Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/311

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 287 prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the god CHAP, ofwar*". ^* The native and proper habitation of Odin is dis- Agreeable tinguished by the appellation of As-gard. The happy talJj hy*!^o' resemblance of that name with As-burg, or As-of thesis con- words of a similar signification, has given rise to anodin." historical system of so pleasing a contexture, that we could almost wish to persuade ourselves of its truth. It is supposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the lake Maeo- tis, till the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the north with servitude: that Odin, yield- ing with indignant fury to a power which he was un- able to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that inaccessible retreat of free- dom, a religion and a people, which, in some remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge ; when his invincible Goths, armed with martial fana- ticism, should issue in numerous swarms from the neighbourhood of the polar circle, to chastise the op- pressors of mankind ™. If so many successive generations of Goths were Emigration capable of preserving a faint tradition of their Scandi- ^^f^^^^P*'*''^ navian origin, we must not expect, from such unlettered dinavia into barbarians, any distinct account of the time and cir- ^^^^^^'> cumstances of their emigration. To cross the Baltic was an easy and natural attempt. The inhabitants of Sweden were masters of a sufficient number of large vessels with oars", and the distance is httle more than ^ Mallet, Introduction a I'Histoire du Dannemarc. ' Mallet (c. iv. p. 55.) has collected from Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Stephanus Byzantinus, the vestiges of such a city and people. " This wonderful expedition of Odin, which, by deducing the enmity of the Goths and Romans from so memorable a cause, might supply the noble groundwork of an epic poem, cannot safely be received as authentic history. According to the obvious sense of the Edda, and the interpretation of the most skilful critics, As-gard, instead of denoting a real city of the Asiatic Sarmatia, is the fictitious appellation of the mystic abode of the gods, the Olympus of Scandinavia; from whence the prophet was supposed to descend when he announced his new religion to the Gothic nations, who were already seated in the southern parts of Sweden. " Tacit. Germ. c. 44.