United States or Mozambique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For more than 300 years Spain remained under Roman rule, until in 409 AD, hordes of barbarians crossed the Pyrenees and swept over the Peninsula. Suevi, Alani and Vandals ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open country, and brought the inhabitants to the lowest depths of misery.
Such indeed was the fate of Radagaisus himself, of his brave and faithful companions, and of more than one third of the various multitude of Sueves and Vandals, of Alani and Burgundians, who adhered to the standard of their general.
On the banks of the Tanais, the military power of the Huns and the Alani encountered each other with equal valor, but with unequal success. The Huns prevailed in the bloody contest; the king of the Alani was slain; and the remains of the vanquished nation were dispersed by the ordinary alternative of flight or submission.
A body of the Alani was received into the military and domestic service of the palace; and the admirable skill, which they were accustomed to display in the unbounded plains of Scythia, was exercised, on a more narrow theatre, in the parks and enclosures of Gaul.
Even the legion, which had been stationed to guard the wall of Britain against the Caledonians of the North, was hastily recalled; and a numerous body of the cavalry of the Alani was persuaded to engage in the service of the emperor, who anxiously expected the return of his general.
TEUTONIC CONFEDERACIES. Of the confederacies of German tribes, the Goths are first to be mentioned. In the third century they had spread over the immense territory between the Baltic and the Black seas. Their force was augmented by the junction of kindred tribes. To the east of them, towards the Don, was a tribe of mixed race, the Alani.
Arimanius would therefore have come from the north-west, that is, from Germania and Sarmatia, through the territory of the Alani and Massagetae, to raid the dominions of one Ormisdas, a great king in Upper Asia, just as other Scythians did in the days of Cyaxares, King of the Medes, according to the account given by Herodotus.
But the most powerful auxiliaries of the Goths were drawn from the camp of those enemies who had expelled them from their native seats. The loose subordination, and extensive possessions, of the Huns and the Alani, delayed the conquests, and distracted the councils, of that victorious people.
The Vandals and the Alani he arranged in companies, appointing over them no less than eighty captains, whom he called "chiliarchs," making it appear that his host of fighting men in active service amounted to eighty thousand. And yet the number of the Vandals and Alani was said in former times, at least, to amount to no more than fifty thousand men.
Their country abounds in corn, cattle, and honey; but produces no wine. Beyond this country there are other provinces, which have a different language, and are not far from each other . These in their order, considering Kremuk as the first, are, 2. Sobai; 5. As, or the Alani.
Word Of The Day