BOOK II. BOOK CHAP. I. The Origin of the SAXONS. THE Anglo-Saxons were the people who transported themselves from the Cymbric peninsula, and its vicinity, in the fifth and sixth centuries, into England. They were branches of the great Saxon confederation, which, from the Elbe, extended itself at last to the Rhine. The hostilities of this formidable people had long distressed the western regions of Europe; and when the Gothic nations overran the most valuable provinces of Rome, the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain soon after the Romans quitted it. The ancient inhabitants, and the progeny of the Roman settlers, disappeared as the new conquerors advanced, or accepted their yoke; and Saxon laws, Saxon language, Saxon manners, government, and institutions, overspread the land. THIS revolution, than which history presents to us none more complete, has made the fortunes of the Saxons, during every period, interesting to us. Though other invaders have appeared in the island, yet the effects of the Anglo-Saxon settlements have prevailed beyond every other. Our language, our government, and our laws, display our Gothic ancestors in every part: they live, not merely in our annals and traditions, but in our civil institutions and perpetual discourse. The parent tree is indeed greatly amplified, by branches engrafted on it from other regions, and by the new shoots, which the accidents of time, and the improvements of society, have produced; but it discovers yet its Saxon origin, and retains its Saxon properties, though more than thirteen centuries have rolled over, with all their tempests and vicissitudes. ALTHOUGH the Saxon name became, on the continent, the appellation of a confederacy of nations, yet, at first, it denoted a single state. The Romans began to remark it, during the second century of the Christian æra; until that period, it had escaped the notice of the conquerors of the world, and the happy obscurity was rewarded by the absence of that desolation which their ambition poured profusely on mankind. PTOLEMY, the Alexandrian, was the first writer whom we know to have mentioned the Saxons. By the passage in his Geography, and by the concurrence of all their future history, it is ascertained, that, before the year 141 of our era', there was a people called Saxones, who inhabited a territory at the north side of the Elbe, on the neck of the Cimbric Chersonesus, and three small islands, at the mouth of this river. From the same author it is also clear, that the Saxones were of no great importance at this period; for in this peninsula, which 1 Ptolemy lived in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, according to Suidas, vol. ii. p. 646.; but he testifies himself, in the 7th book Mag. Synt., p. 167., that he made astronomical observations at Alexandria in the 2d year of Ant. Pius, or ann. Christi, 139. 3 Fab. Bibl. Græc. p. 412. He speaks also of an eclipse of the moon in the 9th of Adrian, or ann. Christi, 125. De la Lande's Astron. i. p. 312. He mentions no observation beyond 141. Ib. 117. CHAP. I. Saxons first men tioned by Ptolemy. BOOK is now divided into Jutland, Sleswick, and Holstein, no fewer than six other nations were stationed, besides the Saxones and the remnant of the Cimbri.2 BUT it is not probable that the Saxons should have started suddenly into existence, in the days of Ptolemy. The question of their previous history has been therefore much agitated; and an equal quantity of learning and of absurdity has been brought forward upon the subject. It has been observed, that to explain the origin of the Saxons, the most wild and inconsistent fictions have been framed.3 But it is not this nation only, which has been thus distinguished by the perverseness of the human mind, labouring to explore inscrutable antiquity; every people may recount similar puerilities. To claim an extravagant duration, has been the folly of every state which has risen to any eminence. We have heard, in our childhood, of the dreams of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians, and Chinese; and we know that even Athenians could wear a golden grasshopper*, as an emblem, that they sprung fortuitously from the earth they cultivated, in ages far beyond the reach of human history: we may therefore pardon and forget the fables of the Saxon patriots. 