in great reputation at Syracuse about 500 B.C., was | The Homonadenses were a wild and plundering peosupposed by many to be the real Homer of this particular poem. One thing, however, is certain, that these hymns are extremely ancient, and it is probable that some of them only yield to the Iliad and Odyssey in remoteness of date. They vary in character and poetical merit; but there is scarcely one among them that has not something to interest us, and they have all of them, in a greater or less degree, that simple Homeric liveliness which never fails to charm us wherever we meet with it.

rius died of the dropsy at Ravenna, in August, 423, | fied with the country school of Flavius (Serm., 1, 6, leaving no issue. (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 29, 72), removed with his son to Rome, where he was seqq.-Encycl. Us. Knowl., vol. 12, p. 281.) placed under the care of a celebrated teacher, Orbilius HORAPOLLO, OF HORUS APOLLO, a grammarian of Pupillus, of Beneventum, whose life has been written Alexandrea, according to Suidas, in the time of the by Suetonius. (De Illustr. Gramm., c. 9.) After Roman emperor Theodosius. He taught, first in his studying the ancient Latin poets (Epist., 2, 1, 70, seq.), native city, and afterward in Constantinople, and Horace acquired the Greek language. (Epist., 2, 2, wrote, under the title of Tepeviká, a work on conse-41, seq.) He also enjoyed, during the course of his crated places. Several other writers of this name are education, the advice and assistance of his father, who mentioned by Suidas, by Stephanus of Byzantium appears to have been a sensible man, and who is men(8. v. DevébnOiç), by Photius (p. 536, ed. Bekker), and tioned by his son with the greatest esteem and respect. by Eustathius (ad Od. 4). It is doubtful to which one (Serm., 1, 4, 105, seqq.; 1, 6, 76, seqq.) It is probof the whole number a treatise which has come down able that, soon after he had assumed the toga virilis, to us on Egyptian Hieroglyphics is to be ascribed. at the age of seventeen, he went to Athens to pursue According to the inscription that is found in most his studies (Epist., 2, 2, 43), where he appears to have MSS., the work was originally written in Egyptian, remained till the breaking out of the civil war during and translated into Greek by a person named Philip. the second triumvirate. In this contest he joined the But, whatever opinion we may form respecting the army of Brutus, was promoted to the rank of military author, it is evident that the work could not have been tribune (Serm., 1, 6, 48), and was present at the batwritten before the Christian era, since it contains allu- tle of Philippi, his flight from which he compares to sions to the philosophical tenets of the Gnostics. Its a similar act on the part of the Greek poet Alcæus. merits are differently estimated. The object of the (Od., 2, 7, 9.) Though the life of Horace was spared, writer appears to have been, not to furnish a key to his paternal property at Venusia was confiscated (Epist., the Hieroglyphic system, but to explain the emblems 2, 2, 49), and he repaired to Rome, with the hope of and attributes of the gods. Champollion, and Lee- obtaining a living by his literary exertions. Some of mans in his edition of the work, are disposed to at- his poems attracted the notice of Virgil and Varius, tribute greater importance to it than former critics had who introduced him to Mæcenas, and the liberality of been willing to allow. The best edition is that of Lee- the minister quickly relieved the poet from all pecunimans, Amst., 1834, 8vo. Previous to the appearance ary difficulties. From this eventful epoch for our bard, of this, the best edition was that of De Pauw, Traj. ad the current of his life flowed on in smooth and gentle Rhen., 1727, 4to. course. Satisfied with the competency which the kindHORE (Spai), the Seasons or Hours, who had ness of his patron had bestowed, Horace declined the charge of the gates of Heaven. Hesiod says that they offers made him by Augustus, to take him into his serwere the daughters of Jupiter and Themis; and he vice as private secretary, and steadily resisted the names them Eunomia (Order), Dike (Justice), and temptation thus held out of rising to opulence and Eirene (Peace). "They watch," adds the poet, "over political consideration; advantages which, to one of the works of mortal man" (py' opalovσi KaTalvηroiσ his philosophical temperament, would have been dearly ẞporoioi.-Theog., 903). By an unknown poet (ap. purchased by the sacrifice of his independence. For Stobaum.-Lobeck, Aglaoph., p. 600), the Horæ are that he was independent in the noblest sense of the called the daughters of Time; and by late poets they word, in freedom of thought and action, is evidenced were named the children of the year, and their num- by that beautiful epistle to Mecenas, in which he states, ber was increased to twelve. (Nonnus, 11, 486.-Id., that if the fayour of his patron is to be secured by a 12, 17.) Some made them seven or ten in number. slavish renunciation of his own habits and feelings, he (Hygin., fab., 183.)-The Hora seem to have been will at once say, Farewell to fortune, and welcome povoriginally regarded as presiding over the three seasons erty! (Epist., 1, 7.)-Not long after his introducinto which the ancient Greeks divided the year. tion to Maecenas the journey to Brundisium took (Welcker, Tril., p. 500, not.) As the day was simi-place, and the gift of his Sabine estate soon followed. larly divided (II., 21, 111), they came to be regarded as presiding over its parts also; and when it was farther subdivided into hours, these minor parts were placed under their charge, and were named from them. (Quint., Smyrn., 2, 595.-Nonnus, l. c.) Order and regularity being their prevailing attributes, the transition was easy from the natural to the moral world; and the guardian goddesses of the seasons were regarded as presiding over law, justice, and peace, the great producers of order and harmony among men. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 190, seq.)

