nd the fortresses of
Pannonia. But the spirit of rapine soon tempted them beyond these
ample limits; they wandered along the coast of the Hadriatic as far as
Dyrrachium, and presumed, with familiar rudeness to enter the towns and
houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the captives who had escaped
from their audacious hands. These acts of hostility, the sallies, as
it might be pretended, of some loose adventurers, were disowned by the
nation, and excused by the emperor; but the arms of the Lombards
were more seriously engaged by a contest of thirty years, which was
terminated only by the extirpation of the Gepidae. The hostile nations
often pleaded their cause before the throne of Constantinople; and the
crafty Justinian, to whom the Barbarians were almost equally odious,
pronounced a partial and ambiguous sentence, and dexterously protracted
the war by slow and ineffectual succors. Their strength was formidable,
since the Lombards, who sent into the field several _myriads_ of
soldiers, still claimed, as the weaker side, the protection of the
Romans. Their spirit was intrepid; yet such is the uncertainty of
courage, that the two armies were suddenly struck with a panic; they
fled from each other, and the rival kings remained with their guards
in the midst of an empty plain. A short truce was obtained; but their
mutual resentment again kindled; and the remembrance of their shame
rendered the next encounter more desperate and bloody Forty thousand of
the Barbarians perished in the decisive battle, which broke the power
of the Gepidae, transferred the fears and wishes of Justinian, and first
displayed the character of Alboin, the youthful prince of the Lombards,
and the future conqueror of Italy.

The wild people who dwelt or wandered in the plains of Russia,
Lithuania, and Poland, might be reduced, in the age of Justinian, under
the two great families of the Bulgarians and the Sclavonians. According
to the Greek writers, the former, who touched the Euxine and the Lake
Maeotis, derived from the Huns their name or descent; and it is needless
to renew the simple and well-known picture of Tartar manners. They
were bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the
flesh, of their fleet and indefatigable horses; whose flocks and herds
followed, or rather guided, the motions of their roving camps; to whose
inroads no country was remote or impervious, and who were practised
in flight, though incapable of fear.