The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Эдвард Гиббон

Ali, his servile panegyrist, would afford us many horrid examples. In his camp before Delhi, Timur massacred 100,000 Indian prisoners, who had smiled when the army of their countrymen appeared in sight (Hist. de Timur Bec, tom. iii. p. 90). The people of Ispahan supplied 70,000 human skulls for the structure of several lofty towers (id. tom. i. p. 434). A similar tax was levied on the revolt of Bagdad (tom. iii. p. 370); and the exact account, which Cherefeddin was not able to procure from the proper officers, is stated by another historian (Ahmed Arabsiada, tom. ii. p. 175 vers. Manger) at 90,000 heads.

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      The ancients, Jornandes, Priscus, &c., are ignorant of this epithet. The modern Hungarians have imagined that it was applied, by a hermit of Gaul, to Attila, who was pleased to insert it among the titles of his royal dignity. Mascou, ix. 23, and Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. vi. p. 143.

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      The missionaries of St. Chrysostom had converted great numbers of the Scythians, who dwelt beyond the Danube in tents and waggons. Theodoret, l. v. c. 31. Photius, p. 1517. The Mahometans, the Nestorians, and the Latin Christians thought themselves secure of gaining the sons and grandsons of Zingis, who treated the rival missionaries with impartial favour.

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      The Germans, who exterminated Varus and his legions, had been particularly offended with the Roman laws and lawyers. One of the Barbarians, after the effectual precautions of cutting out the tongue of an advocate and sewing up his mouth, observed with much satisfaction that the viper could no longer hiss. Florus, iv. 12.

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      Priscus, p. 59 [p. 86]. It should seem that the Huns preferred the Gothic and Latin language to their own; which was probably a harsh and barren idiom.

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      Philip de Comines, in his admirable picture of the last moments of Lewis XI. (Mémoires, l. 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.

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      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 disciplinâ et severitate, sed impetu et irâ, 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.

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      See the whole conversation in Priscus, p. 59-62 [p. 86-88].

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      Nova iterum Orienti assurgit [leg. consurgit] ruina . . . quum nulla ab Occidentalibus ferrentur auxilia. [Chron. Gall. ad 452, ed. Mommsen, Chron. Min. i. p. 662, ad ann. 447.] Prosper-Tiro [see above, vol. iv. Appendix 5, p. 352] composed his Chronicle in the West, and his observation implies a censure.

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      According to the description or rather invective of Chrysostom, an auction of Byzantine luxury must have been very productive. Every wealthy house possessed a semicircular table of massy silver, such as two men could scarcely lift, a vase of solid gold of the weight of forty pounds, cups, dishes of the same metal.

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      The articles of the treaty, expressed without much order or precision, may be found in Priscus (p. 34, 35, 36, 37, 53 [&c. fr. 2-4, and fr. 8, p. 81]). Count Marcellinus dispenses some comfort by observing, 1st, That Attila himself solicited the peace and presents which he had formerly refused; and, 2dly, That, about the same time, the ambassadors of India presented a fine large tame tiger to the emperor Theodosius.

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      Priscus, p. 35, 36 [fr. 5]. Among the hundred and eighty-two forts, or castles, of Thrace, enumerated by Procopius (de Ædificiis, l. iv. c. xi. tom. ii. p. 92, edit. Paris) there is one of the name of Esimontou, whose position is doubtfully marked in the neighbourhood of Anchialus and the Euxine Sea. The name and walls of Azimuntium might subsist till the reign of Justinian, but the race of its brave defenders had been carefully extirpated by the jealousy of the Roman princes. [But the town appears again in the reign of Maurice; and there — c. xlvi. footnote 46 — Gibbon corrects his statement here.]

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      The peevish dispute of St. Jerom and St. Augustin, who laboured, by different expedients, to reconcile the seeming quarrel of the two apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, depends on the solution of an important question (Middleton’s Works, vol. ii. p. 5-10) which has been frequently agitated by Catholic and Protestant divines, and even by lawyers and philosophers of every age.

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      Montesquieu (Considérations sur la Grandeur, &c. c. xix.) has delineated, with a bold and easy pencil, some of the most striking circumstances of the pride of Attila, and the disgrace of the Romans. He deserves the praise of having read the Fragments of Priscus, which have been too much disregarded.

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      See Priscus, p. 69, 71, 72, &c. [F.H.G. iv. p. 93, 97, 98]. I would fain believe that this adventurer was afterwards crucified by the order of Attila, on a suspicion of treasonable practices; but Priscus (p. 57 [p. 84]) has too plainly distinguished two persons of the name of Constantius, who, from the similar events of their lives, might have been easily confounded.

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      In the Persian treaty, concluded in the year 422, the wise and eloquent Maximin had been the assessor of Ardaburius (Socrates, l. vii. c. 20). When Marcian ascended the throne, the office of Great Chamberlain was bestowed on Maximin, who is ranked, in a public edict, among the four principal ministers of state (Novell. ad Calc. Cod. Theod. p. 31). He executed a civil and military commission in the Eastern provinces; and his death was lamented by the savages of Æthiopia, whose incursions he had repressed. See Priscus, p. 40, 41.

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      Priscus was a native of Panium in Thrace, and deserved, by his eloquence, an honourable place among the sophists of the age. His Byzantine history, which related to his own times, was comprised in seven books. See Fabricius, Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 235, 236. Notwithstanding the charitable judgment of the critics, I suspect that Priscus was a Pagan.

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      The Huns themselves still continued to despise the labours of agriculture; they abused the privilege of a victorious nation; and the Goths, their industrious subjects who cultivated the earth, dreaded their neighbourhood, like that of so many ravenous wolves (Priscus, p. 45 [p. 108]). In the same manner the Sarts and Tadgics provide for their own subsistence, and for that of the Usbec Tartars, their lazy and rapacious sovereigns. See Genealogical History of the Tartars, p. 423, 455, &c.

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      It is evident that Priscus passed the Danube and the Theiss, and that he did not reach the foot of the Carpathian hills. Agria, Tokay, and Jazberin are situated in the plains circumscribed by this definition. M. de Buat (Histoire des Peuples, &c. tom. vii. p. 461) has chosen Tokay; Otrokosci (p. 180, apud Mascou, ix. 23), a learned Hungarian, has preferred Jazberin, a place about thirty-six miles westward of Buda and the Danube. [Jász-Berény.]

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      The royal village of Attila may be compared to the city of Karacorum, the residence of the successors of Zingis; which, though it appears to have been a more stable habitation, did not equal the size or splendour of the town and abbeys of St. Denys, in the thirteenth century (see Rubruquis, in the Histoire Générale des Voyages, tom. vii. p. 286). The camp of Aurengzebe, as it is so agreeably described by Bernier (tom. ii. p. 217-235), blended the manners of Scythia with the magnificence and luxury of Hindostan.

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      When the Moguls displayed the spoils of Asia, in the diet of Toncat, the throne