HORATIA, the sister of the Horatii, killed by her surviving brother for deploring the death of her betrothed, one of the Curiatii, and for reproaching him with the deed by which she had lost her lover. (Vid. Horatius II.)

Rendered independent by the bounty of Mæcenas, high in the favour of Augustus, courted by the proudest patricians of Rome, and blessed in the friendship of his brother poets, Virgil, Tibullus, and Varius, it is difficult to conceive a state of more perfect temporal felicity than Horace must have enjoyed. This happiness was first sensibly interrupted by the death of Virgil, which was shortly succeeded by that of Tibullus. These losses must have sunk deeply into his mind. The solemn thoughts and grave studies which, in the first epistle of his first book, he declares shall henceforward occupy his time, were, if we may judge from the second epistle of the second book, addressed to Julius Florus, confirmed by those sad warnings of the frail tenure of existence. The severest blow, however, which Horace had to encounter, was inflicted by the HORATIUS, I. QUINTUS FLACCUS, a celebrated Ro- dissolution of his early friend and best patron Mæceman poet, born at Venusia or Venusium, December nas. He had declared that he could never survive the 8th, B.C. 65, during the consulship of L. Aurelius loss of one who was "part of his soul" (Od., 2, 17, 5), Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. (Od., 3, 21, 1.—and his prediction was verified. The death of the Epod., 13, 6.) His father, who was a freedman of poet occurred only a few weeks after that of his friend, the Horatian family, had gained considerable property on the 27th of November, B.C. 8, when he had nearly as a coactor, a name applied to the servant of the mon- completed his 58th year, and his remains were deey-brokers, who attended at sales at auction, and col-posited next to those of Mæcenas, at the extremity of lected the money from the purchasers. (Serm., 1, 6, the Esquiline Hill.-When at Rome, Horace resided 6.) With these gains he purchased a farm in the in a small and plainly-furnished mansion on the Esquineighbourhood of Venusia, on the banks of the Aufi-line. When he left the capital, he either betook himdus. In this place Horace appears to have lived until self to his Sabine farm or his villa at Tibur, the modhis eleventh or twelfth year, when his father, dissatis-ern Tivoli. When in the country, as the whim seized

Horatius, incensed at this, stabbed his sister to the heart. He was tried and acquitted. (Liv., 1, 26.)

