and they sometimes amused their fancy by filling the vacant

space with headless men, or rather monsters; 127 with horned and

cloven-footed satyrs; 128 with fabulous centaurs; 129 and with

human pygmies, who waged a bold and doubtful warfare against the

cranes. 130 Carthage would have trembled at the strange

intelligence that the countries on either side of the equator

were filled with innumerable nations, who differed only in their

color from the ordinary appearance of the human species: and the

subjects of the Roman empire might have anxiously expected, that

the swarms of Barbarians, which issued from the North, would soon

be encountered from the South by new swarms of Barbarians,

equally fierce and equally formidable. These gloomy terrors would

indeed have been dispelled by a more intimate acquaintance with

the character of their African enemies. The inaction of the

negroes does not seem to be the effect either of their virtue or

of their pusillanimity. They indulge, like the rest of mankind,

their passions and appetites; and the adjacent tribes are engaged

in frequent acts of hostility. 131 But their rude ignorance has

never invented any effectual weapons of defence, or of

destruction; they appear incapable of forming any extensive plans

of government, or conquest; and the obvious inferiority of their

mental faculties has been discovered and abused by the nations of

the temperate zone. Sixty thousand blacks are annually embarked

from the coast of Guinea, never to return to their native

country; but they are embarked in chains; 132 and this constant

emigration, which, in the space of two centuries, might have

furnished armies to overrun the globe, accuses the guilt of

Europe, and the weakness of Africa.

125 (return) [ Leo Africanus (in the Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i.

fol. 78-83) has traced a curious picture of the people and the

country; which are more minutely described in the Afrique de

Marmol, tom. iii. p. 1-54.]

126 (return) [ This uninhabitable zone was gradually reduced by

the improvements of ancient geography, from forty-five to

twenty-four, or even sixteen degrees of latitude. See a learned

and judicious note of Dr. Robertson, Hist. of America, vol. i. p.

426.]

127 (return) [ Intra, si credere libet, vix jam homines et magis

semiferi... Blemmyes, Satyri, &c. Pomponius Mela, i. 4, p. 26,

edit. Voss. in 8vo. Pliny _philosophically_ explains (vi. 35) the

irregularities of nature, which he had _credulously_ admitted,

(v. 8.)]

128 (return) [ If the satyr was the Orang-outang, the great human

ape, (Buffon, Hist. Nat. tom. xiv. p. 43, &c.,) one of that

species might actually be shown alive at Alexandria, in the reign

of Constantine. Yet some difficulty will still remain about the

conversation which St. Anthony held with one of these pious

savages, in the desert of Thebais. (Jerom. in Vit. Paul. Eremit.

tom. i. p. 238.)]

129 (return) [ St. Anthony likewise met one of _these_ monsters;

whose existence was seriously asserted by the emperor Claudius.

The public laughed; but his præfect of Egypt had the address to

send an artful preparation, the embalmed corpse of a

_Hippocentaur_, which was preserved almost a century afterwards

in the Imperial palace. See Pliny, (Hist. Natur. vii. 3,) and the

judicious observations of Freret. (Mémoires de l’Acad. tom. vii.

p. 321, &c.)]

130 (return) [ The fable of the pygmies is as old as Homer,

(Iliad. iii. 6) The pygmies of India and Æthiopia were

(trispithami) twenty-seven inches high. Every spring their

cavalry (mounted on rams and goats) marched, in battle array, to

destroy the cranes’ eggs, aliter (says Pliny) futuris gregibus

non resisti. Their houses were built of mud, feathers, and

egg-shells. See Pliny, (vi. 35, vii. 2,) and Strabo, (l. ii. p.

121.)]

131 (return) [ The third and fourth volumes of the valuable

Histoire des Voyages describe the present state of the Negroes.

The nations of the sea-coast have been polished by European

commerce; and those of the inland country have been improved by

Moorish colonies. * Note: The martial tribes in chain armor,

discovered by Denham, are Mahometan; the great question of the

inferiority of the African tribes in their mental faculties will

probably be experimentally resolved before the close of the

century; but the Slave Trade still continues, and will, it is to

be feared, till the spirit of gain is subdued by the spirit of

Christian humanity.—M.]

132 (return) [ Histoire Philosophique et Politique, &c., tom. iv.

p. 192.]

Chapter XXV: Reigns Of Jovian And Valentinian, Division Of The

Empire.—Part VI.

IV. The ignominious treaty, which saved the army of Jovian, had

been faithfully executed on the side of the Romans; and as they

had solemnly renounced the sovereignty and alliance of Armenia

and Iberia, those tributary kingdoms were exposed, without

protection, to the arms of the Persian monarch. 133 Sapor entered

the Armenian territories at the head of a formidable host of

cuirassiers, of archers, and of mercenary foot; but it was the

invariable practice of Sapor to mix war and negotiation, and to

consider falsehood and perjury as the most powerful instruments

of regal policy. He affected to praise the prudent and moderate

conduct of the king of Armenia; and the unsuspicious Tiranus was

persuaded, by the repeated assurances of insidious friendship, to

deliver his person into the hands of a faithless and cruel enemy.

In the midst of a splendid entertainment, he was bound in chains

of silver, as an honor due to the blood of the Arsacides; and,

after a short confinement in the Tower of Oblivion at Ecbatana,

he was released from the miseries of life, either by his own

dagger, or by that of an assassin. 13311 The kingdom of Armenia

was reduced to the state of a Persian province; the

administration was shared between a distinguished satrap and a

favorite eunuch; and Sapor marched, without delay, to subdue the

martial spirit of the Iberians. Sauromaces, who reigned in that

country by the permission of the emperors, was expelled by a

superior force; and, as an insult on the majesty of Rome, the

king of kings placed a diadem on the head of his abject vassal

Aspacuras. The city of Artogerassa 134 was the only place of

Armenia 13411 which presumed to resist the efforts of his arms.

The treasure deposited in that strong fortress tempted the

avarice of Sapor; but the danger of Olympias, the wife or widow

of the Armenian king, excited the public compassion, and animated

the desperate valor of her subjects and soldiers. 13412 The

Persians were surprised and repulsed under the walls of

Artogerassa, by a bold and well-concerted sally of the besieged.

But the forces of Sapor were continually renewed and increased;

the hopeless courage of the garrison was exhausted; the strength

of the walls yielded to the assault; and the proud conqueror,

after wasting the rebellious city with fire and sword, led away

captive an unfortunate queen; who, in a more auspicious hour, had

been the destined bride of the son of Constantine. 135 Yet if

Sapor already triumphed in the easy conquest of two dependent

kingdoms, he soon felt, that a country is unsubdued as long as

the minds of the people are actuated by a hostile and

contumacious spirit. The satraps, whom he was obliged to trust,

embraced the first opportunity of regaining the affection of

their countrymen, and of signalizing their immortal hatred to the

Persian name. Since the conversion of the Armenians and Iberians,

these nations considered the Christians as the favorites, and the

Magians as the adversaries, of the Supreme Being: the influence

of the clergy, over a superstitious people was uniformly exerted

in the cause of Rome; and as long as the successors of

Constantine disputed with those of Artaxerxes the sovereignty of

the intermediate provinces, the religious connection always threw

a decisive advantage into the scale of the empire. A numerous and

active party acknowledged Para, the son of Tiranus, as the lawful

sovereign of Armenia, and his title to the throne was deeply

rooted in the hereditary succession of five hundred years. By the

unanimous consent of the Iberians, the country was equally

divided between the rival princes; and Aspacuras, who owed his

diadem to the choice of Sapor, was obliged to declare, that his

regard for his children, who were detained as hostages by the

tyrant, was the only consideration which prevented him from

openly renouncing the alliance of Persia. The emperor Valens, who

respected the obligations of the treaty, and who was apprehensive

of involving the East in a dangerous war, ventured, with slow and

cautious measures, to support the Roman party in the kingdoms of

Iberia and Armenia. 13511 Twelve legions established the

authority of Sauromaces on the banks of the Cyrus. The Euphrates

was protected by the valor of Arintheus. A powerful army, under

the command of Count Trajan, and of Vadomair, king of the

Alemanni, fixed their camp on the confines of Armenia. But they

were strictly enjoined not to commit the first hostilities, which

might be understood as a breach of the treaty: and such was the

implicit obedience of the Roman general, that they retreated,

with exemplary patience, under a shower of Persian arrows till

they had clearly acquired a just title to an honorable and

legitimate victory. Yet these appearances of war insensibly

subsided in a vain and tedious negotiation. The contending

parties supported their claims by mutual reproaches of perfidy

and ambition; and it should seem, that the original treaty was

expressed in very obscure terms, since they were reduced to the

necessity of making their inconclusive appeal to the partial

testimony of the generals of the two nations, who had assisted at

the negotiations. 136 The invasion of the Goths and Huns which

soon afterwards shook the foundations of the Roman empire,

exposed the provinces of Asia to the arms of Sapor. But the

declining age, and perhaps the infirmities, of the monarch

suggested new maxims of tranquillity and moderation. His death,

which happened in the full maturity of a reign of seventy years,

changed in a moment the court and councils of Persia; and their

attention was most probably engaged by domestic troubles, and the

distant efforts of a Carmanian war. 137 The remembrance of

ancient injuries was lost in the enjoyment of peace. The kingdoms

of Armenia and Iberia were permitted, by the mutual,though tacit

consent of both empires, to resume their doubtful neutrality. In

the first years of the reign of Theodosius, a Persian embassy

arrived at Constantinople, to excuse the unjustifiable measures

of the former reign; and to offer, as the tribute of friendship,

or even of respect, a splendid present of gems, of silk, and of

Indian elephants. 138

133 (return) [ The evidence of Ammianus is original and decisive,

(xxvii. 12.) Moses of Chorene, (l. iii. c. 17, p. 249, and c. 34,

p. 269,) and Procopius, (de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 5, p. 17,

edit. Louvre,) have been consulted: but those historians who

confound distinct facts, repeat the same events, and introduce

strange stories, must be used with diffidence and caution. Note:

The statement of Ammianus is more brief and succinct, but

harmonizes with the more complicated history developed by M. St.

Martin from the Armenian writers, and from Procopius, who wrote,

as he states from Armenian authorities.—M.]

13311 (return) [ According to M. St. Martin, Sapor, though

supported by the two apostate Armenian princes, Meroujan the

Ardzronnian and Vahan the Mamigonian, was gallantly resisted by

Arsaces, and his brave though impious wife Pharandsem. His troops

were defeated by Vasag, the high constable of the kingdom. (See

M. St. Martin.) But after four years’ courageous defence of his

kingdom, Arsaces was abandoned by his nobles, and obliged to

accept the perfidious hospitality of Sapor. He was blinded and

imprisoned in the “Castle of Oblivion;” his brave general Vasag

was flayed alive; his skin stuffed and placed near the king in

his lonely prison. It was not till many years after (A.D. 371)

that he stabbed himself, according to the romantic story, (St. M.

iii. 387, 389,) in a paroxysm of excitement at his restoration to

royal honors. St. Martin, Additions to Le Beau, iii. 283,

296.—M.]

134 (return) [ Perhaps Artagera, or Ardis; under whose walls

Caius, the grandson of Augustus, was wounded. This fortress was

situate above Amida, near one of the sources of the Tigris. See

D’Anville, Geographie Ancienue, tom. ii. p. 106. * Note: St.

Martin agrees with Gibbon, that it was the same fortress with

Ardis Note, p. 373.—M.]

13411 (return) [ Artaxata, Vagharschabad, or Edchmiadzin,

Erovantaschad, and many other cities, in all of which there was a

considerable Jewish population were taken and destroyed.—M.]

