The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · ¶224
II. When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe, above nine hundred years after the Christian aera, they were mistaken by fear and superstition for the Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs and forerunners of the end of the world. Since the introduction of letters, they have explored their own antiquities with a strong and laudable impulse of patriotic curiosity. Their rational criticism can no longer be amused with a vain pedigree of Attila and the Huns; but they complain that their primitive records have perished in the Tartar war; that the truth or fiction of their rustic songs is long since forgotten; and that the fragments of a rude chronicle must be painfully reconciled with the contemporary though foreign intelligence of the imperial geographer. Magiar is the national and oriental denomination of the Hungarians; but, among the tribes of Scythia, they are…Read in context ›
Edward Gibbon · Project Gutenberg #735 (Milman edition) — public domain
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