Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/295

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 271 more honourable nature. The Germans treated their CHAP. women with esteem and confidence, consulted them on '__ every occasion of importance, and fondly believed, that in their breasts resided a sanctity and wisdom, more than human. Some of these interpreters of fate, such as Velleda, in the Batavian war, governed, in the name of the Deity, the fiercest nations of Germany "". The rest of the sex, without being adored as goddesses, were respected as the free and equal companions of soldiers ; associated even by the marriage ceremony to a life of toil, of danger, and of glory °. In their great invasions, the camps of the barbarians were filled with a multitude of women, who remained firm and un- daunted amidst the sound of arms, the various forms of destruction, and the honourable wounds of their sons and husbands °. Fainting armies of Germans have more than once been driven back upon the enemy, by the generous despair of the women, who dreaded death much less than servitude. If the day was irrecoverably lost, they well knew how to deliver themselves and their children, with their own hands, from an insulting victor P. Heroines of such a cast may claim our ad- miration ; but they were, most assuredly, neither lovely, nor very susceptible of love. Whilst they affected to emulate the stern virtues of man^ they must have re- signed that attractive softness in which principally con- sist the charm and weakness of woman. Conscious pride taught the German females to suppress every tender emotion that stood in competition with honour, and the first honour of the sex has ever been that of chastity. The sentiments and conduct of these high- spirited matrons may at once be considered as a cause, as an effect, and as a proof of the general charac- ^ Tacit. Hist. iv. 61. 65. " The marriage present was a yoke of oxen, horses, and arms. See Germ. c. 18. Tacitus is somewhat too florid on the subject. o The change of exigere into exugere is a most excellent correction. P Tacit. Germ. c. 7 ; Plutarch, in Mario. Before the wives of the Teu- tones destroyed themselves and their children, they had offered to surrender, on condition that they should be received as the slaves of the vestal virgins.