THE GERMAN INVASIONS AND THE BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
[Sidenote: The Huns force the Goths into the Empire. Battle of
Adrianople, 378.]
9. Previous to the year 375 the attempts of the Germans to penetrate
into the Empire appear to have been due to their love of adventure,
their hope of enjoying some of the advantages of their civilized
neighbors, or the need of new lands for their increasing numbers. And
the Romans, by means of their armies, their walls, and their guards, had
up to this time succeeded in preventing the barbarians from violently
occupying their territory. But suddenly a new force appeared which
thrust the Germans out upon the weakened Empire. The Huns, a Mongolian
folk from central Asia, swept down upon the Goths, who were a German
tribe settled upon the Danube, and forced a part of them to seek shelter
across the river, within the boundaries of the Empire. Here they soon
fell out with the imperial officials, and a great battle was fought at
Adrianople in 378 in which the Goths defeated and slew the emperor,
Valens. The Germans had now not only broken through the boundaries of
the Empire, but they had also learned that they could defeat the Roman
legions. The battle of Adrianople may, therefore, be said to mark the
beginning of the conquest of the western part of the Empire by the
Germans. For some years, however, after the battle of Adrianople the
various bands of West Goths--or Visigoths, as they are often
called--were induced to accept the terms offered by the emperor's
officials and some of the Goths agreed to serve as soldiers in the Roman
armies.
[Illustration: THE BARBARIAN INROADS]
[Sidenote: Alaric takes Rome, 410.]
Before long one of the German chieftains, Alaric, became dissatisfied
with the treatment that he received. He collected an army, of which the
nucleus consisted of West Goths, and set out for Italy. Rome fell into
his hands in 410 and was plundered by his followers. Alaric appears to
have been deeply impressed by the sight of the civilization about him.
He did not destroy the city, hardly even did serious damage to it, and
he gave especial orders to his soldiers not to injure the churches or
take their property.[9]
[Sidenote: West Goths settle in southern Gaul and Spain.]
Alaric died before he could find a satisfactory spot for his people to
settle upon permanently. After his death the West Goths wandered into
Gaul, and then into Spain, which had already been occupied by other
barbarian tribes,--the Vandals and Suevi. These had crossed the Rhine
into Gaul four years before Alaric took Rome; for three years they
devastated the country and then proceeded across the Pyrenees. When the
West Goths reached Spain they quickly concluded peace with the Roman
government. They then set to work to fight the Vandals, with such
success that the emperor granted them a considerable district (419) in
southern Gaul, where they established a West Gothic kingdom. Ten years
after, the Vandals moved on into Africa, where they founded a kingdom
and extended their control over the western Mediterranean. Their place
in Spain was taken by the West Goths who, under their king, Euric
(466-484), conquered a great part of the peninsula, so that their
kingdom extended from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar.[10]
[Sidenote: General dismemberment of the Empire in fifth century.]
It is quite unnecessary to follow the confused history of the movements
of the innumerable bands of restless barbarians who wandered about
Europe during the fifth century. Scarcely any part of western Europe was
left unmolested; even Britain was conquered by German tribes, the Angles
and Saxons.
[Sidenote: Attila and the Huns.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Châlons, 451.]
[Sidenote: Founding of Venice.]
To add to the universal confusion caused by the influx of the German
tribes, the Huns, the Mongolian people who had first pushed the West
Goths into the Empire, now began to fill western Europe with terror.
Under their chief, Attila,--"the scourge of God," as the trembling
Romans called him,--the savage Huns invaded Gaul. But the Roman
inhabitants and the Germans joined against the invaders and defeated
them in the battle of Châlons, in 451. After this rebuff Attila turned
to Italy. But the impending danger was averted. Attila was induced by an
embassy, headed by Pope Leo the Great, to give up his plan of marching
upon Rome. Within a year he died and with him perished the power of the
Huns, who never troubled Europe again. Their threatened invasion of
Italy produced one permanent result however; for it was then that
fugitives from the cities of northeastern Italy fled to the sandy islets
just off the Adriatic shore and founded the town which was to grow into
the beautiful and powerful city of Venice.[11]
[Sidenote: The 'fall' of the Empire in the West, 476.]
[Sidenote: Odoacer.]
10. The year 476 has commonly been taken as the date of the "fall" of
the Western Empire and of the beginning of the Middle Ages. What
happened in that year was this. Since Theodosius the Great, in 395, had
provided that his two sons should divide the administration of the
Empire between them, most of the emperors of the West had proved weak
and indolent rulers. The barbarians wandered hither and thither pretty
much at their pleasure, and the German troops in the service of the
Empire amused themselves setting up and throwing down puppet emperors.
