George MacDonald - "St. George and St. Michael Vol. II"

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The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

E >> Edward Gibbon >> The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire




[Footnote 4: Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, tom. xii. p. 79, 116.]
[Footnote 5: Caesar 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.

Note: The passage of Caesar, "parvis renonum tegumentis
utuntur," is obscure, observes Luden, (Geschichte des Teutschen
Volkes,) and insufficient to prove the reindeer to have existed
in Germany. It is supported however, by a fragment of Sallust.
Germani intectum rhenonibus corpus tegunt. - M. It has been
suggested to me that Caesar (as old Gesner supposed) meant the
reindeer in the following description. Est bos cervi figura
cujus a media fronte inter aures unum cornu existit, excelsius
magisque directum (divaricatum, qu ?) his quae nobis nota sunt
cornibus. At ejus summo, sicut palmae, rami quam late
diffunduntur. Bell. vi. - M. 1845.]
[Footnote 6: Cluverius (Germania Antiqua, l. iii. c. 47)
investigates the small and scattered remains of the Hercynian
wood.]

[Footnote 7: Charlevoix, Histoire du Canada.]

It is difficult to ascertain, and easy to exaggerate, the
influence of the climate of ancient Germany over the minds and
bodies of the natives. Many writers have supposed, and most have
allowed, though, as it should seem, without any adequate proof,
that the rigorous cold of the North was favorable to long life
and generative vigor, that the women were more fruitful, and the
human species more prolific, than in warmer or more temperate
climates. ^8 We may assert, with greater confidence, that the
keen air of Germany formed the large and masculine limbs of the
natives, who were, in general, of a more lofty stature than the
people of the South, ^9 gave them a kind of strength better
adapted to violent exertions than to patient labor, and inspired
them with constitutional bravery, which is the result of nerves
and spirits. The severity of a winter campaign, that chilled the
courage of the Roman troops, was scarcely felt by these hardy
children of the North, ^10 who, in their turn, were unable to
resist the summer heats, and dissolved away in languor and
sickness under the beams of an Italian sun. ^11

[Footnote 8: Olaus Rudbeck asserts that the Swedish women often
bear ten or twelve children, and not uncommonly twenty or thirty;
but the authority of Rudbeck is much to be suspected.]

[Footnote 9: In hos artus, in haec corpora, quae miramur,
excrescunt. Taeit Germania, 3, 20. Cluver. l. i. c. 14.]

[Footnote 10: Plutarch. in Mario. The Cimbri, by way of
amusement, often did down mountains of snow on their broad
shields.]

[Footnote 11: The Romans made war in all climates, and by their
excellent discipline were in a great measure preserved in health
and vigor. It may be remarked, that man is the only animal which
can live and multiply in every country from the equator to the
poles. The hog seems to approach the nearest to our species in
that privilege.]

Chapter IX: State Of Germany Until The Barbarians.

Part II.

There is not any where upon the globe a large tract of
country, which we have discovered destitute of inhabitants, or
whose first population can be fixed with any degree of historical
certainty. And yet, as the most philosophic minds can seldom
refrain from investigating the infancy of great nations, our
curiosity consumes itself in toilsome and disappointed efforts.
When Tacitus considered the purity of the German blood, and the
forbidding aspect of the country, he was disposed to pronounce
those barbarians Indigence, or natives of the soil. We may allow
with safety, and perhaps with truth, that ancient Germany was not
originally peopled by any foreign colonies already formed into a
political society; ^12 but that the name and nation received
their existence from the gradual union of some wandering savages
of the Hercynian woods. To assert those savages to have been the
spontaneous production of the earth which they inhabited would be
a rash inference, condemned by religion, and unwarranted by
reason.
[Footnote 12: Facit. Germ. c. 3. The emigration of the Gauls
followed the course of the Danube, and discharged itself on
Greece and Asia. Tacitus could discover only one inconsiderable
tribe that retained any traces of a Gallic origin.

Note: The Gothini, who must not be confounded with the
Gothi, a Suevian tribe. In the time of Caesar many other tribes
of Gaulish origin dwelt along the course of the Danube, who could
not long resist the attacks of the Suevi. The Helvetians, who
dwelt on the borders of the Black Forest, between the Maine and
the Danube, had been expelled long before the time of Caesar. He
mentions also the Volci Tectosagi, who came from Languedoc and
settled round the Black Forest. The Boii, who had penetrated
into that forest, and also have left traces of their name in
Bohemia, were subdued in the first century by the Marcomanni.
The Boii settled in Noricum, were mingled afterwards with the
Lombards, and received the name of Boio Arii (Bavaria) or
Boiovarii: var, in some German dialects, appearing to mean
remains, descendants. Compare Malte B-m, Geography, vol. i. p.
410, edit 1832 - M.]

Such rational doubt is but ill suited with the genius of
popular vanity. Among the nations who have adopted the Mosaic
history of the world, the ark of Noah has been of the same use,
as was formerly to the Greeks and Romans the siege of Troy. On a
narrow basis of acknowledged truth, an immense but rude
superstructure of fable has been erected; and the wild Irishman,
^13 as well as the wild Tartar, ^14 could point out the
individual son of Japhet, from whose loins his ancestors were
lineally descended. The last century abounded with antiquarians
of profound learning and easy faith, who, by the dim light of
legends and traditions, of conjectures and etymologies, conducted
the great grandchildren of Noah from the Tower of Babel to the
extremities of the globe. Of these judicious critics, one of the
most entertaining was Oaus Rudbeck, professor in the university
of Upsal. ^15 Whatever is celebrated either in history or fable,
this zealous patriot ascribes to his country. From Sweden (which
formed so considerable a part of ancient Germany) the Greeks
themselves derived their alphabetical characters, their
astronomy, and their religion. Of that delightful region (for
such it appeared to the eyes of a native) the Atlantis of Plato,
the country of the Hyperboreans, the gardens of the Hesperides,
the Fortunate Islands, and even the Elysian Fields, were all but
faint and imperfect transcripts. A clime so profusely favored by
Nature could not long remain desert after the flood. The learned
Rudbeck allows the family of Noah a few years to multiply from
eight to about twenty thousand persons. He then disperses them
into small colonies to replenish the earth, and to propagate the
human species. The German or Swedish detachment (which marched,
if I am not mistaken, under the command of Askenaz, the son of
Gomer, the son of Japhet) distinguished itself by a more than
common diligence in the prosecution of this great work. The
northern hive cast its swarms over the greatest part of Europe,
Africa, and Asia; and (to use the author's metaphor) the blood
circulated from the extremities to the heart.

[Footnote 13: According to Dr. Keating, (History of Ireland, p.
13, 14,) the giant Portholanus, who was the son of Seara, the son
of Esra, the son of Sru, the son of Framant, the son of
Fathaclan, the son of Magog, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah,
landed on the coast of Munster the 14th day of May, in the year
of the world one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight. Though
he succeeded in his great enterprise, the loose behavior of his
wife rendered his domestic life very unhappy, and provoked him to
such a degree, that he killed - her favorite greyhound. This, as
the learned historian very properly observes, was the first
instance of female falsehood and infidelity ever known in
Ireland.]

[Footnote 14: Genealogical History of the Tartars, by Abulghazi
Bahadur Khan.]

[Footnote 15: His work, entitled Atlantica, is uncommonly scarce.

Bayle has given two most curious extracts from it. Republique
des Lettres Janvier et Fevrier, 1685.]

But all this well-labored system of German antiquities is
annihilated by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any
doubt, and of too decisive a nature to leave room for any reply.
The Germans, in the age of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the
use of letters; ^16 and the use of letters is the principal
circumstance that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of
savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that
artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the
ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the
mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually
forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic,
the imagination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this
important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to
calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and
the illiterate peasant. The former, by reading and reflection,
multiplies his own experience, and lives in distant ages and
remote countries; whilst the latter, rooted to a single spot, and
confined to a few years of existence, surpasses but very little
his fellow-laborer, the ox, in the exercise of his mental
faculties. The same, and even a greater, difference will be
found between nations than between individuals; and we may safely
pronounce, that without some species of writing, no people has
ever preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made
any considerable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever
possessed, in any tolerable degree of perfection, the useful and
agreeable arts of life.