2 Cl. Ptolemæus Georg. lib. ii. c. 11. Marcianus of Heraclea, somewhat later than Ptolemy, gives the Saxons the same position on the neck of the Chersonesus. Pont. ib. 651. The geographical lexicographer of Byzantium, usually named Stephanus, briefly says, "dwelling in the Cimbric Chersonesus." Steph. Byz. voc. Saxones. 3 Krantz remarked this: "Ita puerilibus fabulis et anilibus deliramentis omnia scatent, ut nihil in his sibi constet, nihil quadret." Saxonia, p. i. Yet the absurdity of others did not preserve him from an imitation. 4 Potter's Antiq. of Greece, vol. i. p. 2. they were προσεληνοι, or before the moon. So the Arcadians boasted I. by Tacitus. It has caused much surprise, that Tacitus, who CHAP. wrote a particular description of Germany, many years before Ptolemy, should have omitted to name Not noticed the Saxons. Every author has been unwilling to suppose, that they came to the Elbe in the short interval between these authors; and therefore it has been very generally imagined, that the nation, to whom Tacitus gave the denomination of Fosi", were the warriors, who acquired afterwards so much celebrity, under the name of Saxons. BEFORE such violent suppositions are admitted, it seems necessary to ask, if Ptolemy mentions any other people, in his geography of Germany, whom Tacitus has not noticed? if he does, the omission of Tacitus is not, in the present instance, singular ; if he does not, the conjecture that the Fosi were the Saxons, comes to us with authority. UPON comparing the Cimbric Chersonesus of Tacitus, with the delineation of the same place by Ptolemy, the question above stated is decided. Ptolemy does not mention the Saxones only, as being there; on the contrary, he names, separately, six other nations, before he comes to the Cimbri. Tacitus, after mentioning the Frisii, Chauci, and Cherusci, speaks of the Fosi, and closes his account of this part of Germany with the Cimbri. Tacitus has not merely neglected to 5 Conringius thinks, that by some unexplained accident, time has effaced from the text of Tacitus a passage about the Saxons. Schilter's Thes. Ant. Teut. iii. p. 704. 6 Cellarius Geog. Ant. i. p. 303., and Cluverius, iii. Germ. Ant. 87., and many others assert this. Spencer with diffidence defends it. Notit. Germ. Ant. 363. With a manly but rare impartiality he states forcibly the objections to the opinion he adopts, 371. Leibnitz places the Fosi on the Fusa, a river which falls into the Aller, near Zell. Ibid. 372. Other tribes omitted by Tacitus. BOOK II. name the Saxons, but also the Sigulones, the Sabalingii, the Cobandi, the Chali, the Phundusii, and the Charudes." If either of these tribes had risen to eminence, the one, so successful, would have been thought the Fosi. The Saxons became renowned, and their celebrity, rather than their situation, has made some persons desirous to find them in Tacitus. The name of Fosi cannot be strictly applied to the Saxons, with more justice than to the others. 8 BUT it cannot be inferred from the silence of Tacitus, that the Saxons were not above the Elbe in his days. In this part of his map of Germany, he does not seem to have intended to give that minute detail of information, which Ptolemy, fortunately for our subject, has delivered. Tacitus directed his philosophical eye on the German states, who differed in manners, as well as in name. He seldom presents a mere nomenclature; he seems to enumerate those the most carefully, whose wars, customs, fame, vicissitudes, and power, had distinguished them from the rest. As the Saxons, and their neighbours, were not remarkable in either of these circumstances, he knew them not, or he passed them over; but Ptolemy pursues the plan 7 Cluverius thus stations these tribes. The Sigulones northward from the Saxons, as far as Tunderen and Appenrade; Sabalingii, above these, to the Nipsa and Tobesket, on which are Ripen and Kolding; Cobandi, thence to Holm and Horsens; Chali, beyond these to Hensburg and Hald; the Phundusii and Charudes on the west and east, northward to the Lymfort; and the Cimbri in Wensussel. Ant. Ger. iii. p. 94. See also on this Chorography Pontanus, p. 649. 8 Strabo, Tacitus, and Ptolemy, exhibit a very natural progression of information on the German geography. Tacitus gives a more accurate detail than Strabo, and Ptolemy, writing later, is still more minute. |