13412 (return) [ Pharandsem, not Olympias, refusing the orders of

her captive husband to surrender herself to Sapor, threw herself

into Artogerassa St. Martin, iii. 293, 302. She defended herself

for fourteen months, till famine and disease had left few

survivors out of 11,000 soldiers and 6000 women who had taken

refuge in the fortress. She then threw open the gates with her

own hand. M. St. Martin adds, what even the horrors of Oriental

warfare will scarcely permit us to credit, that she was exposed

by Sapor on a public scaffold to the brutal lusts of his

soldiery, and afterwards empaled, iii. 373, &c.—M.]

135 (return) [ Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 701)

proves, from chronology, that Olympias must have been the mother

of Para. Note *: An error according to St. M. 273.—M.]

13511 (return) [ According to Themistius, quoted by St. Martin,

he once advanced to the Tigris, iii. 436.—M.]

136 (return) [ Ammianus (xxvii. 12, xix. 1. xxx. 1, 2) has

described the events, without the dates, of the Persian war.

Moses of Chorene (Hist. Armen. l. iii. c. 28, p. 261, c. 31, p.

266, c. 35, p. 271) affords some additional facts; but it is

extremely difficult to separate truth from fable.]

137 (return) [ Artaxerxes was the successor and brother (_the

cousin-german_) of the great Sapor; and the guardian of his son,

Sapor III. (Agathias, l. iv. p. 136, edit. Louvre.) See the

Universal History, vol. xi. p. 86, 161. The authors of that

unequal work have compiled the Sassanian dynasty with erudition

and diligence; but it is a preposterous arrangement to divide the

Roman and Oriental accounts into two distinct histories. * Note:

On the war of Sapor with the Bactrians, which diverted from

Armenia, see St. M. iii. 387.—M.]

138 (return) [ Pacatus in Panegyr. Vet. xii. 22, and Orosius, l.

vii. c. 34. Ictumque tum fœdus est, quo universus Oriens usque ad

num (A. D. 416) tranquillissime fruitur.]

In the general picture of the affairs of the East under the reign

of Valens, the adventures of Para form one of the most striking

and singular objects. The noble youth, by the persuasion of his

mother Olympias, had escaped through the Persian host that

besieged Artogerassa, and implored the protection of the emperor

of the East. By his timid councils, Para was alternately

supported, and recalled, and restored, and betrayed. The hopes of

the Armenians were sometimes raised by the presence of their

natural sovereign, 13811 and the ministers of Valens were

satisfied, that they preserved the integrity of the public faith,

if their vassal was not suffered to assume the diadem and title

of King. But they soon repented of their own rashness. They were

confounded by the reproaches and threats of the Persian monarch.

They found reason to distrust the cruel and inconstant temper of

Para himself; who sacrificed, to the slightest suspicions, the

lives of his most faithful servants, and held a secret and

disgraceful correspondence with the assassin of his father and

the enemy of his country. Under the specious pretence of

consulting with the emperor on the subject of their common

interest, Para was persuaded to descend from the mountains of

Armenia, where his party was in arms, and to trust his

independence and safety to the discretion of a perfidious court.

The king of Armenia, for such he appeared in his own eyes and in

those of his nation, was received with due honors by the

governors of the provinces through which he passed; but when he

arrived at Tarsus in Cilicia, his progress was stopped under

various pretences; his motions were watched with respectful

vigilance, and he gradually discovered, that he was a prisoner in

the hands of the Romans. Para suppressed his indignation,

dissembled his fears, and after secretly preparing his escape,

mounted on horseback with three hundred of his faithful

followers. The officer stationed at the door of his apartment

immediately communicated his flight to the consular of Cilicia,

who overtook him in the suburbs, and endeavored without success,

to dissuade him from prosecuting his rash and dangerous design. A

legion was ordered to pursue the royal fugitive; but the pursuit

of infantry could not be very alarming to a body of light

cavalry; and upon the first cloud of arrows that was discharged

into the air, they retreated with precipitation to the gates of

Tarsus. After an incessant march of two days and two nights, Para

and his Armenians reached the banks of the Euphrates; but the

passage of the river which they were obliged to swim, 13812 was

attended with some delay and some loss. The country was alarmed;

and the two roads, which were only separated by an interval of

three miles had been occupied by a thousand archers on horseback,

under the command of a count and a tribune. Para must have

yielded to superior force, if the accidental arrival of a

friendly traveller had not revealed the danger and the means of

escape. A dark and almost impervious path securely conveyed the

Armenian troop through the thicket; and Para had left behind him

the count and the tribune, while they patiently expected his

approach along the public highways. They returned to the Imperial

court to excuse their want of diligence or success; and seriously

alleged, that the king of Armenia, who was a skilful magician,

had transformed himself and his followers, and passed before

their eyes under a borrowed shape. 13813 After his return to his

native kingdom, Para still continued to profess himself the

friend and ally of the Romans: but the Romans had injured him too

deeply ever to forgive, and the secret sentence of his death was

signed in the council of Valens. The execution of the bloody deed

was committed to the subtle prudence of Count Trajan; and he had

the merit of insinuating himself into the confidence of the

credulous prince, that he might find an opportunity of stabbing

him to the heart Para was invited to a Roman banquet, which had

been prepared with all the pomp and sensuality of the East; the

hall resounded with cheerful music, and the company was already

heated with wine; when the count retired for an instant, drew his

sword, and gave the signal of the murder. A robust and desperate

Barbarian instantly rushed on the king of Armenia; and though he

bravely defended his life with the first weapon that chance

offered to his hand, the table of the Imperial general was

stained with the royal blood of a guest, and an ally. Such were

the weak and wicked maxims of the Roman administration, that, to

attain a doubtful object of political interest the laws of

nations, and the sacred rights of hospitality were inhumanly

violated in the face of the world. 139

13811 (return) [ On the reconquest of Armenia by Para, or rather

by Mouschegh, the Mamigonian see St. M. iii. 375, 383.—M.]

13812 (return) [ On planks floated by bladders.—M.]

13813 (return) [ It is curious enough that the Armenian

historian, Faustus of Byzandum, represents Para as a magician.

His impious mother Pharandac had devoted him to the demons on his

birth. St. M. iv. 23.—M.]

139 (return) [ See in Ammianus (xxx. 1) the adventures of Para.

Moses of Chorene calls him Tiridates; and tells a long, and not

improbable story of his son Gnelus, who afterwards made himself

popular in Armenia, and provoked the jealousy of the reigning

king, (l. iii. c 21, &c., p. 253, &c.) * Note: This note is a

tissue of mistakes. Tiridates and Para are two totally different

persons. Tiridates was the father of Gnel first husband of

Pharandsem, the mother of Para. St. Martin, iv. 27—M.]

V. During a peaceful interval of thirty years, the Romans secured

their frontiers, and the Goths extended their dominions. The

victories of the great Hermanric, 140 king of the Ostrogoths, and

the most noble of the race of the Amali, have been compared, by

the enthusiasm of his countrymen, to the exploits of Alexander;

with this singular, and almost incredible, difference, that the

martial spirit of the Gothic hero, instead of being supported by

the vigor of youth, was displayed with glory and success in the

extreme period of human life, between the age of fourscore and

one hundred and ten years. The independent tribes were persuaded,

or compelled, to acknowledge the king of the Ostrogoths as the

sovereign of the Gothic nation: the chiefs of the Visigoths, or

Thervingi, renounced the royal title, and assumed the more humble

appellation of _Judges;_ and, among those judges, Athanaric,

Fritigern, and Alavivus, were the most illustrious, by their

personal merit, as well as by their vicinity to the Roman

provinces. These domestic conquests, which increased the military

power of Hermanric, enlarged his ambitious designs. He invaded

the adjacent countries of the North; and twelve considerable

nations, whose names and limits cannot be accurately defined,

successively yielded to the superiority of the Gothic arms. 141

The Heruli, who inhabited the marshy lands near the lake Mæotis,

were renowned for their strength and agility; and the assistance

of their light infantry was eagerly solicited, and highly

esteemed, in all the wars of the Barbarians. But the active

spirit of the Heruli was subdued by the slow and steady

perseverance of the Goths; and, after a bloody action, in which

the king was slain, the remains of that warlike tribe became a

useful accession to the camp of Hermanric.

He then marched against the Venedi; unskilled in the use of arms,

and formidable only by their numbers, which filled the wide

extent of the plains of modern Poland. The victorious Goths, who

were not inferior in numbers, prevailed in the contest, by the

decisive advantages of exercise and discipline. After the

submission of the Venedi, the conqueror advanced, without

resistance, as far as the confines of the Æstii; 142 an ancient

people, whose name is still preserved in the province of

Esthonia. Those distant inhabitants of the Baltic coast were

supported by the labors of agriculture, enriched by the trade of

amber, and consecrated by the peculiar worship of the Mother of

the Gods. But the scarcity of iron obliged the Æstian warriors to

content themselves with wooden clubs; and the reduction of that

wealthy country is ascribed to the prudence, rather than to the

arms, of Hermanric. His dominions, which extended from the Danube

to the Baltic, included the native seats, and the recent

acquisitions, of the Goths; and he reigned over the greatest part

of Germany and Scythia with the authority of a conqueror, and

sometimes with the cruelty of a tyrant. But he reigned over a

part of the globe incapable of perpetuating and adorning the

glory of its heroes. The name of Hermanric is almost buried in

oblivion; his exploits are imperfectly known; and the Romans

themselves appeared unconscious of the progress of an aspiring

power which threatened the liberty of the North, and the peace of

the empire. 143

140 (return) [ The concise account of the reign and conquests of

Hermanric seems to be one of the valuable fragments which

Jornandes (c 28) borrowed from the Gothic histories of Ablavius,

or Cassiodorus.]

141 (return) [ M. d. Buat. (Hist. des Peuples de l’Europe, tom.

vi. p. 311-329) investigates, with more industry than success,

the nations subdued by the arms of Hermanric. He denies the

existence of the _Vasinobroncæ_, on account of the immoderate

length of their name. Yet the French envoy to Ratisbon, or

Dresden, must have traversed the country of the _Mediomatrici_.]

142 (return) [ The edition of Grotius (Jornandes, p. 642)

exhibits the name of _Æstri_. But reason and the Ambrosian MS.

have restored the _Æstii_, whose manners and situation are

expressed by the pencil of Tacitus, (Germania, c. 45.)]

143 (return) [ Ammianus (xxxi. 3) observes, in general terms,

Ermenrichi.... nobilissimi Regis, et per multa variaque fortiter

facta, vicinigentibus formidati, &c.]

The Goths had contracted an hereditary attachment for the

Imperial house of Constantine, of whose power and liberality they

had received so many signal proofs. They respected the public

peace; and if a hostile band sometimes presumed to pass the Roman

limit, their irregular conduct was candidly ascribed to the

ungovernable spirit of the Barbarian youth. Their contempt for

two new and obscure princes, who had been raised to the throne by

a popular election, inspired the Goths with bolder hopes; and,

while they agitated some design of marching their confederate

force under the national standard, 144 they were easily tempted

to embrace the party of Procopius; and to foment, by their

dangerous aid, the civil discord of the Romans. The public treaty

might stipulate no more than ten thousand auxiliaries; but the

design was so zealously adopted by the chiefs of the Visigoths,

that the army which passed the Danube amounted to the number of

thirty thousand men. 145 They marched with the proud confidence,

that their invincible valor would decide the fate of the Roman

empire; and the provinces of Thrace groaned under the weight of

the Barbarians, who displayed the insolence of masters and the

licentiousness of enemies. But the intemperance which gratified

their appetites, retarded their progress; and before the Goths

could receive any certain intelligence of the defeat and death of

Procopius, they perceived, by the hostile state of the country,

that the civil and military powers were resumed by his successful

rival. A chain of posts and fortifications, skilfully disposed by

Valens, or the generals of Valens, resisted their march,

prevented their retreat, and intercepted their subsistence. The

fierceness of the Barbarians was tamed and suspended by hunger;

they indignantly threw down their arms at the feet of the

conqueror, who offered them food and chains: the numerous

captives were distributed in all the cities of the East; and the

provincials, who were soon familiarized with their savage

appearance, ventured, by degrees, to measure their own strength

with these formidable adversaries, whose name had so long been

the object of their terror. The king of Scythia (and Hermanric

alone could deserve so lofty a title) was grieved and exasperated

by this national calamity. His ambassadors loudly complained, at

the court of Valens, of the infraction of the ancient and solemn

alliance, which had so long subsisted between the Romans and the

Goths. They alleged, that they had fulfilled the duty of allies,

by assisting the kinsman and successor of the emperor Julian;

they required the immediate restitution of the noble captives;

and they urged a very singular claim, that the Gothic generals

marching in arms, and in hostile array, were entitled to the

sacred character and privileges of ambassadors. The decent, but

peremptory, refusal of these extravagant demands, was signified

to the Barbarians by Victor, master-general of the cavalry; who

expressed, with force and dignity, the just complaints of the

emperor of the East. 146 The negotiation was interrupted; and the

manly exhortations of Valentinian encouraged his timid brother to

vindicate the insulted majesty of the empire. 147

144 (return) [ Valens. ... docetur relationibus Ducum, gentem

Gothorum, ea tempestate intactam ideoque sævissimam, conspirantem

in unum, ad pervadenda parari collimitia Thraciarum. Ammian. xxi.

6.]

145 (return) [ M. de Buat (Hist. des Peuples de l’Europe, tom.

vi. p. 332) has curiously ascertained the real number of these

auxiliaries. The 3000 of Ammianus, and the 10,000 of Zosimus,

were only the first divisions of the Gothic army. * Note: M. St.

Martin (iii. 246) denies that there is any authority for these

numbers.—M.]

146 (return) [ The march, and subsequent negotiation, are

described in the Fragments of Eunapius, (Excerpt. Legat. p. 18,

edit. Louvre.) The provincials who afterwards became familiar

with the Barbarians, found that their strength was more apparent

than real. They were tall of stature; but their legs were clumsy,

and their shoulders were narrow.]

147 (return) [ Valens enim, ut consulto placuerat fratri, cujus

regebatur arbitrio, arma concussit in Gothos ratione justâ

permotus. Ammianus (xxvii. 4) then proceeds to describe, not the

country of the Goths, but the peaceful and obedient province of

Thrace, which was not affected by the war.]

The splendor and magnitude of this Gothic war are celebrated by a

contemporary historian: 148 but the events scarcely deserve the

attention of posterity, except as the preliminary steps of the

approaching decline and fall of the empire. Instead of leading

the nations of Germany and Scythia to the banks of the Danube, or

even to the gates of Constantinople, the aged monarch of the

Goths resigned to the brave Athanaric the danger and glory of a

defensive war, against an enemy, who wielded with a feeble hand

the powers of a mighty state. A bridge of boats was established

upon the Danube; the presence of Valens animated his troops; and

his ignorance of the art of war was compensated by personal

bravery, and a wise deference to the advice of Victor and

Arintheus, his masters-general of the cavalry and infantry. The

operations of the campaign were conducted by their skill and

experience; but they found it impossible to drive the Visigoths

from their strong posts in the mountains; and the devastation of

the plains obliged the Romans themselves to repass the Danube on

the approach of winter. The incessant rains, which swelled the

waters of the river, produced a tacit suspension of arms, and

confined the emperor Valens, during the whole course of the

ensuing summer, to his camp of Marcianopolis. The third year of

the war was more favorable to the Romans, and more pernicious to

the Goths. The interruption of trade deprived the Barbarians of

the objects of luxury, which they already confounded with the

necessaries of life; and the desolation of a very extensive tract

of country threatened them with the horrors of famine. Athanaric

was provoked, or compelled, to risk a battle, which he lost, in

the plains; and the pursuit was rendered more bloody by the cruel

precaution of the victorious generals, who had promised a large

reward for the head of every Goth that was brought into the

Imperial camp. The submission of the Barbarians appeased the

resentment of Valens and his council: the emperor listened with

satisfaction to the flattering and eloquent remonstrance of the

senate of Constantinople, which assumed, for the first time, a

share in the public deliberations; and the same generals, Victor

and Arintheus, who had successfully directed the conduct of the

war, were empowered to regulate the conditions of peace. The

freedom of trade, which the Goths had hitherto enjoyed, was

restricted to two cities on the Danube; the rashness of their

leaders was severely punished by the suppression of their

pensions and subsidies; and the exception, which was stipulated

in favor of Athanaric alone, was more advantageous than honorable

to the Judge of the Visigoths. Athanaric, who, on this occasion,

appears to have consulted his private interest, without expecting

the orders of his sovereign, supported his own dignity, and that

of his tribe, in the personal interview which was proposed by the

ministers of Valens. He persisted in his declaration, that it was

impossible for him, without incurring the guilt of perjury, ever

to set his foot on the territory of the empire; and it is more

than probable, that his regard for the sanctity of an oath was

confirmed by the recent and fatal examples of Roman treachery.

The Danube, which separated the dominions of the two independent

nations, was chosen for the scene of the conference. The emperor

of the East, and the Judge of the Visigoths, accompanied by an

equal number of armed followers, advanced in their respective

barges to the middle of the stream. After the ratification of the

treaty, and the delivery of hostages, Valens returned in triumph

to Constantinople; and the Goths remained in a state of

tranquillity about six years; till they were violently impelled

against the Roman empire by an innumerable host of Scythians, who

appeared to issue from the frozen regions of the North. 149

148 (return) [ Eunapius, in Excerpt. Legat. p. 18, 19. The Greek

sophist must have considered as _one_ and the _same_ war, the

whole series of Gothic history till the victories and peace of

Theodosius.]

149 (return) [ The Gothic war is described by Ammianus, (xxvii.

6,) Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 211-214,) and Themistius, (Orat. x. p.

129-141.) The orator Themistius was sent from the senate of

Constantinople to congratulate the victorious emperor; and his

servile eloquence compares Valens on the Danube to Achilles in

the Scamander. Jornandes forgets a war peculiar to the

_Visi_-Goths, and inglorious to the Gothic name, (Mascon’s Hist.

of the Germans, vii. 3.)]

The emperor of the West, who had resigned to his brother the

command of the Lower Danube, reserved for his immediate care the

defence of the Rhætian and Illyrian provinces, which spread so

many hundred miles along the greatest of the European rivers. The

active policy of Valentinian was continually employed in adding

new fortifications to the security of the frontier: but the abuse

of this policy provoked the just resentment of the Barbarians.

The Quadi complained, that the ground for an intended fortress

had been marked out on their territories; and their complaints

were urged with so much reason and moderation, that Equitius,

master-general of Illyricum, consented to suspend the prosecution

of the work, till he should be more clearly informed of the will

of his sovereign. This fair occasion of injuring a rival, and of

advancing the fortune of his son, was eagerly embraced by the

inhuman Maximin, the præfect, or rather tyrant, of Gaul. The

passions of Valentinian were impatient of control; and he

credulously listened to the assurances of his favorite, that if

the government of Valeria, and the direction of the work, were

intrusted to the zeal of his son Marcellinus, the emperor should

no longer be importuned with the audacious remonstrances of the

Barbarians. The subjects of Rome, and the natives of Germany,

were insulted by the arrogance of a young and worthless minister,

who considered his rapid elevation as the proof and reward of his

superior merit. He affected, however, to receive the modest

application of Gabinius, king of the Quadi, with some attention

and regard: but this artful civility concealed a dark and bloody

design, and the credulous prince was persuaded to accept the

pressing invitation of Marcellinus. I am at a loss how to vary

the narrative of similar crimes; or how to relate, that, in the

course of the same year, but in remote parts of the empire, the

inhospitable table of two Imperial generals was stained with the

royal blood of two guests and allies, inhumanly murdered by their

order, and in their presence. The fate of Gabinius, and of Para,

was the same: but the cruel death of their sovereign was resented

in a very different manner by the servile temper of the

Armenians, and the free and daring spirit of the Germans. The

Quadi were much declined from that formidable power, which, in

the time of Marcus Antoninus, had spread terror to the gates of

Rome. But they still possessed arms and courage; their courage

was animated by despair, and they obtained the usual

reenforcement of the cavalry of their Sarmatian allies. So

improvident was the assassin Marcellinus, that he chose the

moment when the bravest veterans had been drawn away, to suppress

the revolt of Firmus; and the whole province was exposed, with a

very feeble defence, to the rage of the exasperated Barbarians.

They invaded Pannonia in the season of harvest; unmercifully

destroyed every object of plunder which they could not easily

transport; and either disregarded, or demolished, the empty

fortifications. The princess Constantia, the daughter of the

emperor Constantius, and the granddaughter of the great

Constantine, very narrowly escaped. That royal maid, who had

innocently supported the revolt of Procopius, was now the

destined wife of the heir of the Western empire. She traversed

the peaceful province with a splendid and unarmed train. Her

person was saved from danger, and the republic from disgrace, by

the active zeal of Messala, governor of the provinces. As soon as

he was informed that the village, where she stopped only to dine,

was almost encompassed by the Barbarians, he hastily placed her

in his own chariot, and drove full speed till he reached the

gates of Sirmium, which were at the distance of six-and-twenty

miles. Even Sirmium might not have been secure, if the Quadi and

Sarmatians had diligently advanced during the general

consternation of the magistrates and people. Their delay allowed

Probus, the Prætorian præfect, sufficient time to recover his own

spirits, and to revive the courage of the citizens. He skilfully

directed their strenuous efforts to repair and strengthen the

decayed fortifications; and procured the seasonable and effectual

assistance of a company of archers, to protect the capital of the

Illyrian provinces. Disappointed in their attempts against the

walls of Sirmium, the indignant Barbarians turned their arms

against the master general of the frontier, to whom they unjustly

attributed the murder of their king. Equitius could bring into

the field no more than two legions; but they contained the

veteran strength of the Mæsian and Pannonian bands. The obstinacy

with which they disputed the vain honors of rank and precedency,

was the cause of their destruction; and while they acted with

separate forces and divided councils, they were surprised and

slaughtered by the active vigor of the Sarmatian horse. The

success of this invasion provoked the emulation of the bordering

tribes; and the province of Mæsia would infallibly have been

lost, if young Theodosius, the duke, or military commander, of

the frontier, had not signalized, in the defeat of the public

enemy, an intrepid genius, worthy of his illustrious father, and

of his future greatness. 150

150 (return) [ Ammianus (xxix. 6) and Zosimus (I. iv. p. 219,

220) carefully mark the origin and progress of the Quadic and

Sarmatian war.]

Chapter XXV: Reigns Of Jovian And Valentinian, Division Of The

Empire.—Part VII.

The mind of Valentinian, who then resided at Treves, was deeply

affected by the calamities of Illyricum; but the lateness of the

season suspended the execution of his designs till the ensuing

spring. He marched in person, with a considerable part of the

forces of Gaul, from the banks of the Moselle: and to the

suppliant ambassadors of the Sarmatians, who met him on the way,

he returned a doubtful answer, that, as soon as he reached the

scene of action, he should examine, and pronounce. When he

arrived at Sirmium, he gave audience to the deputies of the

Illyrian provinces; who loudly congratulated their own felicity

under the auspicious government of Probus, his Prætorian præfect.

151 Valentinian, who was flattered by these demonstrations of

their loyalty and gratitude, imprudently asked the deputy of

Epirus, a Cynic philosopher of intrepid sincerity, 152 whether he

was freely sent by the wishes of the province. “With tears and

groans am I sent,” replied Iphicles, “by a reluctant people.” The

emperor paused: but the impunity of his ministers established the

pernicious maxim, that they might oppress his subjects, without

injuring his service. A strict inquiry into their conduct would

have relieved the public discontent. The severe condemnation of

the murder of Gabinius, was the only measure which could restore

the confidence of the Germans, and vindicate the honor of the

Roman name. But the haughty monarch was incapable of the

magnanimity which dares to acknowledge a fault. He forgot the

provocation, remembered only the injury, and advanced into the

country of the Quadi with an insatiate thirst of blood and

revenge. The extreme devastation, and promiscuous massacre, of a

savage war, were justified, in the eyes of the emperor, and

perhaps in those of the world, by the cruel equity of

retaliation: 153 and such was the discipline of the Romans, and

the consternation of the enemy, that Valentinian repassed the

Danube without the loss of a single man. As he had resolved to

complete the destruction of the Quadi by a second campaign, he

fixed his winter quarters at Bregetio, on the Danube, near the

Hungarian city of Presburg. While the operations of war were

suspended by the severity of the weather, the Quadi made an

humble attempt to deprecate the wrath of their conqueror; and, at

the earnest persuasion of Equitius, their ambassadors were

introduced into the Imperial council. They approached the throne

with bended bodies and dejected countenances; and without daring

to complain of the murder of their king, they affirmed, with

solemn oaths, that the late invasion was the crime of some

irregular robbers, which the public council of the nation

condemned and abhorred. The answer of the emperor left them but

little to hope from his clemency or compassion. He reviled, in

the most intemperate language, their baseness, their ingratitude,

their insolence. His eyes, his voice, his color, his gestures,

expressed the violence of his ungoverned fury; and while his

whole frame was agitated with convulsive passion, a large blood

vessel suddenly burst in his body; and Valentinian fell

speechless into the arms of his attendants. Their pious care

immediately concealed his situation from the crowd; but, in a few

minutes, the emperor of the West expired in an agony of pain,

retaining his senses till the last; and struggling, without

success, to declare his intentions to the generals and ministers,

who surrounded the royal couch. Valentinian was about fifty-four

years of age; and he wanted only one hundred days to accomplish

the twelve years of his reign. 154

151 (return) [ Ammianus, (xxx. 5,) who acknowledges the merit,

has censured, with becoming asperity, the oppressive

administration of Petronius Probus. When Jerom translated and

continued the Chronicle of Eusebius, (A. D. 380; see Tillemont,

Mém. Eccles. tom. xii. p. 53, 626,) he expressed the truth, or at

least the public opinion of his country, in the following words:

“Probus P. P. Illyrici inquissimus tributorum exactionibus, ante

provincias quas regebat, quam a Barbaris vastarentur, _erasit_.”

(Chron. edit. Scaliger, p. 187. Animadvers p. 259.) The Saint

afterwards formed an intimate and tender friendship with the

widow of Probus; and the name of Count Equitius with less

propriety, but without much injustice, has been substituted in

the text.]

152 (return) [ Julian (Orat. vi. p. 198) represents his friend

Iphicles, as a man of virtue and merit, who had made himself

ridiculous and unhappy by adopting the extravagant dress and

manners of the Cynics.]

153 (return) [ Ammian. xxx. v. Jerom, who exaggerates the

misfortune of Valentinian, refuses him even this last consolation

of revenge. Genitali vastato solo et _inultam_ patriam

derelinquens, (tom. i. p. 26.)]

154 (return) [ See, on the death of Valentinian, Ammianus, (xxx.

6,) Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 221,) Victor, (in Epitom.,) Socrates, (l.

iv. c. 31,) and Jerom, (in Chron. p. 187, and tom. i. p. 26, ad

Heliodor.) There is much variety of circumstances among them; and

Ammianus is so eloquent, that he writes nonsense.]

The polygamy of Valentinian is seriously attested by an

ecclesiastical historian. 155 “The empress Severa (I relate the

fable) admitted into her familiar society the lovely Justina, the

daughter of an Italian governor: her admiration of those naked

charms, which she had often seen in the bath, was expressed with

such lavish and imprudent praise, that the emperor was tempted to

introduce a second wife into his bed; and his public edict

extended to all the subjects of the empire the same domestic

privilege which he had assumed for himself.” But we may be

assured, from the evidence of reason as well as history, that the

two marriages of Valentinian, with Severa, and with Justina, were

_successively_ contracted; and that he used the ancient

permission of divorce, which was still allowed by the laws,

though it was condemned by the church. Severa was the mother of

Gratian, who seemed to unite every claim which could entitle him

to the undoubted succession of the Western empire. He was the

eldest son of a monarch whose glorious reign had confirmed the

free and honorable choice of his fellow-soldiers. Before he had

attained the ninth year of his age, the royal youth received from

the hands of his indulgent father the purple robe and diadem,

with the title of Augustus; the election was solemnly ratified by

the consent and applause of the armies of Gaul; 156 and the name

of Gratian was added to the names of Valentinian and Valens, in

all the legal transactions of the Roman government. By his

marriage with the granddaughter of Constantine, the son of

Valentinian acquired all the hereditary rights of the Flavian

family; which, in a series of three Imperial generations, were

sanctified by time, religion, and the reverence of the people. At

the death of his father, the royal youth was in the seventeenth

year of his age; and his virtues already justified the favorable

opinion of the army and the people. But Gratian resided, without

apprehension, in the palace of Treves; whilst, at the distance of

many hundred miles, Valentinian suddenly expired in the camp of

Bregetio. The passions, which had been so long suppressed by the

presence of a master, immediately revived in the Imperial

council; and the ambitious design of reigning in the name of an

infant, was artfully executed by Mellobaudes and Equitius, who

commanded the attachment of the Illyrian and Italian bands. They

contrived the most honorable pretences to remove the popular

leaders, and the troops of Gaul, who might have asserted the

claims of the lawful successor; they suggested the necessity of

extinguishing the hopes of foreign and domestic enemies, by a

bold and decisive measure. The empress Justina, who had been left

in a palace about one hundred miles from Bregetio, was

respectively invited to appear in the camp, with the son of the

deceased emperor. On the sixth day after the death of

Valentinian, the infant prince of the same name, who was only

four years old, was shown, in the arms of his mother, to the

legions; and solemnly invested, by military acclamation, with the

titles and ensigns of supreme power. The impending dangers of a

civil war were seasonably prevented by the wise and moderate

conduct of the emperor Gratian. He cheerfully accepted the choice

of the army; declared that he should always consider the son of

Justina as a brother, not as a rival; and advised the empress,

with her son Valentinian to fix their residence at Milan, in the

fair and peaceful province of Italy; while he assumed the more

arduous command of the countries beyond the Alps. Gratian

dissembled his resentment till he could safely punish, or

disgrace, the authors of the conspiracy; and though he uniformly

behaved with tenderness and regard to his infant colleague, he

gradually confounded, in the administration of the Western

empire, the office of a guardian with the authority of a

sovereign. The government of the Roman world was exercised in the

united names of Valens and his two nephews; but the feeble

emperor of the East, who succeeded to the rank of his elder

brother, never obtained any weight or influence in the councils

of the West. 157

155 (return) [ Socrates (l. iv. c. 31) is the only original

witness of this foolish story, so repugnant to the laws and

manners of the Romans, that it scarcely deserved the formal and

elaborate dissertation of M. Bonamy, (Mém. de l’Académie, tom.

xxx. p. 394-405.) Yet I would preserve the natural circumstance

of the bath; instead of following Zosimus who represents Justina

as an old woman, the widow of Magnentius.]

156 (return) [ Ammianus (xxvii. 6) describes the form of this

military election, and _august_ investiture. Valentinian does not

appear to have consulted, or even informed, the senate of Rome.]

157 (return) [ Ammianus, xxx. 10. Zosimus, l. iv. p. 222, 223.

Tillemont has proved (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. v. p. 707-709)

that Gratian _reigned_ in Italy, Africa, and Illyricum. I have

endeavored to express his authority over his brother’s dominions,

as he used it, in an ambiguous style.]

Chapter XXVI: Progress of The Huns.—Part I.

Manners Of The Pastoral Nations.—Progress Of The Huns, From China

To Europe.—Flight Of The Goths.—They Pass The Danube.—Gothic

War.—Defeat And Death Of Valens.—Gratian Invests Theodosius With

The Eastern Empire.—His Character And Success.—Peace And

Settlement Of The Goths.

In the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on the

morning of the twenty-first day of July, the greatest part of the

Roman world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake.

The impression was communicated to the waters; the shores of the

Mediterranean were left dry, by the sudden retreat of the sea;

great quantities of fish were caught with the hand; large vessels

were stranded on the mud; and a curious spectator 1 amused his

eye, or rather his fancy, by contemplating the various appearance

of valleys and mountains, which had never, since the formation of

the globe, been exposed to the sun. But the tide soon returned,

with the weight of an immense and irresistible deluge, which was

severely felt on the coasts of Sicily, of Dalmatia, of Greece,

and of Egypt: large boats were transported, and lodged on the

roofs of houses, or at the distance of two miles from the shore;

the people, with their habitations, were swept away by the

waters; and the city of Alexandria annually commemorated the

fatal day, on which fifty thousand persons had lost their lives

in the inundation. This calamity, the report of which was

magnified from one province to another, astonished and terrified

the subjects of Rome; and their affrighted imagination enlarged

the real extent of a momentary evil. They recollected the

preceding earthquakes, which had subverted the cities of

Palestine and Bithynia: they considered these alarming strokes as

the prelude only of still more dreadful calamities, and their

fearful vanity was disposed to confound the symptoms of a

declining empire and a sinking world. 2 It was the fashion of the

times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will

of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an

invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the

human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish,

according to the color of their respective prejudices, that the

establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake; or that

a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin

and error. Without presuming to discuss the truth or propriety of

these lofty speculations, the historian may content himself with

an observation, which seems to be justified by experience, that

man has much more to fear from the passions of his

fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements. 3

The mischievous effects of an earthquake, or deluge, a hurricane,

or the eruption of a volcano, bear a very inconsiderable portion

to the ordinary calamities of war, as they are now moderated by

the prudence or humanity of the princes of Europe, who amuse

their own leisure, and exercise the courage of their subjects, in

the practice of the military art. But the laws and manners of

modern nations protect the safety and freedom of the vanquished

soldier; and the peaceful citizen has seldom reason to complain,

that his life, or even his fortune, is exposed to the rage of

war. In the disastrous period of the fall of the Roman empire,

which may justly be dated from the reign of Valens, the happiness

and security of each individual were personally attacked; and the

arts and labors of ages were rudely defaced by the Barbarians of

Scythia and Germany. The invasion of the Huns precipitated on the

provinces of the West the Gothic nation, which advanced, in less

than forty years, from the Danube to the Atlantic, and opened a

way, by the success of their arms, to the inroads of so many

hostile tribes, more savage than themselves. The original

principle of motion was concealed in the remote countries of the

North; and the curious observation of the pastoral life of the

Scythians, 4 or Tartars, 5 will illustrate the latent cause of

these destructive emigrations.

1 (return) [ Such is the bad taste of Ammianus, (xxvi. 10,) that

it is not easy to distinguish his facts from his metaphors. Yet

he positively affirms, that he saw the rotten carcass of a ship,

_ad decundum lapidem_, at Mothone, or Modon, in Peloponnesus.]

2 (return) [ The earthquakes and inundations are variously

described by Libanius, (Orat. de ulciscenda Juliani nece, c. x.,

in Fabricius, Bibl. Græc. tom. vii. p. 158, with a learned note

of Olearius,) Zosimus, (l. iv. p. 221,) Sozomen, (l. vi. c. 2,)

Cedrenus, (p. 310, 314,) and Jerom, (in Chron. p. 186, and tom.

i. p. 250, in Vit. Hilarion.) Epidaurus must have been

overwhelmed, had not the prudent citizens placed St. Hilarion, an

Egyptian monk, on the beach. He made the sign of the Cross; the

mountain-wave stopped, bowed, and returned.]

3 (return) [ Dicæarchus, the Peripatetic, composed a formal

treatise, to prove this obvious truth; which is not the most

honorable to the human species. (Cicero, de Officiis, ii. 5.)]

4 (return) [ The original Scythians of Herodotus (l. iv. c.