[Footnote 16: Tacit. Germ. ii. 19. Literarum secreta viri
pariter ac foeminae ignorant. We may rest contented with this
decisive authority, without entering into the obscure disputes
concerning the antiquity of the Runic characters. The learned
Celsius, a Swede, a scholar, and a philosopher, was of opinion,
that they were nothing more than the Roman letters, with the
curves changed into straight lines for the ease of engraving.
See Pelloutier, Histoire des Celtes, l. ii. c. 11. Dictionnaire
Diplomatique, tom. i. p. 223. We may add, that the oldest Runic
inscriptions are supposed to be of the third century, and the
most ancient writer who mentions the Runic characters is Venan
tius Frotunatus, (Carm. vii. 18,) who lived towards the end of
the sixth century.

Barbara fraxineis pingatur Runa tabellis.

Note: The obscure subject of the Runic characters has
exercised the industry and ingenuity of the modern scholars of
the north. There are three distinct theories; one, maintained by
Schlozer, (Nordische Geschichte, p. 481, &c.,) who considers
their sixteen letters to be a corruption of the Roman alphabet,
post-Christian in their date, and Schlozer would attribute their
introduction into the north to the Alemanni. The second, that of
Frederick Schlegel, (Vorlesungen uber alte und neue Literatur,)
supposes that these characters were left on the coasts of the
Mediterranean and Northern Seas by the Phoenicians, preserved by
the priestly castes, and employed for purposes of magic. Their
common origin from the Phoenician would account for heir
similarity to the Roman letters. The last, to which we incline,
claims much higher and more venerable antiquity for the Runic,
and supposes them to have been the original characters of the
Indo-Teutonic tribes, brought from the East, and preserved among
the different races of that stock. See Ueber Deutsche Runen von
W. C. Grimm, 1821. A Memoir by Dr. Legis. Fundgruben des alten
Nordens. Foreign Quarterly Review vol. ix. p. 438. - M.]
Of these arts, the ancient Germans were wretchedly
destitute. They passed their lives in a state of ignorance and
poverty, which it has pleased some declaimers to dignify with the
appellation of virtuous simplicity. Modern Germany is said to
contain about two thousand three hundred walled towns. ^17 In a
much wider extent of country, the geographer Ptolemy could
discover no more than ninety places which he decorates with the
name of cities; ^18 though, according to our ideas, they would
but ill deserve that splendid title. We can only suppose them to
have been rude fortifications, constructed in the centre of the
woods, and designed to secure the women, children, and cattle,
whilst the warriors of the tribe marched out to repel a sudden
invasion. ^19 But Tacitus asserts, as a well-known fact, that the
Germans, in his time, had no cities; ^20 and that they affected
to despise the works of Roman industry, as places of confinement
rather than of security. ^21 Their edifices were not even
contiguous, or formed into regular villas; ^22 each barbarian
fixed his independent dwelling on the spot to which a plain, a
wood, or a stream of fresh water, had induced him to give the
preference. Neither stone, nor brick, nor tiles, were employed
in these slight habitations. ^23 They were indeed no more than
low huts, of a circular figure, built of rough timber, thatched
with straw, and pierced at the top to leave a free passage for
the smoke. In the most inclement winter, the hardy German was
satisfied with a scanty garment made of the skin of some animal.
The nations who dwelt towards the North clothed themselves in
furs; and the women manufactured for their own use a coarse kind
of linen. ^24 The game of various sorts, with which the forests
of Germany were plentifully stocked, supplied its inhabitants
with food and exercise. ^25 Their monstrous herds of cattle, less
remarkable indeed for their beauty than for their utility, ^26
formed the principal object of their wealth. A small quantity of
corn was the only produce exacted from the earth; the use of
orchards or artificial meadows was unknown to the Germans; nor
can we expect any improvements in agriculture from a people,
whose prosperity every year experienced a general change by a new
division of the arable lands, and who, in that strange operation,
avoided disputes, by suffering a great part of their territory to
lie waste and without tillage. ^27

[Footnote *: Luden (the author of the Geschichte des Teutschen
Volkes) has surpassed most writers in his patriotic enthusiasm
for the virtues and noble manners of his ancestors. Even the
cold of the climate, and the want of vines and fruit trees, as
well as the barbarism of the inhabitants, are calumnies of the
luxurious Italians. M. Guizot, on the other side, (in his
Histoire de la Civilisation, vol. i. p. 272, &c.,) has drawn a
curious parallel between the Germans of Tacitus and the North
American Indians. - M.] [Footnote 17: Recherches Philosophiques
sur les Americains, tom. iii. p. 228. The author of that very
curious work is, if I am not misinformed, a German by birth. (De
Pauw.)]