HORESTI, a people of Scotland, mentioned by Tacitus. In Agricola's time, they seem to have been the inhabitants of what is now Angus. They were probably incorporated with, or subdued by, the Vacomagi, before Ptolemy wrote his geography. Mannert places them near the Frith of Tay. (Tacit., Vit. Agric., 38.)

from Appian in his Supplement to Livy. (Quintil., 1, 1, 6.-Freinsh., Suppl. Liv., 122, 44, seq.)

him, he would either study hard or be luxuriously idle. I cry one will perceive that we have here types of the two The country was the place where his heart abode, and nations regarded as sisters, and of the three tribes in here he displayed all the kindness of his disposition. each. In the first onset, two of the Horatii were slain At times reclining under the shade of a spreading tree, by their opponents; but the third brother, by joining adby the side of some "bubbling runnel," he would tem- dress to valour, obtained a victory over all his antagoper his Massic with the cooling lymph; at others he nists. Pretending to fly from the field of battle, he sepwould handle the spade and mattock, and delight in arated the three Curiatii, and then, attacking them one the good-humoured jokes of his country neighbours by one, slew them successively. As he returned triwhen they laughed at him, with his little punchy fig-umphant to the city, his sister Horatia, who had been ure, puffing and blowing at the unwonted work. But betrothed to one of the Curiatii, met and reproached her his suppers here were the chief scene of his enjoy-brother bitterly for having slain her intended husband. ment. He would then collect around him the patriarchs of the neighbourhood, listen to their homely but practical wisdom, and participate in the merriment of his slaves seated around the blazing fire. Well and truly might he exclaim, "Noctes cænæque Deûm !"The character of Horace is as clearly developed in his writings, as the manner in which he passed his time, or the locality of his favourite haunts. Good sense was the distinguishing characteristic of his intellect; tenderness that of his heart. He acknowledged no HORTENSIA, daughter of the orator Hortensius, and master in philosophy, and his boast was not a vain one. who would seem to have inherited a portion of her faAlthough leaning to the tenets of Epicurus, the "sum- ther's eloquence. When the members of the second mum bonum" of Horace soared far above selfishness. triumvirate had imposed a heavy tax upon the Roman His happiness centred not in self, but was reflected matrons, and no one of the other sex dared to espouse from that of others. Culling what was best from each their cause, Hortensia appeared as their advocate, and sect, he ridiculed unsparingly the vague theories of all; made so able a speech that a large portion of the burand, notwithstanding his shafts were chiefly directed den was removed. (Val. Max., 8, 3, 3.) This haagainst the Stoics, he assented to the loftier and better rangue was extant in Quintilian's time, who speaks of part of their doctrine, the superintendence of the di-it with encomiums. Freinshemius has adumbrated it vinity over the ways of man. Like those of every other mortal, the sterling qualities of Horace were mixed with baser alloy. His philosophy could not pre- HORTENSIUS, QUINTUS, a celebrated orator, who serve him, even at the age of fifty, from the weak- began to distinguish himself by his eloquence in the nesses of a boy, and he did not escape unsullied by the Roman forum at the age of nineteen. He was born vices of the time. These frailties apart, we recognise of a plebeian family, A.U.C. 640, eight years before in Horace all the amenities, and most of the virtues, Cicero. He served at first as a common soldier, and which adorn humanity. The productions of Horace afterward as military tribune, in the Social war. In the are divided into Odes, Epodes, Satires, and Epistles. contest between Marius and Sylla