e provoked by injuries or appeased by presents; they
gradually acquired the skill of using more dangerous weapons, and
although the Sarmatians did not illustrate their name by any memorable
exploits, they occasionally assisted their eastern and western
neighbors, the Goths and the Germans, with a formidable body of cavalry.
They lived under the irregular aristocracy of their chieftains: [42] but
after they had received into their bosom the fugitive Vandals, who
yielded to the pressure of the Gothic power, they seem to have chosen a
king from that nation, and from the illustrious race of the Astingi, who
had formerly dwelt on the hores of the northern ocean. [43]

[Footnote 40: The nine books of Poetical Epistles which Ovid composed
during the seven first years of his melancholy exile, possess, beside
the merit of elegance, a double value. They exhibit a picture of the
human mind under very singular circumstances; and they contain many
curious observations, which no Roman except Ovid, could have an
opportunity of making. Every circumstance which tends to illustrate the
history of the Barbarians, has been drawn together by the very accurate
Count de Buat. Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. iv. c. xvi.
p. 286-317]

[Footnote 41: The Sarmatian Jazygae were settled on the banks of
Pathissus or Tibiscus, when Pliny, in the year 79, published his Natural
History. See l. iv. c. 25. In the time of Strabo and Ovid, sixty or
seventy years before, they appear to have inhabited beyond the Getae,
along the coast of the Euxine.]

[Footnote 42: Principes Sarmaturum Jazygum penes quos civitatis regimen
plebem quoque et vim equitum, qua sola valent, offerebant. Tacit. Hist.
iii. p. 5. This offer was made in the civil war between Vitellino and
Vespasian.]

[Footnote 43: This hypothesis of a Vandal king reigning over Sarmatian
subjects, seems necessary to reconcile the Goth Jornandes with the Greek
and Latin historians of Constantine. It may be observed that Isidore,
who lived in Spain under the dominion of the Goths, gives them for
enemies, not the Vandals, but the Sarmatians. See his Chronicle in
Grotius, p. 709. Note: I have already noticed the confusion which must
necessarily arise in history, when names purely geographical, as this of
Sarmatia, are taken for historical names belonging to a single nation.
We perceive it here; it has forced Gibbon to suppose, without any reason
but the necessity of extricating himself from