Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/419

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 395 querable love of freedom, rising against despotism, CHAP, provoked them into hasty rebelHons, alike fatal to ^^^' themselves and to the provinces ^ ; nor could these arti- ficial supplies, however repeated by succeeding empe- rors, restore the important limit of Gaul and lUyricum to its ancient and native vigour. Of all the barbarians who abandoned their new Daring en- settlements, and disturbed the pubhc tranquilhty, a [he'^Franks. very small number returned to their own country. For a short season they might wander in arms through the empire ; but in the end they were surely destroyed by the power of a warlike emperor. The successful rashness of a party of Franks was attended, however, with such memorable consequences, that it ought not to be passed unnoticed. They had been established by Probus on the sea coast of Pontus, with a view of strengthening that frontier against the inroads of the Alani. A fleet stationed in one of the harbours of the Euxine, fell into the hands of the Franks; and they resolved, through unknown seas, to explore their way from the mouth of the Phasis to that of the Rhine. They easily escaped through the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, and cruising along the Mediterranean, indulged their appetite for revenge and plunder, by frequent descents on the unsuspecting shores of Asia, Greece, and Africa. The opulent city of Syracuse, in whose port the navies of Athens and Carthage had formerly been sunk, was • sacked by a handful of barbarians, who massacred the greatest part of the trembling inhabitants. From the island of Sicily the Franks proceeded to the columns of Hercules, trusted themselves to the ocean, coasted round Spain and Gaul, and steering their triumphant course through the British Channel, at length finished their surprising voyage, by landing in safety on the Batavian or Frisian shores'^. The example of their success, instructing their countrymen to conceive the advantages, and to despise the dangers of the sea, c Hist. August, p. 240. '' Panegyr. Vet. v. 18 j Zosimus, 1, i. p. 66.