the feet of a prince, whose fame had excited them to undertake an
unknown and dangerous journey of fifteen hundred miles. With the
country ^40 from whence the Gothic nation derived their origin,
he maintained a frequent and friendly correspondence: the
Italians were clothed in the rich sables ^41 of Sweden; and one
of its sovereigns, after a voluntary or reluctant abdication,
found a hospitable retreat in the palace of Ravenna. He had
reigned over one of the thirteen populous tribes who cultivated a
small portion of the great island or peninsula of Scandinavia, to
which the vague appellation of Thule has been sometimes applied.
That northern region was peopled, or had been explored, as high
as the sixty- eighth degree of latitude, where the natives of the
polar circle enjoy and lose the presence of the sun at each
summer and winter solstice during an equal period of forty days.
^42 The long night of his absence or death was the mournful
season of distress and anxiety, till the messengers, who had been
sent to the mountain tops, descried the first rays of returning
light, and proclaimed to the plain below the festival of his
resurrection. ^43

[Footnote 33: See the clearness and vigor of his negotiations in
Ennodius, (p. 1607,) and Cassiodorus, (Var. iii. 1, 2, 3, 4; iv.
13; v. 43, 44,) who gives the different styles of friendship,
counsel expostulation, &c.]
[Footnote 34: Even of his table (Var. vi. 9) and palace, (vii.
5.) The admiration of strangers is represented as the most
rational motive to justify these vain expenses, and to stimulate
the diligence of the officers to whom these provinces were
intrusted.]