their primitive abode.* A question so obscure seems hardly to admit of satisfactory elucidation. Paragraph 6.-The Burgundians. The Burgundians are another celebrated race, who in their original seats were, as we have seen, neighbours of the Goths, and separated from them by the Lower Vistula. After the commencement of the migration of these tribes they appear still near each other, since we find from Jornandes that Fastida king of the Gepidæ warred against the Burgundiones, and, as it is said, "pæne usque ad internecionem delevit." Notwithstanding this calamity, we find the Burgundians, together with the Vandals, on the northern bank of the Danube, both tribes being thus to the westward of the Goths. It is said by Zosimus that the emperor Probus overcame the Frangi by the aid of his generals, and fought in person against the Burgundi and Bandili, meaning the Vandals. After this time the Burgundians took a westerly direction, and appear in the neighbourhood of the Alemanni. "Burgundiones Alamannorum agros occupavêre, sed suâ quoque clade quæsitos." They are mentioned by Ammianus in the neighbourhood of the Rhine and Mayne, and are termed by him "bellicosos et pubis immensæ viribus affluentes ideoque metuendos finitimis universis." Orosius speaks of them as of a new people in this quarter: "Burgundionum quoque, novorum hostium novum nomen, plus quam octoginta millia, ut ferunt, armatorum ripa Rheni fluminis insederunt."§ This refers to the reign of Valentinian. At the era of the great inroad of the Vandalic nations into Gaul, recorded by St. Jerom, the Burgundians are mentioned as in motion. They then appear to have been in the neighbourhood of Mentz, probably on both sides of the Rhine. Here their king Gundicar perished with a great number of his subjects in war against the Hunns. Here it was that the conversion of the Burgundians to Catholic Christianity took place, of which an account is given by Orosius and Socrates. The latter of these writers mentions the fact, that they still dwelt—πέραν τοῦ ποταμοῦ * Zeuss, ubi supra, p. 455. Ammian, Marcell. xxviii. 5. † Mamert, Paneg. ii. 17. Zeuss, 466. 'Pivov-beyond the Rhine.* It was soon after their defeat by Aetius and the Hunns that the Burgundians obtained their final settlement, and founded a powerful kingdom between the Alps and the Rhone, and reaching from the Vosges mountains to the Mediterranean. Paragraph 7.-The Langobards. The Langobards were another tribe of Northern Germany, allied, as it would appear, to the Vandalic race. Their own writers term them Vinili. Like the Goths they preserved ancient sagas respecting their origin from Scandinavia, of which the Vinili are said to have possessed a third part. "Langobardi ab extremis Germaniæ finibus Oceanique protinus litore, Scandiaque insula magna egressi et novarum sedium cupidi, Ihorea et Ajone ducibus, Vandalos primum vicerunt.”† They are placed by the same writer soon afterwards on the banks of the Elbe. Paul the son of Wanefrid, a native Lombard, who collected the traditions of his people, gives a similar account. Led from the over-peopled Scandinavia by Ajo and Ihor, sons of the prophetess Gambara, into the land of Scoringa or Skoningen, they encountered Ambri and Assi, chiefs of the Vandals, who exacted a tribute from the wanderers as a rent for the pastures where they fed their flocks. When Skoningen was no longer able to contain the multitude of their host they crossed to the continent, and afterwards to the borders of Poland and Hungary, where they settled.‡ From their settlements beyond the Danube the Lombards were induced by the emperor Justinian to pass that river and make themselves masters of Noricum and Pannonia. A war of thirty years between them and the Gepidæ terminated in the extirpation of the latter people.§ The Langobards were in this war commanded by Albwin, under whom they marched into the north of Italy and established the kingdom of the Lombards. * Socrat. H. Eccl. vii. 50. Zeuss, 460. + Prosper. Aquit. Chron. i. 655. Zeuss, s. 472. § Paul. Diac. i. 22-27. Procop. Bell. Goth. iii. 33. Paul. Diac. ii. 7. See passages from ancient authors cited by Cluver, Germ. Antiq. iii. p. 695 et seqq.; Zeuss, 474; Gibbon, vol. vii. ; and the History of Paul the son of Warnefrid, viz. Paulus Diaconus, in Grotius's Excerpts. Paragraph 8.-The Heruli. The Heruli were another German people famous for the share they took in raising a new principality on the ruins of the dominion of Rome. Their primitive seats are unknown; but M. Zeuss has conjectured with probability that they were the Suardones, the Papadeiro of Ptolemy, under a new name, since there is no other people on the southern coast of the Baltic with whom they can with probability be identified. That they originated from that quarter we have no positive proof, but the fact seems to be implied in verses of Sidonius Apollinaris : "Hic glaucis Herulus genis vagatur Imos Oceani colens recessus, Algoso prope concolor profundo." The Heruli are first mentioned by name as accompanying the Goths on the Pontus in their piratical expeditions against Thrace and Greece in the time of Gallienus and Claudius.* They are mentioned by Trebonius Pollio and Zosimus, and more fully by Jornandes, who cites on this occasion the history of Ablavius. They were reduced under the power of the Gothic emperor Hermanrich, who, as Jornandes says, "non passus est nisi ut gentem Herulorum, quibus præerat Alaricus, magna ex parte trucidatam, reliquam suæ subigeret ditioni. Num prædicta gens, Ablavio historico referente, juxta Mæotidas paludes habitans, in locis stagnantibus quas Græci hele vocant, Heruli nominati sunt, gens quanto velox eo amplius superbissima; sed quamvis velocitas eorum ab aliis sæpe bellantibus eos tutaretur, Gothorum tamen stabilitati subjacent et tarditati."