In 476 the German mercenaries in the Roman army demanded that a third
part of Italy be given to them. On the refusal of this demand, Odoacer,
their leader, banished the last of the western emperors (whose name was,
by the irony of fate, Romulus Augustus the Little) to a villa near
Naples. Then Odoacer sent the insignia of empire to the eastern emperor
with the request that he be permitted to rule Italy as the emperor's
delegate, thus putting an end to the line of the western emperors.[12]
[Sidenote: Theodoric conquers Odoacer and establishes the kingdom of the
East Goths in Italy.]
It was not, however, given to Odoacer to establish an enduring German
kingdom on Italian soil, for he was conquered by the great Theodoric,
the king of the East Goths (or Ostrogoths). Theodoric had spent ten
years of his early youth in Constantinople and had thus become familiar
with Roman life. Since his return to his people he had been alternately
a dangerous enemy and an embarrassing friend to the eastern emperor. The
East Goths, under his leadership, had harassed and devastated various
parts of the Eastern Empire, and had once threatened the capital itself.
The emperor had repeatedly conciliated him by conferring upon him
various honors and titles and by making large grants of money and land
to his people. It must have been a great relief to the government when
Theodoric determined to lead his people to Italy against Odoacer. "If I
fail," Theodoric said to the emperor, "you will be relieved of an
expensive and troublesome friend; if, with the divine permission, I
succeed, I shall govern in your name and to your glory, the Roman Senate
and that part of the Empire delivered from slavery by my victorious
arms."
The struggle between Theodoric and Odoacer lasted for several years, but
Odoacer was finally shut up in Ravenna and surrendered, only to be
treacherously slain a few days later by Theodoric's own hand (493).[13]
[Sidenote: The East Goths in Italy.]
The attitude of the East Goths toward the people already in possession
of the land and toward the Roman culture is significant. Theodoric put
the name of the eastern emperor on the coins that he issued and did
everything in his power to insure the emperor's approval of the new
German kingdom. Nevertheless, although he desired that the emperor
should sanction his usurpation, Theodoric had no idea of being really
subordinate to Constantinople.
[Illustration: Interior of a Church at Ravenna, built in Theodoric's
Time]
The invaders appropriated one third of the land for themselves, but this
was done with discretion and no disorder appears to have resulted.
Theodoric maintained the Roman laws and institutions, which he greatly
admired. The old offices and titles were retained, and Goth and Roman
lived under the same Roman law. Order was restored and learning
encouraged. In Ravenna, which Theodoric chose for his capital, beautiful
buildings that date from his reign still exist.
[Sidenote: The East Goths were Arian heretics.]
On his death in 526, Theodoric left behind him an admirably organized
state, but it had one conspicuous weakness. The Goths, although
Christians, were unorthodox according to the standard of the Italian
Christians. They had been converted by eastern missionaries, who taught
them the Arian heresy earlier prevalent at Constantinople. This
doctrine, which derived its name from Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria
(d. 336), had been condemned by the Council of Nicæa. The followers of
Arius did not have the same conception of Christ's nature and of the
relations of the three members of the Trinity as that sanctioned at
Rome. The East Goths were, therefore, not only barbarians,--which might
have been forgiven them,--but were guilty, in the eyes of the orthodox
Italians, of the unpardonable offense of heresy. Theodoric himself was
exceptionally tolerant for his times. His conviction that "we cannot
command in matters of religion because no one can be compelled to
believe against his will," showed a spirit alien to the traditions of
the Roman Empire and the Roman Church, which represented the orthodox
belief.
[Sidenote: The German kingdoms of Theodoric's time.]
11. While Theodoric had been establishing his kingdom in Italy with such
enlightenment and moderation, what is now France was coming under the
control of the most powerful of the barbarian peoples, the Franks, who
were to play a more important rôle in the formation of modern Europe
than any of the other German races. Besides the kingdoms of the East
Goths and the Franks, the West Goths had their kingdom in Spain, the
Burgundians had established themselves on the Rhone, and the Vandals in
Africa. Royal alliances were concluded between the reigning houses of
these nations, and for the first time in the history of Europe we see
something like a family of nations, living each within its own
boundaries and dealing with one another as independent powers. It
seemed for a few years as if the process of assimilation between Germans
and Romans was going to make rapid progress without involving any
considerable period of disorder and retrogression.
[Illustration: Map of Europe in the Time of Theodoric]
[Sidenote: Extinction of Latin literature.]
[Sidenote: Boethius.]
But no such good fortune was in store for Europe, which was now only at
the beginning of the turmoil from which it was to emerge almost
completely barbarized. Science, art, and literature could find no
foothold in the shifting political sands of the following centuries.