[Footnote 18: The Alexandrian Geographer is often criticized by
the accurate Cluverius.]

[Footnote 19: See Caesar, and the learned Mr. Whitaker in his
History of Manchester, vol. i.]

[Footnote 20: Tacit. Germ. 15.]

[Footnote 21: When the Germans commanded the Ubii of Cologne to
cast off the Roman yoke, and with their new freedom to resume
their ancient manners, they insisted on the immediate demolition
of the walls of the colony. "Postulamus a vobis, muros coloniae,
munimenta servitii, detrahatis; etiam fera animalia, si clausa
teneas, virtutis obliviscuntur." Tacit. Hist. iv. 64.]
[Footnote 22: The straggling villages of Silesia are several
miles in length. See Cluver. l. i. c. 13.]

[Footnote 23: One hundred and forty years after Tacitus, a few
more regular structures were erected near the Rhine and Danube.
Herodian, l. vii. p. 234.]

[Footnote 24: Tacit. Germ. 17.]

[Footnote 25: Tacit. Germ. 5.]

[Footnote 26: Caesar de Bell. Gall. vi. 21.]

[Footnote 27: Tacit. Germ. 26. Caesar, vi. 22.]

Gold, silver, and iron, were extremely scarce in Germany.
Its barbarous inhabitants wanted both skill and patience to
investigate those rich veins of silver, which have so liberally
rewarded the attention of the princes of Brunswick and Saxony.
Sweden, which now supplies Europe with iron, was equally ignorant
of its own riches; and the appearance of the arms of the Germans
furnished a sufficient proof how little iron they were able to
bestow on what they must have deemed the noblest use of that
metal. The various transactions of peace and war had introduced
some Roman coins (chiefly silver) among the borderers of the
Rhine and Danube; but the more distant tribes were absolutely
unacquainted with the use of money, carried on their confined
traffic by the exchange of commodities, and prized their rude
earthen vessels as of equal value with the silver vases, the
presents of Rome to their princes and ambassadors. ^28 To a mind
capable of reflection, such leading facts convey more
instruction, than a tedious detail of subordinate circumstances.
The value of money has been settled by general consent to express
our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express
our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active
energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have
contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to
represent. The use of gold and silver is in a great measure
factitious; but it would be impossible to enumerate the important
and various services which agriculture, and all the arts, have
received from iron, when tempered and fashioned by the operation
of fire, and the dexterous hand of man. Money, in a word, is the
most universal incitement, iron the most powerful instrument, of
human industry; and it is very difficult to conceive by what
means a people, neither actuated by the one, nor seconded by the
other, could emerge from the grossest barbarism. ^29

[Footnote 28: Tacit. Germ. 6.]

[Footnote 29: It is said that the Mexicans and Peruvians, without
the use of either money or iron, had made a very great progress
in the arts. Those arts, and the monuments they produced, have
been strangely magnified. See Recherches sur les Americains,
tom. ii. p. 153, &c]

If we contemplate a savage nation in any part of the globe,
a supine indolence and a carelessness of futurity will be found
to constitute their general character. In a civilized state,
every faculty of man is expanded and exercised; and the great
chain of mutual dependence connects and embraces the several
members of society. The most numerous portion of it is employed
in constant and useful labor. The select few, placed by fortune
above that necessity, can, however, fill up their time by the
pursuits of interest or glory, by the improvement of their estate
or of their understanding, by the duties, the pleasures, and even
the follies of social life. The Germans were not possessed of
these varied resources. The care of the house and family, the
management of the land and cattle, were delegated to the old and
the infirm, to women and slaves. The lazy warrior, destitute of
every art that might employ his leisure hours, consumed his days
and nights in the animal gratifications of sleep and food. And
yet, by a wonderful diversity of nature, (according to the remark
of a writer who had pierced into its darkest recesses,) the same
barbarians are by turns the most indolent and the most restless
of mankind. They delight in sloth, they detest tranquility. ^30
The languid soul, oppressed with its own weight, anxiously
required some new and powerful sensation; and war and danger were
the only amusements adequate to its fierce temper. The sound
that summoned the German to arms was grateful to his ear. It
roused him from his uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active
pursuit, and, by strong exercise of the body, and violent
emotions of the mind, restored him to a more lively sense of his
existence. In the dull intervals of peace, these barbarians were
immoderately addicted to deep gaming and excessive drinking; both
of which, by different means, the one by inflaming their
passions, the other by extinguishing their reason, alike relieved
them from the pain of thinking. They gloried in passing whole
days and nights at table; and the blood of friends and relations
often stained their numerous and drunken assemblies. ^31 Their
debts of honor (for in that light they have transmitted to us
those of play) they discharged with the most romantic fidelity.
The desperate gamester, who had staked his person and liberty on
a last throw of the dice, patiently submitted to the decision of
fortune, and suffered himself to be bound, chastised, and sold
into remote slavery, by his weaker but more lucky antagonist. ^32

