History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5Gibbon, Edward
History
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5
Gibbon, Edward
Byzantine Empire -- History -- To 527; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D.
chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt,
was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general.
The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he
disdained their offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of
danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him
to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival.
Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their
scimeters, broke their scabbards, and maintained an obstinate
combat, till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their
slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa,
Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He
vanquished the natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a
powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the relief of
Carthage.
150 (return) [ Regio ignobilis, et vix quicquam illustre sortita,
parvis oppidis habitatur, parva flumina emittit, solo quam viris
meleor et segnitie gentis obscura. Pomponius Mela, i. 5, iii. 10.
Mela deserves the more credit, since his own Phoenician ancestors
had migrated from Tingitana to Spain (see, in ii. 6, a passage of
that geographer so cruelly tortured by Salmasius, Isaac Vossius,
and the most virulent of critics, James Gronovius). He lived at
the time of the final reduction of that country by the emperor
Claudius: yet almost thirty years afterward, Pliny (Hist. Nat. v.
i.) complains of his authors, to lazy to inquire, too proud to
confess their ignorance of that wild and remote province.]
151 (return) [ The foolish fashion of this citron wood prevailed
at Rome among the men, as much as the taste for pearls among the
women. A round board or table, four or five feet in diameter,
sold for the price of an estate (latefundii taxatione), eight,
ten, or twelve thousand pounds sterling (Plin. Hist. Natur. xiii.
29). I conceive that I must not confound the tree citrus, with
that of the fruit citrum. But I am not botanist enough to define
the former (it is like the wild cypress) by the vulgar or
Linnaean name; nor will I decide whether the citrum be the orange
or the lemon. Salmasius appears to exhaust the subject, but he
too often involves himself in the web of his disorderly
erudition. (Flinian. Exercitat. tom. ii. p 666, &c.)]
152 (return) [ Leo African. fol. 16, verso. Marmol, tom. ii. p.
28. This province, the first scene of the exploits and greatness
of the cherifs is often mentioned in the curious history of that
dynasty at the end of the third volume of Marmol, Description de
l’Afrique. The third vol. of The Recherches Historiques sur les
Maures (lately published at Paris) illustrates the history and
geography of the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco.]
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