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of arms, except when it was found expedient to chap.enrol them in the military service. Nor did the ....—emperors refuse the property of lands, with aless servile tenure, to such of the barbarians assolicited the protection of Rome . They granteda settlement to several colonies of the Carpi, theBastarnae, and the Sarmatians; and, by a dan-gerous indulgence, permitted them in some mea-sure to retain their national manners and inde-pendence/ Among the provincials, it was asubject of flattering exultation, that the barba-rian, so lately an object of terror, now culti-vated their lands, drove their cattle to the neigh-bouring fair, and contributed by his labour tothe public plenty. They congratulated theirmasters on the powerful accession of subjectsand soldiers; but they forgot to observe, thatmultitudes of secret enemies, insolent from fa-vour, or desperate from oppression, were intro-duced into the heart of the empire.’
While the Caesars exercised their valour on the wars ofbanks of the Rhine and Danube, the presence Egypt of the emperors was required on the southernconfines of the Roman world. From the Nile
p There was a settlement of the Sarmatians in the neighbourhood ofTreves, which seems to have been deserted by those lazy barbarians iAusonius speaks of them in his Moselle ;
Unde iter ingrediens ncmorosa per avia solum,
Et nulla hutnaui spectans vestigia coitus
Arvaque Sauromatum nuper metata colonis.
There was a town of the Carpi in the lower Maesia.
* See the rhetorical exultation of Eumenius . Panegyr. vii. 9.