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appellation of the endless peace. The safety of the East enabled the emperor to employ his forces against the Vandals; and the internal state of Africa afforded an honourable motive, and promised a powerful support, to the Roman arms.[1]
State of the Vandals. Hilderic. A.D. 523-530 According to the testament of the founder, the African kingdom had lineally descended to Hilderic the eldest of the Vandal princes. A mild disposition inclined the son of a tyrant, the grandson of a conqueror, to prefer the counsels of clemency and peace; and his accession was marked by the salutary edict which restored two hundred bishops to their churches and allowed the free profession of the Athanasian creed.[2] But the Catholics accepted with cold and transient gratitude a favour so inadequate to their pretensions, and the virtues of Hilderic offended the prejudices of his countrymen. The Arian clergy presumed to insinuate that he had renounced the faith, and the soldiers more loudly complained that he had degenerated from the courage, of his ancestors. His ambassadors were suspected of a secret and disgraceful negotiation in the Byzantine court; and his general, the Achilles,[3] [Hoamer] as he was named, of the Vandals, lost a battle against the naked and disorderly Moors. Gelimer. A.D. 530-534 The public discontent was exasperated by Gelimer,[4] whose age, descent, and military fame gave him an apparent title to the succession; he assumed, with the consent of the nation, the reins of government; and his unfortunate sovereign sunk without a struggle from the throne to a dungeon, [June 531] where he was strictly guarded with a faithful counsellor and his unpopular nephew, the Achilles of the Vandals. But the indulgence which Hilderic had shewn to his Catholic- ↑ The complete series of the Vandal war is related by Procopius in a regular and elegant narrative (l. i. c. 9-25; l. ii. c. 1-13); and happy would be my lot, could I always tread in the footsteps of such a guide. From the entire and diligent perusal of the Greek text, I have a right to pronounce that the Latin and French versions of Grotius and Cousin may not be implicitly trusted; yet the president Cousin has been often praised, and Hugo Grotius was the first scholar of a learned age.
- ↑ See Ruinart, Hist. Persecut. Vandal, c. xii. p. 589. His best evidence is drawn from the life of St. Fulgentius, composed by one of his disciples, transcribed in a great measure in the annals of Baronius, and printed in several great collections (Catalog. Bibliot. Bunaviænæ, tom. i. vol. ii. p. 1258).
- ↑ For what quality of the mind or body? For speed, or beauty, or valour? — In what language did the Vandals read Homer? — Did he speak German? — The Latins had four versions (Fabric. tom. i. l. ii. c. 3, p. 297); yet, in spite of the praises of Seneca (Consol. c. 26), they appear to have been more successful in imitating, than in translating, the Greek poets. But the name of Achilles might be famous and popular, even among the illiterate Barbarians. [The Moorish leader in the battle, which led to the fall of Hilderic, was Antāla, chief of the Frexenses, a Moorish tribe of Byzacium. See Corippus, Johannis, 3, 184 sqq.]
- ↑ [The true form of the name is Geilimir.]
