common proficiency. [57]
The most distinguished youth were educated under the monarch's eye,
practised their exercises in the gate of his palace, and were severely
trained up to the habits of temperance and obedience, in their long and
laborious parties of hunting. In every province, the satrap maintained
a like school of military virtue. The Persian nobles (so natural is
the idea of feudal tenures) received from the king's bounty lands and
houses, on the condition of their service in war. They were ready on the
first summons to mount on horseback, with a martial and splendid train
of followers, and to join the numerous bodies of guards, who were
carefully selected from among the most robust slaves, and the bravest
adventures of Asia. These armies, both of light and of heavy cavalry,
equally formidable by the impetuosity of their charge and the rapidity
of their motions, threatened, as an impending cloud, the eastern
provinces of the declining empire of Rome. [58]

[Footnote 57: The Persians are still the most skilful horsemen, and
their horses the finest in the East.]

[Footnote 58: From Herodotus, Xenophon, Herodian, Ammianus, Chardin,
&c., I have extracted such probable accounts of the Persian nobility,
as seem either common to every age, or particular to that of the
Sassanides.]

Chapter IX: State Of Germany Until The Barbarians.--Part I.

The State Of Germany Till The Invasion Of The Barbarians In
The Time Of The Emperor Decius.

The government and religion of Persia have deserved some notice, from
their connection with the decline and fall of the Roman empire. We shall
occasionally mention the Scythian or Sarmatian tribes, [1001] which, with
their arms and horses, their flocks and herds, their wives and families,
wandered over the immense plains which spread themselves from the
Caspian Sea to the Vistula, from the confines of Persia to those of
Germany. But the warlike Germans, who first resisted, then invaded, and
at length overturned the Western monarchy of Rome, will occupy a much
more important place in this history, and possess a stronger, and, if
we may use the expression, a more domestic, claim to our attention and
regard. The most civilized nations of modern Europe issued from the
woods of Germany; and in the rude institutions of those barbarians we
may still distinguish the original principles of our present laws and
manners. In their primitive state of simplicity and independence,