Boethius,[14] whom Theodoric put to death (in 524 or 525) for alleged
treasonable correspondence with the emperor, was the last Latin writer
who can be compared in any way with the classical authors in his style
and mastery of the language. He was a scholar as well as a poet, and his
treatises on logic, music, etc., were highly esteemed by following
generations.
[Sidenote: Cassiodorus and his manuals.]
Theodoric's distinguished Roman counselor, Cassiodorus (d. 575), to
whose letters we owe a great part of our knowledge of the period, busied
himself in his old age in preparing text-books of the liberal arts and
sciences,--grammar, arithmetic, logic, geometry, rhetoric, music, and
astronomy. His manuals were intended to give the uninstructed priests a
sufficient preparation for the study of the Bible and of the doctrines
of the Church. His absurdly inadequate and, to us, silly treatment of
these seven important subjects, to which he devotes a few pages each,
enables us to estimate the low plane to which learning had fallen in
Italy in the sixth century. Yet his books were regarded as standard
treatises in these great fields of knowledge all through the Middle
Ages. So mediæval Europe owed these, and other text-books upon which she
was dependent for her knowledge, to the period when Latin culture was
coming to an end.
[Sidenote: Scarcely any writers in western Europe during the sixth,
seventh, and eighth centuries.]
A long period of gloom now begins. Between the time of Theodoric and
that of Charlemagne three hundred years elapsed, during which scarcely a
writer was to be found who could compose, even in the worst of Latin, a
chronicle of the events of his day.[15] Everything conspired to
discourage education. The great centers of learning--Carthage, Rome,
Alexandria, Milan--were partially destroyed by the barbarians or the
Arabs. The libraries which had been kept in the temples of the gods were
often annihilated, along with the pagan shrines, by Christian
enthusiasts, who were not sorry to see the heathen literature disappear
with the heathen religion. Shortly after Theodoric's death the eastern
emperor withdrew the support which the government had hitherto granted
to public teachers and closed the great school at Athens. The only
important historian of the sixth century was the half-illiterate
Gregory, Bishop of Tours (d. 594), whose whole work is unimpeachable
evidence of the sad state of intellectual affairs. He at least heartily
appreciated his own ignorance and exclaims, in incorrect Latin, "Woe to
our time, for the study of letters has perished from among us."
[Sidenote: Justinian destroys the kingdoms of the Vandals and the East
Goths.]
12. The year after Theodoric's death one of the greatest of the emperors
of the East, Justinian (527-565), came to the throne at
Constantinople.[16] He undertook to regain for the Empire the provinces
in Africa and Italy that had been occupied by the Vandals and East
Goths. His general, Belisarius, overthrew the Vandal kingdom in northern
Africa in 534, but it was a more difficult task to destroy the Gothic
rule in Italy. However, in spite of a brave defense, the Goths were so
completely defeated in 553 that they agreed to leave Italy with all
their movable possessions. What became of the remnants of the race we do
not know. They had been too few to maintain their control over the mass
of the Italians, who were ready, with a religious zeal which cost them
dear, to open their gates to the hostile armies of Justinian.
[Sidenote: The Lombards occupy Italy.]
The destruction of the Gothic kingdom was a disaster for Italy.
Immediately after the death of Justinian the country was overrun anew,
by the Lombards, the last of the great German peoples to establish
themselves within the bounds of the former Empire. They were a savage
race, a considerable part of which was still pagan, and the Arian
Christians among them appear to have been as hostile to the Roman Church
as their unconverted fellows. The newcomers first occupied the region
north of the Po, which has ever since been called Lombardy after them,
and then extended their conquests southward. Instead of settling
themselves with the moderation and wise statesmanship of the East Goths,
the Lombards chose to move about the peninsula pillaging and massacring.
Such of the inhabitants as could, fled to the islands off the coast. The
Lombards were unable, however, to conquer all of Italy. Rome, Ravenna,
and southern Italy continued to be held by the Greek empire. As time
went on, the Lombards lost their wildness, accepted the orthodox form of
Christianity, and gradually assimilated the civilization of the people
among whom they lived. Their kingdom lasted over two hundred years,
until it was overthrown by Charlemagne.
[Sidenote: The Franks; their importance and their method of conquest.]
13. None of the German peoples of whom we have so far spoken, except the
Franks, ever succeeded in establishing a permanent kingdom. Their states
were overthrown in turn by some other German nation, by the Eastern
Empire, or, in the case of the West-Gothic kingdom in Spain, by the
Mohammedans. The Franks, to whom we must now turn, were destined not
only to conquer most of the other German tribes but even to extend their
boundaries into districts inhabited by the Slavs.
