The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Эдвард Гиббон
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Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated. Ref. 199 But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must however have contributed to the furious plague which, from the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome; and many towns that had escaped the hands of the barbarians were entirely depopulated. Ref. 200
We have the knowledge of a very curious circumstance, of some use perhaps in the melancholy calculation of human calamities. An exact register was kept at Alexandria of all the citizens entitled to receive the distribution of corn. It was found that the ancient number of those comprised between the ages of forty and seventy had been equal to the whole sum of claimants, from fourteen to fourscore years of age, who remained alive after the reign of Gallienus. Ref. 201 Applying this authentic fact to the most correct tables of mortality, it evidently proves that above half the people of Alexandria had perished; and could we venture to extend the analogy to the other provinces, we might suspect that war, pestilence, and famine had consumed, in a few years, the moiety of the human species. Ref. 202
Footnotes:
Ref. 002
[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.]
Ref. 003
The expression used by Zosimus [i. 20] and Zonaras [xii. 19] may signify that Marinus commanded a century, a cohort, or a legion.
Ref. 004
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).]
Ref. 005
[Also named Philip.]
Ref. 006
Zosimus, l. i. p. 20 . Zonaras, l. xii. p. 624 . Edit. Louvre.
Ref. 007
[He conferred the rank of Cæsar on his two sons, Q. Herennius Etruscus Messius Decius and C. Valens Hostilianus Messius Quintus.]
Ref. 008
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.]
Ref. 009
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.]
Ref. 010
Jornandes, c. 3.
Ref. 011
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.
Ref. 012
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.
Ref. 013
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.
Ref. 014
Mallet, Introduction à l’Histoire du Dannemarc.
Ref. 015
Mallet, c. iv. p. 55, has collected from Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, and Stephanus Byzantinus, the vestiges of such a city and people.
Ref. 016
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.]
Ref. 017
Tacit. Germania, c. 44.
Ref. 018
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.
Ref. 019
Ptolemy, l. ii.
Ref. 020
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.
Ref. 021
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.]