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CHAP. now reduced to the imperfect abridgment of Jornandes1. These writers passed with the most artful conciseness over the misfortunes of the nation, celebrated its successful valour, and adorned the triumph with many Asiatic trophies, that more properly belonged to the people of Scythia. On the faith of ancient songs, the uncertain, but the only, memorials of barbarians, they deduced the first origin of the Goths, from the vast island, or peninsula, of Scandinavia. That extreme country of the north was not unknown to the conquerors of Italy: the ties of ancient consanguinity had been strengthened by recent offices of friendship; and a Scandinavian king had cheerfully abdicated his savage greatness, that he might pass the remainder of his days in the peaceful and polished court of Ravenna. Many vestages, which cannot be ascribed to the arts of popular vanity, attest the ancient residence of the Goths in the countries beyond the Baltic. From the time of the geographer Ptolemy, the southern part of Sweden seems to have continued in the possession of the less enterprising remnant of the nation, and a large territory is even at present divided into east and west Gothland. During the middle ages (from the ninth to the twelfth century) whilst Christianity was advancing with a slow progress into the north, the Goths and the Swedes composed two distinct and sometimes hostile members of the same monarchy', The latter of these two names has prevailed without extinguishing the former. The Swedes, who might well be satisfied with their own fame in arms, have in every age claimed the kindred glory of the Goths. In a moment of discontent against the court of Rome, Charles the Twelfth insinuated, that his victorious troops were not degenerated from their brave ances

4 See the prefaces of Cassiodorus and Jornandes: it is surprising that the latter should be omitted in the excellent edition published by Grotius, of the Gothic writers.

5 On the authority of Ablavius, Jornandes quotes some old Gothic chro. nicles in verse. De Reb. Geticis, c. 4.

6 Jornandes, c. 3.

7 See in the Prolegomena of Grotius some large extracts from Adam of Bremen, and Saxo Grammaticus. The former wrote in the year 1077, the latter flourished about the year 1200.

tors, who had already subdued the mistress of the CHAP. world.

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Till the end of the eleventh century, a celebrated Religion temple subsisted at Upsal, the most considerable town of the of the Swedes and Goths. It was enriched with the Goths. gold which the Scandinavians had acquired in their piratical adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth representations of the three principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation, and the god of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized every ninth year, nine animals of every species (without excepting the human) were sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the sacred grove adjacent to the temple. The only traces that now subsist of this barbaric superstition are contained in the Edda, a system of mythology, compiled in Iceland about the thirteenth century, and studied by the learned of Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of their an#cient traditions.

tions and

Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity of the InstituEdda, we can easily distinguish two persons con- death of founded under the name of Odin; the god of war, and Odin. the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet of the north, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the invincible valour of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame, which he acquired, of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had propagated during a long and prosperous life, he confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal places, has

8 Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII. 1. iii. When the Austrians desired the aid of the court of Rome against Gustavus Adolphus, they always represented that conqueror as the lineal successor of Alaric. Harte's History of Gustavus, vol. ii. p. 123.

9 See Adam of Bremen in Grotii Prolegomenis, p. 104. The temple of Upsal was destroyed by Ingo king of Sweden, who began his reign in the year 1075, and about fourscore years afterwards a Christian cathedral was erected on its ruins. See Dalm's History of Sweden, in the Bibliothéque Raisonnée.

CHAP. tening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the god of war. 10

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Agreeable

but uncer

The native and proper habitation of Odin is distintain hyp guished by the appellation of As-gard. The happy thesis con- resemblance of that name with As-burg, or As-of", cerning words of a similar signification, has given rise to an

Odin.

Emigra

Goths

historical system of so pleasing a contexture, that we could almost wish to persuade ourselves of its truth. It is supposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the lake Mæotis, till the fall of Mithridates, and the arms of Pompey menaced the north with servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people, which, in some remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in numerous swarms from the neighbourhood of the Polar circle, to chastise the oppressors of mankind12.

If so many successive generations of Goths were cation of the pable of preserving a faint tradition of their Scandifrom Scan-navian origin, we must not expect, from such unletterdinavia in-ed barbarians, any distinct account of the time and cirto Prussia. cumstances of their emigration. To cross the Baltic

was an easy and natural attempt. The inhabitants of Sweden were masters of a sufficient number of large vessels, with oars, and the distance is little more

10 Mallet Introduction à l'Histoire du Dannemarc.

11 Mallet, c. iv. p. 55, has collected from Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Stephanus Byzantinus, the vestiges of such a city and people.

