them formidable in
a close engagement; the manly obedience which they yielded to hereditary
kings, gave uncommon union and stability to their councils; and
the renowned Amala, the hero of that age, and the tenth ancestor of
Theodoric, king of Italy, enforced, by the ascendant of personal merit,
the prerogative of his birth, which he derived from the Anses, or demi
gods of the Gothic nation.

The fame of a great enterprise excited the bravest warriors from all the
Vandalic states of Germany, many of whom are seen a few years afterwards
combating under the common standard of the Goths. The first motions
of the emigrants carried them to the banks of the Prypec, a river
universally conceived by the ancients to be the southern branch of the
Borysthenes. The windings of that great stream through the plains
of Poland and Russia gave a direction to their line of march, and a
constant supply of fresh water and pasturage to their numerous herds
of cattle. They followed the unknown course of the river, confident in
their valor, and careless of whatever power might oppose their progress.
The Bastarnae and the Venedi were the first who presented themselves; and
the flower of their youth, either from choice or compulsion, increased
the Gothic army. The Bastarnae dwelt on the northern side of the
Carpathian Mountains: the immense tract of land that separated the
Bastarnae from the savages of Finland was possessed, or rather wasted,
by the Venedi; we have some reason to believe that the first of these
nations, which distinguished itself in the Macedonian war, and was
afterwards divided into the formidable tribes of the Peucini, the
Borani, the Carpi, &c., derived its origin from the Germans. * With
better authority, a Sarmatian extraction may be assigned to the Venedi,
who rendered themselves so famous in the middle ages. But the confusion
of blood and manners on that doubtful frontier often perplexed the most
accurate observers. As the Goths advanced near the Euxine Sea, they
encountered a purer race of Sarmatians, the Jazyges, the Alani, and the
Roxolani; and they were probably the first Germans who saw the mouths
of the Borysthenes, and of the Tanais. If we inquire into the
characteristic marks of the people of Germany and of Sarmatia, we shall
discover that those two great portions of human kind were principally
distinguished by fixed huts or movable tents, by a close dress or
flowing garments, by the marriage of one or of several