Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/422

 402 THE DECLINE AND FALL and reviews Oui' fancy, SO lon^ accustomed to exagfijerate and multiply A.D. 42/' the martial swarms of Barbarians that seemed to issue from the North, will perhaps be surprised by the account of the army which Genseric mustered on the coast of Mauritania. The Vandals, who in twenty years had penetrated from the Elbe to Mount Atlas, were united under the command of their warlike king ; and he reigned with equal authority over the Alani, who had passed, within the term of human life, from the cold of Scythia to the excessive heat of an African climate. The hopes of the bold enterprise had excited many brave adventurers of the Gothic nation ; and many desperate provincials were tempted to repair their fortunes by the same means which had occasioned their ruin. Yet this various multitude amounted only to fifty thousand effective men ; and, though Genseric artfully magnified his apparent strength, b}' appointing eighty cliiliarchs, or commanders of thousands, the fallacious increase of old men, of childi-en, and of slaves, would scarcely have swelled his anny to the number of fourscore thousand persons, i" But his own dexterity, and the discontents of Africa, soon fortified the Vandal powers by the accession of numerous and active The Moors alHcs. The parts of Mauritania, which border on the great desert and the Atlantic ocean, were filled with a fierce and un- tractable race of men, whose savage temper had been ex- asperated, rather than reclaimed, by their dread of the Roman arms. The wandering Moors,^'^ as they gradually ventured to approach the sea-shore and the camp of the Vandals, must have viewed with terror and astonishment the cfress, the armour, the martial pride and discipline of the unknown strangers, who had landed on their coast ; and the fair complexions of the blue-eyed warriors of Germany formed a very singular contrast with the Mr. Hodgkin, ii. 292, makes out a good case for the date 428, given in the Chron. Pasch. and perhaps really implied by Idatius.] 1" Compare Procopius {de Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. 5, p. 190) and Victor Vitensis (de Persecutione Vandal. 1. i. c. i, p. 3, edit. Ruinart). We are assured by Idatius that Genseric evacuated Spain, cum Vandalis omnibus eorumque familiis ; and Possidius (in Vit. Augustin. c. 28, apud Ruinart, p. 427) describes his army as manus ingens immanium gentium Vandalorum et Alanorum, commixtam secum habens Gothorum gentem, aliarumque diversarum personas. [To reconcile the 50,000 fighting men of Procopius with the 80,000 (including old men a.rd. paivuli) of Victor, Mr. Hodgkin supposes that females were excluded in Victor's enumeration (ii. 231).] i'^ For the manners of the Moors, see Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. 1. ii. c. 6, p. 249) ; for their figure and complexion, M. de Buffon (Hi.:'.oire Naturelle, torn. iii. p. 430). Procopius says in general that the Moors had joined the Vandals before the death of Valcntinian (de Bell. Vandal. 1. i. c. 5, p. 190), and it is probable that the independent tribes did not embrace any uniform system of policy.