The Danube

frontier.

course of the Rhine and the Danube. The latter of those mighty streams, which rises at the distance of only and Illyrian thirty miles from the former, flows above thirteen hundred miles, for the most part to the southeast, collects the tribute of sixty navigable rivers, and is at length, through six mouths, received into the Euxine, which appears scarcely equal to such an accession of waters." The provinces of the Danube soon acquired the general appellation of Illyricum, or the Illyrian frontier," and were esteemed the most warlike of the empire; but they deserve to be more particularly considered under the names of Rhætia, Noricum, Pannonia, Dalmatia, Dacia, Mæsia, Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece.

Rhætia.

The province of Rhætia, which soon extinguished the name of the Vindelicians, extended from the summit of the Alps to the banks of the Danube, from its source as far as its conflux with the Inn. The greatest part of the flat country is subject to the elector of Bavaria; the city of Augsburg is protected by the constitution of the German empire; the Grisons are safe in their mountains; and the country of Tyrol is ranked among the numerous provinces of the House of Austria.

Noricum and
Pannonia.

The wide extent of territory which is included between the Inn, the Danube, and the Save-Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Lower Hungary, and Sclavonia-was known to the ancients under the names of Noricum and Pannonia. In their original state of independence their fierce inhabitants were intimately connected. Under the Roman government they were frequently united, and they still remain the patrimony of a single family. They now contain the residence of a German prince, who styles himself Emperor of the Romans, and form the centre, as well as strength, of the Austrian power. It may not be improper to observe that, if we except Bohemia, Moravia, the northern skirts of

78 Tournefort, Voyages en Grèce et Asie Mineure, lettre xviii.

79 The name of Illyricum originally belonged to the sea-coast of the Adriatic, and was gradually extended by the Romans from the Alps to the Euxine sea. See Severini, Pannonia, 1. i. c. 3.

Austria, and a part of Hungary between the Theiss and the Danube, all the other dominions of the House of Austria were comprised within the limits of the Roman empire.

Dalmatia.

a

Dalmatia, to which the name of Illyricum more properly belonged, was a long but narrow tract between the Save and the Adriatic. The best part of the sea-coast, which still retains its ancient appellation, is a province of the Venetian State, and the seat of the little republic of Ragusa. The inland parts have assumed the Sclavonian names of Croatia and Bosnia; the former obeys an Austrian governor, the latter a Turkish pasha; but the whole country is still infested by tribes of barbarians, whose savage independence irregularly marks the doubtful limit of the Christian and Mahometan power.

Mæsia and
Dacia.

80

After the Danube had received the waters of the Theiss and the Save, it acquired, at least among the Greeks, the name of Ister." It formerly divided Mæsia and Dacia, the latter of which, as we have already seen, was a conquest of Trajan, and the only province beyond the river. If we inquire into the present state of those countries, we shall find that, on the left hand of the Danube, Temeswar and Transylvania have been annexed, after many revolutions, to the crown of Hungary; while the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia acknowledge the supremacy of the Ottoman Porte. On the right hand of the Danube, Mæsia, which during the Middle Ages was broken into the barbarian kingdoms of Servia and Bulgaria, is again united in Turkish slavery.

80 A Venetian traveller, the Abbate Fortis, has lately given us some account of those very obscure countries. But the geography and antiquities of the western Illyricum can be expected only from the munificence of the emperor, its sovereign.b

81 The Save rises near the confines of Istria, and was considered by the more early Greeks as the principal stream of the Danube.

The sea-coast of Dalmatia, together with Ragusa, now forms part of the Austrian dominions.-S.

b A Translation of the Travels of the Abbate Fortis was published in London in 1788. But the best account of these countries is by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in his “Dalmatia and Montenegro,” London, 1848.—S.

Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece.

The appellation of Roumelia, which is still bestowed by the Turks on the extensive countries of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, preserves the memory of their ancient state under the Roman empire. In the time of the Antonines, the martial regions of Thrace, from the mountains of Hamus and Rhodope to the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, had assumed the form of a province. Notwithstanding the change of masters and of religion, the new city of Rome, founded by Constantine on the banks of the Bosphorus, has ever since remained the capital of a great monarchy. The kingdom of Macedonia, which, under the reign of Alexander, gave laws to Asia, derived more solid advantages from the policy of the two Philips; and, with its dependencies of Epirus and Thessaly, extended from the Ægean to the Ionian sea. When we reflect on the fame of Thebes and Argos, of Sparta and Athens, we can scarcely persuade ourselves that so many immortal republics of ancient Greece were lost in a single province of the Roman empire, which, from the superior influence of the Achæan league, was usually denominated the province of Achaia.

Asia Minor.