When the Franks are first heard of in history they were settled along
the lower Rhine, from Cologne to the North Sea. Their method of getting
a foothold in the Empire was essentially different from that which the
Goths, Lombards, and Vandals had adopted. Instead of severing their
connection with Germany and becoming an island in the sea of the Empire,
they conquered by degrees the territory about them. However far they
might extend their control, they remained in constant touch with the
barbarian reserves behind them. In this way they retained the warlike
vigor that was lost by the races who were completely surrounded by the
enervating influences of Roman civilization.
In the early part of the fifth century they had occupied the district
which constitutes to-day the kingdom of Belgium, as well as the regions
east of it. In 486, seven years before Theodoric founded his Italian
kingdom, they went forth under their great king, Clovis (a name that
later grew into Louis), and defeated the Roman general who opposed them.
They extended their control over Gaul as far south as the Loire, which
at that time formed the northern boundary of the kingdom of the West
Goths. Clovis then enlarged his empire on the east by the conquest of
the Alemanni, a German people living in the region of the Black
Forest.[17]
[Illustration: A Frankish Warrior]
[Sidenote: Conversion of Clovis, 496, and its consequences.]
The battle in which the Alemanni were defeated (496) is in one respect
important above all the other battles of Clovis. Although still a pagan
himself, his wife was an orthodox Christian convert. In the midst of the
conflict, as he saw his line giving way, he called upon Jesus Christ and
pledged himself to be baptized in His name if He would help the Franks
to victory over their enemies. He kept his word and was baptized
together with three thousand of his warriors. His conversion had the
most momentous consequences for Europe. All the other German peoples
within the Empire were Christians, but they were all Arian heretics; and
to the orthodox Christians about them they seemed worse than heathen.
This religious difference had prevented the Germans and Romans from
inter-marrying and had retarded their fusion in other ways. But with the
conversion of Clovis, there was at least one barbarian leader with whom
the Bishop of Rome could negotiate as with a faithful son of the
Church. It is from the orthodox Gregory of Tours that most of our
knowledge of Clovis and his successors is derived. In Gregory's famous
_History of the Franks_, the cruel and unscrupulous king appears as
God's chosen instrument for the extension of the Catholic faith.[18]
Certainly Clovis quickly learned to combine his own interests with those
of the Church, and the alliance between the pope and the Frankish kings
was destined to have a great influence upon the history of western
Europe.
[Sidenote: Conquests of Clovis.]
To the south of Clovis' new acquisitions in Gaul lay the kingdom of the
Arian West Goths, to the southeast that of another heretical German
people, the Burgundians. Gregory of Tours reports him as saying: "I
cannot bear that these Arians should be in possession of a part of Gaul.
Let us advance upon them with the aid of God; after we have conquered
them let us bring their realms into our power." So zealous was the newly
converted king that he speedily extended his power to the Pyrenees, and
forced the West Goths to confine themselves to the Spanish portion of
their realm. The Burgundians became a tributary nation and soon fell
completely under the rule of the Franks. Then Clovis, by a series of
murders, brought portions of the Frankish nation itself, which had
previously been independent of him, under his scepter.
[Sidenote: Character of Frankish history.]
14. When Clovis died in 511 at Paris, which he had made his residence,
his four sons divided his possessions among them. Wars between rival
brothers, interspersed with the most horrible murders, fill the annals
of the Frankish kingdom for over a hundred years after the death of
Clovis. Yet the nation continued to develop in spite of the unscrupulous
deeds of its rulers. It had no enemies strong enough to assail it, and a
certain unity was preserved in spite of the ever-shifting distribution
of territory among the members of the royal house.[19]
[Sidenote: Extent of the Frankish kingdoms in the sixth century.]
The Frankish kings succeeded in extending their power over pretty nearly
all the territory that is included to-day in France, Belgium, and the
Netherlands, as well as over a goodly portion of western Germany. By
555, when Bavaria had become tributary to the Frankish rulers, their
dominions extended from the Bay of Biscay to a point east of Salzburg.
Considerable districts that the Romans had never succeeded in conquering
had been brought into the developing civilization of western Europe.
[Illustration: The Dominions of the Franks under the Merovingians]
[Sidenote: Division of the Frankish territory into Neustria, Austrasia,
and Burgundy.]
As a result of the divisions of the Frankish lands, fifty years after
the death of Clovis three Frankish kingdoms appear on the map. Neustria,
the western kingdom, with its center at Paris or Soissons, was inhabited
mainly by the older Romanized people among whom the Franks had settled.
