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Numbers.

ested in these busy scenes is very different, according to the different condition of mankind. In great monarchies millions of obedient subjects pursue their useful occupations in peace and obscurity. The attention of the writer, as well as of the reader, is solely confined to a court, a capital, a regular army, and the districts which happen to be the occasional scene of military operations. But a state of freedom and barbarism, the season of civil commotions, or the situation of petty republics," raises almost every member of the community into action, and consequently into notice. The irregular divisions and the restless motions of the people of Germany dazzle our imagination, and seem to multiply their numbers. The profuse enumeration of kings and warriors, of armies and nations, inclines us to forget that the same objects are continually repeated under a variety of appellations, and that the most splendid appellations have been frequently lavished on the most inconsiderable objects.

87 Should we suspect that Athens contained only 21,000 citizens, and Sparta no more than 39,000? See Hume and Wallace on the number of mankind in ancient and modern times.a

This number, though too positively stated, is probably not far wrong as an average estimate. On the subject of Athenian population, see St. Croix, Acad. des Inscrip. xlviii.; Böckh, Public Economy of Athens, i. 47, Eng. trans.; Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. p. 381. The latter author estimates the citizens of Sparta at 33,000.-M.

CHAPTER X.

The Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian, and Gallienus.-The general Irruption of the Barbarians.-The Thirty Tyrants.

The nature of

A.D. 248-268.

FROM the great secular games celebrated by Philip to the death of the Emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous the subject. period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution. The confusion of the times and the scarcity of authentic memorials oppose equal difficulties to the historian who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture; and though he ought never to place his conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions, might, on some occasions, supply the want of historical materials.

The Emper

or Philip.

There is not, for instance, any difficulty in conceiving that the successive murders of so many emperors had loosened all the ties of allegiance between the prince and people; that all the generals of Philip were disposed to imitate the example of their master; and that the caprice of armies long since habituated to frequent and violent revolutions might every day raise to the throne the most obscure of their fellow-soldiers. History can only add that the rebellion against the Emperor Philip broke out in the summer of the year two hundred and forty-nine, among the legions of

Services, revolt, victory.

the Emperor Decius. A.D. 249.

Mæsia, and that a subaltern officer,' named Marinus, was the object of their seditious choice. Philip was alarmed. He dreaded lest the treason of the Mæsian army should prove the first spark of a general conflagration. Distracted with the consciousness of his guilt and of his danger, he communicated the intelligence to the senate. A gloomy silence prevailed, the effect of fear, and perhaps of disaffecand reign of tion, till at length Decius, one of the assembly, assuming a spirit worthy of his noble extraction, ventured to discover more intrepidity than the emperor seemed to possess. He treated the whole business with contempt, as a hasty and inconsiderate tumult, and Philip's rival as a phantom of royalty, who in a very few days would be destroyed by the same inconstancy that had created him. The speedy completion of the prophecy inspired Philip with a just esteem for so able a counsellor, and Decius appeared to him the only person capable of restoring peace and discipline to an army whose tumultuous spirit did not immediately subside after the murder of Marinus. Decius,' who long resisted his own nomination, seems to have insinuated the danger of presenting a leader of merit to the angry and apprehensive minds of the soldiers; and his prediction was again confirmed by the event. The legions of Mæsia forced their judge to become their accomplice. They left him only the alternative of death or the purple. His subsequent conduct, after that decisive measure, was unavoidable. He conducted or followed his army to the confines of Italy, whither Philip, collecting all his force to repel the formidable competitor whom he had raised up, advanced to meet him. The imperial troops were superior in number; but the rebels formed an army of veter

1 The expression used by Zosimus and Zonaras may signify that Marinus commanded a century, a cohort, or a legion.

2 His birth at Bubalia, a little village in Pannonia [near Sirmium—S.] (Eutrop. ix. [c. 4] Victor. in Cæsarib. [c. 29] ct Epitom. [c. 29]), seems to contradict, unless it was merely accidental, his supposed descent from the Decii. Six hundred years had bestowed nobility on the Decii: but at the commencement of that period they were only Plebeians of merit, and among the first who shared the consulship with the haughty Patricians. "Plebeia Deciorum animæ," etc. Juvenal, Sat. viii. 254. See the spirited speech of Decius, in Livy, x. 7, 8.

