The Empire of Russia | Page 5

earth has
ever known. They drank the blood of their enemies; tanned their skins
for garments; used their skulls for drinking cups; and worshiped a
sword as the image or emblem of their favorite deity, the God of War.
Philip of Macedon was the first who put any check upon their proud
spirit. He conquered them in a decisive battle, and thus taught them that
they were not invincible. Alexander the Great assailed them and spread
the terror of his arms throughout all the region between the Danube and
the Dnieper. Subsequently the Roman legions advanced to the Euxine,
and planted their eagles upon the heights of the Caucasus.
The Roman historians seem to have dropped the Scythian name, and
they called the whole northern expanse of Europe and Asia, Sarmatia,
and the barbarous inhabitants Sarmatians. About the time of our
Saviour, some of these fierce tribes from the banks of the Theiss and
the Danube, commenced their assaults upon the frontiers of the Roman
empire. This was the signal for that war of centuries, which terminated
in the overthrow of the throne of the Cæsars. The Roman Senate,

enervated by luxury, condescended to purchase peace of these
barbarians, and nations of savages, whose names are now forgotten,
exacted tribute, under guise of payment for alliance, from the proud
empire. But neither bribes, nor alliances, nor the sword in the hands of
enervated Rome, could effectually check the incursions of these bands,
who were ever emerging, like wolves, from the mysterious depths of
the North.
In the haze of those distant times and remote realms, we catch dim
glimpses of locust legions, emerging from the plains and the ravines
between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and sweeping like a storm
cloud over nearly all of what is now called Russia. These people, to
whom the name of Alains was given, had no fixed habitations; they
conveyed their women and children in rude carts. Their devastations
were alike extended over Europe and Asia, and in the ferocity of their
assaults they were as insensible to death as wild beasts could be.
In the second century, the emperor Trajan conquered and took
possession of the province of Dacia, which included all of lower
Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia. The
country was divided into Roman provinces, over each of which a
prefect was established. In the third century, the Goths, from the shores
of the Baltic, came rushing over the wide arena, with the howling of
wolves and their gnashing of teeth. They trampled down all opposition,
with their war knives drove out the Romans, crossed the Black Sea in
their rude vessels, and spread conflagration and death throughout the
most flourishing cities and villages of Bythinia, Gallacia and
Cappadocia. The famous temple of Diana at Ephesus, these barbarians
committed to the flames. They overran all Greece and took Athens by
storm. As they were about to destroy the precious libraries of Athens,
one of their chieftains said,
"Let us leave to the Greeks their books, that they, in reading them may
forget the arts of war; and that we thus may more easily be able to hold
them in subjection."
These Goths established an empire, extending from the Black Sea to
the Baltic, and which embraced nearly all of what is now European

Russia. Towards the close of the fourth century, another of these
appalling waves of barbaric inundation rolled over northern Europe.
The Huns, emerging from the northern frontiers of China, traversed the
immense intervening deserts, and swept over European Russia,
spreading everywhere flames and desolation. The historians of that day
seem to find no language sufficiently forcible to describe the
hideousness and the ferocity of these savages. They pressed down on
the Roman empire as merciless as wolves, and the Cæsars turned pale
at the recital of their deeds of blood.
It is indeed a revolting picture which contemporaneous history gives us
of these barbarians. In their faces was concentrated the ugliness of the
hyena and the baboon. They tattooed their cheeks, to prevent the
growth of their beards. They were short, thick-set, and with back bones
curved almost into a semicircle. Herbs, roots and raw meat they
devoured, tearing their food with their teeth or hewing it with their
swords. To warm and soften their meat, they placed it under their
saddles when riding. Nearly all their lives they passed on horseback.
Wandering incessantly over the vast plains, they had no fixed
habitations, but warmly clad in the untanned skins of beasts, like the
beasts they slept wherever the night found them. They had no religion
nor laws, no conception of ideas of honor; their language was a
wretched jargon, and in their nature there seemed to be no moral sense
to which compassion or mercy could plead.
Such