47—57, 99—101) were confined, by the Danube and the Palus Mæotis,

within a square of 4000 stadia, (400 Roman miles.) See D’Anville

(Mém. de l’Académie, tom. xxxv. p. 573—591.) Diodorus Siculus

(tom. i. l. ii. p. 155, edit. Wesseling) has marked the gradual

progress of the _name_ and nation.]

5 (return) [ The _Tatars_, or Tartars, were a primitive tribe,

the rivals, and at length the subjects, of the Moguls. In the

victorious armies of Zingis Khan, and his successors, the Tartars

formed the vanguard; and the name, which first reached the ears

of foreigners, was applied to the whole nation, (Freret, in the

Hist. de l’Académie, tom. xviii. p. 60.) In speaking of all, or

any of the northern shepherds of Europe, or Asia, I indifferently

use the appellations of _Scythians_ or _Tartars_. * Note: The

Moguls, (Mongols,) according to M. Klaproth, are a tribe of the

Tartar nation. Tableaux Hist. de l’Asie, p. 154.—M.]

The different characters that mark the civilized nations of the

globe, may be ascribed to the use, and the abuse, of reason;

which so variously shapes, and so artificially composes, the

manners and opinions of a European, or a Chinese. But the

operation of instinct is more sure and simple than that of

reason: it is much easier to ascertain the appetites of a

quadruped than the speculations of a philosopher; and the savage

tribes of mankind, as they approach nearer to the condition of

animals, preserve a stronger resemblance to themselves and to

each other. The uniform stability of their manners is the natural

consequence of the imperfection of their faculties. Reduced to a

similar situation, their wants, their desires, their enjoyments,

still continue the same: and the influence of food or climate,

which, in a more improved state of society, is suspended, or

subdued, by so many moral causes, most powerfully contributes to

form, and to maintain, the national character of Barbarians. In

every age, the immense plains of Scythia, or Tartary, have been

inhabited by vagrant tribes of hunters and shepherds, whose

indolence refuses to cultivate the earth, and whose restless

spirit disdains the confinement of a sedentary life. In every

age, the Scythians, and Tartars, have been renowned for their

invincible courage and rapid conquests. The thrones of Asia have

been repeatedly overturned by the shepherds of the North; and

their arms have spread terror and devastation over the most

fertile and warlike countries of Europe. 6 On this occasion, as

well as on many others, the sober historian is forcibly awakened

from a pleasing vision; and is compelled, with some reluctance,

to confess, that the pastoral manners, which have been adorned

with the fairest attributes of peace and innocence, are much

better adapted to the fierce and cruel habits of a military life.

To illustrate this observation, I shall now proceed to consider a

nation of shepherds and of warriors, in the three important

articles of, I. Their diet; II. Their habitations; and, III.

Their exercises. The narratives of antiquity are justified by the

experience of modern times; 7 and the banks of the Borysthenes,

of the Volga, or of the Selinga, will indifferently present the

same uniform spectacle of similar and native manners. 8

6 (return) [ Imperium Asiæ _ter_ quæsivere: ipsi perpetuo ab

alieno imperio, aut intacti aut invicti, mansere. Since the time

of Justin, (ii. 2,) they have multiplied this account. Voltaire,

in a few words, (tom. x. p. 64, Hist. Generale, c. 156,) has

abridged the Tartar conquests.

Oft o’er the trembling nations from afar,

Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war.

Note *: Gray.—M.]

7 (return) [ The fourth book of Herodotus affords a curious

though imperfect, portrait of the Scythians. Among the moderns,

who describe the uniform scene, the Khan of Khowaresm, Abulghazi

Bahadur, expresses his native feelings; and his genealogical

history of the Tartars has been copiously illustrated by the

French and English editors. Carpin, Ascelin, and Rubruquis (in

the Hist. des Voyages, tom. vii.) represent the Moguls of the

fourteenth century. To these guides I have added Gerbillon, and

the other Jesuits, (Description de la China par du Halde, tom.

iv.,) who accurately surveyed the Chinese Tartary; and that

honest and intelligent traveller, Bell, of Antermony, (two

volumes in 4to. Glasgow, 1763.) * Note: Of the various works

published since the time of Gibbon, which throw fight on the

nomadic population of Central Asia, may be particularly remarked

the Travels and Dissertations of Pallas; and above all, the very

curious work of Bergman, Nomadische Streifereyen. Riga, 1805.—M.]

8 (return) [ The Uzbecks are the most altered from their

primitive manners; 1. By the profession of the Mahometan

religion; and 2. By the possession of the cities and harvests of

the great Bucharia.]

I. The corn, or even the rice, which constitutes the ordinary and

wholesome food of a civilized people, can be obtained only by the

patient toil of the husbandman. Some of the happy savages, who

dwell between the tropics, are plentifully nourished by the

liberality of nature; but in the climates of the North, a nation

of shepherds is reduced to their flocks and herds. The skilful

practitioners of the medical art will determine (if they are able

to determine) how far the temper of the human mind may be

affected by the use of animal, or of vegetable, food; and whether

the common association of carniverous and cruel deserves to be

considered in any other light than that of an innocent, perhaps a

salutary, prejudice of humanity. 9 Yet, if it be true, that the

sentiment of compassion is imperceptibly weakened by the sight

and practice of domestic cruelty, we may observe, that the horrid

objects which are disguised by the arts of European refinement,

are exhibited in their naked and most disgusting simplicity in

the tent of a Tartarian shepherd. The ox, or the sheep, are

slaughtered by the same hand from which they were accustomed to

receive their daily food; and the bleeding limbs are served, with

very little preparation, on the table of their unfeeling

murderer. In the military profession, and especially in the

conduct of a numerous army, the exclusive use of animal food

appears to be productive of the most solid advantages. Corn is a

bulky and perishable commodity; and the large magazines, which

are indispensably necessary for the subsistence of our troops,

must be slowly transported by the labor of men or horses. But the

flocks and herds, which accompany the march of the Tartars,

afford a sure and increasing supply of flesh and milk: in the far

greater part of the uncultivated waste, the vegetation of the

grass is quick and luxuriant; and there are few places so

extremely barren, that the hardy cattle of the North cannot find

some tolerable pasture.

The supply is multiplied and prolonged by the undistinguishing

appetite, and patient abstinence, of the Tartars. They

indifferently feed on the flesh of those animals that have been

killed for the table, or have died of disease. Horseflesh, which

in every age and country has been proscribed by the civilized

nations of Europe and Asia, they devour with peculiar greediness;

and this singular taste facilitates the success of their military

operations. The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in

their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of

spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble

the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the Barbarians. Many are

the resources of courage and poverty. When the forage round a

camp of Tartars is almost consumed, they slaughter the greatest

part of their cattle, and preserve the flesh, either smoked, or

dried in the sun. On the sudden emergency of a hasty march, they

provide themselves with a sufficient quantity of little balls of

cheese, or rather of hard curd, which they occasionally dissolve

in water; and this unsubstantial diet will support, for many

days, the life, and even the spirits, of the patient warrior. But

this extraordinary abstinence, which the Stoic would approve, and

the hermit might envy, is commonly succeeded by the most

voracious indulgence of appetite. The wines of a happier climate

are the most grateful present, or the most valuable commodity,

that can be offered to the Tartars; and the only example of their

industry seems to consist in the art of extracting from mare’s

milk a fermented liquor, which possesses a very strong power of

intoxication. Like the animals of prey, the savages, both of the

old and new world, experience the alternate vicissitudes of

famine and plenty; and their stomach is inured to sustain,

without much inconvenience, the opposite extremes of hunger and

of intemperance.

9 (return) [ Il est certain que les grands mangeurs de viande

sont en général cruels et féroces plus que les autres hommes.

Cette observation est de tous les lieux, et de tous les temps: la

barbarie Angloise est connue, &c. Emile de Rousseau, tom. i. p.

274. Whatever we may think of the general observation, _we_ shall

not easily allow the truth of his example. The good-natured

complaints of Plutarch, and the pathetic lamentations of Ovid,

seduce our reason, by exciting our sensibility.]

II. In the ages of rustic and martial simplicity, a people of

soldiers and husbandmen are dispersed over the face of an

extensive and cultivated country; and some time must elapse

before the warlike youth of Greece or Italy could be assembled

under the same standard, either to defend their own confines, or

to invade the territories of the adjacent tribes. The progress of

manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude

within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer

soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil

society, corrupt the habits of the military life. The pastoral

manners of the Scythians seem to unite the different advantages

of simplicity and refinement. The individuals of the same tribe

are constantly assembled, but they are assembled in a camp; and

the native spirit of these dauntless shepherds is animated by

mutual support and emulation. The houses of the Tartars are no

more than small tents, of an oval form, which afford a cold and

dirty habitation, for the promiscuous youth of both sexes. The

palaces of the rich consist of wooden huts, of such a size that

they may be conveniently fixed on large wagons, and drawn by a

team perhaps of twenty or thirty oxen. The flocks and herds,

after grazing all day in the adjacent pastures, retire, on the

approach of night, within the protection of the camp. The

necessity of preventing the most mischievous confusion, in such a

perpetual concourse of men and animals, must gradually introduce,

in the distribution, the order, and the guard, of the encampment,

the rudiments of the military art. As soon as the forage of a

certain district is consumed, the tribe, or rather army, of

shepherds, makes a regular march to some fresh pastures; and thus

acquires, in the ordinary occupations of the pastoral life, the

practical knowledge of one of the most important and difficult

operations of war. The choice of stations is regulated by the

difference of the seasons: in the summer, the Tartars advance

towards the North, and pitch their tents on the banks of a river,

or, at least, in the neighborhood of a running stream. But in the

winter, they return to the South, and shelter their camp, behind

some convenient eminence, against the winds, which are chilled in

their passage over the bleak and icy regions of Siberia. These

manners are admirably adapted to diffuse, among the wandering

tribes, the spirit of emigration and conquest. The connection

between the people and their territory is of so frail a texture,

that it may be broken by the slightest accident. The camp, and

not the soil, is the native country of the genuine Tartar. Within

the precincts of that camp, his family, his companions, his

property, are always included; and, in the most distant marches,

he is still surrounded by the objects which are dear, or

valuable, or familiar in his eyes. The thirst of rapine, the

fear, or the resentment of injury, the impatience of servitude,

have, in every age, been sufficient causes to urge the tribes of

Scythia boldly to advance into some unknown countries, where they

might hope to find a more plentiful subsistence or a less

formidable enemy. The revolutions of the North have frequently

determined the fate of the South; and in the conflict of hostile

nations, the victor and the vanquished have alternately drove,

and been driven, from the confines of China to those of Germany.

10 These great emigrations, which have been sometimes executed

with almost incredible diligence, were rendered more easy by the

peculiar nature of the climate. It is well known that the cold of

Tartary is much more severe than in the midst of the temperate

zone might reasonably be expected; this uncommon rigor is

attributed to the height of the plains, which rise, especially

towards the East, more than half a mile above the level of the

sea; and to the quantity of saltpetre with which the soil is

deeply impregnated. 11 In the winter season, the broad and rapid

rivers, that discharge their waters into the Euxine, the Caspian,

or the Icy Sea, are strongly frozen; the fields are covered with

a bed of snow; and the fugitive, or victorious, tribes may

securely traverse, with their families, their wagons, and their

cattle, the smooth and hard surface of an immense plain.

10 (return) [ These Tartar emigrations have been discovered by M.

de Guignes (Histoire des Huns, tom. i. ii.) a skilful and

laborious interpreter of the Chinese language; who has thus laid

open new and important scenes in the history of mankind.]

11 (return) [ A plain in the Chinese Tartary, only eighty leagues

from the great wall, was found by the missionaries to be three

thousand geometrical paces above the level of the sea.

Montesquieu, who has used, and abused, the relations of

travellers, deduces the revolutions of Asia from this important

circumstance, that heat and cold, weakness and strength, touch

each other without any temperate zone, (Esprit des Loix, l. xvii.

c. 3.)]

