Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/334

 31G THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, the dress and manners, the arms and inroads of the '_ Getae and Sarmatians, who were associated for the purposes of destruction; and from the accounts of his- tory, there is some reason to beheve that these Sarma- tians were the Jazygaj, one of the most numerous and •warhke tribes of the nation. The allurements of plenty engaged them to seek a permanent establishment on the frontiers of the empii'e. Soon after the reign of Augustus, they obliged the Dacians, who subsisted by fishing on the banks of the river Teyss or Tibiscus, to retire into the hilly country, and to abandon to the victorious Sarmatians the fertile plains of the Upper Hungary, which are bounded by the course of the Danube and the semicircular enclosure of the Carpa- thian mountains ^ In this advantageous position, they watched or suspended the moment of attack, as they were provoked by injuries or appeased by presents; they gradually acquired the skill of using more dan- gerous weapons ; and although the Sarmatians did not illustrate their name by any memorable exploits, they occasionally assisted their eastern and western neigh- bours, the Goths and the Germans, with a formidable body of cavalry. They lived under the irregular aris- tocracy of their chieftains*; but after they had re- ceived into their bosom the fugitive Vandals, who yielded to the pressure of the Gothic power, they seem to have chosen a king from that nation, and from the illustrious race of the Astingi, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Northern ocean". which no Roman, except Ovid, could have an opportunity of making. Every circumstance which tends to illustrate the history of the barbarians, has been drawn together by the very accurate count de Duat, Hist. An- cienne des Peuples de I'Europe, torn. iv. c. xvi. p. 286 — 317. ' The Sarmatians Jazygae were settled on the banks of the Pathissus or Tibiscus, when Pliny, in the year 79, published his Natural History. See I. iv. c. 25. In the time of Strabo and Ovid, sixty or seventy years be- fore, they appear to have inhabited beyond the Gets, along the coast of the Euxine. ' Principes Sarmatarum Jazygum penes quos civitatis regimen . . . plebem quoque et vim equitum qua sola valent ofFerebant. Tacit. Hist. iii. 5. This offer was made in the civil war between Vilellius and Vespasian. " This hypoiliesis of a Vandal king reigning over Sarmatian subjects, seems necessary to reconcile the Goth Jornandes with the Greek and Latin historians of Constantine. It may be observed that Isidore, who lived in