302 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, fusion and calamity. As the Roman empire was at the ' same time, and on every side, attacked by the bUnd fury of foreign invaders, and the wild ambition of do- mestic usurpers, we shall consult order and perspicuity, by pursuing, not so much the doubtful arrangement of dates, as the more natural distribution of subjects. The most dangerous enemies of Rome, during the Inroads of rcigns of Valerian and Gallienus, were, 1. The Franks; Hans.^'^" ^. The Alemanni; 3. The Goths; and, 4. The Per- sians. Under these general appellations, we may com- prehend the adventures of less considerable tribes, whose obscure and uncouth names would only serve to oppress the memory and perplex the attention of the reader. Origin and I. As the posterity of the Franks compose one of the oUhe ^'^^^^ greatest and most enlightened nations of Europe, the Franlcs. powers of learning and ingenuity have been exhausted in the discovery of their unlettered ancestors. To the tales of credulity, have succeeded the systems of fancy. Every passage has been sifted, every spot has been surveyed, that might possibly reveal some faint traces of their origin. It has been supposed, that Pannonia", that Gaul, that the northern parts of Germany y, gave birth to that celebrated colony of warriors. At length the most rational critics, rejecting the fictitious emigra- tions of ideal conquerors, have acquiesced in a senti- ment whose simplicity persuades us of its truth ^ They suppose, that about the year two hundred and forty*, a new confederacy was formed under the name of Franks, by the old inhabitants of the Lower Rhine and the Weser. The present circle of Westphalia, the landgraviate of Hesse, and the duchies of Brunswick and Lunenburgh, were the ancient seat of the Chauci, ^ Various systems have been formed to explain a difficult passage in Gregory of Tours, 1. ii. c. 9. y The geographer of Ravenna, i. 11. by mentioning Mauringania on the confines of Denmark as the ancient seat of the Franks, gave birth to an ingenious system of Leibnitz. ^ See Cluver. Germ. Antiqua, 1. iii. c. 20 ; M. Freret, in the M6moires de I'Acad^mie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii.
- Most probably under the reign of Gordian, from an accidental circum-
stance fully canvassed by Tillemont, tom. iii. p. 710. 1181.
