eir spoil, and to yield
a select band of their tall and robust youth to serve in the Imperial
armies. They stipulated only a safe and honorable retreat; and the
condition was readily granted by the Roman general, who meditated an act
of perfidy, [106] imprudent as it was inhuman, while a Saxon remained
alive, and in arms, to revenge the fate of their countrymen. The
premature eagerness of the infantry, who were secretly posted in a deep
valley, betrayed the ambuscade; and they would perhaps have fallen the
victims of their own treachery, if a large body of cuirassiers, alarmed
by the noise of the combat, had not hastily advanced to extricate their
companions, and to overwhelm the undaunted valor of the Saxons. Some of
the prisoners were saved from the edge of the sword, to shed their
blood in the amphitheatre; and the orator Symmachus complains, that
twenty-nine of those desperate savages, by strangling themselves with
their own hands, had disappointed the amusement of the public. Yet the
polite and philosophic citizens of Rome were impressed with the deepest
horror, when they were informed, that the Saxons consecrated to the gods
the tithe of their human spoil; and that they ascertained by lot the
objects of the barbarous sacrifice. [107]

[Footnote 101: At the northern extremity of the peninsula, (the Cimbric
promontory of Pliny, iv. 27,) Ptolemy fixes the remnant of the Cimbri.
He fills the interval between the Saxons and the Cimbri with six obscure
tribes, who were united, as early as the sixth century, under the
national appellation of Danes. See Cluver. German. Antiq. l. iii. c. 21,
22, 23.]

[Footnote 102: M. D'Anville (Establissement des Etats de l'Europe, &c.,
p. 19-26) has marked the extensive limits of the Saxony of Charlemagne.]

[Footnote 103: The fleet of Drusus had failed in their attempt to pass,
or even to approach, the Sound, (styled, from an obvious resemblance,
the columns of Hercules,) and the naval enterprise was never resumed,
(Tacit. de Moribus German. c. 34.) The knowledge which the Romans
acquired of the naval powers of the Baltic, (c. 44, 45) was obtained by
their land journeys in search of amber.]

[Footnote 104:

Quin et Aremoricus piratam Saxona tractus
Sperabat; cui pelle salum sulcare Britannum
Ludus; et assuto glaucum mare findere lembo
Sidon. in Panegyr. Avit. 369.

The genius of Caesar imitated, for a particular service, these rude,
but light vessels, which