he remained neuter, The Odes, which for the most part are little more and was one of the twenty quaestors established by than translations or imitations of the Greek poets, are Sylla, A.U.C. 674. He afterward obtained in succesgenerally written in a very artificial manner, and sel- sion the offices of ædile, prætor, and consul, the last dom depict the stronger and more powerful feelings of of these A.U.C. 685. As an orator he for a long time human nature. The best are those in which the poet balanced the reputation of Cicero; but, as his orations describes the pleasures of a country life, or touches on are lost, we can only judge of him by the account the beauties of nature, for which he had the most lively which his rival gives of his abilities. "Nature had perception and the most exquisite relish: nor yet, at given him," says Cicero, in his Brutus (c. 88), SO the same time, are his lyrical productions altogether happy a memory, that he never had need of commitwithout those touches which excite our warmer sym- ting to writing any discourse which he had meditated, pathies. But if we were to name those qualities in while, after his opponent had finished speaking, he could which Horace most excels, we should mention his recall, word by word, not only what the other had said, strong good sense, his clear judgment, and the pu- but also the authorities which had been cited against rity of his taste.-The best edition of Horace is that himself. His industry was indefatigable. He never of Döring, Lips., 1803, 1815, 1828, 2 vols. 8vo, let a day pass without speaking in the forum, or prereprinted at the London press, and also at Oxford, paring himself to appear on the morrow; oftentimes he 1838, in one volume 8vo. Many critics have main- did both. He excelled particularly in the art of divitained that each ode, each satire, &c., was published ding his subject, and in then reuniting it in a luminous separately by the poet. But Bentley, in the preface to manner, calling in, at the same time, even some of the his edition of the poet's works, argues, from the words arguments which had been urged against him. His of Suetonius, the practice of other Latin poets, and diction was noble, elegant, and rich; his voice strong the expressions of Horace himself, that his works were and pleasing; his gestures carefully studied." The originally published in books, in the order in which eloquence of Hortensius would seem, in fact, to have they now appear. Consult on this subject the "Ho- been of that showy species called Asiatic, which flourratius Restitutus" of Tate, Cambr., 1832; 2d ed., ished in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, and was 1837. (Bähr, Gesch. Röm. Lit., vol. 1, p. 220, seqq. infinitely more florid and ornamental than the oratory -Quarterly Review, No. 124.-Encycl. Us. Knowl., of Athens, or even of Rhodes, being full of brilliant vol. 12, p. 290.)-II. The name of three brave Ro- thoughts and of sparkling expressions. This glowing man twin-brothers, who fought, according to the old style of rhetoric, though deficient in solidity and weight, Roman legends, against the Curiatii, three Alban twin- was not unsuitable in a young man; and, being farther brothers, about 667 years before the commencement recommended by a beautiful cadence of periods, met Mutual acts of violence committed by the with the utmost applause. But Hortensius, as he adcitizens of Rome and Alba had given rise to a war. vanced in life, did not correct this exuberance, nor The armies were drawn up against each other at the adopt a chaster eloquence; and this luxury and glitFossa Cluilia, where it was agreed to avert a battle by ter of phraseology, which, even in his earliest years, a combat of three brothers on either side, namely, the had occasionally excited ridicule or disgust among the Horatii and Curiatii, whose mothers were sisters. Ev-graver fathers of the senatorial order, being totally in

