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to fall from a new world, as their name, manners, and com plexion, were equally unknown on the coast of Africa.80

II. In that part of Upper Saxony, beyond the Elbe, which is at present called the Marquisate of Lusace, there existed, in ancient times, a sacred wood, the awful seat of the superstition of the Suevi. None were permitted to enter the holy precincts, without confessing, by their servile bonds and sup pliant posture, the immediate presence of the sovereign Deity.81 Patriotism contributed, as well as devotion, to consecrate the Sonnenwald, or wood of the Semnones.82 It was universally believed, that the nation had received its first existence on that sacred spot. At stated periods, the numer ous tribes who gloried in the Suevic blood, resarted thither by their ambassadors; and the memory of their common extraction was perpetuated by barbaric rites and human sacrifices. The wide-extended name of Suevi filled the interior countries of Germany, from the banks of the Oder to those of the Danube. They were distinguished from the other Germans by their peculiar mode of dressing their long hair, which they gathered into a rude knot on the crown of the head; and they delighted in an ornament that showed their ranks more lofty and terrible in the eyes of the enemy.83 Jealous as the Germans were of military renown, they all confessed the superior valor of the Suevi; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who, with a vast army, encountered the dictator Cæsar, declared that they esteemed it not a disgrace to have fled before a people to whose arms the immortal gods them selves were unequal.84

In the reign of the emperor Caracalla, an innumerable swarm of Suevi appeared on the banks of the Mein, and in the neighborhood of the Roman provinces, in quest either of food, of plunder, or of glory.85 The hasty army of volun teers gradually coalesced into a great and permanent nation, and as it was composed from so many different tribes, assumed the name of Alemanni,* or Allmen; to denote at once thei

80 Aurel. Victor. Eutrop. ix. 6.

8. Tacit. Germania, 38.

8 Cluver. Germ. Antiq. iii. 25.

3 Sic Suevi a ceteris Germanis, sic Suevorum ingenui a servis sep. arantur. A proud separation!

54 Cæsar in Bello Gallico, iv. 7.

Victor in Caracal. Dion Cassius, lxvii. p. 1350.

• The nation of the Alemanni was not originally formed by the Suevi

The atter

various lineage and their common bravery,86 was soon felt by the Romans in many a hostile inroad. The Alemanni fought chiefly on horseback; but their cavalry was rendered still more formidable by a mixture of light infantry, selected from the bravest and most active of the youth, whom frequent exercise had inured to accompany the horsemen in the longest march, the most rapid charge, or the most precipitate retreat.87

This warlike people of Germans had been astonished by the immense preparations of Alexander Severus; they were disınayed by the arms of his successor, a barbarian equal in valor and fierceness to themselves. But still hovering on the frontiers of the empire, they increased the general disorder that ensued after the death of Decius. They inflicted severe wounds on the rich provinces of Gaul; they were the first who removed the veil that covered the feeble majesty of Italy. A numerous body of the Alemanni penetrated across the Danube and through the Rhætian Alps into the plains of

86 This etymology (far different from those which amuse the fancy of the learned) is preserved by Asinius Quadratus, an original historian, quoted by Agathias, i. c. 5.

87 The Suevi engaged Cæsar in this manner, and the manœuvre deserved the approbation of the conqueror, (in Bello Gallico, i. 48.)

properly so called; these have always preserved their own name. Shortly afterwards they made (A. D. 357) an irruption into Rhætia, and it was not long after that they were reunited with the Alemanni. Still they have always been a distinct people; at the present day, the people who inhabit the north-west of the Black Forest call themselves Schwaben, Suabians, Sueves, while those who inhabit near the Rhine, in Ortenau, the Brisgaw, the Margraviate of Baden, do not consider themselves Suabians, and are by origin Alemanni.

The Teucteri and the Usipetæ, inhabitants of the interior and of the north of Westphalia, formed, says Gatterer, the nucleus of the Alemannic nation; they occupied the country where the name of the Alemanni first appears, as conquered in 213, by Caracalla. They were well trained to fight on horseback, (according to Tacitus, Germ. c. 32;) and Aurelius Victor gives the same praise to the Alemanni: finally, they never made part of the Frankish league. The Alemanni became subsequently a centre round which gathered a multitude of German tribes. See Eumen. Panegyr. c. 2. Amm. Marc. xviii. 2, xxix. 4. — G.

The question whether the Suevi was a generic name comprehending the clans which peopled central Germany, is rather hastily decided by M. Quizot. Mr. Greenwood, who has studied the modern German writers on their own origin, supposes the Suevi, Alemanni, and Marcomanni, one people, under different appellations. History of Germany, vol. i. — M.

Lombardy, advanced as far as Ravenna, and displayed the victorious banners of barbarians almost in sight of Rome.88

The insult and the danger rekindled in the senate some sparks of their ancient virtue. Both the emperors were engaged in far distant wars, Valerian in the East, and Gallienus on the Rhine. All the hopes and resources of the Romans were in themselves. In this emergency, the senators resumed the defence of the republic, drew out the Prætorian guards, who had been left to garrison the capital, and filled up their numbers, by enlisting into the public service the stoutest and most willing of the Plebeians. The Alemanni, astonished with the sudden appearance of an army more numerous than their own, retired into Germany, laden with spoil; and their retreat was esteemed as a victory by the unwarlike Romans.89

