of peace, of affluence, and perhaps of content.42 The daughters of Hilderic were entertained with the respectful tenderness due to their age and misfortune; and Justinian and Theodora accepted the honour of educating and enriching the female descendants of the great Theodosius. The bravest of the Vandal youth were distributed into five squadrons of cavalry, which adopted the name of their benefactor, and supported in the Persian wars the glory of their ancestors. But these rare exceptions, the reward of birth or valour, are insufficient to explain the fate of a nation, whose numbers, before a short and bloodless war, amounted to more than six hundred thousand persons. After the exile of their king and nobles, the servile crowd might purchase their safety by abjuring their character, religion, and language; and their degenerate posterity would be insensibly mingled with the common herd of African subjects. Yet even in the present age, and in the heart of the Moorish tribes, a curious traveller has discovered the white complexion and long flaxen hair of a northern race; 43 and it was formerly believed that the boldest of the Vandals fled beyond the power, or even the knowledge, of the Romans, to enjoy their solitary freedom on the shores of the Atlantic ocean. 44 Africa had been their empire, it became their prison; nor could they entertain an hope, or even a wish, of returning to the banks of the Elbe, where their brethren, of a spirit less adventurous, still wandered in their native forests. It was impossible for cowards to surmount the barriers of unknown seas and hostile Barbarians; it was impossible for brave men to expose their nakedness and defeat before the eyes of their countrymen, to describe the kingdoms which they had lost, and to claim a share of the humble inheritance which, in a happier hour, they had almost unanimously renounced.45 In the country between the Elbe and the Oder, several populous villages of Lusatia are inhabited by the Vandals : 42 In the Bélisaire of Marmontel, the king and the conqueror of Africa meet, sup, and converse, without recollecting each other. It is surely a fault of that romance, that not only the hero, but all to whom he had been so conspicuously known, appear to have lost their eyes or their memory. 43 Shaw, p. 59. Yet, since Procopius (1. ii. c. 13) speaks of a people of Mount Atlas, as already distinguished by white bodies and yellow hair, the phænomenon (which is likewise visible in the Andes of Peru, Buffon, tom. ii. p. 504) may naturally be ascribed to the elevation of the ground and the temperature of the air. 44 The geographer of Ravenna (1. iii. c. xi. p. 129, 130, 131. Paris, 1688) describes the Mauritania Gaditana (opposite to Cadiz), ubi gens Vandalorum, á Belisario devicta in Africâ, fugit, et nunquam comparuit. 45 A single voice had protested, and Genseric dismissed, without a formal answer, the Vandals of Germany; but those of Africa derided his prudence and affected to despise the poverty of their forests (Procopius, Vandal. 1. i. c. 22). Manners and defeat of the 535 they still preserve their language, their customs, and the purity of their blood; support with some impatience, the Saxon or Prussian yoke; and serve with secret and voluntary allegiance the descendant of their ancient kings, who in his garb and present fortune is confounded with the meanest of his vassals. 46 The name and situation of this unhappy people might indicate their descent from one common stock with the conquerors of Africa. But the use of a Sclavonian dialect more clearly represents them as the last remnant of the new colonies, who succeeded to the genuine Vandals, already scattered or destroyed in the age of Procopius. 47 If Belisarius had been tempted to hesitate in his allegiance, he Moors. A.D. might have urged, even against the emperor himself, the indispensable duty of saving Africa from an enemy more barbarous than the Vandals. The origin of the Moors is involved in darkness; they were ignorant of the use of letters. 48 Their limits cannot be precisely defined: a boundless continent was opened to the Libyan shepherds; the change of seasons and pastures regulated their motions; and their rude huts and slender furniture were transported with the same ease as their arms, their families, and their cattle, which consisted of sheep, oxen, and camels, 49 During the vigour of the Roman power, they observed a respectable distance from Carthage and the sea-shore; under the feeble reign of the Vandals they invaded the cities of Numidia, occupied the sea-coast from Tangier to Cæsarea, and pitched their camps, with impunity, in the fertile province of Byzacium. The formidable strength and artful conduct of Belisarius secured the neutrality of the Moorish princes, whose 46 From the mouth of the great elector (in 1687), Tollius describes the secret royalty and rebellious spirit of the Vandals of Brandenburgh, who could muster five or six thousand soldiers who had procured some cannon, &c. (Itinerar. Hungar. p. 42, apud Dubos, Hist. de la Monarchie Françoise, tom. i. p. 182, 183). The veracity, not of the elector, but of Tollius himself, may justly be suspected. [The (Teutonic) Vandals have, of course, nothing to do with the (Slavonic) Wends. The confusion arose from a custom of medieval writers to use Vandali to designate the Wends. Cp. the use of Siculi for the Szeklers of Transylvania.] 