covered at Prilwitz on the supposed site of the ancient Rhetra,* where the Obotrites made their longest resistance to the Saxons, and where, as we learn from Adam of Bremen, Dithmar and Helmoldus, there was a celebrated temple of Radagast, surrounded by the pantheon of Slavonian deities. Their images were found each bearing its proper designation, as well as the more general one of Velibog or Czernebog; the statues were constructed with rude art, in pieces separate, but afterwards molten together. Their names are in Runic characters, borrowed doubtless by the Wends from their German neighbours, or left by the Vandals, who had possessed the country before their arrival.

Every trait that can be discovered of the ancient Slavish rites and superstitions tends to confirm the opinion of their Asiatic origin. It is to be regretted that no monuments remain to elucidate the interior dogmas or metaphysical notions connected with their worship.

SECTION VII.-Inquiry into the early History of the Nations inhabiting the Eastern Parts of Europe.

We have in the preceding sections traced the ethnological divisions of the Slavic race, and the history of the different ramifications of that stock which have constituted from the sixth century the great mass of European population in the countries to the eastward of Germany and of the Vistula. We commenced this investigation from the age of Jornandes and Procopius, by whom the Antes and Sclaveni are first mentioned by name, and described in a manner that leaves no room for doubt as to the identification of the races so termed with the Slavonian nations of modern times. We must now attempt some elucidation of the earlier ethnography of the same region, and endeavour to determine with what division of its more an

In the curious work of Hofprediger Masch on the gods of the Obotrites, a particular account is to be found of these remains. An analysis of that work may be seen in the West of England Journal, with copies of Masch's engravings, representing the rude figures of Radegast, Podaga, Sieba, Pya, Czernebog, and other idols.

+ The gods Sieba and Vodha occurring among the idols of Prilwitz are perhaps imitations of Siva and Buddha.

cient inhabitants the Slavic race was connected in origin and descent.

We have seen that the Antes and Sclaveni, the eastern and western branches of the Slavic race, were spread, about the middle of the sixth century, over a vast space in the eastern parts of Europe, extending from the Danube and the Euxine. to a great but undefined distance towards the north; and that from west to east they reached from the Theiss or Tibiscus to the Dniester, and even as far as the Borysthenes. Of these countries, after their abandonment by the Goths and the retreat or destruction of the Hunns, the Slavic nations appear to have been the principal inhabitants. The repeated revolutions which had taken place in this part of Europe had changed in many instances the relative positions of the different nations, and it is not easy to connect the Slavi with any one of the races whose names are well known to us in the earlier history of the same countries. In order to obtain as much light as possible on this subject it will be necessary to take a general survey of the ancient population of Sarmatia.

The eastern parts of Europe to the northward of the Danube were little known to the Greeks and Romans. The Vistula was generally considered as the eastern boundary of Germany, and the country beyond that river was termed by the Romans, and by late Greek writers, Sarmatia. Thus Ptolemy describes it: "Sarmatia in Europe is bounded towards the west by the river Vistula, and by a line drawn midway between the source of that river and the Sarmatic mountains, and by those mountains themselves."* Pomponius Mela mentions the Sarmatic nations as bounded by Germany towards the west, and he makes them reach from the Baltic Sea to the Danube. Towards the north and the east Sarmatia had no limits, and may be considered as reaching to the extremity of Europe, or of the known world.

The following boundaries are laid down by Mannert,+ after

* Η ἐν Εὐρώπη Σαρματία περιορίζεται ἀπὸ δυσμῶν τῷ τε Οὐιστούλα ποταμῷ, καὶ τῇ μεταξὺ τῆς κεφαλῆς αὐτῶ καὶ τῶν Σαρματικῶν ὀρέων γραμμῷ, καὶ avroïç Toiç öpεdiv.-Cl. Ptolem. Geog. Tab. 3. See Pomp. Mela de Situ Orbis, lib. iii. c. 3.

+ Mannert's Geographie der Griechen und Römer, th. iv. s. 250. Leipzig, 1820.

a diligent comparison of the passages of ancient geographers, as the limits of Sarmatia in the times of the Roman empire:

1. On the western side Sarmatia was bounded by the river Vistula; 2. to the northward by the ocean and a region of unknown extent; 3. to the southward by the Carpathian mountains, and beyond these by the river Tyras or Danaster or Dniester; thence by an imaginary line drawn straight to the mouth of the Borysthenes and the coast of the Euxine as far as the Tauric peninsula; 4. on the eastern side by the Palus Mæotis, which was supposed to be of much greater extent than it really is; afterwards by the river Tanais, and an imaginary line drawn from the source of that stream towards the north.

The Sarmatic nations was a term used by the Roman writers to designate, in general, various races little known, who inhabited the country beyond the Vistula. It is therefore not synonymous with Sauromatæ : that name is used by Herodotus to describe a particular nation who had a language and character of their own. Nearly the same remark applies to the name of Scythian. The Scythæ of Herodotus were a particular nation. Scythia in later times had an indefinite extent.