When Gallienus received the intelligence that his capital was delivered from the barbarians, he was much less delighted than alarmed with the courage of the senate, since it might one day prompt them to rescue the public from domestic tyranny as well as from foreign invasion. His timid ingrati tude was published to his subjects, in an edict which prohibited the senators from exercising any military employment, and even from approaching the camps of the legions. But his fears were groundless. The rich and luxurious nobles, sinking into their natural character, accepted, as a favor, this disgraceful exemption from military service; and as long as they were indulged in the enjoyment of their baths, their theatres, and their villas, they cheerfully resigned the more dangerous cares of empire to the rough hands of peasants and soldiers,90

Another invasion of the Alemanni, of a more formidable aspect, but more glorious event, is mentioned by a writer of the lower empire. Three hundred thousand of that warlike people are said to have been vanquished, in a battle near Milan, by Gallienus in person, at the head of only ten thousand Romans.91 We may, however, with great probability, ascribe this incredible victory either to the credulity of the historian, or to some exaggerated exploits of one of the emperor's lieutenants. It was by arms of a very different nature,

38 Hist. August. p. 215, 216. num, p. 8. Hieronym. Chron. 9 Zosimus, 1. i. p. 34.

Dexippus in the Excerpta Legatio-
Orosius, vii. 22.

90 Aurel. Victor, in Gallieno et Probo. His complaints breathe an uncommon spirit of freedom.

Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 631.

that Gallienus endeavored to protect Italy from the fury of the Germans. He espoused Pipa, the daughter of a king of the Marcomanni, a Suevic tribe, which was often confounded with the Alemanni in their wars and conquests.92 To the father, as the price of his alliance, he granted an ample settlement in Pannonia. The native charms of unpolished beauty seem to nave fixed the daughter in the affections of the inconstant emperor, and the bands of policy were more firmly connected oy those of love. But the haughty prejudice of Rome still refused the name of marriage to the profane mixture of a citi. zen and a barbarian; and has stigmatized the German princess with the opprobrious title of concubine of Gallienus.93

III. We have already traced the emigration of the Goths from Scandinavia, or at least from Prussia, to the mouth of the Borysthenes, and have followed their victorious arms from the Borysthenes to the Danube. Under the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, the frontier of the last-mentioned river was perpetually infested by the inroads of Germans and Sarmatians; but it was defended by the Romans with more than usual firmness and success. The provinces that were the seat of war, recruited the armies of Rome with an inexhausti ble supply of hardy soldiers; and more than one of these Illyrian peasants attained the station, and displayed the abilities, of a general. Though flying parties of the barbarians, who incessantly hovered on the banks of the Danube, penetrated sometimes to the confines of Italy and Macedonia, their progress was commonly checked, or their return intercepted, by the Imperial lieutenants.94 But the great stream of the Gothic hostilities was diverted into a very different channel. The Goths, in their new settlement of the Ukraine, soon became masters of the northern coast of the Euxine: to the south of that inland sea were situated the soft and wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which possessed all that could attract, and nothing that could resist, a barbarian conqueror.

The banks of the Borysthenes are only sixty miles distant from the narrow entrance 95 of the peninsula of Crim Tartary,

92 One of the Victors calls him king of the Marcomanni; the other. of the Germans.

93 See Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iii. p. 398, &c.

94 See the lives of Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus, in the Augustan History.

85 It is about half a league in breadth. Genealogical History of the Tartars p. 598.

known to the ancients under the name of Chersonesus Tau rica. On that inhospitable shore, Euripides, embellishing with exquisite art the tales of antiquity, has placed the scene of one of his most affecting tragedies.97 The bloody sacrifices of Diana, the arrival of Orestes and Pylades, and the triumph of virtue and religion over savage fierceness, serve to represent an historical truth, that the Tauri, the original inhabitants of the peninsula, were, in some degree, reclaimed from their brutal manners, by a gradual intercourse with the Grecian colonies, which settled along the maritime coast. The little kingdom of Bosphorus, whose capital was situated on the Straits, through which the Mæotis communicates itself to the Euxine, was composed of degenerate Greeks and half-civilized barbarians. It subsisted, as an independent state, from the time of the Peloponnesian war,98 was at last swallowed up by the ambition of Mithridates,99 and, with the rest of his dominions, sunk under the weight of the Roman arms. From the reign of Augustus,100 the kings of Bosphorus were the humble, but not useless, allies of the empire. By presents, by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the Isthmus, they effectually guarded against the roving plunderers of Sarmatia, the access of a country, which, from its peculiar situation and convenient harbors, commanded the Euxine Sea and Asia Minor. 101 As long as the sceptre was possessed by a lineal succession of kings, they acquitted themselves of their important charge with vigilance and success. Domestic factions, and the fears, or private interest, of obscure usurpers, who seized on the vacant throne, admitted the Goths into the heart of Bosphorus. With the acquisition of a superfluous waste of fertile soil, the conquerors obtained the command of a naval force, sufficient to transport their

96 M. de Peyssonel, who had been French Consul at Caffa, in his Observations sur les Peuples Barbares, qui ont habité les bords du Danube.

97 Euripides in Iphigenia in Taurid.

98 Strabo, 1. vii. p. 309. The first kings of Bosphorus were the allies of Athens.

99 Appian in Mithridat.

100 It was reduced by the arms of Agrippa. Orosius, vi. 21. Eutropius, vii. 9. The Romans once advanced within three days' march Tacit. Annal. xii. 17.

of the Tanais.

101 See the Toxaris of Lucian, if we credit the sincerity and the virtues of the Scythian, who relates a great war of his nation against the kings of Bosphorus.

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