Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/110

90 THE DECLINE AND FALL the common hardships of their adverse fortune. ^^ The Huns, with their Hocks and herds, their wives and children, their dependents and alHes, were transported to the West of the Volga, and they boldly advanced to invade the country of the Alani, a pastoral people who occupied, or wasted, an extensive tract of the deserts of Scythia. The plains between the Volga and the Tanais were covered with the tents of the Alani, but their name and manners were diffused over the wide extent of their conquests ; and the painted tribes of the Agathyrsi and Geloni were confounded among their vassals. Towards the North, they penetrated into the frozen regions of Siberia, among the savages who were accustomed, in their rage or hunger, to the taste of human flesh ; and their Southern inroads were pushed as far as the confines of Persia and India. The mixture of Sarmatic and German blood had contributed to improve the features of the Alani, to whiten their swarthy complexions, and to tinge their hair with a yellowish cast, which is seldom found in the Tartar race. They were less deformed in their persons, less brutish in their manners, than the Huns ; but they did not yield to those formidable Barbarians in their martial and independent spirit ; in the love of freedom, which rejected even the use of domestic slaves ; and in the love of arms, which considered war and rapine as the pleasure and the gloiy of mankind. A naked scymetar, fixed in the ground, was the only object of their religious worship ; the scalps of their enemies formed the costly trappings of their horses ; and they viewed, Avith pity and contempt, the pusillanimous warriors, who patiently expected the infirmities of age and the tortures of lingering disease.^*^ On the banks of the Tanais, the military power of the Huns and the Alani, encountered each other with equal valour, but with unequal success. The Huns prevailed in [A,D. 372-3?] the bloody contest: the king of the Alani was slain ; and the remains of the vanquished nation were dispersed by the ordinary alternative of flight or submission.^" A colony of exiles found a 55 See the Histoire des Huns, torn. ii. p. 125-144. The subsequent history (p. 145-277) of three or four Hunnic dynasties evidently proves that their martial spirit was not impaired by a long residence in China. 58 Utque hominibus quietis et placidis otiiim est voluptabile, ita illos pericula juvant et bella. Judicatur ibi beatus qui in prcjelio profuderit animam : senescentes etiam et fortuitis niortibus mundo digresses, ut degeneres et ignavos conviciis atrocibus insectantur. We must think highly of the conquerors of such men. 57 On the subject of the Alani, see Ammianus (xxxi. 2), Jomandes (de Rebus Geticis, c. 24), M. de Guignes (Hist, des Huns, tORi. ii. p. 279), and the Genealogical Historj' of the Tartars (torn. ii. p. 617).