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chap, xlii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 369 certainty of courage that the two armies were suddenly struck with a panic ; they fled from each other, and the rival kings remained with their guards in the midst of an empty plain. A short truce was obtained ; but their mutual resentment again kindled ; and the remembrance of their shame rendered the next encounter more desperate and bloody. Forty thousand of the Barbarians perished in the decisive battle, which broke the power of the Gepidae, transferred the fears and wishes of Justinian, and first displayed the character of Alboin, the youth- ful prince of the Lombards, and the future conqueror of Italy. 11 The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of TheScia- VfllllRflH Eussia, Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian, under the two great families of the Bulgarians 12 and the Sclavonians. According to the Greek writers, the former, who touched the Euxine and the lake Mgeotis, derived from the Huns their name or descent ; and it is needless to renew the simple and well-known picture of Tartar manners. They were bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk and feasted on the flesh of their fleet and indefatigable horses ; whose flocks and herds followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps ; to whose inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were practised in flight, though incapable of fear. The nation was divided into two powerful and hostile tribes, who pursued each other with fraternal hatred. They eagerly disputed the friendship or rather the gifts of the emperor ; and the distinction which nature had fixed between the faithful dog and the rapacious wolf was applied by an ambassador who re- ceived only verbal instructions from the mouth of his illiterate prince. 13 The Bulgarians, of whatsoever species, were equally 11 I have used, without undertaking to reconcile, the facts in Procopius (Goth. 1. ii. c. 14; 1. iii. c. 33, 34 ; 1. iv. c. 18, 25), Paul Diaconus (de Gestis Langobard, 1. i. c. 1-23, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, torn. i. p. 405-419), and Jornandes (de Success. Regnoruni, p. 242). The patient reader may draw some light from Mascou (Hist, of the Germans, and Annotat. xxiii.) and de Buat (Hist, des Peuples, &e. torn. ix. x. xi.). [See Hodgkin, op. cit., v. 203 sqq. ; L. Schmidt, Geschichte der deutschen Stamme, i. 311 sqq.] 13 I adopt the appellation of Bulgarians, from Ennodius (in Panegyr. Theo- dorici, Opp. Sirmond. torn. i. p. 1598, 1599), Jornandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 5, p. 194, et de Regn. Successione, p. 242), Theophanes (p. 185), and the Chronicles of Cassiodorius and Marcellinus. The name of Huns is too vague; the tribes of Cutturgurians and Utturgurians are too minute and too harsh. [See Appendix 16.] 18 Procopius (Goth. 1. iv. c. 19). His verbal message (he owns himself an illiterate Barbarian) is delivered as an epistle. The style is savage, figurative, and original. vol. iv. — 24