Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/278

 254 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP. IX. Extent of Germany. Climate. tions, which rendered the wild barbarians of Germany such formidable enemies to the Roman power. Ancient Germany, excluding from its independent limits the province westward of the Rhine, which had submitted to the Roman yoke, extended itself over a third part of Europe. Almost the whole of modern Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Livo- nia, Prussia, and the greater part of Poland, were peo- pled by the various tribes of one great nation, whose complexion, manners, and language, denoted a common origin, and preserved a striking resemblance. On the west, ancient Germany was divided by the Rhine from the Gallic, and on the south, by the Danube, from the lllyrian, provinces of the empire. A ridge of hills, rising from the Danube, and called the Carpathian mountains, covered Germany on the side of Dacia or Hungary. The eastern frontier was faintly marked by the mutual fears of the Germans and the Sarmatians, and was often confounded by the mixture of warring and confederating tribes of the two nations. In the remote darkness of the north, the ancients imperfectly descried a frozen ocean, that lay beyond the Baltic sea, and beyond the peninsula, or islands* of Scandinavia. Some ingenious writers^ have suspected that Europe was much colder formerly than it is at present ; and the most ancient descriptions of the climate of Germany tend exceedingly to confirm their theory. The general complaints of intense frost, and eternal winter, are per- haps little to be regarded ; since we have no method of reducing to the accurate standard of the thermometer, the feelings, or the expressions, of an orator born in ^ The modern philosophers of Sweden seem agreed that the waters of the Baltic gradually sink in a regular proportion, which they have ventured to estimate at half an inch every year. Twenty centuries ago, the flat country of Scandinavia must have been covered by the sea ; while the high lands rose above the waters, as so many islands of various forms and dimen- sions. Such indeed is the notion given us by Mela, Pliny, and Tacitus, of the vast countries round the Baltic. See in the Biblioth6que Raisonn^e, tom.xl. and xlv. a large abstract of Dalin's History of Sweden, composed in the Swedish language. ^ In particular, Mr. Hume, the abbe du Bos, and M. Pelloutier, Hist. des Celtes, torn. i.