ans, commanded by an able and experienced leader. Philip was either killed in the battle or put to death a few days afterwards at Verona. His son and associate in the empire was massacred at Rome by the Prætorian guards; and the victorious Decius, with more favorable circumstances than the ambition of that age can usually plead, was universally acknowledged by the senate and provinces. It is reported that, immediately after his reluctant acceptance of the title of Augustus, he had assured Philip by a private message of his innocence and loyalty, solemnly protesting that, on his arrival in Italy, he would resign the imperial ornaments, and return to the condition of an obedient subject. His professions might be sincere; but in the situation where fortune had placed him, it was scarcely possible that he could either forgive or be forgiven.3

Marches against the Goths. A.D. 250.

The Emperor Decius had employed a few months in the works of peace and the administration of justice, when he was summoned to the banks of the Danube by the invasion of the GотHS. This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. So memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion of the Western empire, that the name of GоTHS is frequently but improperly used as a general appellation of rude and warlike barbarism.

Origin of the Goths from Scandinavia.

In the beginning of the sixth century, and after the conquest of Italy, the Goths, in possession of present greatness, very naturally indulged themselves in the prospect of past and of future glory. They wished to preserve the memory of their ancestors, and to transmit to posterity their own achievements. The principal minister of the court of Ravenna, the learned Cassiodorus, gratified the inclination of the conquerors in a Gothic history, which consisted of twelve books, now reduced to the imper

3

Zosimus, 1. i. [c. 22] p. 20. Zonaras, 1. xii. [c. 19] p. 625, edit. Par. [p. 584, edit. Bonn].

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fect abridgment of Jornandes. These writers passed with the most artful conciseness over the misfortunes of the nation, celebrated its successful valor, 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.

5 a

Many

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.

On the authority of Ablavius, Jornandes quotes some old Gothic chronicles in De Reb. Geticis, c. 4. 6 Jornandes, c. 3.

verse.

a The Scandinavian origin of the Goths has given rise to much discussion, and has been denied by several eminent modern scholars. The only reasons in favor of their Scandinavian origin are the testimony of Jornandes, and the existence of the name of Gothland in Sweden; but the testimony of Jornandes contains at the best only the tradition of the people respecting their origin, which is never of much value; and the mere fact of the existence of the name of Gothland in Sweden is not sufficient to prove that this country was the aboriginal abode of the people. When the Romans first saw the Goths, in the reign of Caracalla, they dwelt in the land of the Getæ. Hence Jornandes, Procopius, and many other writers, both ancient and modern, supposed the Goths to be the same as the Geta of the earlier historians. But the latter writers always regarded the Geta as Thracians; and if their opinion was correct, they could have had no connection with the Goths. Still, it is a startling fact that a nation called Gothi should have emigrated from Germany, and settled accidentally in the country of a people with a name so like their own as that of Geta. This may have happened by accident, but certainly all the probabilities are against it. Two hypotheses have been brought forward in modern times to meet this difficulty. One is that of Grimm, in his History of the German Language, who supposes that there was no migration of the Goths at all, that they were on the Lower Danube from the beginning, and that they were known to the earlier Greek and Latin writers as Geta: but the great objection to this opinion is the general belief of the earlier writers that the Geta were Thracians, and the latter were certainly not Germans. The other is that of Latham, who supposes, with much ingenuity, that the name of Get, or Goth, was the general name given by the Slavonic nations to the Lithuanians. According to this theory, the Goth-ones, or Guth-ones, at the mouth of the Vistula, mentioned by Tacitus and Ptolemy, are Lithuanians, and the Get-æ, on the Danube, belong to the same nation. Latham also believes that the Goths of a later period were Germans who migrated to the Danube, but that they did not bear the name of Goths till they settled in the country of the Geta. See Latham, The Germania of Tacitus, Epil. p. xxxviii. seq.-S.

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