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[ Mela says, "Their manner of living is so rude and savage, that they eat even raw flesh; either fresh killed, or softened by working with their hands and feet, after it has grown stiff in the hides of tame or wild animals." (iii. 3.) Florus relates that the ferocity of the Cimbri was mitigated by their feeding on bread and dressed meat, and drinking wine, in the softest tract of Italy.—iii. 3.]
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[ This must not be understood to have been cheese; although Caesar says of the Germans, "Their diet chiefly consists of milk, cheese and flesh." (Bell. Gall. vi. 22.) Pliny, who was thoroughly acquainted with the German manners, says more accurately, "It is surprising that the barbarous nations who live on milk should for so many ages have been ignorant of, or have rejected, the preparation of cheese; especially since they thicken their milk into a pleasant tart substance, and a fat butter: this is the scum of milk, of a thicker consistence than what is called the whey. It must not be omitted that it has the properties of oil, and is used as an unguent by all the barbarians, and by us for children."—xi. 41.]
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[ This policy has been practised by the Europeans with regard to the North American savages, some tribes of which have been almost totally extirpated by it.]
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[ St. Ambrose has a remarkable passage concerning this spirit of gaming among a barbarous people:—"It is said that the Huns, who continually make war upon other nations, are themselves subject to usurers, with whom they run in debt at play; and that, while they live without laws, they obey the laws of the dice alone; playing when drawn up in line of battle; carrying dice along with their arms, and perishing more by each others' hands than by the enemy. In the midst of victory they submit to become captives, and suffer plunder from their own countrymen, which they know not how to bear from the foe. On this account they never lay aside the business of war, because, when they have lost all their booty by the dice, they have no means of acquiring fresh supplies for play, but by the sword. They are frequently borne away with such a desperate ardor, that, when the loser has given up his arms, the only part of his property which he greatly values, he sets the power over his life at a single cast to the winner or usurer. It is a fact, that a person, known to the Roman emperor, paid the price of a servitude which he had by this means brought upon himself, by suffering death at the command of his master.">[
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[ The condition of these slaves was the same as that of the vassals, or serfs, who a few centuries ago made the great body of the people in every country in Europe. The Germans, in after times, imitating the Romans, had slaves of inferior condition, to whom the name of slave became appropriated; while those in the state of rural vassalage were called lidi.]