VIII. the age of seven years they were taught to speak chap. truth, to shoot with the bow, and to ride; and it was universally confessed, that in the two last of these arts, they had made a more than common proficiency *. The most distinguished youth were educated under the monarch's eye, practised their exercises in the gate of his palace, and were severely trained up to the habits of temperance and obedience, in their long and laborious parties of hunting. In every province, the satrap maintained a like school of military virtue. The Persian nobles (so natural is the idea of feudal tenures) received from the king's bounty lands and houses, on the condition of their service in war. They were ready on the first summons to mount on horseback, with a martial and splendid train of followers, and to join the numerous bodies of guards, who were carefully selected from amongst the most robust slaves, and the bravest adventurers of Asia. These armies, both of light and of heavy cavalry, equally formidable by the impetuosity of their charge, and the rapidity of their motions, threatened, as an impending cloud, the eastern provinces of the declining empire of Rome +. CHAP. 24 ་ *The Persians are still the most skilful horsemen, and their horses the finest in the East. + From Herodotus, Xenophon, Herodian, Ammianus, Chardin, &c. I have extracted such probable accounts of the Persian nobility, as seem either common to every age, or particular to that of the Sassanides. СНАР, IX. The State of Germany till the Invasion of the Barbarians, in the Time of the Emperor Decius. THE noterads HE government and religion of Persia have deserved some notice, from their connexion with the decline and fall of the Roman empire. We shall occasionally mention the Scythian, or Sarmatian tribes, which, with their arms and horses, their flocks and herds, their wives and families, wandered over the immense plains which spread themselves from the Caspian Sea to the Vistula, from the confines of Persia to those of Germany, But the warlike Germans, who first resisted, then invaded, and at length overturned the western monarchy of Rome, will occupy a much more important place in this history, and possess a stronger, and, if we may use the expression, a more domestic, claim to our attention and regard. The most civilised nations of modern Europe issued from the woods of Germany; and in the rude institutions of those barbarians we may still distinguish the original principles of our present laws and manners. In their primitive state of simplicity and independence, the Germans were surveyed by the discerning eye, and delineated by the masterly pencil, of Tacitus, the first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts. The expressive conciseness of his descriptions has deserved to ex ercise ercise the diligence of innumerable antiquarians, CHA P. and to excite the genius and penetration of the IX. philosophic historian of our own times. The rian of our ow subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer. We shall therefore content ourselves with observing, and indeed with repeating, some of the most important circumstances of climate, of manners, and of institutions, which rendered the wild barbarians of Germany such formidable enemies to the Roman power. A Ancient Germany, excluding from its inde- Extent of Germany. pendent limits the province westward of the Rhine, which had submitted to the Roman yoke, extended itself over a third part of Europe. Almost the whole of modern Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livonia, Prussia, and the greater part of Poland, were peopled by the various tribes of one great nation, whose complexion, manners, and language, denoted a common origin, and preserved a striking resemblance. On the west, ancient Germany was divided by the Rhine from the Gallic, and on the south, by the Danube, from the Illyrian provinces of the empire. A ridge of hills, rising from the Danube, and called the Carpathian mountains, covered Germany on the side of Dacia or Hungary. The eastern frontier was faintly marked by the mutual fears of the Germans and the Sarmatians, and was often confounded by the mixture of warring and confederating tribes of the two nations. IX. CHAP. In the remote darkness of the north, the ancients imperfectly descried a frozen ocean that lay be yond the Baltic sea, and beyond the Peninsula, or islands of Scandinavia. Climate. H Some ingenious writers + have suspected that i Europe was much colder formerly than it is at present; and the most ancient descriptions of the climate of Germany tend exceedingly to confirm ́their theory. The general complaints of intense frost, and eternal winter, are perhaps little to be regarded, since we have no method of reducing to the accurate standard of the thermometer, the feelings, or the expressions of an orator, born in the happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall select two remarkable circumstances of a less equivocal nature. 1. The great rivers which covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and the Danube were frequently frozen over, and capable of supporting the most enormous weights. The barbarians, who often chose that severe season for their inroads, transported, without apprehension or danger, their numerous armies, their cavalry, *The modern philosophers of Sweden seem agreed, that the waters of the Baltic gradually sink in a regular proportion, which they have ventured to estimate at half an inch every year. Twenty ceuturies ago, the flat country of Scandinavia must have been covered by the sea; while the high lands rose above the waters, as so many islands of various forms and dimensions. Such indeed is the notion given us by Mela, Pliny, and Tacitus, of the vast countries round the Baltic. See in the Bibliotheque Raisonne, tom. xl. and xlv. a large abstract of Dalin's History of Sweden, composed in the Swedish language. † In particular, Mr Hume, the Abbe du Bos' and M. Pelloutier, Hist. des Celtes, tom. i. cavalry, and their heavy waggons, over a vast c day, * Diodorus Siculus, 1. v. p. 840. Edit. Wessel. Herodian, 1. vi. p. 221. Jornandes, c. 55. On the banks of the Danube, the wine, when brought to table, was frequently frozen into great lamps, frusta vini. Ovid. Epist. ex Ponto, l. iv. 7, 9, 10. Virgil, Georgic. 1. iii. 355. The fact is confirmed by a soldier and a philosopher, who had experienced the intense cold of Thrace. See Xenophon, Anabasis, 1. vii. p. 560. Edit. Hutchinson. + Buffon Histoire Naturelle, tom, xii. p. 79, 116. + Cæsar de Bell. Gallic. vi. 23, &c. The most inquisitive of the Germans were ignorant of its utmost limits, although some of them had travelled in it more than sixty days journey. Cluverius (Germania Antiqua, 1. iii. c. 47.) investigates the small and scattered remains of the Hercynian wood. H A P. IX. |