of our era.

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consistent with his advanced age and consular digni- | A.U.C. 666 till 679, a space of thirteen years, at the ty, which required something more serious and com- head of the Roman bar; and being, in consequence, posed, his reputation in consequence diminished with engaged during that long period on one side or other increase of years. Besides, from his declining health in every cause of importance, he soon amassed a proand strength, which greatly failed in his latter years, he digious fortune. He lived, too, with a magnificence may not have been able to give full effect to that showy corresponding to his wealth. His house at Rome, species of rhetoric in which he indulged. A constant which was splendidly furnished, formed the centre of toothache and swelling in the jaws greatly impaired the chief imperial palace, which increased from the his powers of elocution and utterance, and became at time of Augustus to that of Nero, till it nearly covered length so severe as to accelerate his end. A few the whole Palatine Mount, and branched over other months, however, before his death, which happened in hills. Besides his mansion in the capital, he possess703, he pleaded for his nephew Messala, who was ac-ed sumptuous villas at Tusculum, Bauli, and Laurencused of illegal canvassing, and who was acquitted tum, where he was accustomed to give the most elemore in consequence of the astonishing exertions of his gant and expensive entertainments. advocate than the justice of his cause. His olive planSo unfavoura- tations he is said to have regularly moistened and beble, indeed, was his case esteemed, that, however much dewed with wine; and, on one occasion, during the the speech of Hortensius had been admired, he was re- hearing of an important cause in which he was enceived, on entering the theatre of Curio on the follow-gaged along with Cicero, he begged the latter to change ing day, with loud clamours and hisses, which were the with him the previously arranged order of pleading, as more remarked as he had never met with similar treat- he was obliged to go to the country to pour wine on a ment in the whole course of his forensic career. (Cic., favourite platanus, which grew near his Tusculan villa. Ep. ad Fam., 8, 2.) The speech, however, revived all (Macrob., Sat., 3, 13.) Notwithstanding this profuthe ancient admiration of the public for his oratorical sion, his heir found not less than 10,000 casks of wine talents, and convinced them that, had he possessed in his cellar after his death. the same perseverance as Cicero, he would not have his taste for wine and fondness for plantations, he in(Plin., 14, 14.) Besides ranked second to that orator. The speeches of Hor- dulged in a passion for pictures and fish-ponds. At his tensius, as has already been mentioned, lost part of Tusculan villa he built a hall for the reception of a their effect by the orator's advance in years, but they painting of the expedition of the Argonauts, by the suffered still more by being transferred to writing. As painter Cydias, which cost the enormous_sum of his chief excellence consisted in action and delivery, 144,000 sesterces. his writings were much inferior to what was expected the seashore, he vied with Lucullus and Philippus in At his country seat near Bauli, on from the high fame which he had enjoyed; and ac- the extent of his fish-ponds, which were constructed cordingly, after death, he retained little of that esteem at immense cost, and so formed that the tide flowed which he had so abundantly possessed during life. into them. (Varro, R. R., 3, 3.) Yet such was his (Quint., Inst. Orat., 11, 3.) It appears from Macro- luxury, and reluctance to diminish his supply, that, bius, that he was much ridiculed by his contempora- when he gave entertainments at Bauli, he generally ries on account of his affected gestures. In pleading, sent to the neighbouring town of Puteoli to buy fish his hands were constantly in motion, whence he was for supper. (Id., 3, 17.) He had a vast number of often attacked by his adversaries in the forum for re- fishermen in his service, and paid so much attention sembling an actor; and on one occasion he received to the feeding of his fish, that he had always ready a from his opponent the appellation of Dionysia, which large stock of small fish to be devoured by the great was the name of a celebrated dancing girl. (Aulus ones. It was with the utmost difficulty he could be Gellius, 1,8.) Esopus and Roscius frequently attend-prevailed upon to part with any of them; and Varro ed his pleadings to catch his gestures and imitate them declares that a friend could more easily get his charioton the stage. (Val. Max., 8, 10.) Such, indeed, was mules out of his stable than a mullet from his ponds. his exertion in action, that it was commonly said that He was more anxious about the welfare of his fish it could not be determined whether people went to hear than the health of his slaves, and less solicitous that or to see him. Like Demosthenes, he chose and put a sick servant might not take what was unfit for him, on his dress with the most studied care and neatness. than that his fish might not drink water which was He is said not only to have prepared his gestures, but unwholesome. It is even said (Plin., 9, 55) that he also to have adjusted the plaits of his gown before a mirror when about to issue forth to the forum; and to shed tears for its untimely death. was so passionately fond of a particular lamprey as to At his Laurentan have taken no less care in arranging them than in villa Hortensius had a wooded park of fifty acres, enmoulding the periods of his discourse. He so tucked compassed with a wall. This enclosure he called a up his gown that the folds did not fall by chance, but nursery of wild beasts, all of which came for their were formed with great care by help of a knot care-provender at a certain hour on the blowing of a horn: fully tied, and concealed by the plies of his robe, which an exhibition with which he was accustomed to amuse apparently flowed carelessly around him. (Macrobi-the guests who visited him here. Varro mentions an us, Sat., 3, 13.) Macrobius also records a story of his entertainment where those invited supped on an emiinstituting an action of damages against a person who nence, called a Triclinium, in this sylvan park. Duhad jostled him while walking in this elaborate dress, ring the repast, Hortensius summoned his Orpheus, and had ruffled his toga when he was about to appear who, having come with his musical instruments, and in public with his drapery adjusted according to the being ordered to display his talents, blew a trumpet, happiest arrangement; an anecdote which, whether when such a multitude of deer, boars, and other quadtrue or false, shows by its currency the opinion enter-rupeds rushed to the spot from all quarters, that the tained of his finical attention to everything that concerned the elegance of his attire, or the gracefulness of his figure and attitudes. This appears to have been the only blemish in his oratorical character; and the only stain on his moral conduct was his practice of corrupting the judges of the causes in which he was employed, a practice which must be in a great measure imputed to the defects of the judicial system at Rome; for, whatever might be the excellence of the Roman laws, nothing could be worse than the procedure under which they were administered.-Hortensius was, from 646

