s and fatigues. All
the refined arts of life were unknown among the Germans: tillage itself
was almost wholly neglected; they even seem to have been anxious to
prevent any improvements of that nature; and the leaders, by annually
distributing anew all the land among the inhabitants of each village,
kept them from attaching themselves to particular possessions, or
making such progress in agriculture as might divert their attention from
military expeditions, the chief occupation of the community.[*]

[* Tacit. de Mor. Germ]

The Saxons had been for some time regarded as one of the most warlike
tribes of this fierce people, and had become the terror of the
neighboring nations.[*]

[* Amm. Marcell. lib. xxviii. Orosius.]

They had diffused themselves from the northern parts of Germany and the
Cimbrian Chersonesus, and had taken possession of all the sea-coast
from the mouth of the Rhine to Jutland; whence they had long infested
by their piracies all the eastern and southern parts of Britain, and the
northern of Gaul.[*]

[* Amm. Marcell. lib. xxvii. cap. 7. lib. xxviii. cap. 7]

In order to oppose their inroads, the Romans had established an officer,
whom they called "Count of the Saxon shore;" and as the naval arts can
flourish among a civilized people alone, they seem to have been more
successful in repelling the Saxons than any of the other barbarians by
whom they were invaded. The dissolution of the Roman power invited them
to renew their inroads; and it was an acceptable circumstance that
the deputies of the Britons appeared among them, and prompted them to
undertake an enterprise to which they were of themselves sufficiently
inclined.[*]

[* W. Malms, p. 8.]

Hengist and Horsa, two brothers, possessed great credit among the
Saxons, and were much celebrated both for their valor and nobility. They
were reputed, as most of the Saxon princes, to be sprung from Woden, who
was worshipped as a god among those nations, and they are said to be his
great grandsons;[*] a circumstance which added much to their authority.

[* Bede, lib. i. cap. 15. Chron. Sax. p. 13. Nennius, cap.
28.]

We shall not attempt to trace any higher the origin of those princes
and nations. It is evident what fruitless labor it must be to search,
in those barbarous and illiterate ages, for the annals of a people, when
their first leaders, known in any true history, were believed by them to
be the fourth in desce