Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/71

OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 51 If the geographical accuracy of Ammianus had been fortun- state of ately bestowed on the British exploits of Theodosius, we should '"^'^* have traced, with eager curiosity, the distinct and domestic footsteps of his march. But the tedious enumeration of the unknown and uninteresting tribes of Africa may be reduced to the general remark that they were all of the swarthy race of the Moors ; that they inhabited the back settlements of the Mauritanian and Numidian provinces, the country, as they have since been termed by the Arabs, of dates and of locusts ; ^-^ and that, as the Roman power declined in Africa, the boundary of civilized manners and cultivated land was insensibly contracted. Beyond the utmost limits of the Moors, the vast and inhospitable desert of the South extends above a thousand miles to the banks of the Niger. The ancients, who had a veiy faint and imperfect knowledge of the great peninsula of Africa, were sometimes tempted to believe that the toiTid zone must ever remain destitute of inhabitants : ^^^ and they sometimes amused their fancy by filling the vacant space with headless men, or rather monsters ; ^^i with homed and cloven-footed satyrs ; ^-^^ with fabulous centaurs ; ^-^^ and with human pygmies, who waged a bold and doubtful warfare against the cranes.^^ Carthage 1-3 Leo Africanus (in the Viaggi di Ramusio, torn. i. fol. 78-83) has traced a curious picture of the people and the country, which are more minutely described in the Afrique de Marmol, torn. iii. p. 1-54. 130 This uninhabitable zone was gradually reduced, by the improvements of ancient geography, from forty-five to twenty-four, or even sixteen, degrees of latitude. See a learned and judicious note of Dr. Robertson, Hist, of America, vol. i. p. 426. 131 Intra, si credere libet, vix jam homines et magis semiferi . . . Blemmyes, Satyri, &c. Pomponius Mela, i. 4, p. 26, edit. Voss. in 8vo. Pliny philosophically explains (vi. 35) the irregularities of nature, which he had credulously admitted (V. 8). 132 If the satyr was the Orang-outang, the great human ape (Buffon, Hist. Nat. tom. xiv. p. 43, &c.), one of that species might actually be shown alive at Alexandria in the reign of Constantine. Yet some difficulty will still remain about the conversation which St. Anthony held with one of these pious savages in the desert of Thebais (Jerom, in Vit. Paul. Eremit. tom. i. p. 238). 133 St. Anthony likewise met one of these monsters, whose existence was seriously asserted by the emperor Claudius. The public laughed ; but his prasfect of Egypt had the address to send an artful preparation, the embalmed corpse of an Htppocentaur, which was preserved almost a century afterwards in the Imperial palace. See Pliny (Hist. Natur. vii. 3), and the judicious observations of Fr^ret (M^moires de I'Acad. tom. vii. p. 321, &c.). 13^ The fable of the pygmies is as old as Homer (Iliad, iii. 6). The pygmies of India and .^Ethiopia were (trispithami) twenty-seven inches high. Every spring their cavalry (mounted on rams and goats) marched in battle array to destroy the cranes' eggs, aliter (says Pliny) futuris gregibus non resisti. Their houses were built of mud, feathers, and egg-shells. See Pliny (vi. 35, vii. 2), and Strabo (1. ii. p. 121 [§ I, 9]).