A.D. 455-582. OBSCURE STATE OF BRITAIN. 399 Obscure or fabulous state of Britain. By the revolution of Britain the limits of science as well as of empire were contracted. The dark cloud which had been cleared by the Phoenician discoveries, and finally dispelled by the arms of Cæsar, again settled on the shores of the Atlantic, and a Roman province was again lost among the fabulous Islands of the Ocean. One hundred and fifty years after the reign of Honorius the gravest historian of the times161 describes the wonders of a remote isle, whose eastern and western parts are divided by an antique wall, the boundary of life and death, or, more properly, of truth and fiction. The east is a fair country, inhabited by a civilised people the air is healthy, the waters are pure and plentiful, and the earth yields her regular and fruitful increase. In the west, beyond the wall, the air is infectious and mortal; the ground is covered with serpents; and this dreary solitude is the region of departed spirits, who are transported from the opposite shores in substantial boats and by living rowers. Some families of fishermen, the subjects of the Franks, are excused from tribute, in consideration of the mysterious office which is performed by these Charons of the ocean. Each in his turn is summoned, at the hour of midnight, to hear the voices, and even the names, of the ghosts: he is sensible of their weight, and he feels himself impelled by an unknown, but irresistible, power. After Cambriæ, c. 6-15, inter Script. Camden. p. 886-891) and the authors quoted by the Abbé de Vertot (Hist. Critique, tom. ii. p. 259-266). 161 See Procopius de Bell. Gothic. 1. iv. c. 20, p. 620-625 [ed. Paris; tom. ii. p. 559 sqq., ed. Bonn]. The Greek historian is himself so confounded by the wonders which he relates, that he weakly attempts to distinguish the islands of Brittia and Britain, which he has identified by so many inseparable circumstances.a a Notwithstanding Gibbon's identification of Brittia and Britannia, in which he has been followed by Mr. Macaulay (Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 5), it may be questioned whether they are not two different islands. Procopius, after speaking of the Varni, whom he describes as dwelling on both sides of the river Rhine, as far as the northern Ocean, then proceeds to say that in this ocean lies Brittia, 200 stadia opposite the mouths of the Rhine, and between Britannia and the island of Thule; and that it is inhabited by the Frisians, the Angles, and the Britons. On this statement we may remark, that Procopius has almost certainly made a mistake in placing the Varni on the Rhine, for which we ought probably to substitute the Elbe (see next note); and that in that case his fabulous Brittia is probably the same as the holy island of the Germania of Tacitus (c. 40), which was visited by the Angli, Varini, and other tribes. This holy island has been identified with Heligoland or Rugen; but it is probable that it was neither the one nor the other, but an island made out of a mixture of attributes of the two. Heligoland was a holy island, almost certainly peopled by the Germanic tribes of the Angles and Fri. sians; while Rugen was the holy island of the Slavonic Varini (Varni), who were near neighbours of the Angles. The name Brittia perhaps represents the Slavonic Prussia, for the eponymous hero of the ancient Prussians bore the name of Bruteus. If then the holy island of the Germans and that of the Slavonians were thus confounded, we can explain the assertion of Procopius that Brittia was inhabited by the Frisians, Angles, and the Britons, the two former being a German, and the latter a Slavonic race. See Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography, vol. i. p. 430 seq.-S. this dream of fancy, we read with astonishment that the name of this island is Brittia; that it lies in the ocean, against the mouth of the Rhine, and less than thirty miles from the continent; that it is possessed by three nations, the Frisians, the Angles, and the Britons; and that some Angles had appeared at Constantinople in the train of the French ambassadors. From these ambassadors Procopius might be informed of a singular, though not improbable, adventure, which announces the spirit, rather than the delicacy, of an English heroine. She had been betrothed to Radiger, king of the Varni, a tribe of Germans who touched the ocean and the Rhine; but the perfidious lover was tempted, by motives of policy, to prefer his father's widow, the sister of Theodebert, king of the Franks. 