Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/71

 CHAPTER III. THE GERMAN INVASIONS AND THE BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE I. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE HUNS FORCE THE WEST GOTHS ACROSS THE DANUBE INTO THE ROMAN EMPIRE, AtD. 376 The retired soldier, Ammianus Marcellinus, writing 10. Descrip- not more than ten or fifteen years after the battle of tionby J Ammianus Adrianople, thus describes the Huns and the passage Marcellinus ~ '.'., * .<D of the Huns of the Goths into the Empire. and of the movements The people called Huns, barely mentioned in ancient of the Goths records, live beyond the sea of Azof, on the border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a race savage beyond all parallel. At the very moment of birth the cheeks of their infant children are deeply marked by an iron, in order that the hair, instead of growing at the proper season on their faces, may be hindered by the scars; accordingly the Huns grow up without beards, and without any beauty. They all have closely knit and strong limbs and plump necks; they are of great size, and low legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or 'the stout figures which are hewn out in a rude manner with an ax on the posts at the end of bridges. They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, and are so hardy that they neither require fire nor well fla- vored food, but live on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the backs of their horses. They never shelter themselves under roofed houses, but avoid them, as people ordinarily avoid sepulchers as things 35