sight appeared to the delighted spectators as beautiful as the courses with wild animals in the great circus of the Ediles. (Dunlop, Hist. Rom. Lit., vol. 2, p. 222, seqq.)

HORUS, a son of Isis and Osiris, and one of the deities of Egypt. Horus is the sun at the summer solstice. From the month of April until this season of the year, Typhon was said to bear sway, with his attendant band of heats and maladies: the earth was parched, gloomy, and desolate. Horus thereupon recalls his father Osiris from the lower world, he revives the parent

in the son, he avenges him on Typhon: the solstitial | having any beard, and they are as deformed as ensun brings back the Nile from the bottom of Egypt, where it had appeared to be sleeping the sleep of death; the waters spread themselves over the land, everything receives new life; contagious maladies, hurtful reptiles, parching heats which had engendered them, all disappear before the conqueror of Typhon; through him nature revives, and Egypt resumes her fertility. Horus was the deity of Apollinopolis Magna (Edfou), where he had a magnificent temple. The Greeks compared him to their Apollo. He is the conqueror of Typhon, as Apollo is of Python, and Crishna of the serpent Caliya. (Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. 2, p. 276.-Creuzer, par Guigniaut, vol. 1, p. 400.-Compare the remarks of Jomard, in the "Description de l'Egypte-Antiq.," vol. 1, p. 26, seqq.)

nuchs. They are of squat figures, and have strong limbs and large heads. Their figure is a remarkable one; they are bent to such a degree that one would almost fancy them to be brute beasts moving on two legs, or those rudely carved pillars which are used to support bridges, and which are cut into some resemblance to a human form." Zosimus, who wrote about a century after the first inroad of the Huns into Europe, supposes them to be identical with the royal Scythians of Herodotus. Jornandes gives a fabulous account of their origin from some sorceresses who had united themselves with the impure spirits of the desert. He describes them as a race which showed no other resemblance to the human species than what the use of the faculty of speech afforded. The porHOSTILIA, a village on the Padus, or Po, now Os- trait of these barbarians will be complete, if we add tiglia, in the vicinity of Cremona. (Tacit., Ann., 2, to it the description given by Sidonius Apollinaris, 40.) in 472 (2, 245, seqq.). The terror which these barHOSTIUS, a Roman poet, contemporary with Lucil-barians occasioned, contributed, no doubt, in a very ius the satirist. He wrote a poem on the Istrian war, great degree, to heighten the picture which the ancient which took place 576 A.U.C., or B.C. 178. Some writers just mentioned have given us of their personal fragments of this have reached our time. Hostius deformity. We must also take into consideration the wrote also metrical annals, after the manner of En- following circumstance: The various hordes of barnius. (Weichert, de Hostio poeta, ejusque carm. reli- barians, such as the Lombards, Goths, Vandals, and quiis, Commentatio, p. 1-18.) Some make him to others, which made inroads into the Roman empire have been the father, others the grandfather, of the before the invasion of the Huns, were of the IndoCynthia of Propertius. (Consult Brouckhus., ad Pro-Germanic race; their physiognomy, therefore, did not pert., Eleg., 3, 18, 8.)

