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THE DECLINE AND FALL
they still preserve their language, their customs, and the purity of their blood; support with some impatience, the Saxon or Prussian yoke; and serve with secret and voluntary allegiance the descendant of their ancient kings, who in his garb and present fortune is confounded with the meanest of his vassals.[1] The name and situation of this unhappy people might indicate their descent from one common stock with the conquerors of Africa. But the use of a Sclavonian dialect more clearly represents them as the last remnant of the new colonies, who succeeded to the genuine Vandals, already scattered or destroyed in the age of Procopius.[2]
Manners and defeat of the Moors. A.D. 535 If Belisarius had been tempted to hesitate in his allegiance, he might have urged, even against the emperor himself, the indispensable duty of saving Africa from an enemy more barbarous than the Vandals. The origin of the Moors is involved in darkness; they were ignorant of the use of letters.[3] Their limits cannot be precisely defined: a boundless continent was opened to the Libyan shepherds; the change of seasons and pastures regulated their motions; and their rude huts and slender furniture were transported with the same ease as their arms, their families, and their cattle, which consisted of sheep, oxen, and camels.[4] During the vigour of the Roman power, they observed a respectable distance from Carthage and the sea-shore; under the feeble reign of the Vandals they invaded the cities of Numidia, occupied the sea-coast from Tangier to Cæsarea, and pitched their camps, with impunity, in the fertile province of Byzacium. The formidable strength and artful conduct of Belisarius secured the neutrality of the Moorish princes, whose- ↑ From the mouth of the great elector (in 1687), Tollius describes the secret royalty and rebellious spirit of the Vandals of Brandenburgh, who could muster five or six thousand soldiers who had procured some cannon, &c. (Itinerar. Hungar, p. 42, apud Dubos, Hist. de la Monarchie Françoise, tom. i. p. 182, 183). The veracity, not of the elector, but of Tollius himself, may justly be suspected. [The (Teutonic) Vandals have, of course, nothing to do with the (Slavonic) Wends. The confusion arose from a custom of mediæval writers to use Vandali to designate the Wends. Cp. the use of Siculi for the Szeklers of Transylvania.]
- ↑ Procopius (l. i. c. 22) was in total darkness — οὐδὲ μνήμη τις οὐδὲ ὄκομα ἐς ἐμὲ σῴζεται. Under the reign of Dagobert (A.D. 630), the Sclavonian tribes of the Sorbi and Venedi already bordered on Thuringia (Mascou, Hist. of the Germans, xv. 3, 4, 5).
- ↑ Sallust represents the Moors as a remnant of the army of Heracles (de Bell. Jugurth. c. 21), and Procopius (Vandal. l. ii. c. 10) as the posterity of the Cananæans who fled from the robber Joshua (λῄστης). He quotes two columns, with a Phœnician inscription. I believe in the columns — I doubt the inscription — and I reject the pedigree.
- ↑ Virgil (Georgic. iii. 339) and Pomponius Mela (i. 8) describe the wandering life of the African shepherds, similar to that of the Arabs and Tartars; and Shaw (p. 222) is the best commentator on the poet and the geographer.