12 This wonderful expedition of Odin, which, by deducing the enmity of the Goths and Romans from so memorable a cause, might supply the noble groundwork of an Epic poem, cannot safely be received as authentic history. According to the obvious sense of the Edda, and the interpreta tion of the most skilful critics, As-gard, instead of denoting a real city of the Asiatic Sarmatia, is the fictitious appellation of the mystic abode of the gods, the Olympus of Scandinavia: from whence the prophet was supposed to descend, when he announced his new religion to the Gothic nations, who were already seated in the southern parts of Sweden.

13 Tacit. Germania, c. 44.

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than one hundred miles from Carlscroon to the nearest CHAP. ports of Pomerania and Prussia. Here, at length, we land on firm and historic ground. At least as early as the Christian æra, and as late as the age of the Antonines15, the Goths were established towards the mouth of the Vistula, and in that fertile province where the commercial cities of Thorn, Elbing, Koningsberg, and Dantzick were long afterwards founded. Westward of the Goths, the numerous tribes of the Vandals were spread along the banks of the Oder, and the sea-coast of Pomerania and Mecklenburgh. A striking resemblance of manners, complexion, religion, and language, seemed to indicate that the Vandals and the Goths, were originally one great people". The latter appear to have been subdivided into Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepida. The distinction among the Vandals was more strongly marked by the independent names of Heruli, Burgundians, Lombards, and a variety of other petty states, many of which, in a future age, expanded themselves into powerful monarchies.

Prussia

In the age of the Antonines, the Goths were still From seated in Prussia. About the reign of Alexander Se- to the verus, the Roman province of Dacia had already ex- Ukraine. perienced their proximity by frequent and destructive inroads19. In this interval, therefore, of about seventy years, we must place the second migration of the

14 Tacit. Annal. ii. 62. If we could yield a firm assent to the naviga tions of Pytheas of Marseilles, we must allow that the Goths had passed the Baltic at least three hundred years before Christ.

15 Ptolemy, l. ii.

16 By the German colonies who followed the arms of the Teutonic knights. The conquest and conversion of Prussia were completed by those adventurers in the thirteenth century.

17 Pliny (Hist. Natur. iv. 14.) and Procopius (in Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. 1.) agree in this opinion. They lived in distant ages, and possessed different means of investigating the truth.

18 The Ostro and Visi, the eastern and western Goths obtained those denominations from their original seats in Scandinavia. In all their future marches and settlements they preserved, with their names, the same rela tive situation. When they first departed from Sweden, the infant colony was contained in three vessels. The third being a heavy sailer, lagged be hind, and the crew, which afterwards swelled into a nation, received from that circumstance the appellation of Gepida, or loiterers. Jornandes, c. 17..~ 19 See a fragment of Peter Patricius in the Excerpta Legationum; and with regard to its probable date, see Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iii. p. 346.

VOL. I.

Nn

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CHAP. Goths from the Baltic to the Euxine; but the cause that produced it lies concealed among the various motives which actuate the conduct of unsettled barbarians. Either a pestilence, or a famine, a victory, or a defeat, an oracle of the Gods, or the eloquence of a daring leader, were sufficient to impel the Gothic arms on the milder climates of the south. Besides the influence of a martial religion, the numbers and spirit of the Goths were equal to the most dangerous adventures. The use of round bucklers and short swords rendered them formidable in a close engagement; the manly obedience which they yielded to hereditary kings, gave uncommon union and stability to their councils20; and the renowned Amala, the hero of that age, and the tenth ancestor of Theodoric, king of Italy, enforced, by the ascendant of personal merit, the prerogative of his birth, which he derived from the Anses, or demigods of the Gothic nation".

The Gothic na

tion in

The fame of a great enterprise excited the bravest warriors from all the Vandalic states of Germany, creases in many of whom are seen a few years afterwards comits march. bating under the common standard of the Goths22. The

first motions of the emigrants carried them to the banks of the Prypec, a river universally conceived by the ancients to be the southern branch of the Borysthenes23. The windings of that great stream through the plains of Poland and Russia gave a direction to their line of march, and a constant supply of fresh water and pasturage to their numerous herds of cattle. They followed the unknown course of the river, confident in their valour, and careless of whatever power might oppose their progress. The Bastarnæ and the Venedi were the first who presented themselves; and the

20 Omnium harum gentium insigne, rotunda scuta, breves gladii, et erga reges obsequium. Tacit. Germania, c. 43. The Goths probably acquired their iron by the commerce of amber.

21 Jornandes, c. 13, 14.

22 The Heruli, and the Uregundi or Burgundi, are particularly men. tioned. See Mascou's History of the Germans, 1. v. A passage in the Augustan History, p. 28, seems to allude to this great emigration. The Marcomannic war was partly occasioned by the pressure of barbarous tribes, who fled before the arms of more northern barbarians.

23 D'Anville, Geographie Ancienne, and the third part of his incomparable map of Europe.

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