X.

CHAP. Sylla. The efforts of his fkill were ineffectual, and the barbarians became mafters of the native feat of the mufes and the arts. But while the conquerors abandoned themselves to the licence of plunder and intemperance, their fleet, that lay with a flender guard in the harbour of Piræus, was unexpectedly attacked by the brave Dexippus, who, flying with the engineer Cleodamus from the fack of Athens, collected a hafty band of volunteers, peasants as well as foldiers, and in fome measure avenged the calamities of his country 123.

ravage

threaten

Italy.

But this exploit, whatever luftre it might shed on the declining age of Athens, ferved rather to irritate than to fubdue the undaunted spirit of the northern invaders. A general conflagration blazed out at the fame time in every district of Greece. Thebes and Argos, Corinth and Sparta, which had formerly waged fuch memorable wars against each other, were now unable to bring an army into the field, or even to defend their ruined fortifications. The rage of war, both by land and by fea, spread from the eastern point of Sunium to the western coaft of Epirus.

The Goths had already advanced within fight of Italy when the approach of such imminent danger awakened the indolent Gallienus from his dream of pleasure. The Emperor appeared in arms;

Ocofius, vii. 42. ZoSyncellus, p. 182. It explain and conciliate

123 Hift. Auguft. p. 181. Victor, c. 33. fimus, 1. i. p. 35. Zonaras, 1. xii. 635. is not without fome attention, that we can their imperfect hints. We can ftill discover fome traces of the partiality of Dexippus, in the relation of his own and his countrymen's exploits.

and

retreat.

and his prefence feems to have checked the CHA P. ardour, and to have divided the ftrength, of the X. enemy. Naulobatus, a chief of the Heruli, Their diviaccepted an honourable capitulation, entered fions and with a large body of his countrymen into the fervice of Rome, and was invested with the ornaments of the confular dignity, which had never before been profaned by the hands of a barbarian 124. Great numbers of the Goths, difgufted with the perils and hardships of a tedious voyage, broke into Mæfia, with a defign of forcing their way over the Danube, to their fettlements in the Ukraine. The wild attempt would have proved inevitable deftruction, if the difcord of the Roman generals had not opened to the barbarians the means of an escape 125. The fmall remainder of this deftroying hoft returned on board their veffels; and measuring back their way through the Hellefpont and the Bofphorus, ravaged in their paffage the fhores of Troy, whofe fame, immortalized by Homer, will probably furvive the memory of the Gothic conquefts. As foon as they found themfelves in fafety within the bafon of the Euxine, they landed at Anchialus in Thrace, near the foot of Mount Hæmus: and, after all their toils, indulged themselves in the use of thofe pleasant and falutary hot baths. What remained of the

124 Syncellus, p. 382. This body of Heruli was for a long time faithful and famous.

125 Claudius, who commanded on the Danube, thought with propriety and acted with fpirit. His colleague was jealous of his fame. Hift. Auguft. p. 181,

voyage

X.

CHAP. Voyage was a fhort and eafy navigation 126. Such was the various fate of this third and greatest of their naval enterprises. It may feem difficult to conceive, how the original body of fifteen thoufand warriors could fuftain the loffes and divifions of fo bold an adventure. But as their numbers were gradually wafted by the fword, by fhipwrecks, and by the influence of a warm climate, they were perpetually renewed by troops of banditti and deferters, who flocked to the ftandard of plunder, and by a crowd of fugitive flaves, often of German or Sarmatian extraction, who eagerly feized the glorious op portunity of freedom and revenge. In thefe expeditions, the Gothic nation claimed a fuperior share of honour and danger; but the tribes that fought under the Gothic banners are fometimes diftinguifhed and fometimes confounded in the imperfect hiftories of that age; and as the barbarian fleets feemed to iffue from the mouth of the Tanais, the vague but familiar appellation of Scythians was frequently bestowed on the mixed multitude 27.

Ruin of the

temple of Ephesus.

In the general calamities of mankind, the death of an individual, however exalted, the ruin of an edifice, however famous, are paffed over with careless inattention. Yet we cannot forget that the temple of Diana at Ephefus, after having rifen with increafing fplendour from feven re

126 Jornandes, C. 20.

127 Zofimus and the Greeks (as the author of the Philopatris) give the name of Scythians to those whom Jornandes, and the Latin writers, `conftantly represent as Goths.

peated

X.

peated misfortunes 128, was finally burnt by the CHAP. Goths in their third naval invafion. The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Afia, had confpired to érect that facred and magnificent ftructure. It was fupported by an hundred and twenty-feven marble columns of the Ionic order. They were the gifts of devout monarchs, and each was fixty feet high. The altar was adorned with the masterly sculptures of Praxiteles, who had, perhaps, felected from the favourite legends of the place, the birth of the divine children of Latona, the concealment of Apollo after the flaughter of the Cyclops, and the clemency of Bacchus to the vanquifhed Amazons 129. Yet the length of the temple of Ephefus was only four hundred and twenty-five feet, about two-thirds of the measure of the church of St. Peter's at Rome 30. In the other dimenfions, it was ftill more inferior to that fublime production of modern architecture. The spreading arms of a Christian cross require a much greater breadth than the oblong temples of the Pagans; and the boldeft artifts of antiquity would have been startled at the propofal of raifing in the air a dome of the fize and proportions of the pantheon. The temple of Diana was, however, admired as one of the wonders of the world. Succeffive empires, the Perfian, the

128 Hift. Auguft. p. 178.

129 Strabo, 1. xiv. p. 640.

Jornandes, c. 20.

Vitruvius, 1. i. c. 1. præfat. 1. vii. Tacit. Annal. iii. 61. Plin, Hift. Nat. xxxvi. 14.

130 The length of St. Peter's is 840 Roman palms; each palm is

very little short of nine English inches.

vol. i. p. 233; On the Roman foot.

See Greaves's Mifcellanies,

Macedonian,

X.

CHAP. Macedonian, and the Roman, had revered its fanctity, and enriched its spendour. But the rude favages of the Baltic were deftitute of a tafte for the elegant arts, and they despised the ideal terrors of a foreign fuperftition 132.

Conduct of the Goths at Athens.

Another circumftance is related of these invafions, which might deferve our notice, were it not justly to be fufpected as the fanciful conceit of a recent fophift. We are told, that in the fack of Athens, the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were on the point of fetting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refined policy than his brethren, diffuaded them from the defign; by the profound obfervation, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they would never apply themselves to the exercife of arms 33. The fagacious counsellor (fhould the truth of the fact be admitted) reafoned like an ignorant barbarian. In the most polite and powerful nations, genius of every kind has dif. played itself about the fame period; and the age of fcience has generally been the age of military virtue and fuccefs.

131 The policy, however, of the Romans induced them to abridge the extent of the fanctuary or asylum, which by fucceffive privileges had spread itself two ftadia round the temple. Strabo, l. xiv. p. 641. Tacit. Annal. iii. 60, &c.

7

132 They offered no facrifices to the Grecian gods. See Epiftol. Gregor. Thaumat.

133 Zonaras, l. xii. p. 635. Such an anecdote was perfectly suited to the taste of Montaigne. He makes use of it in his agreeable Effay on Pedantry, l. i. c. 24.

IV. The