Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/454

 430 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, the territories of Amiens, Beauvais, Cambray, Treves, Langres, and Troyes, are particularly specified °) which had been depopulated by the calamities of war. They were usefully employed as shepherds and husbandmen, but were denied the exercise of arms, except when it was found expedient to enrol them in the military ser- vice. Nor did the emperors refuse the property of lands, with a less servile tenure, to such of the barba- rians as solicited the protection of Rome. They granted a settlement to several colonies of the Carpi, the Bastarnae, and the Sarmatians; and, by a dan- gerous indulgence, permitted them in some measure to retain their national manners and independence p. Among the provincials, it was a subject of flattering exultation, that the barbarian, so lately an object of terror, now cultivated their lands, drove their cattle to the neighbouring fair, and contributed by his labour to the pubhc plenty. They congratulated their mas- ters on the powerful accession of subjects and soldiers ; but they forgot to observe, that multitudes of secret enemies, insolent from favour, or desperate from oppres- sion, were introduced into the heart of the empire •^. Wars of While the Caesars exercised their valour on the Eo^Ypt ^" banks of the Rhine and Danube, the presence of the emperors was required on the southern confines of the Roman world. From the Nile to mount Atlas, Africa was in arms. A confederacy of five Moorish nations issued from their deserts to invade the peaceful pro- vinces Julian had assumed the purple at Carthage % o Panegyr. Vet. vii. 21. P There was a settlement of the Sarmatians in the neighbourhood of Treves, which seems to have been deserted by those lazy barbarians : Au- sonius speaks of them in his Moselle. Unde iter ingrediens nemorosa per avia solum, £t nulla humani spectans vestigia cultus Arvaque SauromatAm nuper metata colonis. There was a town of the Carpi in the Lower Maesia. 1 See the rhetorical exultation of Eumenius. Panegyr. vii. 9. ' Scaliger (Animadvers. ad Euseb. p. 243.) decides in his usual manner, that the quinquegentiani.or five African nations, were the five great cities, the Pentapolis of the inoffensive province of Cyrene. ately leaped into the flames. Victor in Epitome.
 * After his defeat, Julian stabbed himself with a dagger, and immedi«