Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/282

 262 THE DECLINE AND FALL conquests stretched from Corea far beyond the river Irtish. He vanquished in the country to tlie North of the Caspian Sea the [Khakhan] nation of the lliins ; and the new title of Khan or Cagaii expressed the fame and power which he derived from this memorable victory.*^ Emigration of The chain of events is inteiTu))ted, or rather is concealed, as the northern, « it^i itt ^ ^ ii ii Germans. it passcs ii'om tile V olga to the istuia, throufifh the dark in- terval which separates the extreme limits of the Chinese and of the Roman <reography. Yet the temper of the Barbarians and the experience of successive emiorations sufficiently declare that the Huns, who were oppressed by the arms of the Geougen, soon withdrew from the presence of an insultin/r victor. The countries towards the Euxine were already occupied by their kindi'ed tribes ; and their hasty flight, which they soon con- verted into a bold attack, would more naturally be directed towards the rich and level plains through which the Vistula gently flows into the Baltic Sea. The North must again have been alarmed and agitated by the invasion of the Huns ; and the nations who retreated before them must have pressed with in- cumbent weight on the confines of Oermany.^" The inhabitants of those regions which the ancients have assigned to the Suevi, the V'andals, and the Burgundians might embrace the resolution of abandoning to the fugitives of Sarmatia their woods and morasses ; or at least of discharging their superfluous numbers on the provinces of the Roman empire.^'"' About four years after the victorious Toulun had assumed the title of Khan of the Geougen, another Barbarian, the haughty Rhodogast or Rada- gaisus,'^'-' marched from the northern extremities of Germany ^ See .M. de Guignes, Hist, des Huns, torn. i. p. 179-189, torn. ii. p. 295, 334- 338. [His empire " extended east and west from Corea to Harashar and south as far as the country of the Tukuhun and the modern Kan Sub province ". " North- west of Zarun's empire were the remains of the Hiungnu, and they were all gradu- ally annexed by him. This modest statement, which precedes the distinct limita- tion of his dominions in a westerly direction to the north of Harashar — at the utmost Tarbagatai or Kuldja — is evidently the ground for Gibbon's mistaken statement that he 'vanquished the Huns to the north of the Caspian'.'' Mr. E. H. Parker, . Thousand Years of the Tartars, p. 161-2.] •■" Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. iii. p. 182) has observed an emigration from the Palus Mceotis to the north of Germany, which he ascribes to famine. But his views of ancient history are strangely darkened by ignorance and error. •^ Zosimus (1. v.. p. 331 [c. 26]) uses the general description of the nations beyond the E>anube and the Rhine. Their situation, and consequently their names, are manifestly shown, even in the various epithets which each ancient writer may have casually added. lenburgh). A hero might naturally assume the appellation of his tutelar god ; but it is not probable that the Barbarians should worship an unsuccessful hero. See Mascou. Hist, of the Germans, viii. 14. [His name suggested that Radagaisus was a Slav ; but he is now generally supposed to be a Goth.]
 * The name of Rhadagast was that of a local deity of the Obotrites (in Meck-