BOOK II. The Sakai As they spread over Europe, the Kimmerian and Keltic population retired towards the west and south. In the days of Cæsar, the most advanced tribes of the Scythian, or Gothic race, were known to the Romans under the name of Germans. They occupied all the continent but the Cimbric peninsula, and had reached and even passed the Rhine. One of their divisions, the Belgæ, had for some time established themselves in Flanders and part of France; and another body, under Ariovistus, were attempting a similar settlement near the centre of Gaul, which Cæsar prevented. It is most probable that the Belgæ in Britain were descendants of colonists or invaders from the Belgæ in Flanders and Gaul. 28 THE names Scythians and Scoloti, were, like Galli and Kimmerians, not so much local as generic appellations. The different tribes of the Scythians, like those of the Kimmerians and Gauls, had their peculiar distinctive denominations. THE Saxons were a German or Teutonic, that bably the is, a Gothic or Scythian tribe; and of the various suna pro Saxons. dies, which Terence has borrowed, Geta and Davus, Strabo, lib. vii. 467. The Getæ used the same language with the Thracians, and the Greeks called them a Thracian nation: so does Menander. Strabo, p. 453-455. Ovid, who was banished to Tome, a town of Mysia, on the Euxine, frequently talks of his Getic and Scythic locality in his epistles and Tristia. As he was so near the borders of the Sarmatians, it is a natural circumstance that their name is also mentioned in his verses; but this is no identification of nations whose origin was so distinct. 29 These two facts are fully asserted by Cæsar. He expressly distinguishes the Kelts from the Belgians in Gaul, as differing in language, laws, and customs, and ascribes to the Belgians a German origin. I. Scythian nations which have been recorded, the Sa- CHAP. kai, or Sacæ, are the people from whom the descent of the Saxons may be inferred, with the least violation of probability. Sakai-suna, or the sons of the Sakai, abbreviated into Saksun, which is the same sound as Saxon, seems a reasonable etymology of the word Saxon. The Sakai, who in Latin are called Sacæ, were an important branch of the Scythian nation. They were so celebrated, that the Persians called all the Scythians by the name of Sacæ; and Pliny, who mentions this, remarks them among the most distinguished people of Scythia."9 Strabo places them eastward of the Caspian, and states them to have made many incursions on the Kimmerians and Treres, both far and near. They seized Bactriana, and the most fertile part of Armenia, which, from them, derived the name Sakasina; they defeated Cyrus; and they reached the Cappadoces on the Euxine.30 This important fact of a part of Armenia having been named Sakasina, is mentioned by Strabo in another place31; and seems to give a geographical locality to our primeval ancestors, and to account for the Persian words that occur in the Saxon language, as they must have come into Armenia from the northern regions of Persia. THAT Some of the divisions of this people were really called Saka-suna, is obvious from Pliny; for he says, that the Sakai, who settled in Armenia, were named Sacassani 32, which is but Saka-suna, spelt by a person unacquainted with the meaning of 29 Pliny, lib. vi. c. 19. 30 Strabo, lib. xi. p. 776. 778. 31 Strab. p. 124. 32 Pliny, lib. vi. c. 11. H 2 23823B II. BOOK the combined words. And the name Sacasena 33, which they gave to the part of Armenia they occupied, is nearly the same sound as Saxonia. It is also important to remark, that Ptolemy mentions a Scythian people, sprung from the Sakai, by the name of Saxones. If the Sakai, who reached Armenia, were called Sacassani, they may have traversed Europe with the same appellation; which being pronounced by the Romans from them, and then reduced to writing from their pronunciation, may have been spelt with the x instead of the ks, and thus Saxones would not be a greater variation from Sacassani or Saksuna, than we find between French, François, Franci, and their Greek name, gayy; or between Spain, Espagne, and Hispania. It is not at all improbable, but that some of these marauding Sakai, or Sacassani, were gradually propelled to the western coasts of Europe, on which they were found by Ptolemy, and from which they molested the Roman empire, in the third century of our æra. There was a people called Saxoi, on the Euxine, according to Stephanus.34 We may consider these also, as a nation of the same parentage; who, in the wanderings of the Sakai, from Asia to the German Ocean, were left on the Euxine, as others had chosen to occupy Armenia. We may here recollect the traditional descent of Odin preserved by Snorre in the Edda and his history. This great ancestor of the Saxon and Scandinavian chieftains, is represented to have migrated from a city, on the east of the Tanais, called Asgard, and 33 Strabo, lib. xi. p. 776. 778. 34 Stephanus de Urb. et Pop. p. 657. I. a country called Asaland, which imply the city and CHAP. land of the Asæ or Asians. The cause of this movement was the progress of the Romans.35 Odin is stated to have moved first into Russia, and thence into Saxony. This is not improbable. The wars between the Romans and Mithridates involved, and shook most of the barbaric nations in these parts, and may have excited the desire, and imposed the necessity of a westerly or European emigration. Of the ancient Scythian language, the probable Ancient parent of all the Gothic tongues, we have a few Scythian words preserved to us: language, Of their gods, we learn that they had seven; and deities. whose character and attributes were thought, by Herodotus, to be like some of the most distinguished in the Grecian mythology: as, Tabiti, their principal deity, Papaios Oitosuros Artimpasa, or Arippasa Thamimasadas Apia, wife of Papaios 35 Snorre Ynglinga Saga. c. 2. and 5. Vesta. Jupiter. Apollo. Venus. Neptune. Earth. 36 Herod. Melpom. s. 52. 28. 110. Pliny, lib. vi. c. 19. BOOK II. THEY had also a warlike deity, like Mars, whose name has not been given to us; and to whom only they raised altars, images, and temples, and to whom they sacrificed annually horses and sheep, and a portion of their prisoners. Their bows were proverbial. 38 In battle they drank the blood of the first enemy whom they mastered. They scalped their opponents, and offered their heads to their king; and they made drinking vessels of the skulls of their greatest enemies or conquered friends. They had many diviners, who used rods of willow for their predictions.39 In these customs our Gothic ancestors resembled them. They had the moral virtues of Nomadic nations. Eschylus mentions them with an epithet that implies their habits of social justice. Homer declares that no nation was 37 Herod. Melp. s. 59. Lucian tells us that they adored a sword, Jup. Trag., which Herodotus mentions as their emblem of Mars. Lucian also says that despising the Grecian worship as unworthy of the deity, they sacrificed men to their Diana, who delighted in human blood. 28 "Like a Scythic bow," Strabo, 187. 39 Her. s. 64, 65. 67. Strabo remarks, that they used skulls for their cups, lib. vii. p. 458. In the days of Herodotus their customs were sufficiently ferocious. But by the time that their branches the Germans and Saxons had pervaded Europe and attracted the attention of Tacitus, they had attained the improvements whose benefits we feel. How superior both they and the Kelts of Gaul were to the more savage and uncivilised tribes of America we may perceive, by contrasting Tacitus' account of the Germans, with Brainerd's the Indian missionary's description of the North American Indians. Of these he says, "they are in general wholly unacquainted with civil laws and proceedings; nor have any kind of notion of civil judicatures : of persons being arraigned, tried, judged, condemned or acquitted. They have little or no ambition or resolution. Not one in a thousand of them has the spirit of a man. They are unspeakably indolent and slothful. They discover little grati |