Free, already occupied the
flat maritime country, intersected and almost overflown by the
stagnating waters of the Rhine, and that several tribes of the Frisians
and Batavians had acceded to their alliance. He vanquished the
Burgundians, a considerable people of the Vandalic race. [341] They had
wandered in quest of booty from the banks of the Oder to those of the
Seine. They esteemed themselves sufficiently fortunate to purchase, by
the restitution of all their booty, the permission of an undisturbed
retreat. They attempted to elude that article of the treaty. Their
punishment was immediate and terrible. [35] But of all the invaders of
Gaul, the most formidable were the Lygians, a distant people, who
reigned over a wide domain on the frontiers of Poland and Silesia. [36]
In the Lygian nation, the Arii held the first rank by their numbers and
fierceness. "The Arii" (it is thus that they are described by the energy
of Tacitus) "study to improve by art and circumstances the innate
terrors of their barbarism. Their shields are black, their bodies are
painted black. They choose for the combat the darkest hour of the night.
Their host advances, covered as it were with a funeral shade; [37] nor do
they often find an enemy capable of sustaining so strange and infernal
an aspect. Of all our senses, the eyes are the first vanquished
in battle." [38] Yet the arms and discipline of the Romans easily
discomfited these horrid phantoms. The Lygii were defeated in a general
engagement, and Semno, the most renowned of their chiefs, fell alive
into the hands of Probus. That prudent emperor, unwilling to reduce a
brave people to despair, granted them an honorable capitulation, and
permitted them to return in safety to their native country. But the
losses which they suffered in the march, the battle, and the retreat,
broke the power of the nation: nor is the Lygian name ever repeated in
the history either of Germany or of the empire. The deliverance of
Gaul is reported to have cost the lives of four hundred thousand of the
invaders; a work of labor to the Romans, and of expense to the emperor,
who gave a piece of gold for the head of every barbarian. [39] But as
the fame of warriors is built on the destruction of human kind, we may
naturally suspect, that the sanguinary account was multiplied by
the avarice of the soldiers, and accepted without any very severe
examination by the liberal vanity of Probus.

[Footnote 34: See the Caesars of