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

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      [We have almost no sources for Philip’s reign. Gibbon mentions no events during the years between his accession in 244 and the secular games in 248. An expedition led by Philip himself against the Carpi seems to have been the most important occurrence.]

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      The expression used by Zosimus [i. 20] and Zonaras [xii. 19] may signify that Marinus commanded a century, a cohort, or a legion.

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      His birth at Bubalia, a little village in Pannonia (Eutrop. ix. , Victor. in Cæsarib. et Epitom. ), seems to contradict, unless it was merely accidental, his supposed descent from the Decii. Six hundred years had bestowed nobility on the Decii; but at the commencement of that period, they were only plebeians of merit, and among the first who shared the consulship with the haughty patricians. Plebeiæ Deciorum animæ, &c. Juvenal, Sat. viii. 254. See the spirited speech of Decius in Livy, x. 9, 10 [7, 8]. [C. Messius Quintus Traianus Decius. The date of his elevation fell in the last days of 248 (Schiller, i. 803).]

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      [Also named Philip.]

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      Zosimus, l. i. p. 20 . Zonaras, l. xii. p. 624 . Edit. Louvre.

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      [He conferred the rank of Cæsar on his two sons, Q. Herennius Etruscus Messius Decius and C. Valens Hostilianus Messius Quintus.]

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      See the prefaces of Cassiodorus and Jornandes: it is surprising that the latter should be omitted in the excellent edition, published by Grotius, of the Gothic writers. [Jordanes is now recognised as the correct spelling of the Gothic writer whom Gibbon calls Jornandes. See Appendix 1.]

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      On the authority of Ablavius, Jornandes quotes some old Gothic chronicles in verse. De Reb. Geticis, c. 4. [The Scandinavian origin of the Goths was a legend believed by themselves, but there is no historical evidence for it.]

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      Jornandes, c. 3.

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      See, in the Prolegomena of Grotius [to Hist. Gotth., Vand. et Lang.], some large extracts from Adam of Bremen [98 sqq.], and Saxo-Grammaticus [124 sqq.]. The former wrote in the year 1077, the latter flourished about the year 1200.

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      Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII. l. iii. When the Austrians desired the aid of the court of Rome against Gustavus Adolphus, they always represented that conqueror as the lineal successor of Alaric. Harte’s History of Gustavus, vol. ii. p. 123.

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      See Adam of Bremen in Grotii Prolegomenis, p. 104 . The temple of Upsal was destroyed by Ingo King of Sweden, who began his reign in the year 1075, and about fourscore years afterwards a Christian Cathedral was erected on its ruins. See Dalin’s History of Sweden in the Bibliothèque Raisonnée.

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      Mallet, Introduction à l’Histoire du Dannemarc.

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      Mallet, c. iv. p. 55, has collected from Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Stephanus Byzantinus, the vestiges of such a city and people.

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      This wonderful expedition of Odin, which, by deducing the enmity of the Goths and Romans from so memorable a cause, might supply the noble groundwork of an Epic Poem, cannot safely be received as authentic history. According to the obvious sense of the Edda, and the interpretation of the most skilful critics, As-gard, instead of denoting a real city of the Asiatic Sarmatia, is the fictitious appellation of the mystic abode of the gods, the Olympus of Scandinavia; from whence the prophet was supposed to descend when he announced his new religion to the Gothic nations, who were already seated in the southern parts of Sweden. [See below, chap. lxxi. note 29.]

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      Tacit. Germania, c. 44.

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      Tacit. Annal. ii. 62. If we could yield a firm assent to the navigations of Pytheas of Marseilles, we must allow that the Goths had passed the Baltic at least three hundred years before Christ.

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      Ptolemy, l. ii.

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      By the German colonies who followed the arms of the Teutonic knights. The conquest and conversion of Prussia were completed by those adventurers in the xiiith century.

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      Pliny (Hist. Natur. iv. 14) and Procopius (in Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 1 ) agree in this opinion. They lived in distant ages, and possessed different means of investigating the truth. [Resemblances in proper names point to a close kinship.]

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      The Ostro and Visi, the Eastern and Western Goths, obtained those denominations from their original seats in Scandinavia. In all their future marches and settlements they preserved, with their names, the same relative situation. When they first departed from Sweden, the infant colony was contained in three vessels. The third being a heavy sailer lagged behind, and the crew, which afterwards swelled into a nation, received from that circumstance the appellation of Gepidæ or Loiterers. Jornandes, c. 17. [On this division and the early migrations of the Goths, see Appendix 1, 2.]

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      See a fragment of Peter Patricius in the Excerpta Legationum; and with regard to its probable date, see Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iii. p. 346. [Fr. 8, F.H.G., iv. p. 186.]

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      Omnium harum gentium insigne, rotunda scuta, breves gladii, et erga reges obsequium. Tacit. Germania, c. 43. The Goths probably acquired their iron by the commerce of amber.

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      Jornandes, c. 13, 14. [Theodoric was not “King of Italy,” as we shall see; the expression is a loose one.]

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      The Heruli, and the Uregundi or Burgundi, are particularly mentioned. See Mascou’s History of the Germans, l. v. A passage in the Augustan History, p. 28 [iv. 14], seems to allude to this great emigration. The Marcomannic war was partly occasioned by the pressure of barbarous tribes, who fled before the arms of more northern barbarians.

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      D’Anville, Géographie Ancienne, and the third part of his incomparable map of Europe.

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      Tacit. Germania, c. 46. [The Bastarnæ were certainly a Germanic people.]

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      Cluver. Germ. Antiqua, l. iii. c. 43.

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      The Venedi, the Slavi, and the Antes, were the three great tribes of the same people. Jornandes, c. 24 [xxiii. 119, ed. Mommsen].

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      Tacitus most assuredly deserves that title, and even his cautious suspense is a proof of his diligent inquiries.