47 Procopius (1. i. c. 22) was in total darkness-ovde μvýμn is ovdè ŏvopa és èμè σώζεται. Under the reign of Dagobert (A.D. 630), the Sclavonian tribes of the Sorbi and Venedi already bordered on Thuringia (Mascou, Hist. of the Germans, xv. 3, 4, 5). 48 Sallust represents the Moors as a remnant of the army of Heracles (de Bell. Jugurth. c. 21), and Procopius (Vandal. l. ii. c. 10) as the posterity of the Cananæans who fled from the robber Joshua (Anons). He quotes two columns, with a Phonician inscription. I believe in the columns-I doubt the inscription—and I reject the pedigree. 49 Virgil (Georgic. iii. 339) and Pomponius Mela (i. 8) describe the wandering life of the African shepherds, similar to that of the Arabs and Tartars; and Shaw (p. 222) is the best commentator on the poet and the geographer. vanity aspired to receive, in the emperor's name, the ensigns of their regal dignity.50 They were astonished by the rapid event, and trembled in the presence of their conqueror. But his approaching departure soon relieved the apprehensions of a savage and superstitious people; the number of their wives allowed them to disregard the safety of their infant hostages; and, when the Roman general hoisted sail in the port of Carthage, he heard the cries, and almost beheld the flames, of the desolated province. Yet he persisted in his resolution; and, leaving only a part of his guards to reinforce the feeble garrisons, he entrusted the command of Africa to the eunuch Solomon,51 who proved himself not unworthy to be the successor of Belisarius. In the first invasion, some detachments, with two officers of merit, were surprised and intercepted; but Solomon speedily assembled his troops, marched from Carthage into the heart of the country, and in two great battles destroyed sixty thousand of the Barbarians. The Moors depended on their multitude, their swiftness, and their inaccessible mountains; and the aspect and smell of their camels are said to have produced some confusion in the Roman cavalry. 52 But, as soon as they were commanded to dismount, they derided this contemptible obstacle; as soon as the columns ascended the hills, the naked and disorderly crowd was dazzled by glittering arms and regular evolutions; and the menace of their female prophets was repeatedly fulfilled, that the Moors should be discomfited by a beardless antagonist. The victorious eunuch advanced thirteen days' journey from Carthage, to besiege mount Aurasius,53 the citadel, and at the same time the garden, of Numidia. That range of hills, a branch of the great Atlas, contains within a circumference of one hundred and 50 The customary gifts were a sceptre, a crown or cap, a white cloak, a figured tunic and shoes, all adorned with gold and silver; nor were these precious metals less acceptable in the shape of coin (Procop. Vandal. 1. i. c. 25). See the African government and warfare of Solomon, in Procopius (Vandal. 1. ii. c. 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20). He was recalled, and again restored; and his last victory dates in the xiiith year of Justinian (A.D. 539). An accident in his childhood had rendered him an eunuch (1. i. c. 11); the other Roman generals were amply furnished with beards, wywvos éμmindáμevoi (1. ii. c. 8). 52 This natural antipathy of the horse for the camel is affirmed by the ancients (Xenophon, Cyropæd. 1. vi. p. 438; 1. vii. p. 483, 492, edit. Hutchinson. Polyæn. Stratagem. vii. 6. Plin. Hist. Nat. viii. 26. Ælian. de Natur. Animal. I. iii. c. 7); but it is disproved by daily experience, and derided by the best judges, the Orientals (Voyage d'Oléarius, p. 553). 53 Procopius is the first who describes mount Aurasius (Vandal. 1. ii. c. 13. De Edific. 1. vi. c. 7). He may be compared with Leo Africanus (dell' Africa, parte v. in Ramusio [Navigationi et Viaggi, 1563], tom. i. fol. 77 [leg. 71] recto), Marmol (tom. i. p. 430), and Shaw (p. 56-59). [Cp. Diehl, L'Afrique byzant., p. 237 sqq.] [A.D. 539] Neutrality of twenty miles, a rare variety of soil and climate; the intermediate valleys and elevated plains abound with rich pastures, perpetual streams, and fruits of a delicious taste and uncommon magnitude. This fair solitude is decorated with the ruins of Lambesa, a Roman city, once the seat of a legion, and the residence of forty thousand inhabitants. The Ionic temple of Æsculapius is encompassed with Moorish huts; and the cattle now graze in the midst of an amphitheatre, under the shade of Corinthian columns. A sharp perpendicular rock rises above the level of the mountain, where the African princes deposited their wives and treasures; and a proverb is familiar to the Arabs, that