318 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, proposal of raising in the air a dome of the size and ^' proportions of the pantheon. The temple of Diana was, however, admired as one of the wonders of the world. Successive empires, the Persian, the Mace- donian, and the Roman, had revered its sanctity, and enriched its splendour^. But the rude savages of the Baltic were destitute of a taste for the elegant arts, and they despised the ideal terrors of a foreign su- perstition "". Conduct of Another circumstance is related of these invasions, AUiens. ^^ which might deserve our notice, were it not justly to be suspected as the fanciful conceit of a recent sophist. We are told, that in the sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were on the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design ; by the pro- found observation, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they would never apply themselves to the exercise of arms ^ The sagacious counsellor (should the truth of the fact be admitted) ' reasoned like an ignorant barbarian. In the most polite and powerful nations, genius of every kind has displayed itself about the same period ; and the age of science has generally been the age of military virtue and success. Conquest of IV. The new sovereigns of Persia, Artaxerxes and the"per^ '^^ his SOU Sapor, had triumphed (as we have already sians. seen) over the house of Arsaces. Of the many princes of that ancient race, Chosroes, king of Armenia, had alone preserved both his life and his independence. He defended himself by the natural strength of his country ; by the perpetual resort of fugitives and mal- ^ The policy, however, of the Romans induced them to abridge the ex- tent of the sanctuary or asylum, which by successive privileges had spread itself two stadia round the temple. Strabo, 1. xiv. p. 641 ; Tacit. Annal. iii. 60, etc. ' They offered no sacrifices to the Grecian gods. See Epistol. Gregor. Thaumat.
- Zonaras, 1. xii. p. 635. Such an anecdote was perfectly suited to the
taste of Montaigne. He makes use of it in his agreeable essay on Pedan- try, 1. i. c. 24.
