from north and south, booty, spoils, taxes, tribute had flowed into Rome. Even after the seat of government had been removed to Constantinople (A. D. 330), visitors from the new capital were astounded to behold the Roman temples, baths, amphitheatres, forums, circuses, and palaces, all glittering with marble and bronze. But the riches acquired by conquest and tribute had brought seeds of evil with them. Society was divided into the very rich and the very poor; the simple laborious life of the freemen of ancient Rome was gone; the regular occupations of production had been abandoned to serfs and slaves; moderate incomes and plain living had disappeared. The middle class had been thrust down to the level of the plebs. In the country the small proprietors had been reduced to a position little better than that of the serfs, while the great landlords had got vast tracts of land into their hands. Nearly half the population were slaves. Taxes had become heavier and heavier as the exigencies of the Empire grew; great numbers of officials were maintained, and great mercenary armies. The rich controlled the government, and shifted almost the whole burden of taxation from their own shoulders to those of the poor. In the cities, each imitating Rome so far as it could, had grown up a vicious unemployed class, living on the distribution of bread which was paid for out of the public revenues.
On the farther side of the Rhine and the Danube, in marked contrast with this society, the Teutonic Barbarians tilled their lands and herded their flocks. They dwelt in little communities which were banded together into tribes; and these in turn were united in a sort of loose confederation, which assumed the semblance of a nation only when under the necessity of military action, and then the adult male population constituted the army. Their buildings were of the humblest character, their clothes rude, their arts primitive; they could neither read nor write, and their men cared for little besides hunting and fighting. They were, however, a free, self-respecting, self-governing people, electing their king, and meeting in one great assembly to enact their laws. On the Roman borders the Barbarians had become Christians, unfortunately not Trinitarians, but mere Arians, heretics in the eyes of the orthodox Catholics; so their Christianity hardly served to smooth their relations with the Romans.
The differences between these two divisions of Europe were about as great as between ourselves and the Don Cossacks. A Roman gentleman living in Gaul, for example, would have a villa in Auvergne, built high upon the hills in order to get the breezes and the view. Here was a bath-house, a fish-pond, separate apartments for the women, a pillared portico that overlooked a lake, a winter drawing-room, a summer parlour, etc. In this agreeable place, in his times of leisure, the owner would stroll about his grounds, play tennis, cultivate his garden, read Virgil and Claudian, compose epigrams, write letters to his friends in the vein of Horace's Satires, gossip about the doings at the Imperial court or talk philosophy. The pleasant, luxurious life of Roman gentlemen was not very different from luxurious life in America to-day.
The Barbarians in their native forests were hardly aware of Roman civilization; and those on the border made a marked contrast with the Romans. The young kings were superb athletes, sparing at table, and attentive to their kingly duties. The Barbarian elders admired Roman civilization, but were "stiff and lumpish in body and mind." The young men, six feet or more in height, with long, yellow hair, were great eaters of garlic and indelicate viands; they went about bare-legged, booted with rough ox-leather, and wore short-sleeved garments of divers colours, belted tight, with swords dangling at their backs, shields at side, and battle-axes in their hands.
It would be a mistake, however, to draw a very sharp line between these two opposing divisions of Europe. The Teutons were called Barbarians because they were not Romans, but many of them had been trained in the Roman armies and had lived in Constantinople, Trier, or Milan, and were well accustomed to Roman military arts and discipline; in fact, the Roman army was recruited mainly from among the Barbarians. Roman traders dealt with them regularly. In one way and another the Barbarians, especially their leaders, had come under the educating influence of Roman civilization, and they regarded that civilization with an amazement and a respect that at times deepened into awe.
But though a sharp line cannot be drawn, yet at bottom Romans and Barbarians were far apart. It was impossible that two societies of such divergent civilization should exist side by side in peace; one must conquer the other. The struggle between the Empire and its enemies had been almost continuous since the days of Julius Cæsar, and for several centuries the Empire had prevailed; but social disintegration within had proceeded rapidly, and by the beginning of the fifth century the Empire's doom had come. Rome herself, the original home of empire, lay "nerveless, dead, unsceptred," open to any takers; and takers came. The Visigoths, under Alaric, captured the city in 410 and were merciful; the Vandals, under Genseric, captured it in 455 and were cruel.
The fall of Rome, which we now see to have been inevitable, came, however, with a terrible shock to the civilized world. St. Jerome, who had gone to the wilderness near Bethlehem in order to meditate upon the prophets, wrote: "My voice is choked and my sobs interrupt the words which I write; the city is subdued which subdued the world. … Who could believe that Rome, which was built of the spoils of the whole earth, would fall, that the city could, at the same time, be the cradle and grave of her people; that all the coasts of Asia, Egypt, and Africa should be filled with the slaves and maidens of Rome? That holy Bethlehem should daily receive, as beggars, men and women who formerly were conspicuous for their wealth and luxury?"[1]
The city of Rome had been deemed immortal; it had become almost sacred from long veneration; and when Rome fell, the Empire in the West had not a prop to rest upon. Spain was taken by the Suevi and the Visigoths, Gaul by the Franks, Burgundians, and Alemanni, England by Angles and Saxons, Africa by the Vandals; and, with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, Italy, too, became the prize of a Barbarian general.
The succeeding period of European history, in Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Italy, is the mingling or attempted mingling of the old populations of the Empire with the Barbarian conquerors. The process had, indeed, as I have intimated, begun before the fall of the Empire. For several generations Barbarians had not only been received as colonists and taken as soldiers, but even whole tribes had been admitted within the Roman boundaries. Imperial statesmen had realized that the Empire could only be upheld by an infusion of Barbarian virility, and they had favoured the process. But assimilation had not taken place, and now that the Empire had passed into the hands of the Barbarians there were two social strata—the rude martial conquerors on top, and the civilized, feeble, subject race, ten times as numerous, underneath. It was obvious to the wiser Barbarian chiefs, trained as they were in Roman ways, that if they were to get stable dominion and civilized government, they must adopt the complicated Imperial machinery. They saw that unless the Barbarians learned Roman civilization, they would need hundreds of years to create any such civilization of their own. This was especially true in Italy. Odoacer, the general who deposed Romulus Augustulus, well knew that a state which had its military service all Barbarian and its civil service all Roman could not stand firm. Barbarian sovereignty needed support, especially legal support, in the eyes of the subject population. Such legitimacy could only come from the Empire. Odoacer and other intelligent Barbarians turned instinctively to Constantinople for recognition. They did not think that they had overturned or suppressed the Empire. Nobody thought that there were two Empires, one Eastern and one Western, one enduring and one destroyed in 476. To the Roman world the Empire had always been single, had always been a unit. The division into eastern and western parts had been made for convenience of administration; the Empire itself had never been divided. Even after the western countries of Europe had been overrun by the Barbarians, the Emperor at Constantinople remained the supreme and sole source of authority and law. The very Barbarians could not free themselves from this theory, however little heed they paid to it in practice. Odoacer acknowledged the sovereignty of the Empire without question. He merely wished to control the civil and military administration in Italy.
Before beginning a sketch of the attempts to found a permanent Barbarian government in Italy and to combine Barbarians and Romans in one people, it is necessary to speak of a rising power which already constituted the most important element in the situation. The Church was not only the one vigorous body in Italy, but it had already begun to foreshadow its future greatness. In the time of Constantine (323–337) and his immediate successors, the bishops of Rome had no primacy over other bishops, but they