BOOK

I.

merians of these districts moved from Europe into Asia Minor; and afflicted its maritime regions with calamities, from their warfare, which Ionia remembered with such horror, as to believe that they sprang from the infernal regions; to the neighbourhood of which even Homer consigns them."

THE part of the Kimmerian population, which the Scythians thus disturbed, was then occupying the peninsula, which from them obtained the name of the Kimmerian Chersonesus; and its vicinity. Their name was also retained, after their departure, in the adjoining Bosphorus, in a mountain, and in a city on the peninsula, where the isthmus was protected by a ditch and a rampart. In these parts of Europe they had possessed great power, before the Scythians attacked them; and Herodotus says, that in his time, several Kimmerian walls and ports were to be seen there." The Turks are now the masters of this country, but their dominion begins to decline.

THE retreat of the Kimmerians, who fled before the Scythians, has given rise to the assertion, that they conquered Asia, because what the Romans called Asia Minor, was by the more ancient Greeks usually denominated Asia; but it is clear that their irruption was along the sea-coast, and did not ex

to 631 years before Christ. Strabo places the same event in Homer's time or before, on the authority of some other historians, p. 38. 222. We can scarcely reduce any of the facts of ancient classical history, before the Persian war, to exact chronology.

5 "As Homer knew that the Kimmerians were in the north and west regions on the Bosphorus, he made them to be near Hades ; and perhaps according to the common opinions of the Ionians concerning that race." Strabo, Geog. p. 222.

8

tend beyond the maritime districts. One of their chiefs who conducted it was called Lygdamis; he penetrated into Lydia and Ionia, took Sardis, and died in Cilicia. This destructive incursion, which succeeded probably because it was unexpected, has been mentioned by some Greek poets, as well as by Herodotus, Callisthenes", and Strabo." They were at length expelled from Asia Minor by the father of Croesus.1

WHEN the Scythians first attacked them on the European side of their Bosphorus, their endangered tribes held a council; the chiefs and their friends wished to resist the invaders, but the others preferred a voluntary emigration. Their difference of opinion produced a battle, and the survivors abandoned their country to the Scythians." But while one portion went under Lygdamis to Asia, the more warlike and larger part of the Kimmerian nations, according to the geographers cursorily mentioned by Plutarch ", receded westward from the Scythians, and proceeded to inhabit the remoter regions of Europe, extending to the German Ocean. Here," he adds, "it is said that they live in a dark, woody country, where the sun is seldom seen, from their many lofty and spreading trees, which reach into the interior as far as the Hercynian forest." But whether their progress to

66

8 Herod. Clio, s. 15.

9 By Callinus in his poems, who calls them the "impetuous Kimmerians." Strab. lib. xiv. p. 958., and by Callimachus, Hym. in

CHAP.

II.

BOOK

I.

these parts was the consequence of the Scythian attack, or had preceded it, is of little importance to us to ascertain. The fact is unquestionable, that the Kimmerians anciently diffused the mselves towards the German Ocean.

THE history of the Kimmerians, from their leaving the eastern Bosphorus to their reaching the Cimbric Chersonesus on the Baltic, has not been perpetuated. The traditions of Italy, and even an ancient historian intimate, that Kimmerians were in those regions near Naples, where the ancient mythologists place the country of the dead.16 Their early occupation of Europe and extensive dispersion divest this circumstance of any improbability. They who wandered across Europe from the Thracian Bosphorus into Jutland, may have also migrated southward into Italy, like the Goths and Lombards of a future age. But as nations, in the Nomadic state, have little other literature than funeral inscriptions, the brief and vague songs of their bands, wild incantations, or rude expressions of martial trophies, divested of all circumstance or chronology, it is not till they assail the welfare of the civilised, and become a part of their national history, that we have any notice of their transactions; and often not till this period, any indication of their existence. But two intimations have been preserved to us of the Kimmerians, which probably express the general outline of their history.