III. The pastoral life, compared with the labors of agriculture

and manufactures, is undoubtedly a life of idleness; and as the

most honorable shepherds of the Tartar race devolve on their

captives the domestic management of the cattle, their own leisure

is seldom disturbed by any servile and assiduous cares. But this

leisure, instead of being devoted to the soft enjoyments of love

and harmony, is usefully spent in the violent and sanguinary

exercise of the chase. The plains of Tartary are filled with a

strong and serviceable breed of horses, which are easily trained

for the purposes of war and hunting. The Scythians of every age

have been celebrated as bold and skilful riders; and constant

practice had seated them so firmly on horseback, that they were

supposed by strangers to perform the ordinary duties of civil

life, to eat, to drink, and even to sleep, without dismounting

from their steeds. They excel in the dexterous management of the

lance; the long Tartar bow is drawn with a nervous arm; and the

weighty arrow is directed to its object with unerring aim and

irresistible force. These arrows are often pointed against the

harmless animals of the desert, which increase and multiply in

the absence of their most formidable enemy; the hare, the goat,

the roebuck, the fallow-deer, the stag, the elk, and the

antelope. The vigor and patience, both of the men and horses, are

continually exercised by the fatigues of the chase; and the

plentiful supply of game contributes to the subsistence, and even

luxury, of a Tartar camp. But the exploits of the hunters of

Scythia are not confined to the destruction of timid or innoxious

beasts; they boldly encounter the angry wild boar, when he turns

against his pursuers, excite the sluggish courage of the bear,

and provoke the fury of the tiger, as he slumbers in the thicket.

Where there is danger, there may be glory; and the mode of

hunting, which opens the fairest field to the exertions of valor,

may justly be considered as the image, and as the school, of war.

The general hunting matches, the pride and delight of the Tartar

princes, compose an instructive exercise for their numerous

cavalry. A circle is drawn, of many miles in circumference, to

encompass the game of an extensive district; and the troops that

form the circle regularly advance towards a common centre; where

the captive animals, surrounded on every side, are abandoned to

the darts of the hunters. In this march, which frequently

continues many days, the cavalry are obliged to climb the hills,

to swim the rivers, and to wind through the valleys, without

interrupting the prescribed order of their gradual progress. They

acquire the habit of directing their eye, and their steps, to a

remote object; of preserving their intervals of suspending or

accelerating their pace, according to the motions of the troops

on their right and left; and of watching and repeating the

signals of their leaders. Their leaders study, in this practical

school, the most important lesson of the military art; the prompt

and accurate judgment of ground, of distance, and of time. To

employ against a human enemy the same patience and valor, the

same skill and discipline, is the only alteration which is

required in real war; and the amusements of the chase serve as a

prelude to the conquest of an empire. 12

12 (return) [ Petit de la Croix (Vie de Gengiscan, l. iii. c. 6)

represents the full glory and extent of the Mogul chase. The

Jesuits Gerbillon and Verbiest followed the emperor Khamhi when

he hunted in Tartary, (Duhalde, Déscription de la Chine, tom. iv.

p. 81, 290, &c., folio edit.) His grandson, Kienlong, who unites

the Tartar discipline with the laws and learning of China,

describes (Eloge de Moukden, p. 273—285) as a poet the pleasures

which he had often enjoyed as a sportsman.]

The political society of the ancient Germans has the appearance

of a voluntary alliance of independent warriors. The tribes of

Scythia, distinguished by the modern appellation of _Hords_,

assume the form of a numerous and increasing family; which, in

the course of successive generations, has been propagated from

the same original stock. The meanest, and most ignorant, of the

Tartars, preserve, with conscious pride, the inestimable treasure

of their genealogy; and whatever distinctions of rank may have

been introduced, by the unequal distribution of pastoral wealth,

they mutually respect themselves, and each other, as the

descendants of the first founder of the tribe. The custom, which

still prevails, of adopting the bravest and most faithful of the

captives, may countenance the very probable suspicion, that this

extensive consanguinity is, in a great measure, legal and

fictitious. But the useful prejudice, which has obtained the

sanction of time and opinion, produces the effects of truth; the

haughty Barbarians yield a cheerful and voluntary obedience to

the head of their blood; and their chief, or _mursa_, as the

representative of their great father, exercises the authority of

a judge in peace, and of a leader in war. In the original state

of the pastoral world, each of the _mursas_ (if we may continue

to use a modern appellation) acted as the independent chief of a

large and separate family; and the limits of their peculiar

territories were gradually fixed by superior force, or mutual

consent. But the constant operation of various and permanent

causes contributed to unite the vagrant Hords into national

communities, under the command of a supreme head. The weak were

desirous of support, and the strong were ambitious of dominion;

the power, which is the result of union, oppressed and collected

the divided force of the adjacent tribes; and, as the vanquished

were freely admitted to share the advantages of victory, the most

valiant chiefs hastened to range themselves and their followers

under the formidable standard of a confederate nation. The most

successful of the Tartar princes assumed the military command, to

which he was entitled by the superiority, either of merit or of

power. He was raised to the throne by the acclamations of his

equals; and the title of _Khan_ expresses, in the language of the

North of Asia, the full extent of the regal dignity. The right of

hereditary succession was long confined to the blood of the

founder of the monarchy; and at this moment all the Khans, who

reign from Crimea to the wall of China, are the lineal

descendants of the renowned Zingis. 13 But, as it is the

indispensable duty of a Tartar sovereign to lead his warlike

subjects into the field, the claims of an infant are often

disregarded; and some royal kinsman, distinguished by his age and

valor, is intrusted with the sword and sceptre of his

predecessor. Two distinct and regular taxes are levied on the

tribes, to support the dignity of the national monarch, and of

their peculiar chief; and each of those contributions amounts to

the tithe, both of their property, and of their spoil. A Tartar

sovereign enjoys the tenth part of the wealth of his people; and

as his own domestic riches of flocks and herds increase in a much

larger proportion, he is able plentifully to maintain the rustic

splendor of his court, to reward the most deserving, or the most

favored of his followers, and to obtain, from the gentle

influence of corruption, the obedience which might be sometimes

refused to the stern mandates of authority. The manners of his

subjects, accustomed, like himself, to blood and rapine, might

excuse, in their eyes, such partial acts of tyranny, as would

excite the horror of a civilized people; but the power of a

despot has never been acknowledged in the deserts of Scythia. The

immediate jurisdiction of the khan is confined within the limits

of his own tribe; and the exercise of his royal prerogative has

been moderated by the ancient institution of a national council.

The Coroulai, 14 or Diet, of the Tartars, was regularly held in

the spring and autumn, in the midst of a plain; where the princes

of the reigning family, and the mursas of the respective tribes,

may conveniently assemble on horseback, with their martial and

numerous trains; and the ambitious monarch, who reviewed the

strength, must consult the inclination of an armed people. The

rudiments of a feudal government may be discovered in the

constitution of the Scythian or Tartar nations; but the perpetual

conflict of those hostile nations has sometimes terminated in the

establishment of a powerful and despotic empire. The victor,

enriched by the tribute, and fortified by the arms of dependent

kings, has spread his conquests over Europe or Asia: the

successful shepherds of the North have submitted to the

confinement of arts, of laws, and of cities; and the introduction

of luxury, after destroying the freedom of the people, has

undermined the foundations of the throne. 15

13 (return) [ See the second volume of the Genealogical History

of the Tartars; and the list of the Khans, at the end of the life

of Geng’s, or Zingis. Under the reign of Timur, or Tamerlane, one

of his subjects, a descendant of Zingis, still bore the regal

appellation of Khan and the conqueror of Asia contented himself

with the title of Emir or Sultan. Abulghazi, part v. c. 4.

D’Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orien tale, p. 878.]

14 (return) [ See the Diets of the ancient Huns, (De Guignes,

tom. ii. p. 26,) and a curious description of those of Zingis,

(Vie de Gengiscan, l. i. c. 6, l. iv. c. 11.) Such assemblies are

frequently mentioned in the Persian history of Timur; though they

served only to countenance the resolutions of their master.]

15 (return) [ Montesquieu labors to explain a difference, which

has not existed, between the liberty of the Arabs, and the

_perpetual_ slavery of the Tartars. (Esprit des Loix, l. xvii. c.

5, l. xviii. c. 19, &c.)]

The memory of past events cannot long be preserved in the

frequent and remote emigrations of illiterate Barbarians. The

modern Tartars are ignorant of the conquests of their ancestors;

16 and our knowledge of the history of the Scythians is derived

from their intercourse with the learned and civilized nations of

the South, the Greeks, the Persians, and the Chinese. The Greeks,

who navigated the Euxine, and planted their colonies along the

sea-coast, made the gradual and imperfect discovery of Scythia;

from the Danube, and the confines of Thrace, as far as the frozen

Mæotis, the seat of eternal winter, and Mount Caucasus, which, in

the language of poetry, was described as the utmost boundary of

the earth. They celebrated, with simple credulity, the virtues of

the pastoral life: 17 they entertained a more rational

apprehension of the strength and numbers of the warlike

Barbarians, 18 who contemptuously baffled the immense armament of

Darius, the son of Hystaspes. 19 The Persian monarchs had

extended their western conquests to the banks of the Danube, and

the limits of European Scythia. The eastern provinces of their

empire were exposed to the Scythians of Asia; the wild

inhabitants of the plains beyond the Oxus and the Jaxartes, two

mighty rivers, which direct their course towards the Caspian Sea.

The long and memorable quarrel of Iran and Touran is still the

theme of history or romance: the famous, perhaps the fabulous,

valor of the Persian heroes, Rustan and Asfendiar, was

signalized, in the defence of their country, against the

Afrasiabs of the North; 20 and the invincible spirit of the same

Barbarians resisted, on the same ground, the victorious arms of

Cyrus and Alexander. 21 In the eyes of the Greeks and Persians,

the real geography of Scythia was bounded, on the East, by the

mountains of Imaus, or Caf; and their distant prospect of the

extreme and inaccessible parts of Asia was clouded by ignorance,

or perplexed by fiction. But those inaccessible regions are the

ancient residence of a powerful and civilized nation, 22 which

ascends, by a probable tradition, above forty centuries; 23 and

which is able to verify a series of near two thousand years, by

the perpetual testimony of accurate and contemporary historians.

24 The annals of China 25 illustrate the state and revolutions of

the pastoral tribes, which may still be distinguished by the

vague appellation of Scythians, or Tartars; the vassals, the

enemies, and sometimes the conquerors, of a great empire; whose

policy has uniformly opposed the blind and impetuous valor of the

Barbarians of the North. From the mouth of the Danube to the Sea

of Japan, the whole longitude of Scythia is about one hundred and

ten degrees, which, in that parallel, are equal to more than five

thousand miles. The latitude of these extensive deserts cannot be

so easily, or so accurately, measured; but, from the fortieth

degree, which touches the wall of China, we may securely advance

above a thousand miles to the northward, till our progress is

stopped by the excessive cold of Siberia. In that dreary climate,

instead of the animated picture of a Tartar camp, the smoke that

issues from the earth, or rather from the snow, betrays the

subterraneous dwellings of the Tongouses, and the Samoides: the

want of horses and oxen is imperfectly supplied by the use of

reindeer, and of large dogs; and the conquerors of the earth

insensibly degenerate into a race of deformed and diminutive

savages, who tremble at the sound of arms. 26

16 (return) [ Abulghasi Khan, in the two first parts of his

Genealogical History, relates the miserable tales and traditions

of the Uzbek Tartars concerning the times which preceded the

reign of Zingis. * Note: The differences between the various

pastoral tribes and nations comprehended by the ancients under

the vague name of Scythians, and by Gibbon under inst of Tartars,

have received some, and still, perhaps, may receive more, light

from the comparisons of their dialects and languages by modern

scholars.—M]

17 (return) [ In the thirteenth book of the Iliad, Jupiter turns

away his eyes from the bloody fields of Troy, to the plains of

Thrace and Scythia. He would not, by changing the prospect,

behold a more peaceful or innocent scene.]

