circumstances; and they contain many curious observations, which
no Roman except Ovid, could have an opportunity of making. Every
circumstance which tends to illustrate the history of the
Barbarians, has been drawn together by the very accurate Count de
Buat. Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. iv. c. xvi. p.
286-317]
[Footnote 41: The Sarmatian Jazygae were settled on the banks of
Pathissus or Tibiscus, when Pliny, in the year 79, published his
Natural History. See l. iv. c. 25. In the time of Strabo and
Ovid, sixty or seventy years before, they appear to have
inhabited beyond the Getae, along the coast of the Euxine.]

[Footnote 42: Principes Sarmaturum Jazygum penes quos civitatis
regimen plebem quoque et vim equitum, qua sola valent,
offerebant. Tacit. Hist. iii. p. 5. This offer was made in the
civil war between Vitellino and Vespasian.]

[Footnote 43: This hypothesis of a Vandal king reigning over
Sarmatian subjects, seems necessary to reconcile the Goth
Jornandes with the Greek and Latin historians of Constantine. It
may be observed that Isidore, who lived in Spain under the
dominion of the Goths, gives them for enemies, not the Vandals,
but the Sarmatians. See his Chronicle in Grotius, p. 709.
Note: I have already noticed the confusion which must
necessarily arise in history, when names purely geographical, as
this of Sarmatia, are taken for historical names belonging to a
single nation. We perceive it here; it has forced Gibbon to
suppose, without any reason but the necessity of extricating
himself from his perplexity, that the Sarmatians had taken a king
from among the Vandals; a supposition entirely contrary to the