Such was the state of Europe under the Roman emperors. The provinces of Asia, without excepting the transient conquests of Trajan, are all comprehended within the limits of the Turkish power. But, instead of following the arbitrary divisions of despotism and ignorance, it will be safer for us, as well as more agreeable, to observe the indelible characters of nature. The name of Asia Minor is attributed, with some propriety, to the peninsula which, confined between the Euxine and the Mediterranean, advances from the Euphrates towards Europe. The most extensive and flourishing district westward of Mount Taurus and the river Halys was dignified by the Romans with the exclusive title of Asia. The jurisdiction of that province extended over the ancient monarchies of Troy, Lydia, and Phrygia, the maritime countrics of the Pamphylians, Lycians, and Carians, and the Grecian colonies of Ionia, which equalled in arts, though not in arms, the glory of their parent. The kingdoms of Bithynia and Pontus possessed the northern side of the peninsula from

Constantinople to Trebizond. On the opposite side the province of Cilicia was terminated by the mountains of Syria: the inland country, separated from the Roman Asia by the river Halys, and from Armenia by the Euphrates, had once formed the independent kingdom of Cappadocia. In this place we may observe that the northern shores of the Euxine, beyond Trebizond in Asia, and beyond the Danube in Europe, acknowledged the sovereignty of the emperors, and received at their hands either tributary princes or Roman garrisons. Budzak, Crim Tartary, Circassia, and Mingrelia are the modern appellations of those savage countries."

Syria, Phonicia, and

Under the successors of Alexander, Syria was the seat of the Seleucidæ, who reigned over Upper Asia till the successful revolt of the Parthians confined their dominions between the Euphrates and the MediterraPalestine. nean. When Syria became subject to the Romans, it formed the eastern frontier of their empire: nor did that province, in its utmost latitude, know any other bounds than the mountains of Cappadocia to the north, and towards the south the confines of Egypt and the Red Sea. Phoenicia and Palestine were sometimes annexed to, and sometimes separated from, the jurisdiction of Syria. The former of these was a narrow and rocky coast; the latter was a territory scarcely superior to Wales, either in fertility or extent. Yet Phoenicia and Palestine will forever live in the memory of mankind; since America, as well as Europe, has received letters from the one, and religion from the other.63 A sandy

82 See the Periplus of Arrian. He examined the coasts of the Euxine when he was Governor of Cappadocia.

83 The progress of religion is well known. The use of letters was introduced among the savages of Europe about fifteen hundred years before Christ; and the

This comparison is exaggerated, with the intention, no doubt, of attacking the authority of the Bible, which boasts of the fertility of Palestine. But not only do many ancient writers extol the fertility of Palestine (Tac. Hist. v. 6; Amm. Marc. xiv. 8; Joseph. Hist. vi. 1, § 1), but even in the present day, the wars and misgovernment of ages have not exhausted the natural richness of the soil.Abridged from G. & M.

b The time at which the use of letters was introduced into Greece by the Phoenicians is unknown, but certainly at a much later period than is specified by Gibbon. The earliest Greek inscriptions extant are not much more ancient than the fiftieth Olympiad, or B.C. 580.-S.

desert, alike destitute of wood and water, skirts along the doubtful confine of Syria, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. The wandering life of the Arabs was inseparably connected with their independence; and wherever, on some spots less barren than the rest, they ventured to form any settled habitations, they soon became subjects to the Roman empire."

Egypt.

The geographers of antiquity have frequently hesitated to what portion of the globe they should ascribe Egypt." By its situation, that celebrated kingdom is included within the immense peninsula of Africa; but it is accessible only on the side of Asia, whose revolutions, in almost every period of history, Egypt has humbly obeyed. A Roman præfect was seated on the splendid throne of the Ptolemies; and the iron sceptre of the Mamalukes is now in the hands of a Turkish pasha. The Nile flows down the country above five hundred miles, from the Tropic of Cancer to the Mediterranean, and marks on either side the extent of fertility by the measure of its inundations. Cyrene, situate towards the west and along the sea-coast, was first a Greek colony, afterwards a province of Egypt, and is now lost in the desert of Barca.

From Cyrene to the ocean the coast of Africa extends above fifteen hundred miles; yet so closely is it pressed between the Mediterranean and the Sahara, or sandy Africa. desert, that its breadth seldom exceeds fourscore or a hundred miles. The eastern division was considered by the Romans as the more peculiar and proper province of Africa. Till the arrival of the Phoenician colonies that fertile country was inhabited by the Libyans, the most savage of mankind. Under the immediate jurisdiction of Carthage it

era.

Europeans carried them to America about fifteen centuries after the Christian But in a period of three thousand years the Phoenician alphabet received considerable alterations, as it passed through the hands of the Greeks and Romans. 84 Dion Cassius, lib. lxviii. [c. 14] p. 1131.

85 Ptolemy and Strabo, with the modern geographers, fix the isthmus of Suez as the boundary of Asia and Africa. Dionysius, Mela, Pliny, Sallust, Hirtius, and Solinus have preferred for that purpose the western branch of the Nile, or even the great Catabathmus, or descent, which last would assign to Asia, not only Egypt, but part of Libya.