18 (return) [ Thucydides, l. ii. c. 97.]

19 (return) [ See the fourth book of Herodotus. When Darius

advanced into the Moldavian desert, between the Danube and the

Niester, the king of the Scythians sent him a mouse, a frog, a

bird, and five arrows; a tremendous allegory!]

20 (return) [ These wars and heroes may be found under their

respective _titles_, in the Bibliothèque Orientale of D’Herbelot.

They have been celebrated in an epic poem of sixty thousand

rhymed couplets, by Ferdusi, the Homer of Persia. See the history

of Nadir Shah, p. 145, 165. The public must lament that Mr. Jones

has suspended the pursuit of Oriental learning. Note: Ferdusi is

yet imperfectly known to European readers. An abstract of the

whole poem has been published by Goerres in German, under the

title “das Heldenbuch des Iran.” In English, an abstract with

poetical translations, by Mr. Atkinson, has appeared, under the

auspices of the Oriental Fund. But to translate a poet a man must

be a poet. The best account of the poem is in an article by Von

Hammer in the Vienna Jahrbucher, 1820: or perhaps in a masterly

article in Cochrane’s Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 1, 1835. A

splendid and critical edition of the whole work has been

published by a very learned English Orientalist, Captain Macan,

at the expense of the king of Oude. As to the number of 60,000

couplets, Captain Macan (Preface, p. 39) states that he never saw

a MS. containing more than 56,685, including doubtful and

spurious passages and episodes.—M. * Note: The later studies of

Sir W. Jones were more in unison with the wishes of the public,

thus expressed by Gibbon.—M.]

21 (return) [ The Caspian Sea, with its rivers and adjacent

tribes, are laboriously illustrated in the Examen Critique des

Historiens d’Alexandre, which compares the true geography, and

the errors produced by the vanity or ignorance of the Greeks.]

22 (return) [ The original seat of the nation appears to have

been in the Northwest of China, in the provinces of Chensi and

Chansi. Under the two first dynasties, the principal town was

still a movable camp; the villages were thinly scattered; more

land was employed in pasture than in tillage; the exercise of

hunting was ordained to clear the country from wild beasts;

Petcheli (where Pekin stands) was a desert, and the Southern

provinces were peopled with Indian savages. The dynasty of the

_Han_ (before Christ 206) gave the empire its actual form and

extent.]

23 (return) [ The æra of the Chinese monarchy has been variously

fixed from 2952 to 2132 years before Christ; and the year 2637

has been chosen for the lawful epoch, by the authority of the

present emperor. The difference arises from the uncertain

duration of the two first dynasties; and the vacant space that

lies beyond them, as far as the real, or fabulous, times of Fohi,

or Hoangti. Sematsien dates his authentic chronology from the

year 841; the thirty-six eclipses of Confucius (thirty-one of

which have been verified) were observed between the years 722 and

480 before Christ. The _historical_ period of China does not

ascend above the Greek Olympiads.]

24 (return) [ After several ages of anarchy and despotism, the

dynasty of the Han (before Christ 206) was the æra of the revival

of learning. The fragments of ancient literature were restored;

the characters were improved and fixed; and the future

preservation of books was secured by the useful inventions of

ink, paper, and the art of printing. Ninety-seven years before

Christ, Sematsien published the first history of China. His

labors were illustrated, and continued, by a series of one

hundred and eighty historians. The substance of their works is

still extant; and the most considerable of them are now deposited

in the king of France’s library.]

25 (return) [ China has been illustrated by the labors of the

French; of the missionaries at Pekin, and Messrs. Freret and De

Guignes at Paris. The substance of the three preceding notes is

extracted from the Chou-king, with the preface and notes of M. de

Guignes, Paris, 1770. The _Tong-Kien-Kang-Mou_, translated by P.

de Mailla, under the name of Hist. Génerale de la Chine, tom. i.

p. xlix.—cc.; the Mémoires sur la Chine, Paris, 1776, &c., tom.

i. p. 1—323; tom. ii. p. 5—364; the Histoire des Huns, tom. i. p.

4—131, tom. v. p. 345—362; and the Mémoires de l’Académie des

Inscriptions, tom. x. p. 377—402; tom. xv. p. 495—564; tom.

xviii. p. 178—295; xxxvi. p. 164—238.]

26 (return) [ See the Histoire Generale des Voyages, tom. xviii.,

and the Genealogical History, vol. ii. p. 620—664.]

Chapter XXVI: Progress of The Huns.—Part II.

The Huns, who under the reign of Valens threatened the empire of

Rome, had been formidable, in a much earlier period, to the

empire of China. 27 Their ancient, perhaps their original, seat

was an extensive, though dry and barren, tract of country,

immediately on the north side of the great wall. Their place is

at present occupied by the forty-nine Hords or Banners of the

Mongous, a pastoral nation, which consists of about two hundred

thousand families. 28 But the valor of the Huns had extended the

narrow limits of their dominions; and their rustic chiefs, who

assumed the appellation of _Tanjou_, gradually became the

conquerors, and the sovereigns of a formidable empire. Towards

the East, their victorious arms were stopped only by the ocean;

and the tribes, which are thinly scattered between the Amoor and

the extreme peninsula of Corea, adhered, with reluctance, to the

standard of the Huns. On the West, near the head of the Irtish,

in the valleys of Imaus, they found a more ample space, and more

numerous enemies. One of the lieutenants of the Tanjou subdued,

in a single expedition, twenty-six nations; the Igours, 29

distinguished above the Tartar race by the use of letters, were

in the number of his vassals; and, by the strange connection of

human events, the flight of one of those vagrant tribes recalled

the victorious Parthians from the invasion of Syria. 30 On the

side of the North, the ocean was assigned as the limit of the

power of the Huns. Without enemies to resist their progress, or

witnesses to contradict their vanity, they might securely achieve

a real, or imaginary, conquest of the frozen regions of Siberia.

The _Northern Sea_ was fixed as the remote boundary of their

empire. But the name of that sea, on whose shores the patriot

Sovou embraced the life of a shepherd and an exile, 31 may be

transferred, with much more probability, to the Baikal, a

capacious basin, above three hundred miles in length, which

disdains the modest appellation of a lake 32 and which actually

communicates with the seas of the North, by the long course of

the Angara, the Tongusha, and the Jenissea. The submission of so

many distant nations might flatter the pride of the Tanjou; but

the valor of the Huns could be rewarded only by the enjoyment of

the wealth and luxury of the empire of the South. In the third

century 3211 before the Christian æra, a wall of fifteen hundred

miles in length was constructed, to defend the frontiers of China

against the inroads of the Huns; 33 but this stupendous work,

which holds a conspicuous place in the map of the world, has

never contributed to the safety of an unwarlike people. The

cavalry of the Tanjou frequently consisted of two or three

hundred thousand men, formidable by the matchless dexterity with

which they managed their bows and their horses: by their hardy

patience in supporting the inclemency of the weather; and by the

incredible speed of their march, which was seldom checked by

torrents, or precipices, by the deepest rivers, or by the most

lofty mountains. They spread themselves at once over the face of

the country; and their rapid impetuosity surprised, astonished,

and disconcerted the grave and elaborate tactics of a Chinese

army. The emperor Kaoti, 34 a soldier of fortune, whose personal

merit had raised him to the throne, marched against the Huns with

those veteran troops which had been trained in the civil wars of

China. But he was soon surrounded by the Barbarians; and, after a

siege of seven days, the monarch, hopeless of relief, was reduced

to purchase his deliverance by an ignominious capitulation. The

successors of Kaoti, whose lives were dedicated to the arts of

peace, or the luxury of the palace, submitted to a more permanent

disgrace. They too hastily confessed the insufficiency of arms

and fortifications. They were too easily convinced, that while

the blazing signals announced on every side the approach of the

Huns, the Chinese troops, who slept with the helmet on their

head, and the cuirass on their back, were destroyed by the

incessant labor of ineffectual marches. 35 A regular payment of

money, and silk, was stipulated as the condition of a temporary

and precarious peace; and the wretched expedient of disguising a

real tribute, under the names of a gift or subsidy, was practised

by the emperors of China as well as by those of Rome. But there

still remained a more disgraceful article of tribute, which

violated the sacred feelings of humanity and nature. The

hardships of the savage life, which destroy in their infancy the

children who are born with a less healthy and robust

constitution, introduced a remarkable disproportion between the

numbers of the two sexes. The Tartars are an ugly and even

deformed race; and while they consider their own women as the

instruments of domestic labor, their desires, or rather their

appetites, are directed to the enjoyment of more elegant beauty.

A select band of the fairest maidens of China was annually

devoted to the rude embraces of the Huns; 36 and the alliance of

the haughty Tanjous was secured by their marriage with the

genuine, or adopted, daughters of the Imperial family, which

vainly attempted to escape the sacrilegious pollution. The

situation of these unhappy victims is described in the verses of

a Chinese princess, who laments that she had been condemned by

her parents to a distant exile, under a Barbarian husband; who

complains that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only

food, a tent her only palace; and who expresses, in a strain of

pathetic simplicity, the natural wish, that she were transformed

into a bird, to fly back to her dear country; the object of her

tender and perpetual regret. 37

27 (return) [ M. de Guignes (tom. ii. p. 1—124) has given the

original history of the ancient Hiong-nou, or Huns. The Chinese

geography of their country (tom. i. part. p. lv.—lxiii.) seems to

comprise a part of their conquests. * Note: The theory of De

Guignes on the early history of the Huns is, in general, rejected

by modern writers. De Guignes advanced no valid proof of the

identity of the Hioung-nou of the Chinese writers with the Huns,

except the similarity of name. Schlozer, (Allgemeine Nordische

Geschichte, p. 252,) Klaproth, (Tableaux Historiques de l’Asie,

p. 246,) St. Martin, iv. 61, and A. Remusat, (Recherches sur les

Langues Tartares, D. P. xlvi, and p. 328; though in the latter

passage he considers the theory of De Guignes not absolutely

disproved,) concur in considering the Huns as belonging to the

Finnish stock, distinct from the Moguls the Mandscheus, and the

Turks. The Hiong-nou, according to Klaproth, were Turks. The

names of the Hunnish chiefs could not be pronounced by a Turk;

and, according to the same author, the Hioung-nou, which is

explained in Chinese as _detestable slaves_, as early as the year

91 J. C., were dispersed by the Chinese, and assumed the name of

Yue-po or Yue-pan. M. St. Martin does not consider it impossible

that the appellation of Hioung-nou may have belonged to the Huns.

But all agree in considering the Madjar or Magyar of modern

Hungary the descendants of the Huns. Their language (compare

Gibbon, c. lv. n. 22) is nearly related to the Lapponian and

Vogoul. The noble forms of the modern Hungarians, so strongly

contrasted with the hideous pictures which the fears and the

hatred of the Romans give of the Huns, M. Klaproth accounts for

by the intermingling with other races, Turkish and Slavonian. The

present state of the question is thus stated in the last edition

of Malte Brun, and a new and ingenious hypothesis suggested to

resolve all the difficulties of the question.

Were the Huns Finns? This obscure question has not been

debated till very recently, and is yet very far from being

decided. We are of opinion that it will be so hereafter in

the same manner as that with regard to the Scythians. We

shall trace in the portrait of Attila a dominant tribe or

Mongols, or Kalmucks, with all the hereditary ugliness of

that race; but in the mass of the Hunnish army and nation

will be recognized the Chuni and the Ounni of the Greek

Geography. the Kuns of the Hungarians, the European Huns, and

a race in close relationship with the Flemish stock. Malte

Brun, vi. p. 94. This theory is more fully and ably

developed, p. 743. Whoever has seen the emperor of Austria’s

Hungarian guard, will not readily admit their descent from

the Huns described by Sidonius Appolinaris.—M]

28 (return) [ See in Duhalde (tom. iv. p. 18—65) a circumstantial

description, with a correct map, of the country of the Mongous.]