162 The forsaken princess of the Angles, instead of bewailing, revenged her disgrace. Her warlike subjects are said to have been ignorant of the use, and even of the form, of a horse; but she boldly sailed from Britain to the mouth of the Rhine, with a fleet of four hundred ships and an army of one hundred thousand men. After the loss of a battle the captive Radiger implored the mercy of his victorious bride, who generously pardoned his offence, dismissed her rival, and compelled the king of the Varni to discharge with honour and fidelity the duties of an husband.163 This gallant exploit appears to be the last naval enterprise of the Anglo-Saxons. The arts of navigation, by which they had acquired the empire of Britain and of the sea, were soon neglected by the indolent barbarians, who supinely renounced all the commercial advantages of their insular situation. Seven independent kingdoms were agitated by perpetual discord; and the British world was seldom connected, either in peace or war, with the nations of the continent. 164 162 Theodebert, grandson of Clovis and king of Austrasia, was the most powerful and warlike prince of the age; and this remarkable adventure may be placed between the years 534 and 547, the extreme terms of his reign. His sister Theudechildis retired to Sens, where she founded monasteries and distributed alms (see the notes of the Benedictine editors, in tom. ii. p. 216). If we may credit the praises of Fortunatus (1. vi. carm. 5, in tom. ii. p. 507), Radiger was deprived of a most valuable wife. 163 Perhaps she was the sister of one of the princes or chiefs of the Angles who landed, in 527 and the following years, between the Humber and the Thames, and gradually founded the kingdoms of East Anglia and Mercia. The English writers are ignorant of her name and existence: but Procopius may have suggested to Mr. Rowe the character and situation of Rodogune in the tragedy of the Royal Convert. 164 In the copious history of Gregory of Tours we cannot find any traces of hostile or friendly intercourse between France and England, except in the marriage of the The Varni, called Varini by Pliny (iv. 14, s. 28) and Tacitus (Germ. c. 40), and Outgouvor by Ptolemy (ii. 11, § 17), originally dwelt upon the Elbe; and they appear to have occupied the same settlements about A.D. 512 (Procop. Bell. Goth. ii. 15). Hence there can be little doubt that Procopius was mistaken in saying (Bell. Goth iv. 20) that the Varni touched the Rhine, and that for this river we ought to substitute the Elbe. See Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme, p. 360 seq.-S. A.D. 455-582. FALL OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE. 401 I have now accomplished the laborious narrative of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, from the fortunate age of Trajan Fall of the and the Antonines to its total extinction in the West, Rome in about five centuries after the Christian era. At that the West. unhappy period the Saxons fiercely struggled with the natives for the possession of Britain: Gaul and Spain were divided between the powerful monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths and the dependent kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians: Africa was exposed to the cruel persecution of the Vandals and the savage insults of the Moors: Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were afflicted by an army of barbarian mercenaries, whose lawless tyranny was succeeded by the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. All the subjects of the empire, who, by the use of the Latin language, more particularly deserved the name and privileges of Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and calamities of foreign conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany established a new system of manners and government in the western countries of Europe. The majesty of Rome was faintly represented by the princes of Constantinople, the feeble and imaginary successors of Augustus. Yet they continued to reign over the East, from the Danube to the Nile and Tigris; the Gothic and Vandal kingdoms of Italy and Africa were subverted by the arms of Justinian; and the history of the Greek emperors may still afford a long series of instructive lessons and interesting revolutions. daughter of Caribert, king of Paris, quam in Cantia regis cujusdam filius matrimonio copulavit (1. ix. c. 26, in tom. ii. p. 348). The bishop of Tours ended his history and his life almost immediately before the conversion of Kent. VOL. IV. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST. THE Greeks, after their country had been reduced into a province, imputed the triumphs of Rome, not to the merit, but to the FORTUNE, of the republic. The inconstant goddess, who so blindly distributes and resumes her favours, had now consented (such was the language of envious flattery) to resign her wings, to descend from her globe, and to fix her firm and immutable throne on the banks of the Tiber.' A wiser Greek, who has composed, with a philosophic spirit, the memorable history of his own times, deprived his countrymen of this vain and delusive comfort, by opening to their view the deep foundations of the greatness of Rome. The fidelity of the citizens to each other and to the state was confirmed by the habits of education and the prejudices of religion. Honour, as well as virtue, was the principle of the republic; the ambitious citizens laboured to deserve the solemn glories of a triumph; and the ardour of the Roman youth was kindled into active emulation as often as they beheld the domestic images of their ancestors. The temperate struggles of the patricians and plebeians had finally established the firm and equal balance of the constitution, which united the freedom of popular assemblies with the authority and wisdom of a senate and the executive powers of a regal magistrate. When the consul displayed the standard of the republic, each citizen bound himself, by the obligation of an oath, to draw his sword in the cause of his country till he had discharged the sacred duty by a military service of ten years. This wise institution continually poured into the field the rising generations of freemen and soldiers; and their numbers were reinforced by the warlike and populous states of Italy, who, after a brave resistance, had yielded to the valour and embraced the alliance of the Romans. The sage historian, who excited the virtue of the younger Scipio and 3 Such are the figurative expressions of Plutarch (Opera, tom. ii. p. 318, edit. Wechel [Frankf. 1620]), to whom, on the faith of his son Lamprias (Fabricius, Bibliot. Græc. tom. iii. p. 341), I shall boldly impute the malicious declamation, EgÌ THS 'Papaiwv Túxns. The same opinions had prevailed among the Greeks two hundred and fifty years before Plutarch; and to confute them is the professed intention of Polybius (Hist. 1. i. [c. 63] p. 90, edit. Gronov. Amstel. 1670). 2 See the inestimable remains of the sixth book of Polybius, and many other parts of his general history, particularly a digression in the seventeenth book [1. xviii. c. 12-15], in which he compares the phalanx and the legion. 3 Sallust, de Bell. Jugurthin. c. 4. Such were the generous professions of P. Scipio and Q. Maximus. The Latin historian had read, and most probably transcribes, Polybius, their contemporary and friend. OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST. 4 403 beheld the ruin of Carthage, has accurately described their military system; their levies, arms, exercises, subordination, marches, encampments; and the invincible legion, superior in active strength to the Macedonian phalanx of Philip and Alexander. From these institutions of peace and war Polybius has deduced the spirit and success of a people incapable of fear and impatient of repose. The ambitious design of conquest, which might have been defeated by the seasonable conspiracy of mankind, was attempted and achieved; and the perpetual violation of justice was maintained by the political virtues of prudence and courage. The arms of the republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.5 The rise of a city, which swelled into an empire, may deserve, as a singular prodigy, the reflection of a philosophic mind. But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed and finally dissolved by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of barbarians. The decay of Rome has been frequently ascribed to the translation of the seat of empire; but this history has already shown that the 4 While Carthage was in flames Scipio repeated two lines of the Iliad, which express the destruction of Troy, acknowledging to Polybius, his friend and preceptor (Polyb. [Fragm. 1. xxxix. sub fin.] in Excerpt. de Virtut. et Vit. tom. ii. p. 1455-1465), that while he recollected the vicissitudes of human affairs he inwardly applied them to the future calamities of Rome (Appian. in Libycis [1. viii. c. 132], p. 136, edit. Toll.). 5 See Daniel ii. 31-40. "And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron; foras"much as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things.' The remainder of the prophecy (the mixture of iron and clay) was accomplished, according to St. Jerom, in his own time. Sicut enim in principio nihil Romano Imperio fortius et durius, ita in fine rerum nihil imbecillius: quum et in bellis civilibus et adversus diversas nationes, aliarum gentium barbararum auxilio indigemus (Opera, tom. v. p. 572). |