Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/345

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 323 have been the victims of theii* rapacious spirit. If a Bedovi'een discovers from afar a solitary traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice, " Undress thyself, thy aunt {my wife) is without a garment ''. A ready submission entitles him to mercy ; resistance will provoke the aggressor, and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in legitimate defence. A single robber or a few associates are branded with their genuine name ; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the character of a lawful and honourable war. The temper of a people, thus armed against mankind, was doubly in- flamed by the domestic licence of rapine, murder, and revenge. In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much smaller, list of respectable potentates ; but each Arab, with impunity and re- nown, might point his javelin against the life of his countryman. The union of the nation consisted only in a vague resemblance of language and manners ; and in each community the jurisdic- tion of the magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time of ignorance which preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles -^^ are recorded by tradition ; hostility was embittered with the rancour of civil faction ; and the recital, in prose or verse, of an obsolete feud was sufficient to rekindle the same passions among the descendants of the hostile tribes. In private life, every man, at least every family, was the judge and avenger of its own cause. The nice sensibility of honour, which weighs the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the quarrels of the Arabs ; the honour of their women, and of their beards, is most easily wounded ; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be expiated only by the blood of the offender ; and such is their patient inveteracy that they expect whole months and years the opportunity of revenge. A fine or compensation for murder is familiar to the barbarians of every age ; but in Arabia the kins- men of the dead are at liberty to accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law of retaliation. The re- fined malice of the Arabs refuses even the head of the murderer, (Marshall!, Canon. Chron. p. 98-163, &c.). ^Hycsos is supposed to mean " princes of the Shasu," a name for the Bedouins of the Sinai peninsula. The name Hyksos comes from Manetho, ap. Joseph, c. Apion. , i. 14. Another name for them (in Egyptian documents) is Mentu. See Chabas, Las pasteurs en Egypte, 1868 ; Petrie, History of Egypt, c. x. ] 89 Or, according to another account, 1200 (d'Herbelot, Bibliothfeque Orientale, p. 7s). The two historians who wrote of the Ayam al Arab, the battles of the Arabs, lived in the ninth and tenth century. The famous war of Dahes and Gabrah was occasioned by two horses, lasted forty years, and ended in a proverb (Pocock, Specimen, p. 48).