( viii )
Arimaspians; as they did those beyond the Caspian Sea into the Sacæ and Messagetæ.” These Sacæ and Messagetæ might possibly be the ancestors of the Saxons and Goths, (as these last are fully proved to have been the Getæ of the ancients[1]) who, in the time of those very remote Greek writers, possibly had not penetrated so far westward as they did afterwards: As it is well known that the Germanii are mentioned by Herodotus[2] as a Persian people. Now the most authentic historians and poets of the Gothic or Teutonic nations all agree that their ancestors came at different emigrations from the more eastern countries[3]. But with regard to the three other nations, the Hyperboreans, the Sauromatæ and the Arimaspians; if we agree with Pelloutier[4], that under the two former the Celts and Sarmatians are plainly designed; when he contends[5] that the Arimaspians are a meer fabulous people, which never existed, who does not see that he is blinded by hypothesis? Why may not the ancient Finns or Laplanders have been intended by this term, which he himself interprets from Herodotus to signify One-eyed, and supposes it descriptive of some nation that excelled in archery, as alluding to their practice of winking with
- ↑ See Pelloutier, liv. 1. ch. viii. vol I. p. 46, 47, &c. notes.
- ↑ Herod. in Clio. Αλλοι δε Περσαι εισι οιδε, Πανθηλαιοι, Δηρουσιαιοι, ΓΕΡΜΑΝΙΟΙ. Edit. R. Steph. 1570. pag. 34.
- ↑ All the old northern Scalds and historians agree that their ancestors came thither from the East, but then some of them, to do the greater honour to their country, and to its antiquities, pretend that they first made an emigration into the East from Scandinavia. See Sheringham De Anglorum Gentis origine, Cartabrigia 1670. 8vo. paßim. It is the great fault of Sheringham not to know how to distinguish what is true and credible from what is improbable and fabulous in the old Northern Chronicles: Because some parts are true, he receives all for authentic; as a late ingenious writer, because some parts are fabulous, is for rejecting all as false. (See Clarke, in his learned Treatise on the Connexion between the Roman, Saxon and English Coins, &c. Lond. 1767. 4to.) By the same rule we might reject the whole Grecian history: For that of the North has, like it, its fabulous, its doubtful, and more certain Periods; which acute and judicious criticks will easily distinguish.
- ↑ Liv. 1. chap. i.
- ↑ Vol. I. p. 9, 10.
