“Next to him was his son Thor, who rode on the thunder-cloud and whirlwind, whose hammer was the thunderbolt, whose arrows were the lightning flashes, and whose wagon dashed through the heavens with crashing noise and ungovernable fury.”[283]
Then there was Saxnôt, another son of Woden, who occupied the [pg 853] third place among the gods. His name is afterwards associated with those of Woden and Thor in the abjuration of paganism made by those who were converted to Christianity. He is designated under many different names. He is Eor, or Are, or Ere, or Cheru, Tyr, Zio, Tuisco, or Tuis. He was the god of war, fierce and terrible, rushing to battle, at Woden's side, and bearing down whole hosts with his mighty sword of iron or stone.
War, blood, and violence, then, were ever, in the minds of the barbarians, associated with the greatest of those beings whom they worshipped and admired. The character and the deeds of these gods were the highest and the noblest they could conceive. To be mighty in battle like them; to wield their war-weapon as Thor wielded his huge hammer; to mow down enemies as Tuisco did with his terrible sword, would be the grand object of their soul's desire. We may judge how little there was in their religious worship to tone down their fierce natures. Everything symbolized war; their deities were almost all warlike. Even Freyja, the Northern Venus, was pictured to their imagination as delighting in war. She was believed to be ever present in the battle-field, wielding her flaming sword, with frantic joy, over the heads of their enemies, and ready to bear off the souls of the slain to Odin's Valhalla. In that imaginary Elysium the joys of their fallen heroes were also of a warlike and savage character. They revelled there in “constantly massacring visionary foes, and drinking without satiety, out of the skulls of the slain, brimming ale-cups presented by lovely Valkyrja.” What shall we expect, then, when these wild warriors are turned loose upon the Roman Empire?
But is it possible to obtain a further glimpse behind that vast, dark line of pine-trees? Can we, by any means, get a glance at the wild indwellers of the mysterious land beyond? What are those men like whom God has so long kept hidden there? From time to time they have come forth from their forest homes and stood on the boundaries of the civilized world, and rolled their glaring eyes around over the rich empire that was to be their booty. But that has been, as it were, only for a moment. They have plunged again into their native darkness. Yet such writers as Apollinaris and Ammianus Marcellinus have told us something of them. By their aid we can picture to ourselves what those terrible hosts of avengers will be like, who will presently come down with such a headlong sweep upon the doomed empire of Rome.
All that we can imagine savage and terrible and extraordinary in figure and habit is found in real fact among those barbaric hordes. There are among them tribes who are small of stature, and thin and brawny, but quick and fierce as the wild-cat. There are, too, men of giant height and strength, who can wield their huge clubs like playthings, and shiver the hard rock like glass. They have blue, flashing eyes, and bathe their flaxen hair in lime-water, and anoint it with the unsavory unguent of rancid butter. Some of them roam about nude and uncovered as the wild animals of the forest, proud of their iron necklaces and golden bracelets; others are partially clothed with the skins of savage beasts, cut and shaped after the most odd and fantastic fashions. Some give additional terror to their appearance by wearing helmets made to imitate the muzzles of ferocious beasts. Plutarch tells us that all the [pg 854] Cimbrian horsemen wore helmets made in the form of the open jaws and muzzles of all kinds of strange and savage animals, and surmounted these by plumes shaped like wings, and of a prodigious height. This gave them the appearance of monstrous giants. They were armed with cuirasses of most brilliant metal, and covered with bucklers of uniform whiteness. Some shaved their chins, and, what must have added much to their hideousness, the back of their heads, whilst their hair was drawn to the front and hung down over their eyes like the forelock of a horse. So says Apollinaris,
“Ad front em coma tracta jacet, nudata cervix
Setarum per summa nitet.”[284]
Others, again, allowed their hair to grow, and wore long mustachios and beard. Their weapons of war were various and strange as their own appearance. Some fought on foot, wielding with savage fury the huge club, or crushing mallet, or heavy-headed hammer; or they did fierce work with their rude sword, or long javelin with its two points, or double-edged hatchet; or they were skilful in the use of the sling or the arrow pointed with sharp pieces of bone. Others rushed to battle on high war-steeds barded with steel, or on small horses, ugly and wretched to look at, but swift as eagles in their course. If they fought on the level plain, these barbarians were sometimes scattered over a large space, or they formed themselves into cuneiform bodies, or they pressed together into compact, impenetrable masses. If the contest was waged in the forests, they clomb the trees, which they worshipped, with the agility of monkeys, and there combated their enemies with wild ferocity, thus borne on the shoulders and in the arms of their gods. If they were conquerors in the battle, they abandoned themselves to acts of the most savage cruelty. To illustrate this we need only think of the tragic deeds that were done amid the swamps and the wooded hills of the Teutoberger Wald in the latter days of Augustus. It is sad, indeed, to read in Tacitus and the pages of Dio of the fate of that noble Roman army over which Varus held command. Yet we cannot regret to see the well-concerted rising of the German tribes, under the splendid military genius of Arnim, to throw off the Roman yoke. We hold