16 Strabo says, "And they deem this place Plutonian, and say that the Kimmerians are there; and they who sail thither, first sacrifice to propitiate the subterraneous demons, which the priests exhort them to do, on account of the profit which they derive from the offering. There is a fountain of river water, but all abstain from this, as they think it the water of the Styx. Geog. p. 171. — Ephorus applying this place to the Kimmerians," &c. Ib. p. 375.

They are stated to have often made plundering incursions", and they were considered by Posidonius, to whose geographical works Strabo was often indebted, as a predatory and wandering nation.18

CHAP.

II.

were Kin

In the century before Cæsar they became known The Cimb to the Romans by the harsher pronunciation of merians. Kimbri1, in that formidable irruption from which Marius rescued the Roman state. At this period a great body of them quitted their settlements on the Baltic, and, in conjunction with other tribes, entered the great Hercynian forest, which covered the largest part of ancient Germany. Repulsed by the Boioi, they descended on the Danube. Penetrating into Noricum and Illyricum, they defeated the Roman consul Narbo; and a few years afterwards, having by their ambassadors to Rome solicited in vain the senate, to assign them lands for their habitation, for which they offered to assist the Romans in their wars, they defeated four other consuls in as many successive battles, and entered Gaul. Having ravaged all the country between the Rhone and the Pyrenees, they spread into Spain, with the same spirit of desolation. Repulsed

17 Strabo, p. 106. This habit no doubt occasioned the word Cimbri to signify robbers among the Germans, as Plutarch remarks in his life of Marius.

18 Posid. ap. Strab. p. 450.

19 That the Kepio of the Greeks were the Kimbroi of the Greeks, and Cimbri (Kimbri) of the Latin writers, was not only the opinion of Posidonius, whom Strabo quotes, lib. vii. p. 293., but of the Greeks generally : quum Græci Cimbros Cimmeriorum nomine afficiant," ib. Diodorus Siculus expressly says, that to those who were called Κιμμέριοις, the appellation of Κιμέρων was applied in process of time, and by the corruption of language, lib. v. p. 309. Plutarch, in his life of Marius, also identifies the Kimbri with the Kimmerioi. He says, "From these regions, when they came into Italy, they began their march, being anciently called Kimmerioi, and in process of time Kimbroi."

BOOK

I.

there by the Celtiberi, they returned to France; and joining with the Teutones, who had also wandered from the Baltic, they burst into Italy with a force, that had accumulated in every region which they had traversed. Rome was thrown into consternation by their progress; and it required all the talents and experience of Marius, Sylla, and the best Roman officers to overthrow them.20

THE great mass of the Kimbric population perished in these conflicts. The Romans are stated to have destroyed, from two to three hundred thousand, in two battles. It is impossible to read of human slaughter without lamenting it, or without feeling some abhorrence of those, however famed as heroes, by whom it has been effected. But in this war, the Kimbri provoked the destruction, by their desolating aggressions: and considering the spirit and customs of barbaric ferocity, which they maintained, and their national restlessness, their disappearance was advantageous to the progress of civilisation, and to the interests of humanity. Marius did not, like Cæsar, go into Gaul in search of a sanguinary warfare. He obeyed the call of his country to rescue it from a calamitous invasion. His successes filled Rome with peculiar joy, and were sung by the poet Archias, whom Cicero's eloquence has made illustrious.21

THE rest of the Kimmerian nation on the Continent remained in a feeble and scattered state.

20 Liv. Epit. 63–67. Florus, lib. iii. c. 3. Oros. lib. v. c. 16. Strabo, lib. v. Plut. Vit. Mar. We have the names of three of their kings from Livy, Plutarch, and Florus: these are Bolus, Bojorisc, and Teutobochus.

21 Even the illiterate Marius was pleased with this Parnassian effusion. Ipsi illi C. Mario, qui durior ad hæc studia videbatur, jucundus fuit." Cicer. Or. pro Arch. c. 9.