differ much from that of the European nations already known to the Greeks and Romans. On a sudden the Huns presented themselves, belonging clearly to a different race, and whose figures and personal appearance generally, in themselves far from pleasing, were rendered still more disagreeable to the eye by artificial means. The sudden presence of such a

HUNNI, one of the barbarian nations that invaded the Roman empire. The first ancient author who makes mention of the Huns is Dionysius Periegetes. This geographer, who wrote probably about 30 years before our era, names four nations, which, in the order of his narrative, followed from north to south along the western shores of the Caspian Sea, viz., the Scy-race could not but produce an alarming impression; thians, the Huns (Ovvvo), the Caspians, and the Albanians. Eratosthenes, cited by Strabo, places these nations in the same order; but, in place of Huns, he calls the second Oviriot, Huitii, who were probably the Hunnic tribe farthest to the west. Ptolemy, who lived about the middle of the third century, placed the Huns (Xovvot) between the Bastarne and Roxolani, consequently on the two banks of the Borysthenes. The Armenian historians know this people under the denomination of Hounk, and place them to the north of Caucasus, between the Wolga and the Don. Hence they call the defile of Derbend the "Rampart of the Huns." In the geographical work falsely attributed to Moses of Chorene, the following passage occurs: "The Massagetæ dwell as far as the Caspian Sea, where is the branch of Mount Caucasus that contains the rampart of Tarpant (Derbend) and a wonderful tower built in the sea: to the north are the Huns within the city of Varkatchan, and others besides." Moses of Chorene relates, in his Armenian history, the wars which Tiridates the Great, who reigned from 259 to 312, sustained against certain northern nations that had made an irruption into Armenia. This prince attacked and defeated them, slew their king, and pursued them into the country of the Hounk (Huns). Zonaras states, that, according to some, the Emperor Carus was slain (A.D. 283) in an expedition against the Huns. From all that has been stated, we see clearly that this people were already known before their invasion of Europe, and that, when Ammianus Marcellinus speaks of them as a nation "little known to the ancients," he is not to be considered as meaning that there was no knowledge of them prior to A.D. 376. "They live," remarks the same writer, "beyond the Palus Mæotis, on the borders of the Icy Sea. They are marked by extreme ferocity of manners. As soon as a child is born, they cut deep incisions into ts cheeks, in order that the scars thus formed may prevent, at a later period, the first growth of the beard from appearing. They reach an advanced age without

and hence the writers of that day can hardly find expressions strong enough to depict, amid the terror by which they were surrounded, the repulsive deformity of this new swarm of conquerors; they endeavour to improve, the one upon the other, in placing before their readers the most frightful traits of savage portraiture.-As regards the origin of the Hunnic race, it must be confessed that great uncertainty has for a long time prevailed. Some have seen in them the progenitors of the Mogul and Calmuc Tartars of the present day, without having any better foundation for this opinion than vague descriptions of the forms of the Huns. These writers ought to have reflected that the descriptions in question would apply equally wel! to a large number of the races of northern Asia, to the Vogoules, the Samoiedes, the Toungouses, and others. De Guignes, on the other hand, traces up the Huns to a nomadic and powerful race which infested the borders of China, and who are called by the historians of this country Hioung nou. The simple resemblance of names has caused this theory to wear a plausible appearance, but Klaproth fully establishes its fallacy. This writer, in following as his guides the Byzantine historians, makes the Huns to have been of the same origin with the Avares, and to have been a branch of the Oriental Finns, and the progenitors of the present Vougoules. (Klaproth, Tableaux Historiques de l'Asie, p. 246.)--The history of the Huns, in its more important features, is as follows: In 374 they quitted their settlements on the Wolga and Palus Mæotis, under the conduct of their monarch Balamir, and subjected the Akatsires, who, according to the statement of Priscus, had a common origin with them. Reunited to this people, they attacked the Alani, called Tanaïta from their dwelling on the banks of the Tanaïs or Don. The Alani, being conquered, made common cause with the Huns, and in 376 the united hordes invaded the country of the Ostrogoths. Hermannrich, the king of this latter people, met with a total defeat, and killed himself in despair. His suc