OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

391

As-burg, or As-of, 1 words of a singular signifi- chap.

cation, has given rise to an historical system of._

so pleasing a contexture, that we could almostwish to persuade ourselves of its truth. It issupposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe ofbarbarians which dwelt on the banks of the lakeMseotis, till the fall of Mithridates and the armsof Pompey menaced the north with servitude.

That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to apower which he was unable to resist, conduct-ed his tribe from the frontiers of the AsiaticSarmatia into Sweden , with the great design offorming, in that inaccessible retreat of freedom,a religion and a people, which, in some remoteage, might be subservient to his immortal re-venge ; when his invincible Goths , armed withmartial fanaticism, should issue in numerousswarms from the neighbourhood of the polarcircle, to chastise the oppressors of mankind." 1

If so many successive generations of Goths Emigra-were capable of preserving a faint tradition of Goths 1their Scandinavian origin, we must not expect, diniVkOnlfrom such unlettered barbarians, any distinct toPlussia -

1 Mallet, c. iv, p. 65, has collected from Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy , andSteplianus Byzantinus, the •vestiges of such a city and people.

m This wonderful expedition of Odin, which, by deducing the en-mity of the Goths and Romans from so memorable a cause, might sup.ply the noble groundwork of an epic poem, but cannot safely be receivedas authentic history. According to the obvious sense of the Edda,andthe interpretation of the most skilful critics, As-gard, instead of de-noting a real city of the Asiatic Sarmatia, is the fictitious appellationof the mystic abode of the gods, the Olympus of Scandinavia , fromwhence the prophet was supposed to descend, when he announced hisnew religion to the Gothic nations, who were already seated in thesouthern parts of Sweden .