lin, though it was formed only of horses' hoofs, cut into thin and
polished slices, carefully laid over each other in the manner of scales
or feathers, and strongly sewed upon an under garment of coarse linen.
The offensive arms of the Sarmatians were short daggers, long lances,
and a weighty bow vow with a quiver of arrows. They were reduced to the
necessity of employing fish-bones for the points of their weapons;
but the custom of dipping them in a venomous liquor, that poisoned
the wounds which they inflicted, is alone sufficient to prove the most
savage manners, since a people impressed with a sense of humanity would
have abhorred so cruel a practice, and a nation skilled in the arts
of war would have disdained so impotent a resource. Whenever these
Barbarians issued from their deserts in quest of prey, their shaggy
beards, uncombed locks, the furs with which they were covered from head
to foot, and their fierce countenances, which seemed to express the
innate cruelty of their minds, inspired the more civilized provincials
of Rome with horror and dismay.

The tender Ovid, after a youth spent in the enjoyment of fame and
luxury, was condemned to a hopeless exile on the frozen banks of the
Danube, where he was exposed, almost without defence, to the fury of
these monsters of the desert, with whose stern spirits he feared that
his gentle shade might hereafter be confounded. In his pathetic, but
sometimes unmanly lamentations, he describes in the most lively colors
the dress and manners, the arms and inroads, of the Getae and Sarmatians,
who were associated for the purposes of destruction; and from the
accounts of history there is some reason to believe that these
Sarmatians were the Jazygae, one of the most numerous and warlike
tribes of the nation. The allurements of plenty engaged them to seek a
permanent establishment on the frontiers of the empire. Soon after the
reign of Augustus, they obliged the Dacians, who subsisted by fishing
on the banks of the River Teyss or Tibiscus, to retire into the hilly
country, and to abandon to the victorious Sarmatians the fertile plains
of the Upper Hungary, which are bounded by the course of the Danube
and the semicircular enclosure of the Carpathian Mountains. In this
advantageous position, they watched or suspended the moment of attack,
as they were provoked by injuries or appeased by presents; they
gradually acquired the skill of using more dangerous weapons, and
although the