in deepest horror the wrongs, the oppressions of the Romans from the first ravages of Cæsar to the judicial murders of Varus. We think with feelings of indignation of the treachery and the bloody cruelty of Cæsar when the Usipetes and the Teuchteri were all but annihilated on the banks of the Rhine, and the Roman general rejoiced at his own unprovoked atrocity. We recall with sorrow all that the barbarians had had to suffer from their Roman conquerors through succeeding years, and our souls are on fire at the recollection of it. When, then, we see that the day of deliverance is at hand, we carrot but rejoice with Arnim and his brother Adelings at the prospect of future freedom. Our sympathies are with the Germans, not with their Roman oppressors. Whilst the Romans, then, are hungry and starved in the long, boggy valley between the sources of the Ems and the Lippe, and the rain falls in torrents through the cold night, and the soldiers' spirits sink as they find themselves hemmed in by the enemy on all sides, we are, meantime, in imagination and feeling with the barbarian chiefs holding high festival as they recall the memory of ancient freedom and the deeds of former days, and we join in the [pg 855] war songs as they echo among the wild, dreary hills, and swell above the howlings of the storm. And when the morning breaks ominously and darkly over the Teutoberger Wald, and the tempest rises higher, and the heavy-armed Romans cannot advance, and find it difficult, even, to keep their footing in the wet and slippery swamp; when we see their bows now useless from the wet, and their spears and shields no longer glittering in military pride, and their entire armor and clothing drenched and made too heavy for the poor benumbed and hunger-stricken soldiers to bear, we can scarcely feel one pang of sorrow. On the contrary, our heart leaps with gladness when Arnim from his watch-eminence gives the signal, and the trumpets ring out and the war-weapons clang, and the terrible Barritum described by Tacitus[285] is heard rising above the howlings of the storm. We know how that tragic day ended, and how the evening saw the Roman host covering, with their dead bodies, the length and breadth of the battle-field. Never had there been, in the annals of military warfare, such a terrible massacre of Roman legions. The news of it seized upon Augustus like a madness, and the old man, during the short remainder of his life, wandered sad and disconsolate through the apartments of his palace, sometimes dashing his white head against the walls, and murmuring, Quintili Vare, legiones redde![286] But the barbarians were not content with such terrific slaughter as nearly annihilated the Roman army; their wild ferocity and cruelty showed themselves in their treatment of the captives. Tacitus in his Annals tells us[287] that in the neighboring woods the barbarians had altars erected to their gods, and there the surviving Roman tribunes and the centurions of the first class were offered in sacrifice. Around Varus's camp Roman heads were fixed, in cruel mockery, on the trunks and branches of trees, and in the midst arose a huge mound of Roman bones, left to be stripped of their flesh by the wild birds of prey, and then to whiten under that northern sky into a long enduring monument of a great barbarian victory.
If, on the contrary they were conquered, their fury was boundless, and was even turned against each other. When Marius overcame the first Cimbrian league, those who composed it were found on the field of battle bound fast to each other, so that they could not fall back before the enemy, and thus were compelled to conquer or die. Their wives were armed with swords or hatchets, and, shrieking and gnashing their teeth with rage and grief, they struck both Cimbrians and Romans. They rushed into the thickest of the fight, snatching with their naked hands at the sharp-cutting Roman sabres; they sprang upon the legionaries like tigers, tearing from them their bucklers, and thus purposely drawing upon themselves their own destruction. It was a dreadful sight also to witness some of them when the fortune of the day had turned against them, rushing to and fro with dishevelled hair, their black dresses all torn and bloody, or to see them mounted like mad fiends on the chariots, killing their husbands and brothers, fathers and sons, strangling their new-born infants and casting them under the horses' hoofs, and then plunging the dagger into their own bosoms.[288]
Some of the barbarians delighted [pg 856] in eating human flesh. Ammianus Marcellinus gives us a picture in his history which freezes our blood and haunts us with its horrid memory. He tells us that, after the defeat of Valens under the walls of Constantinople, a barbarian was seen rushing among the imperial troops, naked down to his waist, sword in hand, and uttering a hoarse, lugubrious cry. He sprang with savage fury upon an enemy whom he had slain, and, applying his lips to his throat, sucked out his life-blood with a wild beast's relish. The Scythians of Europe were amongst those who showed this same instinct of the weasel and the hyena. We have the authority of S. Jerome for believing that the Atticoti also were accustomed to feed on human flesh. When they were wandering about in the woods of Gaul, and happened to meet herds of swine or other cattle, they cut off the breasts of the shepherdesses, and large pieces from the bodies of the shepherds, and ate them as dainty bits.[289] The Alans tore off the heads of their enemies, and caparisoned their horses with the skins of their bodies. The Budini and Geloni were accustomed to do much the same, being particular in reserving their enemies' heads for themselves. The appearance of the Geloni was a sickening sight to look upon. They were accustomed to have their cheeks cut and gashed; and their proudest distinction was a face all covered with wounds that were scaly, and livid and crowned with blood-red crests.