[458] Ranke's statement (Latin and Teutonic Nations. Eng. tr. p. 1) that the "collective German nations at last brought about" a Latino-Teutonic unity is a merely empirical proposition, true in no organic sense.
[459] Gibbon, ch. 11, Bohn ed. i, 365.
[460] It is true that none of the generals mentioned was an Italian. Stilicho was indeed a Vandal; Aetius was a Scythian; Belisarius was a Thracian; and Narses probably a Persian. But they handled armies made up of all races; and their common qualification was a military science to be learned only from Roman tradition. Cp. Finlay, History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans, ed. 1877, i, 211.
[461] Paulus Orosius, vii, 43. The record has every appearance of trustworthiness, the historian premising that at Bethlehem he heard the blessed Jerome tell how he had known a wise old inhabitant of Narbonne, who was highly placed under Theodosius, and had known Athaulf intimately; and who often told Jerome how that great and wise king thus delivered himself.
[462] Sismondi, citing the Diplomata, tom. iv, p. 616.
[463] Because of his contempt for the religious controversies to which the literature of his time mainly ran.
[464] See Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, B. ii, Kap. 2, as to his constant concern for culture and established usage.
[465] Cassiodorus, 1. i, c. 34; iii, 44; iv, 5, 7. Cp. Finlay, ed. cited, i, 236, note. At the same time it is to be remembered that the population was in some districts greatly reduced. See below, p. 194. And there were, of course, Italian scarcities from time to time. Cassiodorus, v, 35; x, 27; xi, 5.
[466] Cp. Gibbon, ch. 39 (Bohn ed. iv, 270-71), as to the general care of the administration and the prosperity of agriculture.
[467] "Gross war Ruhm und Glanz seines [Theodoric's] Reiches; die inneren Schäden und Gefahren desselben blieben damals noch verhüllt, kaum etwa dem Kaiser und den Merovingen erkennbar" (F. Dahn, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Völker, in Oncken's Allg. Gesch. 1881, i, 246).