The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

THE DELUGE OF BARBARISM THE MEDIAEVAL STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE AND REËSTABLISH CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER V

NEW PEOPLES IN THE EMPIRE

THE WEAKENED EMPIRE. Though the first and second centuries A.D. have often been called one of the happiest ages in all human history, due to a succession of good Emperors and peace and quiet throughout the Roman world, [1] the reign of the last of the good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.), may be regarded as clearly marking a turning-point in the history of Roman society. Before his reign Rome was ascendant, prosperous, powerful; during his reign the Empire was beset by many difficulties— pestilence, floods, famine, troubles with the Christians, and heavy German inroads—to which it had not before been accustomed; and after his reign the Empire was distinctly on the defensive and the decline. Though the elements contributing to this change in national destiny had their origin in the changes in the character of the national life at least two centuries earlier, it was not until now that the Empire began to feel seriously the effects of these changes in a lowered vitality and a weakened power of resistance.

The virtues of the citizens of the early days of the Republic, trained according to the old ideas, had gradually given way in the face of the vices and corruption which beset and sapped the life of the upper and ruling classes in the later Empire. The failure of Rome to put its provincial government on any honest and efficient civil-service basis, the failure of the State to establish and direct an educational system capable of serving as a corrective of dangerous national tendencies, the lack of a guiding national faith, the gradual admission of so many Germans into the Empire, the great extent and demoralizing influence of slavery [2]—all contributed to that loss of national strength and resisting power which was now becoming increasingly evident. Other contributing elements of importance were the almost complete obliteration of the peasantry by the creation of great landed estates and cattle ranches worked by slaves, in place of the small farms of earlier days; the increase of the poor in the cities, and the declining birth-rate; the introduction of large numbers of barbarians as farmers and soldiers; and the demoralization of the city rabble by political leaders in need of votes. Captured slaves performed almost every service, and a lavish display of wealth on the part of a few came to be a characteristic feature of city life. [3] The great middle, commercial, and professional classes were still prosperous and contented, but luxury, imported vices, slavery, political corruption, and new ideals [4] had gradually sapped the old national vitality and destroyed the resisting power of the State in the face of a great national calamity. Rome now stood, much like the shell of a fine old tree, apparently in good condition, but in reality ready to fall before the blast because it had been allowed to become rotten at the heart. Sooner or later the boundaries of the Empire, which had held against the pressure from without for so long, were destined to be broken and the barbarian deluge from the north and east would pour over the Empire.

[Illustration: FIG. 31. A BODYGUARD OF GERMANS A relief from the Column of Marcus Aurelius, at Rome, erected to celebrate his victories over the Marcomanni, and other German tribes.]

THE BOUNDARIES OF THE EMPIRE ARE BROKEN. While temporary extensions of territory had at times been made beyond the Rhine and the Danube, these rivers had finally come to be the established boundaries of the Empire on the north, and behind these rivers the Teutonic barbarians, or Germani, as the Romans called them, had by force been kept. To do even this the Romans had been obliged to admit bands of Germans into the Empire, and had taken them into the Roman army as "allies," making use of their great love for fighting to hold other German tribes in check. In 166 A.D. the plague, brought back by soldiers returning from the East, carried off approximately half the population of Italy. This same year the Marcomanni (see Figure 18), a former friendly tribe, invaded the Empire as far as the head of the Adriatic Sea, and it required thirteen years of warfare to put them back behind the Danube. Even this was accomplished only by the aid of friendly German tribes. From this time on the Empire was more or less on the defensive, with the barbarian tribes to the north casting increasingly longing eyes toward "a place in the sun" and the rich plunder that lay to the south, and frequently breaking over the boundaries. Rome, though, was still strong enough to put them back again.

In 275 A.D., after a five years' struggle, the Eastern Emperor gave the province of Dacia, to the south of the Danube, to the Visigoths, in an effort to buy them off from further invasion and warfare. This eased the pressure for another century. In 378 A.D., now pressed on by the terrible Huns from behind, the Visigoths, as a body, invaded the Eastern Empire, and in the Battle of Adrianople, near Constantinople, defeated the Roman army, slew the Roman Emperor, definitely broke the boundaries of the Empire, and they and the Ostrogoths now moved southward and settled in Moesia and Thrace. The Germans at Adrianople learned that they could beat the Roman legions, and from this time on it was they, and not the Romans, who named the terms of ransom and the price of peace. A few years later, under Alaric, the Visigoths invaded Greece, then turned westward through Illyria to the valley of the Po, in northern Italy, which they reached in the year 400. In 410 the great calamity came when they captured and sacked Rome. The effect produced on the Roman world by the fall of the Eternal City, as the news of the almost incredible disaster penetrated to the remote provinces, was profound (R. 48). For eight hundred years Rome had not been touched by foreign hands, and now it had been captured and plundered by barbarian hordes. It seemed to many as though the end of the world were approaching. The Visigoths now turned west once more, carrying with them the beautiful sister of the Emperor as a captive bride of the chief, and finally settled in Spain and southern Gaul, which provinces were thenceforth lost to Rome. This was the first of the great permanent inroads into the Empire, and from now on Roman resistance seemed powerless to stop the flood.

[Illustration: FIG. 32. THE GERMAN MIGRATIONS The barriers of the Empire along the Rhine and the Danube now are broken down. Take a pencil and trace the route followed by each of these peoples.]

A PERIOD OF TRIBAL MOVEMENTS. The Hunnish pressure also started the Vandals and Suevi, and within fifty years they had been able to move across Germany, France, and Spain, plundering the cities on their way. Finally they crossed to the northern coast of Africa, where they became noted as the great sea pirates of the Mediterranean. In 455 they crossed back to Italy, and Rome was sacked for the second time by barbarian hordes. The Huns, under the leadership of Attila, the so-called "Scourge of God," now moved in and ravaged Gaul (451) and northern Italy (452), and then, at the intercession of the Roman Pope Leo, were induced by a ransom price to return to the lower Danube, where they have since remained. In 476 the barbarian soldiers of the Empire, tired of camp life and demanding land on which they too might settle, rose in revolt, displaced the last of the Western Emperors, and elevated Odovacar, a tribesman from the north, as ruler in his stead. The Western Roman Empire was now at an end. In 493 Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, became king of Italy.