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156 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xxxviii the historian of the empire may be tempted to pursue the revolutions of a Roman province, till it vanishes from his sight ; and an Englishman may curiously trace the establish- ment of the Barbarians from whom he derives his name, his laws, and perhaps his origin. Descent of About forty years after the dissolution of the Roman govern- a.d. «9 ' ment, Vortigern appears to have obtained the supreme, though precarious, command of the princes and cities of Britain. That unfortunate monarch has been almost unanimously condemned for the weak and mischievous policy of inviting 135 a formidable stranger to repel the vexatious inroads of a domestic foe. His ambassadors are dispatched, by the gravest historians, to the coast of Germany ; they address a pathetic oration to the general assembly of the Saxons, and those warlike Barbarians resolve to assist with a fleet and army the suppliants of a distant and unknown island. If Britain had indeed been unknown to the Saxons, the measure of its calamities would have been less complete. But the strength of the Roman government could not always guard the maritime province against the pirates of Germany ; the independent and divided states were exposed to their attacks ; and the Saxons might sometimes join the Scots and the Picts in a tacit, or express, confederacy of rapine and destruction. Vortigern could only balance the various perils which assaulted on every side his throne and his people ; and his policy may deserve either praise or excuse, if he preferred the alliance of those Barbarians whose naval power rendered them the most dangerous enemies and the most serviceable allies. Hengist and Horsa, as they ranged along the Eastern coast with three ships, were engaged, by the promise of an ample stipend, to embrace the defence of Britain ; and their intrepid valour soon delivered the country from the Caledonian invaders. The isle of Thanet, a secure and fertile district, was 135 This invitation, which may derive some countenance from the loose expres- sions of Gildas and Bede, is framed into a regular story by Witikind, a Saxon monk of the tenth century (see Cousin, Hist, de l'Empire d'Occident, torn. ii. p. 356). Eapin, and even Hume, have too freely used this suspicious evidence, without regarding the precise and probable testimony of Nennius : Interea venerunt tres Chiulae a Gerrnania in exilio pulsae, in quibus erant Hors et Hengist [31, p. 171, ed. Mommsen. The chief work on Nennius is H. Zimmer's Nennius Vindicatus, 1893. Gildas and Nennius have been edited critically by Mommsen in the Chronica Minora, vol. iii., as well as the Chronicle of Bede. Of Bede's Ecclesiastical History the best edition is that of C. Plummer (1896).]