the man may eat fire, who dares to attack the craggy cliffs and inhospitable natives of mount Aurasius. This hardy enterprise was twice attempted by the eunuch Solomon: from the first he retreated with some disgrace; and in the second, his patience and provisions were almost exhausted; and he must again have retired, if he had not yielded to the impetuous courage of his troops, who audaciously scaled, to the astonishment of the Moors, the mountain, the hostile camp, and the summit of the Geminian Rock. A citadel was erected to secure this important conquest, and to remind the Barbarians of their defeat; and, as Solomon pursued his march to the west, the long-lost province of Mauritanian Sitifi was again annexed to the Roman empire. The Moorish war continued several years after the departure of Belisarius; but the laurels which he resigned to a faithful lieutenant may be justly ascribed to his own triumph. The experience of past faults, which may sometimes correct the Visigoths the mature age of an individual, is seldom profitable to the successive generations of mankind. The nations of antiquity, careless of each other's safety, were separately vanquished and enslaved by the Romans. This awful lesson might have instructed the Barbarians of the West to oppose, with timely counsels and confederate arms, the unbounded ambition of Justinian. Yet the same error was repeated, the same consequences were felt, and the Goths, both of Italy and Spain, insensible of their approaching danger, beheld with indifference, and even with joy, the rapid downfall of the Vandals. the failure of the royal line, Theudes, a valiant and powerful chief, ascended the throne of Spain, which he had formerly administered in the name of Theodoric and his infant grandson. Under his command the Visigoths besieged the fortress of Ceuta on the African coast; but, while they spent the Sabbath-day in peace and devotion, the pious security of their camp was invaded [A.D. 531] After the Romans A.D. 550-620 by a sally from the town; and the king himself, with some difficulty and danger, escaped from the hands of a sacrilegious enemy.54 It was not long before his pride and resentment were gratified by a suppliant embassy from the unfortunate Gelimer, who implored, in his distress, the aid of the Spanish monarch. But, instead of sacrificing these unworthy passions to the dictates of generosity and prudence, Theudes amused the ambassadors, till he was secretly informed of the loss of Carthage, and then dismissed them with obscure and contemptuous advice, to seek in their native country a true knowledge of the state of the Vandals.55 The long continuance of the Italian war delayed the punishment conquests of of the Visigoths; and the eyes of Theudes were closed before in Spain. they tasted the fruits of his mistaken policy. After his death, the sceptre of Spain was disputed by a civil war. The weaker candidate solicited the protection of Justinian, and ambitiously subscribed a treaty of alliance, which deeply wounded the independence and happiness of his country. Several cities, both on the ocean and the Mediterranean, were ceded to the Roman troops, who afterwards refused to evacuate those pledges, as it should seem, either of safety or payment; and, as they were fortified by perpetual supplies from Africa, they maintained their impregnable stations, for the mischievous purpose of inflaming the civil and religious factions of the Barbarians. Seventy years elapsed before this painful thorn could be extirpated from the bosom of the monarchy; and, as long as the emperors retained any share of these remote and useless possessions, their vanity might number Spain in the list of their provinces, and the successors of Alaric in the rank of their vassals. 56 threatens the Italy. A.D. The error of the Goths who reigned in Italy was less excusable Belisarius than that of their Spanish brethren, and their punishment was Ostrogoths of still more immediate and terrible. From a motive of private 534 revenge, they enabled their most dangerous enemy to destroy their most valuable ally. A sister of the great Theodoric had been given in marriage to Thrasimond the African king: 57 on 54 Isidor. Chron. p. 722, edit. Grot. Mariana, Hist. Hispan. 1. v. c. 8, p. 173. Yet, according to Isidore, the siege of Ceuta and the death of Theudes happened A. E. H. 586, A.D. 548 [this is not implied by Isidore]; and the place was defended, not by the Vandals, but by the Romans. [Maximus of Saragossa (Chr. Min. ii. 221) puts the death of Theudes in A.D. 544.Ĵ 55 Procopius, Vandal. l. i. c. 24. 56 See the original Chronicle of Isidore, and the vth and vith books of the History of Spain by Mariana. The Romans were finally expelled by Suintila king of the Visigoths (A.D. 621-626), after their reunion to the Catholic church. 67 See the marriage and fate of Amalafrida in Procopius (Vandal. 1. i. c. 8, 9), and in Cassiodorius (Var. ix. 1) the expostulation of her royal brother. Compare likewise the Chronicle of Victor Tunnunensis. |
