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 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 37 mutual credulity, as it was conducive to mutual interest.i^^ An army of fourscore thousand Burgundians soon appeared on the banks of the Rhine ; and impatiently required the support and subsidies which Valentinian had promised : but they were amused with excuses and delays, till at length, after a fruitless expectation, they were compelled to retire. The arms and fortifications of the Gallic frontier checked the fury of their just resentment ; and their massacre of the captives served to embitter the hereditaiy feud of the Burgundians and the Ale- manni. The inconstancy of a wise prince may, perhaps, be explained by some alteration of circumstances ; and perhaps it was the original design of Valentinian to intimidate rather than to destroy, as the balance of power would have been equally overtm-ned by the extirpation of either of the German nations. Among the princes of the Alemanni, Macrianus, who, with a Roman name, had assumed the arts of a soldier and a statesman, deserved his hatred and esteem. The emperor him- [a.d. 371] self, with a light and unencumbered band, condescended to pass the Rhine, marched fifty miles into the country, and would infallibly have seized the object of his pursuit, if his judicious measures had not been defeated by the impatience of the ti'oops. Macrianus was afterwards admitted to the honour of a personal conference with the emperor ; and the favours which he received fixed him, till the hour of his death, a steady and sincere friend of the republic.^'^^ The land was covered by the fortifications of Valentinian ; The saxons but the sea-coast of Gaul and Britain was exposed to the depre- dations of the Saxons. That celebrated name, in which we have a dear and domestic interest, escaped the notice of Tacitus ; and in the maps of Ptolemy it faintly marks the narrow neck of the Cimbric peninsula and three small islands towards the mouth of the Elbe.^'^^ This contracted temtory, the present i''^ Jam inde temporibus priscis sobolem se esse Romanam Burgundii sciunt : and the vague tradition gradually assumed a more regular form. Ores. 1. vii. c. 32. It is annihilated by the decisive authority of Pliny, who composed the history of Drusus, and served in Germany (Plin. Secund. Epist. iii. 5) within sixty years after the death of that hero. Germanoriim genera quinque ; Vindili, quorum pars Burgundiones, &c. Hist. Natur. iv. 28. 103 xhe wars and negotiations relative to the Burgundians and Alemanni are distinctly related by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxviii. 5, xxix. 4, xxx. 3). Orosius (1. vii. c. 32) and the Chronicles of Jerom and Cassiodorius fix some dates and add some circumstances. lO'^'En-i Toi/ a.vx'^va. Trjs KiiajSjOiKi^s xf^p^Tovriaov, SafoKes. At the northern extremity of the peninsula (the Cimbric promontory of Pliny, iv. 27) Ptolemy fixes the remnant of the Cimbri. He fills the interval between the Saxons and the Cimbri with six obscure tribes, who were united, as early as the sixth century, under the national appellation of Danes. See Cluver. German. Antiq. L iii. c. 21, 22, 23.