There is some difficulty in distributing the nations of Sarmatia among the different races known to have been spread through that country. Tacitus says that he was in doubt whether to reckon the Peucini and Bastarnæ, the Venedi and Fenni, among the German or Sarmatic races. He assures us that the Peucini, who were by some called Bastarnæ, were Germans in language and dress, though by their squalid habits they resembled the Sarmatic nations. The Fenni are doubtless the Finnish nations. The Venedi were a northern people who bordered on them. By some these last are supposed to have been the ancestors of the Slavic nations, who by the Germans are termed Wends. The Venedi are always distinguished from the Sarmatæ, as they differed in manners from that people and lived much further towards the north.

Ptolemy has given the following account of the inhabitants of European Sarmatia. "Sarmatia," he says, "is inhabited by the following great nations: the Venedæ, along all the Venedic gulf, that is the Baltic; and above Dacia, the Peucini and the Bastarnæ : along the coast of the Mæotis, the Jazyges

and Rhoxolani; further inland, the Amaxobii and the Alauni, who are Scythians."*

It seems from this account that the northern coast of Sarmatia along the Baltic, from the mouth of the Vistula eastward, was inhabited by the Veneda. To the southward of these, and between them and the Carpathian mountains, in the modern Podolia and Red Russia, lived the Peucini and Bastarnæ, who were, as we have seen, German nations. To the southward and eastward of these last were the Jazyges and Rhoxolani, who were the principal Sarmatian tribes.

With this account we may compare a passage of Strabo describing the same countries. He says: "All the region lying above that already described, between the Danube and the Borysthenes, is, first, the desert of the Getæ ; next, the Tyrigetæ." This tribe is mentioned by Pliny, and by Ptolemy,+ who calls them Tyrangitæ Sarmatæ.‡ "After these," says Strabo, "are the Jazyges Sarmatæ, and the Royal Sarmatæ, and the Ourgi, who are chiefly nomades; some of these people cultivate the earth, and dwell near the Danube on both banks. In the interior are the Bastarnæ, bordering on the Tyrigeta and the Germans, who are themselves mostly of German origin and are divided into many tribes."§

To the southward of the Carpathian mountains the plains of Pannonia or Hungary were inhabited in the time of Ammianus by other Sarmatian tribes, the Metanastæ and Lemigantes.

When the Bastarnæ had removed from these countries, which they appear to have done in company with the Goths, Burgundians, and other tribes of their own race, the whole of Sarmatia was apparently occupied by Venedæ in the north, and Sarmatic tribes further towards the south and east.

It is no easy matter to determine the relations between these ancient tribes in eastern Europe and the modern inhabitants. Accordingly the most learned writers have differed greatly in

Cl. Ptolem. lib. iii. c. 5.

†M. Zeuss conjectures that the name of the Tyrangetæ means the river Tyras." Compare Tyrang-etæ with Massag-etæ. § Strabo, Geog. lib. vii.

Cl. Ptolem. lib. iii. c. 10. p. 79.

their opinions. Klaproth was very positive in maintaining an entire difference of race between the Sarmatæ and the later Slavonians. Niebuhr without hesitation identified them.* A similar difference of opinion may be observed between MM. Schaffarik, F. Müller, and Zeuss, the latest and most distinguished writers on European ethnography.

There is only one consideration which seems likely to lead us to any very satisfactory conclusion on this subject. It turns on the obvious improbability that great and widely spread nations, especially on the borders of civilised countries, would vanish and altogether disappear to make room for other races of people, and this without leaving any memorial or trace on the page of history attesting such an event. If this consideration be allowed to have its full weight, it will lead us with certainty to a conclusion, otherwise very probable, as to the affiliation of the modern nations of Eastern Europe with the ancient inhabitants. We have seen that in the second century the countries on the Venedic or Baltic coast, which we may consider as coextensive with East Prussia and Lithuania, and part of Livonia, were inhabited by the Venedæ. This is precisely the region over which we find in the middle ages the Lettish or Lithuanian race to have been spread. Although in some degree distinct from the Slavic nations, and speaking a different language, these tribes are so nearly related to that people as to render it probable that they were included by their German neighbours under the same designation of Wends, the term by which the Slavonic people are generally known among tribes of the Teutonic race. It is, indeed, probable that the Letts may have been the original Wends,† since they had bordered on the north-eastern nations of Germany from immemorial times, and that the name was extended from them to the Slavic Wends in a later period, when the Slavonians came into the borders of Germany. We have also traced the

* M. Klaproth says, in his characteristic style, that he hopes none of his readers are so ignorant as to confound or identify the Slavi with the older Sarmatians. M. Niebuhr maintains this identity as a fact established by convincing proofs. See Klaproth's travels in Caucasus. Niebuhr's Kleinere Schriften.

+ Wends, in the opinion of Adelung, is of German origin, and means "people of the sea-coast."