s allies, ill armed as soldiers, and
still worse disciplined, were forced to yield to the superior genius of
Pompey. Odin is said to have been of their number.... Odin commanded the
AEsir, whose country must have been situated between the Pontus Euxinus
and the Caspian Sea. Their principal city was Asgard. The worship there
paid to their supreme God was famous throughout the circumjacent
countries. Odin, having united under his banners the youth of the
neighbouring nations, marched towards the north and west of Europe,
subduing, as we are told, all the people he found in his passage, and
giving them to one or other of his sons for subjects. Many sovereign
families of the North are said to be descended from these princes. Thus
Horsa and Hengist, the chiefs of those Saxons who conquered Britain in
the fifth century, counted Odin or Wodin in the number of their
ancestors; it was the same with the other Anglo-Saxon princes as well as
the greatest part of those of lower Germany and the North.'[3]

Gibbon refers to this ancient tradition, though not as accepting it for
a part of ascertained history, yet in a spirit less sceptical than was
usual to him. He writes thus: 'It is supposed that Odin was chief of a
tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the lake Moeotis, till
the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the north with
servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he
was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the
Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that
inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people which, in some
remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his
invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in
numerous swarms from the neighbourhood of the Polar circle to chastise
the oppressors of mankind.... Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity
of the Edda, we can easily distinguish two persons confounded under the
name of Odin; the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia.
The latter, the Mahomet of the north, instituted a religion adapted to
the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the
Baltic were subdued by the invincible valour of Odin, by his persuasive
eloquence, and by the fame which he acquired of a most skilful magician.
The faith that he had propagated during a long and prosperous life he
confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive o