an
commander, Jovinus, surprised a body of Alemanni near the town now
called Charpeigne, in the valley of the Moselle; and how the Roman
soldiers, as, concealed by the thick wood, they stole upon their
unsuspecting enemies, saw that some were bathing and others "comas
rutilantes ex more." More than two centuries earlier Pliny gives
indirect evidence to the same effect when he says of soap:--
[Footnote 1: Res Gestae, xxvii.]
"Galliarum hoc inventum rutilandis capillis ... apud Germanos
majore in usu viris quam foeminis."[1]
[Footnote 1: Historia Naturalis, xxviii. 51.]
Here we have a writer who flourished only a short time after the date
of the Caligula story, telling us that the Gauls invented soap for the
purpose of doing that which, according to Suetonius, Caligula forced
them to do. And, further, the combined and independent testimony of
Pliny and Ammianus assures us that the Germans were as much in the
habit of reddening their hair as the Gauls. As to De Belloguet's
supposition that, even in Caligula's time, the Gauls had become darker
than their ancestors were, it is directly contradicted by Ammianus
Marcellinus, who knew the Gauls well. "Celsioris staturae et candidi
poene Galli sunt onions, et rutili, luminumque torvitate terribiles,"
is his description; and it would fit the Gauls who sacked Rome.
III. _In none of the invasions of Britain which have taken place since
the Roman dominion, has any other type of man been introduced than one
or other of the two which existed during that dominion_.
The North Germans, who effected what is commonly called the Saxon
conquest of Britain, were, most assuredly, a fair, yellow, or
red-haired, blue eyed, long-skulled people. So were the Danes and the
Norsemen who followed them; though it is very possible that the active
slave trade which went on, and the intercourse with Ireland, may have
introduced a certain admixture of the dark stock into both Denmark and
Norway. The Norman conquest brought in new ethnological elements, the
precise value of which cannot be estimated with exactness; but as to
their quality, there can be no question, inasmuch as even the wide
area from which William drew his followers could yield him nothing but
the fair and the dark types of men, already present in Britain. But
whether the Norman settlers, on the whole, strengthened the fair or
the dark element, is a problem, the elements of the solution of which
are not attainable.
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