+ The Heruli were the most wandering people of the whole German race they fought in almost every country in Europe in the various wars which in the course of three centuries established the German nations in all the provinces of the Western *Sidonius Apollinaris, Epist. in Burdegal. Zeuss, 479. + It may be observed that such writers as Jornandes, though they acquired a tolerable degree of aptitude in the construction of Latin sentences and in the use of the vocabulary-in which, however, they often give peculiar meanings to wordscould never learn with accuracy the tenses of verbs. This may account for the loss of so many Latin verbal forms in the modern languages. empire. They were most celebrated by the accidental elevation of their prince Odoacher to be the first German sovereign of Italy. In the outline which I have thus endeavoured to trace of the Continental German nations, I have not attempted to enumerate all the tribes mentioned by the ancients, but only to describe briefly the principal divisions, and those whose history is most important, with a view to the ethnography of the race. I must now add some brief remarks on the nations of Scandinavia who had not the German language, properly so termed, but the Old Norse or Northern speech. SECTION V.-History of the Northmen, or of the Scandinavian division of the German Race. The earliest inhabitants of the countries beyond the Baltic were, as we have seen, people foreign to the German race. With the aboriginal Iotuns of the north Teutonic invaders waged a long warfare of conquest or extermination, the passages of which became the theme of many a legend in the mythical poems sung by ancient Scalds, and at a somewhat later period were committed to writing in the poetical or prosaic sagas. That the Northmen were a people allied to the German race is sufficiently testified by the affinity of their language; but its comparative remoteness from the dialects of the central German tribes indicates a distinct era as the period of separation. Yet it seems improbable that the great division of the German race took place, as Adelung supposed, while they were yet inhabitants of their primitive abodes in the East. The varieties of the German languages, the old Norse or Northern tongue being comprehended among them, have so entirely a local relation, that they must, as it would appear, have been originally developed since the tribes of the German race took possession of their present abodes. Their history as inhabitants of northern Europe, and as resting on foreign and authentic testimony, comes down from a very early period. It begins with the accounts transmitted by that celebrated northern voyager, who in the days of Aristotle discovered Albion and Thule, the Baltic Sea and the amber coast. It is indeed a striking proof of the difficulty of communication by land between the European countries in ancient times, that Germany and Scandinavia were discovered at the same era, and by a navigator of the northern seas. There must have been a very ancient intercourse between the maritime people of the two great midland seas of Europe, since amber, a produce of the Baltic coast, was known at the inmost recess of the Mediterranean, by the Greeks, before the time of Homer.* It has been conjectured that Phoenician vessels passed the Straits of Hercules and those of the Cimbric Chersonese, and traded to the coast of Prussia, where the ancient Scargon, or by others Kulm, has been supposed to have been a station of their traffic;+ but no evidence can be found in the earliest accounts of the amber trade that they had any settlement in the north, and the fact is rendered at least doubtful, as it has been observed by Gesenius, by the negative evidence. On the other hand, it is probable that the traders from Marseilles in somewhat later times only followed the track of Phoenician or Punic mariners; and we are certain that adventurers from the Phocæan colony reached the mouth of the Vistula. Pytheas is the earliest navigator who is known to have sailed into the Baltic;§ he appears to have landed on the coast of Albion, the name of which he first made known to the civilised world, as he likewise did * Strabo, p. 201. + Uphagen. Parerg. Histor. p. 186. Joh. v. Müller, Allgem. Geschichte, i. s. 35. Voigt, Geschichte Preussens von den ältesten Zeiten, i. s. 17. It has been conjectured by some that the old Scargon or the peninsula of Hela was a Phoenician settlement; by others Kulm was fixed upon as the site of the supposed colony. See Voigt," Bernsteinhandel im Alterthum, Geschichte Preuss. s. 80. Gesenius in his late work calls in question the prevalent opinion that the Phoenicians formed settlements on the coast of Europe beyond the straits of Hercules. The fact that no Phoenician inscription has been discovered in any of the places where the Phoenicians are supposed to have traded in all that region, while they are so frequently found in places known to have been the seats of Phoenician colonies, is very remarkable; but we must observe that it is in the ruins of ancient temples or of the sepulchres of distinguished men that these inscriptions have been found, and that such things might hardly be expected in merely trading settlements or in marts only resorted to by merchants. § Geminus Rhodius in Uranologio Petavii. Geijer, Schweden's Urgeschichte, s. 57. |