29 (return) [ The Igours, or Vigours, were divided into three

branches; hunters, shepherds, and husbandmen; and the last class

was despised by the two former. See Abulghazi, part ii. c. 7. *

Note: On the Ouigour or Igour characters, see the work of M. A.

Remusat, Sur les Langues Tartares. He conceives the Ouigour

alphabet of sixteen letters to have been formed from the Syriac,

and introduced by the Nestorian Christians.—Ch. ii. M.]

30 (return) [ Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxv.

p. 17—33. The comprehensive view of M. de Guignes has compared

these distant events.]

31 (return) [ The fame of Sovou, or So-ou, his merit, and his

singular adventurers, are still celebrated in China. See the

Eloge de Moukden, p. 20, and notes, p. 241—247; and Mémoires sur

la Chine, tom. iii. p. 317—360.]

32 (return) [ See Isbrand Ives in Harris’s Collection, vol. ii.

p. 931; Bell’s Travels, vol. i. p. 247—254; and Gmelin, in the

Hist. Generale des Voyages, tom. xviii. 283—329. They all remark

the vulgar opinion that the _holy sea_ grows angry and

tempestuous if any one presumes to call it a _lake_. This

grammatical nicety often excites a dispute between the absurd

superstition of the mariners and the absurd obstinacy of

travellers.]

3211 (return) [ 224 years before Christ. It was built by

Chi-hoang-ti of the Dynasty Thsin. It is from twenty to

twenty-five feet high. Ce monument, aussi gigantesque

qu’impuissant, arreterait bien les incursions de quelques

Nomades; mais il n’a jamais empéché les invasions des Turcs, des

Mongols, et des Mandchous. Abe Remusat Rech. Asiat. 2d ser. vol.

i. p. 58—M.]

33 (return) [ The construction of the wall of China is mentioned

by Duhalde (tom. ii. p. 45) and De Guignes, (tom. ii. p. 59.)]

34 (return) [ See the life of Lieoupang, or Kaoti, in the Hist,

de la Chine, published at Paris, 1777, &c., tom. i. p. 442—522.

This voluminous work is the translation (by the P. de Mailla) of

the _Tong- Kien-Kang-Mou_, the celebrated abridgment of the great

History of Semakouang (A.D. 1084) and his continuators.]

35 (return) [ See a free and ample memorial, presented by a

Mandarin to the emperor Venti, (before Christ 180—157,) in

Duhalde, (tom. ii. p. 412—426,) from a collection of State papers

marked with the red pencil by Kamhi himself, (p. 354—612.)

Another memorial from the minister of war (Kang-Mou, tom. ii. p

555) supplies some curious circumstances of the manners of the

Huns.]

36 (return) [ A supply of women is mentioned as a customary

article of treaty and tribute, (Hist. de la Conquete de la Chine,

par les Tartares Mantcheoux, tom. i. p. 186, 187, with the note

of the editor.)]

37 (return) [ De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 62.]

The conquest of China has been twice achieved by the pastoral

tribes of the North: the forces of the Huns were not inferior to

those of the Moguls, or of the Mantcheoux; and their ambition

might entertain the most sanguine hopes of success. But their

pride was humbled, and their progress was checked, by the arms

and policy of Vouti, 38 the fifth emperor of the powerful dynasty

of the Han. In his long reign of fifty- four years, the

Barbarians of the southern provinces submitted to the laws and

manners of China; and the ancient limits of the monarchy were

enlarged, from the great river of Kiang, to the port of Canton.

Instead of confining himself to the timid operations of a

defensive war, his lieutenants penetrated many hundred miles into

the country of the Huns. In those boundless deserts, where it is

impossible to form magazines, and difficult to transport a

sufficient supply of provisions, the armies of Vouti were

repeatedly exposed to intolerable hardships: and, of one hundred

and forty thousand soldiers, who marched against the Barbarians,

thirty thousand only returned in safety to the feet of their

master. These losses, however, were compensated by splendid and

decisive success. The Chinese generals improved the superiority

which they derived from the temper of their arms, their chariots

of war, and the service of their Tartar auxiliaries. The camp of

the Tanjou was surprised in the midst of sleep and intemperance;

and, though the monarch of the Huns bravely cut his way through

the ranks of the enemy, he left above fifteen thousand of his

subjects on the field of battle. Yet this signal victory, which

was preceded and followed by many bloody engagements, contributed

much less to the destruction of the power of the Huns than the

effectual policy which was employed to detach the tributary

nations from their obedience. Intimidated by the arms, or allured

by the promises, of Vouti and his successors, the most

considerable tribes, both of the East and of the West, disclaimed

the authority of the Tanjou. While some acknowledged themselves

the allies or vassals of the empire, they all became the

implacable enemies of the Huns; and the numbers of that haughty

people, as soon as they were reduced to their native strength,

might, perhaps, have been contained within the walls of one of

the great and populous cities of China. 39 The desertion of his

subjects, and the perplexity of a civil war, at length compelled

the Tanjou himself to renounce the dignity of an independent

sovereign, and the freedom of a warlike and high-spirited nation.

He was received at Sigan, the capital of the monarchy, by the

troops, the mandarins, and the emperor himself, with all the

honors that could adorn and disguise the triumph of Chinese

vanity. 40 A magnificent palace was prepared for his reception;

his place was assigned above all the princes of the royal family;

and the patience of the Barbarian king was exhausted by the

ceremonies of a banquet, which consisted of eight courses of

meat, and of nine solemn pieces of music. But he performed, on

his knees, the duty of a respectful homage to the emperor of

China; pronounced, in his own name, and in the name of his

successors, a perpetual oath of fidelity; and gratefully accepted

a seal, which was bestowed as the emblem of his regal dependence.

After this humiliating submission, the Tanjous sometimes departed

from their allegiance and seized the favorable moments of war and

rapine; but the monarchy of the Huns gradually declined, till it

was broken, by civil dissension, into two hostile and separate

kingdoms. One of the princes of the nation was urged, by fear and

ambition, to retire towards the South with eight hords, which

composed between forty and fifty thousand families. He obtained,

with the title of Tanjou, a convenient territory on the verge of

the Chinese provinces; and his constant attachment to the service

of the empire was secured by weakness, and the desire of revenge.

From the time of this fatal schism, the Huns of the North

continued to languish about fifty years; till they were oppressed

on every side by their foreign and domestic enemies. The proud

inscription 41 of a column, erected on a lofty mountain,

announced to posterity, that a Chinese army had marched seven

hundred miles into the heart of their country. The Sienpi, 42 a

tribe of Oriental Tartars, retaliated the injuries which they had

formerly sustained; and the power of the Tanjous, after a reign

of thirteen hundred years, was utterly destroyed before the end

of the first century of the Christian æra. 43

38 (return) [ See the reign of the emperor Vouti, in the

Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p. 1—98. His various and inconsistent

character seems to be impartially drawn.]

39 (return) [ This expression is used in the memorial to the

emperor Venti, (Duhalde, tom. ii. p. 411.) Without adopting the

exaggerations of Marco Polo and Isaac Vossius, we may rationally

allow for Pekin two millions of inhabitants. The cities of the

South, which contain the manufactures of China, are still more

populous.]

40 (return) [ See the Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p. 150, and the

subsequent events under the proper years. This memorable festival

is celebrated in the Eloge de Moukden, and explained in a note by

the P. Gaubil, p. 89, 90.]

41 (return) [ This inscription was composed on the spot by

Parkou, President of the Tribunal of History (Kang-Mou, tom. iii.

p. 392.) Similar monuments have been discovered in many parts of

Tartary, (Histoire des Huns, tom. ii. p. 122.)]

42 (return) [ M. de Guignes (tom. i. p. 189) has inserted a short

account of the Sienpi.]

43 (return) [ The æra of the Huns is placed, by the Chinese, 1210

years before Christ. But the series of their kings does not

commence till the year 230, (Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 21,

123.)]

The fate of the vanquished Huns was diversified by the various

influence of character and situation. 44 Above one hundred

thousand persons, the poorest, indeed, and the most pusillanimous

of the people, were contented to remain in their native country,

to renounce their peculiar name and origin, and to mingle with

the victorious nation of the Sienpi. Fifty-eight hords, about two

hundred thousand men, ambitious of a more honorable servitude,

retired towards the South; implored the protection of the

emperors of China; and were permitted to inhabit, and to guard,

the extreme frontiers of the province of Chansi and the territory

of Ortous. But the most warlike and powerful tribes of the Huns

maintained, in their adverse fortune, the undaunted spirit of

their ancestors. The Western world was open to their valor; and

they resolved, under the conduct of their hereditary chieftains,

to conquer and subdue some remote country, which was still

inaccessible to the arms of the Sienpi, and to the laws of China.

45 The course of their emigration soon carried them beyond the

mountains of Imaus, and the limits of the Chinese geography; but

_we_ are able to distinguish the two great divisions of these

formidable exiles, which directed their march towards the Oxus,

and towards the Volga. The first of these colonies established

their dominion in the fruitful and extensive plains of Sogdiana,

on the eastern side of the Caspian; where they preserved the name

of Huns, with the epithet of Euthalites, or Nepthalites. 4511

Their manners were softened, and even their features were

insensibly improved, by the mildness of the climate, and their

long residence in a flourishing province, 46 which might still

retain a faint impression of the arts of Greece. 47 The _white_

Huns, a name which they derived from the change of their

complexions, soon abandoned the pastoral life of Scythia. Gorgo,

which, under the appellation of Carizme, has since enjoyed a

temporary splendor, was the residence of the king, who exercised

a legal authority over an obedient people. Their luxury was

maintained by the labor of the Sogdians; and the only vestige of

their ancient barbarism, was the custom which obliged all the

companions, perhaps to the number of twenty, who had shared the

liberality of a wealthy lord, to be buried alive in the same

grave. 48 The vicinity of the Huns to the provinces of Persia,

involved them in frequent and bloody contests with the power of

that monarchy. But they respected, in peace, the faith of

treaties; in war, the dictates of humanity; and their memorable

victory over Peroses, or Firuz, displayed the moderation, as well

as the valor, of the Barbarians. The _second_ division of their

countrymen, the Huns, who gradually advanced towards the

North-west, were exercised by the hardships of a colder climate,

and a more laborious march. Necessity compelled them to exchange

the silks of China for the furs of Siberia; the imperfect

rudiments of civilized life were obliterated; and the native

fierceness of the Huns was exasperated by their intercourse with

the savage tribes, who were compared, with some propriety, to the

wild beasts of the desert. Their independent spirit soon rejected

the hereditary succession of the Tanjous; and while each horde

was governed by its peculiar mursa, their tumultuary council

directed the public measures of the whole nation. As late as the

thirteenth century, their transient residence on the eastern

banks of the Volga was attested by the name of Great Hungary. 49

In the winter, they descended with their flocks and herds towards

the mouth of that mighty river; and their summer excursions

reached as high as the latitude of Saratoff, or perhaps the

conflux of the Kama. Such at least were the recent limits of the

black Calmucks, 50 who remained about a century under the

protection of Russia; and who have since returned to their native

seats on the frontiers of the Chinese empire. The march, and the

return, of those wandering Tartars, whose united camp consists of

fifty thousand tents or families, illustrate the distant

emigrations of the ancient Huns. 51

44 (return) [ The various accidents, the downfall, and the flight

of the Huns, are related in the Kang-Mou, tom. iii. p. 88, 91,

95, 139, &c. The small numbers of each horde may be due to their

losses and divisions.]

45 (return) [ M. de Guignes has skilfully traced the footsteps of

the Huns through the vast deserts of Tartary, (tom. ii. p. 123,

277, &c., 325, &c.)]

4511 (return) [ The Armenian authors often mention this people

under the name of Hepthal. St. Martin considers that the name of

Nepthalites is an error of a copyist. St. Martin, iv. 254.—M.]

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) · 第 27 / 79 章

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