The Roman empire was now dismembered, and the various tribes of barbarians, after a contest of two hundred years were fairly settled in its provinces.
[Sidenote: The settlement of the Ostrogoths in Italy.]
In Italy we find the Ostrogoths as a dominant power, who, migrating from the mouth of the Danube, with all the barbarians they could enlist under the standard of Theodoric, prevailed over Odoacer, and settled in Italy. The Gothic kingdom was assailed afterward by Belisarius and Narses, the great generals of Justinian, also by the Lombards under Alboin, who maintained themselves in the north of Italy.
[Sidenote: The settlement of the franks in Gaul.]
Gaul was divided among the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Visigoths, whose perpetual wars, and whose infant kingdom, it is not my object to present.
[Sidenote: The settlement of the Saxons in Britain.]
Britain was possessed by the Saxons, Spain by the Vandals, Suevi, and Visigoths, and Africa by the Vandals, while the whole eastern empire fell into the hands of the Saracens, except Constantinople, which preserved the treasures of Greek and Roman civilization, until the barbarians, elevated by the Christian religion, were prepared to ingraft it upon their own rude laws and customs.
It would be interesting to trace the various fortunes of these Teutonic tribes in the devastated provinces which they possessed by conquest. But this would lead us into a boundless field, foreign to our inquiry. It is the fall of Rome, not the reconstruction by the new races, which I seek to present. It would also be interesting to survey the old capital of the world in the hands of her various masters, pillaged and sacked by all in turn; but her doom was sealed when Alaric entered the gates which had been closed for six hundred years to a foreign enemy, and the empire fell, virtually, when the haughty city, so long a queen among the nations, yielded up her palaces as spoil. The eastern empire had a longer life, but it was inglorious when Rome was no longer the superior city.
[Sidenote: Reflections on the fall of the empire.]
The story of the fall of the grandest empire ever erected on our earth is simple and impressive. Genius, energy, and patience led to vast possessions, which were retained by a uniform policy which nothing could turn aside. Prosperity and success led to boundless self-exaggeration and a depreciation of enemies, while the vices of self-interest undermined gradually all real strength. Society became utterly demoralized and weakened, and there were no conservative forces sufficiently, strong to hold it together. Vitality was destroyed by disproportionate fortunes, by slavery, by the extinction of the middle classes, by the degradation of woman, by demoralizing excitements, by factitious life, by imperial misrule, by proconsular tyranny, by enervating vices, by the absence of elevated sentiments, by an all- engrossing abandonment to money-making and the pleasures it procured, so that no lofty appeal could be made to which the degenerate people would listen, or which they could understand. The empire was rotten to the core—was steeped in selfishness, sensuality, and frivolity, and the poison pervaded all classes and orders, and descended to the extremities of the social system. What could be done? There was no help from man. The empire was on the verge of dissolution when the barbarians came. They only gave a shock and hastened the fall. The empire was ripe fruit, to be plucked by the strongest hand.