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 chap, xxxix] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 197 From the shores of the Baltic, the iEstians or Livonians laid their offerings of native amber 47 at the feet of a prince whose fame had excited them to undertake an unknown and dangerous journey of fifteen hundred miles. With the country 48 from whence the Gothic nation derived their origin he maintained a frequent and friendly correspondence ; the Italians were clothed in the rich sables 49 of Sweden ; and one of its sovereigns, after a voluntary or reluctant abdication, found an hospitable retreat in the palace of Kavenna. He had reigned over one of the thir- teen populous tribes who cultivated a small portion of the great island or peninsula of Scandinavia, to which the vague appella- tion of Thule has been sometimes applied. That northern region was peopled, or had been explored, as high as the sixty- eighth degree of latitude, where the natives of the polar circle enjoy and lose the presence of the sun at each summer and winter solstice during an equal period of forty days. 50 The long night of his absence or death was the mournful season of dis- tress and anxiety, till the messengers who had been sent to the mountain tops descried the first rays of returning light and proclaimed to the plain below the festival of his resurrection. 51 The life of Theodoric represents the rare and meritorious example of a Barbarian, who sheathed his sword in the pride of His defen- sive wars 47 Cassiodorius, who quotes Tacitus to the iEstians, the unlettered savages of the Baltic (Var. v. 2), describes the amber for which their shores have ever been famous, as the gum of a tree, hardened by the sun, and purified and wafted by the waves. When that singular substance is analysed by the chemists, it yields a vegetable oil and a mineral acid. [Tacitus, Germ. 45.] 48 Scanzia, or Thule, is described by Jornandes (c. 3, p. 610-613) and Procopius (Goth. 1. ii. c. 15). Neither the Goth nor the Greek had visited the country ; both had conversed with the natives in their exile at Kavenna or Constantinople. 49 Saphirinas pelles. In the time of Jornandes, they inhabited Suethans, the proper Sweden ; but that beautiful race of animals has gradually been driven into the eastern parts of Siberia. See Buffon (Hist. Nat. torn. xiii. p. 309-313, quarto edition) ; Pennant (System of Quadrupeds, vol. i. p. 322-328) ; Gmelin (Hist. Gen. des Voyages, torn, xviii. p. 257, 258) ; and Levesque (Hist, de Russie, torn. v. p. 165, 166, 514, 515). 50 In the system or romance of M. Bailly (Lettres sur les Sciences et sur l'At- lantide, torn. i. p. 249-256, torn. ii. p. 114-139), the phcenix of the Edda, and the annual death and revival of Adonis and Osiris, are the allegorical symbols of the absence and return of the sun in the arctic regions. This ingenious writer is a worthy disciple of the great Buffon ; nor is it easy for the coldest reason to with- stand the magic of their philosophy. 51 Autij T€ BvAlrais r/ jxiyiari) twv eoprwv San, says Procopius. At present a rude Manicheism (generous enough) prevails among the Samoyedes in Greenland and in Lapland (Hist, des Voyages, torn, xviii. p. 508, 509, torn. xix. p. 105, 106, 527, 528) ; yet, according to Grotius, Samojutae caelum atque astra adorant, numina haud aliis iniquiora (de Bebus Belgicis. 1. iv. p. 338, folio edition) : a sentence which Tacitus would not have disowned.