[Footnote 30: Tacit. Germ. 15.]

[Footnote 31: Tacit. Germ. 22, 23.]

[Footnote 32: Id. 24. The Germans might borrow the arts of play
from the Romans, but the passion is wonderfully inherent in the
human species.] Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very
little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly
expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was
sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But
those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of
Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication.
They attempted not, however, (as has since been executed with so
much success,) to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine
and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the
materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what
might be ravished by arms, was esteemed unworthy of the German
spirit. ^33 The intemperate thirst of strong liquors often urged
the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had
bestowed those much envied presents. The Tuscan who betrayed his
country to the Celtic nations, attracted them into Italy by the
prospect of the rich fruits and delicious wines, the productions
of a happier climate. ^34 And in the same manner the German
auxiliaries, invited into France during the civil wars of the
sixteenth century, were allured by the promise of plenteous
quarters in the provinces of Champaigne and Burgundy. ^35
Drunkenness, the most illiberal, but not the most dangerous of
our vices, was sometimes capable, in a less civilized state of
mankind, of occasioning a battle, a war, or a revolution.

[Footnote 33: Tacit. Germ. 14.]

[Footnote 34: Plutarch. in Camillo. T. Liv. v. 33.]

[Footnote 35: Dubos. Hist. de la Monarchie Francoise, tom. i. p.
193.]
The climate of ancient Germany has been modified, and the
soil fertilized, by the labor of ten centuries from the time of
Charlemagne. The same extent of ground which at present
maintains, in ease and plenty, a million of husbandmen and
artificers, was unable to supply a hundred thousand lazy warriors
with the simple necessaries of life. ^36 The Germans abandoned
their immense forests to the exercise of hunting, employed in
pasturage the most considerable part of their lands, bestowed on
the small remainder a rude and careless cultivation, and then
accused the scantiness and sterility of a country that refused to
maintain the multitude of its inhabitants. When the return of
famine severely admonished them of the importance of the arts,
the national distress was sometimes alleviated by the emigration
of a third, perhaps, or a fourth part of their youth. ^37 The
possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which
bind a civilized people to an improved country. But the Germans,
who carried with them what they most valued, their arms, their
cattle, and their women, cheerfully abandoned the vast silence of
their woods for the unbounded hopes of plunder and conquest. The
innumerable swarms that issued, or seemed to issue, from the
great storehouse of nations, were multiplied by the fears of the
vanquished, and by the credulity of succeeding ages. And from
facts thus exaggerated, an opinion was gradually established, and
has been supported by writers of distinguished reputation, that,
in the age of Caesar and Tacitus, the inhabitants of the North
were far more numerous than they are in our days. ^38 A more
serious inquiry into the causes of population seems to have
convinced modern philosophers of the falsehood, and indeed the
impossibility, of the supposition. To the names of Mariana and
of Machiavel, ^39 we can oppose the equal names of Robertson and
Hume. ^40

[Footnote 36: The Helvetian nation, which issued from a country
called Switzerland, contained, of every age and sex, 368,000
persons, (Caesar de Bell. Gal. i. 29.) At present, the number of
people in the Pays de Vaud (a small district on the banks of the
Leman Lake, much more distinguished for politeness than for
industry) amounts to 112,591. See an excellent tract of M.
Muret, in the Memoires de la Societe de Born.]

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