in multitude break forth with might and wrath.
By force of arms the barrier-stream of Ister they shall cross,
O'er Scythic ground and Moesian lands spreading dismay and loss:
They shall Pannonian horsemen brave, and Gallic soldiers slay,
And nought but loss of life and breath their course shall ever stay."

II.

Sec. 1. The following circumstances were the original cause of all the
destruction and various calamities which the fury of Mars roused up,
throwing everything into confusion by his usual ruinous violence: the
people called Huns, slightly mentioned in the ancient records, live
beyond the Sea of Azov, on the border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a
race savage beyond all parallel.

2. At the very moment of their birth the cheeks of their infant children
are deeply marked by an iron, in order that the usual vigour of their
hair, instead of growing at the proper season, may be withered by the
wrinkled scars; and accordingly they grow up without beards, and
consequently without any beauty, like eunuchs, though they all have
closely-knit and strong limbs, and plump necks; they are of great size,
and low legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or the
stout figures which are hewn out in a rude manner with an axe on the
posts at the end of bridges.

3. They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, but are so
hardy that they neither require fire nor well-flavoured food, but live
on the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw
flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it
between their own thighs and the backs of their horses.

4. They never shelter themselves under roofed houses, but avoid them as
people ordinarily avoid sepulchres as things not fitted for common use.
Nor is there even to be found among them a cabin thatched with reed; but
they wander about, roaming over the mountains and the woods and accustom
themselves to bear frost and hunger and thirst from their very cradles.
And even when abroad they never enter a house unless under the
compulsion of some extreme necessity; nor, indeed, do they think people
under roofs as safe as others.

5. They wear linen clothes, or else garments made of the skins of
field-mice: nor do they wear a different dress out of doors from that
which they wear at home; but after a tunic is once put round their
necks, however it becomes worn, it is never taken off or changed till,
from long decay, it be