Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/160

140 THE DECLINE AND FALL ruling, though too often the unsuccessful, passion of the Hun- garians, who are endowed by nature with a vigorous constitution of soul and body.-^ Extreme cold has diminished the stature and congealed the faculties of the Laplanders ; and the Arctic tribes, alone among the sons of men, are ignorant of war and unconscious of human blood : an happy ignorance, if reason and virtue were the guardians of their peace ! '^" Tactics and It is the obscrvation of the Imperial author of the Tactics "'^ theHungari- that all tlic Scytliiau hordes resembled each other in their pas- garians. AD. toral and military life, that they all practised the same means of subsistence, and employed the same instruments of destruction. But he adds that the two nations of Bulgarians and Hungarians were superior to their brethren, and similar to each other, in the improvements, however rude, of their discipline and government; their visible likeness determines Leo to confound his friends and enemies in one common description ; and the picture may be heightened by some strokes from their contemporaries of the tenth century. Except the merit and fame of military prowess, all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to these barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the consciousness of numbers and freedom. The tents of the Hun- garians were of leather, their garments of fur ; they shaved their hair and scarified their faces ; in speech they were slow, in action prompt, in treat}^ perfidious ; and they shared the common re- proach of barbarians, too ignorant to conceive the importance of truth, too proud to deny or palliate the breach of their most solemn engagements. Their simplicity has been praised ; yet they abstained only from the luxury they had never known ; whatever they saw, they coveted ; their desires Avere insatiate, and their sole industry was the hand of violence and rapine. 36 This picture of the Hungarians and Bulgarians is chiefly drawn from the Tactics of Leo, p. 796-801 [c. 18], and the Latin Annals, which are alleged by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori, A.D. 889, &c. 3' Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, torn. v. p. 6, in i2mo. Gustavus Adolphus attempted, without success, to form a regiment of Laplanders. Grotius says of these Arctic tribes, arma arcus et pharetra, sed adversus feras (.^nnal. 1. iv. p. 236) ; and attempts, after the manner of Tacitus, to varnish with philosophy their brutal ignorance. •"^ Leo has observed that the government of the Turks was monarchical, and that their punishments were rigorous (Tactics, p. 896 [18, § 46], dn-rjiets kol ^apdn^). Regino (in Chron. A.D. 889) mentions theft as a capital crime, and his jurisprudence is confirmed by the original code of St. Stephen (A.I). 1016). If a slave were guilty, he was chastised, for the first time, with the loss of his nose, or a fine of five heifers ; for the second, with the loss of his ears, or a similar fine ; for the third, with death ; which the freeman did not incur till the fourth offence, as his first penalty was the loss of liberty (Katona, Hist. Kegum Hungar. torn. i. p. 231, 232),