he skill of an eloquent
lawyer could excite only their contempt or their abhorrence. [28] The
perpetual intercourse of the Huns and the Goths had communicated the
familiar knowledge of the two national dialects; and the Barbarians were
ambitious of conversing in Latin, the military idiom even of the Eastern
empire. [29] But they disdained the language and the sciences of the
Greeks; and the vain sophist, or grave philosopher, who had enjoyed
the flattering applause of the schools, was mortified to find that his
robust servant was a captive of more value and importance than himself.
The mechanic arts were encouraged and esteemed, as they tended to
satisfy the wants of the Huns. An architect in the service of Onegesius,
one of the favorites of Attila, was employed to construct a bath; but
this work was a rare example of private luxury; and the trades of the
smith, the carpenter, the armorer, were much more adapted to supply a
wandering people with the useful instruments of peace and war. But the
merit of the physician was received with universal favor and respect:
the Barbarians, who despised death, might be apprehensive of disease;
and the haughty conqueror trembled in the presence of a captive, to whom
he ascribed, perhaps, an imaginary power of prolonging or preserving
his life. [30] The Huns might be provoked to insult the misery of their
slaves, over whom they exercised a despotic command; [31] but their
manners were not susceptible of a refined system of oppression; and the
efforts of courage and diligence were often recompensed by the gift of
freedom. The historian Priscus, whose embassy is a source of curious
instruction, was accosted in the camp of Attila by a stranger, who
saluted him in the Greek language, but whose dress and figure displayed
the appearance of a wealthy Scythian. In the siege of Viminiacum, he had
lost, according to his own account, his fortune and liberty; he became
the slave of Onegesius; but his faithful services, against the Romans
and the Acatzires, had gradually raised him to the rank of the native
Huns; to whom he was attached by the domestic pledges of a new wife
and several children. The spoils of war had restored and improved his
private property; he was admitted to the table of his former lord; and
the apostate Greek blessed the hour of his captivity, since it had been
the introduction to a happy and independent state; which he held by the
honorable tenure of military service. This ref