Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/449

 or THE ROMAN EMPIRE 429 But the merit of the physician was received with universal favour and respect ; the Barbarians, who despised death, might be apprehensive of disease ; and the haughty conqueror trembled in the presence of a captive, to whom he ascribed, perhaps, an imaginary power of prolonging, or preserving, his life.^^ The Huns might be provoked to insult the miseiy of their slaves, over whom they exercised a despotic command ; ^- but their manners were not susceptible of a refined system of oppression ; and the efforts of courage and diligence were often recompensed by the gift of freedom. The historian Priscus, whose embassy is a course of curious instruction, was accosted, in the camp of Attila, by a stranger, who saluted him in the Greek language, but whose dress and figure displayed the appearance of a wealthy Scythian. In the siege of Viminacium, he had lost, according to his own account, his fortune and liberty ; he be- came the slave of Onegesius ; but his faithful services, against the Romans and the Acatzires, had gradually raised him to the rank of the native Huns ; to whom he was attached by the domestic pledges of a new wife and several children. The spoils of war had restored and improved his private property ; he was admitted to the table of his former lord ; and the apostate Greek blessed the hour of his captivity, since it had been the introduction to an happy and independent state ; which he held by the honourable tenure of militaiy service. This reflection naturally produced a dispute on the advantages, and defects, of the Roman government, which was severely arraigned by the apostate, and defended by Priscus in a prolix and "feeble declamation. The freedom of Onegesius exposed, in time and lively colours, the vices of a declining empire, of Avhich he had so long been the victim ; the cruel absm-dity of the Roman princes, unable to protect their subjects against the public enemy, unwilling to trust them with arms for their own defence ; the intolerable weight of taxes, rendered still more oppressive by the intricate or arbitrary modes of collection ; 31 Philip de Comines, in his admirable picture of the last moments of Lewis XI. (M^moires, 1. vi. c. 12), represents the insolence of his physician, who, in five months, extorted 54,000 crowns, and a rich bishopric, from the stern, avaricious tyrant. 32 Priscus (p. 61 [p. 88]) extols the equity of the Roman laws, which protected the life of a slave. Occidere solent (says Tacitus of the Germans) non disciphna et severitate, sed impetu et iri, ut inimicum, nisi quod impune. De Moribus Germ. c. 25. The Heruli, who were the subjects of Attila, claimed, and exercised, the power of life and death over their slaves. See a remarkable instance in the second book of Agathias.