Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

Principality of the IJles. z^g
inhabitants multiplied almoll beyond belief. A
country in this lituation, which did not abound
with the necelTaries of h'fe, could not but fend nu-
merous colonies abroad in queft of either plunder
or fettlcments : and fuch colonies, confifling of
adventurers hardy, enterprifmg, lawlefs, poor,
and determined to make their fortune or perilh
in the attempt, mull have carried defolation far
and v/ide.
But it is by no means certain that polygamy
was eftablifhed either by law or cuflom among the
ancient Scandinavians. The Germania Magna of
the old " geographers comprehended at lesfb the
Southern coaft of the Baltic, together with its ifles,
Mela and Tacitus feem to extend it much far-
ther * ; and Cluverius is pofitive that Norway,
Sweden, and every region lying to the North of
the Baltic, made a part of that immenfe tradl of
land. The Suiones of Tacitus are undoubtedly
either the Norwegians or the Swedes, or perhaps
both: and the .^flii of the fame author are by
Archbifnop Ufher t, and other eminent critics,
called the progenitors of thofe pirates, afterwards
lliled Eafterlings and Odmans.
Tacitus, who feems to have made the man-
ners and cuftoms of the Germans his particular
iludy, informs us, that every one of that nation,
excepting only a fmall number of the chiefs or
leading men, contented himfelf with one wife,
and that of all the barbarians in the world, they
were the flrideft obfervers of the matrimonial
* Mela, lib. iil. cap. g. Tacit, de mor. Germ. cnp. 45.
t See Ware's Antiquities of Ireland, chap. 24.
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