'A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic, and English; with a Dissertation on the Languages, Literature, and Manners of Eastern Nations' [‎28r] (60/1826)

DISSERTATION.
XXXIX
most severe of satires. Oden, they say, was the
chief of a Sarmatian tribe, inhabiting the banks of
the Lake Meotis; or, according to others, the
country between the Euxine and Caspian Seas,
now called Gurjistdn or Georgia ; who, terrified at
the progress of the Roman arms, after the defeat
of Mithridates by Pompey, abandoned his country,
at the head of a great body of his people, and
settled in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and other
Scandinavian districts; where he laid the founda
tions of that power, which, in after ages, over
whelmed the Roman empire. But if the Palus
Meotis is fixed as the dominions of Oden, even the
din of war could hardly have reached his ear ;
whilst the impression made upon the countries
between the seas was too slight to have alarmed
the most effeminate of nations. Pompey was but
a short time at Colchis: Mithridates had fled before
his arrival. The conquest of that country was not
his object: he had more important views. He
left it almost immediately, and marched against
Tigranes into Armenia. The Iberians and Al
banians, the old inhabitants of Georgia, instead of
flying, laid many ambuscades to harass him. On
the defeat of Tigranes, he returned to chastise those
people for daring to insult the Roman arms. They
again opposed him; but afterwards sued for peace;
which he granted, without any severity of condi
tion. Pompey proceeded immediately against the
Syrians and Medes ; and we hear of him no more
in those parts. The Romans, unlike the barbarian
invaders of their empire, who marked their route
with desolation, though an ambitious, were by no
means a cruel enemy. A nominal obedience to the
senate was often all they required, -from those dis
tricts in particular which skirted their dominions;
and protection was ever the reward of submission.
Whence then could originate a terror so dreadful,
as to frighten a people not completely pusillani
mous from a country hardly attacked; capable of
great natural defence; intersected in various direc
tions by rugged mountains and extensive forests ;
and hurry them from the mild latitude of 42, to
the degree of 57 north : a region to them un
known ; barren, bleak, and of a severity of climate,
which, even now, with all the advantage of culti
vation, must chill to inaction the constitution of a
Southern Asiatic ? Would it not have been flying,
at the same time, from the mere echo of war, to
encounter difficulties almost insurmountable ? To
have pierced to the frozen latitude of Scandinavia,
over mountains, and rivers, and seas ; through
woods, and marshes, and hardy savages; implies
a degree of persevering intrepidity, widely differing
from that abject timidness which first induced
them to fly. There is a striking difference, let it
be remembered, between emigration and flight j
between the enthusiasm and animation which must
possess a body of adventurers departing in quest
of plunder and new discoveries, and the trembling
fugitives from imaginary alarms. A fearlessness
of danger will distinguish the first; a wretched
despondency will mark the others. Yet in this
tale, those opposite characters must have been
found in the same people ; and Oden and his tribe,
from despicable cowards, must suddenly have been
transformed to'paragons of heroism. But Nature
rejects the idea, and History should reject it too.
We err when we take it from the province of
romance. We ought to consider it in the light of
a mere Scaldic fable, invented to trace the origin
of Gothic and Roman enmity; as the far more
probable fiction of Dido and Mneas was supposed
to account for the irreconcileable antipathy be
tween Rome and Carthage. The epoch of the
expedition seems, at the same time, to bring Oden
too far down. He is celebrated as a deity in
Runic odes of very ancient date. The Gods of
every barbarous country are generally carried up
to the highest periods of society. The era of this
personage, whether real or imaginary, must ap
parently be of more remote antiquity. A mere
modern would hardly have been the object of such
early and enthusiastic worship . 71
The great officina gentium, whence such my
riads of barbarians have at different periods poured
into the more cultivated regions of the earth,
appears, with every probability, to have been