pithet of Barbarians. The numbers, the
strength, the rapid motions, and the implacable cruelty of the Huns,
were felt, and dreaded, and magnified, by the astonished Goths; who
beheld their fields and villages consumed with flames, and deluged with
indiscriminate slaughter. To these real terrors they added the surprise
and abhorrence which were excited by the shrill voice, the uncouth
gestures, and the strange deformity of the Huns. [56a] These savages
of Scythia were compared (and the picture had some resemblance) to
the animals who walk very awkwardly on two legs and to the misshapen
figures, the Termini, which were often placed on the bridges of
antiquity. They were distinguished from the rest of the human species by
their broad shoulders, flat noses, and small black eyes, deeply buried
in the head; and as they were almost destitute of beards, they never
enjoyed either the manly grace of youth, or the venerable aspect of age.
[57] A fabulous origin was assigned, worthy of their form and manners;
that the witches of Scythia, who, for their foul and deadly practices,
had been driven from society, had copulated in the desert with infernal
spirits; and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable
conjunction. [58] The tale, so full of horror and absurdity, was
greedily embraced by the credulous hatred of the Goths; but, while it
gratified their hatred, it increased their fear, since the posterity
of daemons and witches might be supposed to inherit some share of the
praeternatural powers, as well as of the malignant temper, of their
parents. Against these enemies, Hermanric prepared to exert the united
forces of the Gothic state; but he soon discovered that his vassal
tribes, provoked by oppression, were much more inclined to second, than
to repel, the invasion of the Huns. One of the chiefs of the Roxolani
[59] had formerly deserted the standard of Hermanric, and the cruel
tyrant had condemned the innocent wife of the traitor to be torn asunder
by wild horses. The brothers of that unfortunate woman seized the
favorable moment of revenge.

The aged king of the Goths languished some time after the dangerous
wound which he received from their daggers; but the conduct of the war
was retarded by his infirmities; and the public councils of the nation
were distracted by a spirit of jealousy and discord. His death, which
has been imputed to his own despair, left the reins of government in
the hands of Withimer, who, with th