To the east was Austrasia, with Metz and Aix-la-Chapelle as its chief
cities. This region was completely German in its population. In these
two there was the prophecy of the future France and Germany. Lastly,
there was the old Burgundian realm. Of the Merovingian kings, as the
line descended from Clovis was called, the last to rule as well as reign
was Dagobert (d. 638), who united the whole Frankish territory once more
under his scepter.
[Sidenote: The Frankish nobility.]
A new danger, however, threatened the unity of the Frankish kingdom,
namely, the aspirations of the powerful nobles. In the earliest accounts
which we have of the Germans there appear to have been certain families
who enjoyed a recognized preëminence over their companions. In the
course of the various conquests there was a chance for the skillful
leader to raise himself in the favor of the king. It was only natural
that those upon whom the king relied to control distant parts of the
realm should become dangerously ambitious and independent.
[Sidenote: The Mayors of the Palace.]
[Sidenote: Foundation of the power of Charlemagne's family, the
so-called Carolingians.]
Among the positions held by the nobility none was reputed more honorable
than those near the king's person. Of these offices the most influential
was that of the Major Domus, or Mayor of the Palace, who was a species
of prime minister. After Dagobert's death these mayors practically ruled
in the place of the Merovingian monarchs, who became mere "do-nothing
kings,"--_rois fainéants_, as the French call them. The Austrasian Mayor
of the Palace, Pippin of Heristal, the great-grandfather of Charlemagne,
succeeded in getting, in addition to Austrasia, both Neustria and
Burgundy under his control. In this way he laid the foundation of his
family's renown. Upon his death, in 714, his task of consolidating and
defending the vast territories of the Franks devolved upon his more
distinguished son, Charles Martel, i.e., the Hammer.[20]
[Sidenote: Fusion of the barbarians and the Roman population.]
15. As one looks back over the German invasions it is natural to ask
upon what terms the newcomers lived among the old inhabitants of the
Empire, how far they adopted the customs of those among whom they
settled, and how far they clung to their old habits? These questions
cannot be answered very satisfactorily; so little is known of the
confused period of which we have been speaking that it is impossible to
follow closely the amalgamation of the two races.
[Sidenote: The number of the barbarians.]
Yet a few things are tolerably clear. In the first place, we must be on
our guard against exaggerating the numbers in the various bodies of
invaders. The writers of the time indicate that the West Goths, when
they were first admitted to the Empire before the battle of Adrianople,
amounted to four or five hundred thousand persons, including men, women,
and children. This is the largest band reported, and it must have been
greatly reduced before the West Goths, after long wanderings and many
battles, finally settled in Spain and southern Gaul. The Burgundians,
when they appear for the first time on the banks of the Rhine, are
reported to have had eighty thousand warriors among them. When Clovis
and his army were baptized the chronicler speaks of "over three
thousand" soldiers who became Christians upon that occasion. This would
seem to indicate that the Frankish king had no larger force at this
time.
Undoubtedly these figures are very meager and unreliable. But the
readiness with which the Germans appear to have adopted the language and
customs of the Romans would tend to prove that the invaders formed but a
small minority of the population. Since hundreds of thousands of
barbarians had been assimilated during the previous five centuries, the
great invasions of the fifth century can hardly have made an abrupt
change in the character of the population.
[Sidenote: Contrast between spoken and written Latin.]
The barbarians within the old empire were soon speaking the same
conversational Latin which was everywhere used by the Romans about
them.[21] This was much simpler than the elaborate and complicated
language used in books, which we find so much difficulty in learning
nowadays. The speech of the common people was gradually diverging more
and more, in the various countries of southern Europe, from the written
Latin, and finally grew into French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
But the barbarians did not produce this change, for it had begun before
they came and would have gone on without them. They did no more than
contribute a few convenient words to the new languages.
The Germans appear to have had no dislike for the Romans nor the Romans
for them, except as long as the Germans remained Arian Christians. Where
there was no religious barrier the two races intermarried freely from
the first. The Frankish kings did not hesitate to appoint Romans to
important positions in the government and in the army, just as the
Romans had long been in the habit of employing the barbarians. In only
one respect were the two races distinguished for a time,--each had its
particular law.
[Sidenote: The Roman and the German law.]
The West Goths in the time of Euric were probably the first to write
down their ancient laws, using the Latin language. Their example was
followed by the Franks, the Burgundians, and later by the Lombards and
other peoples. These codes make up the "Laws of the Barbarians," which
form our most important source of knowledge of the habits and ideas of
the Germans at the time of the invasions.[22] For several centuries
following the conquest, the members of the various German tribes appear
to have been judged by the laws of the particular people to which they
belonged. The older inhabitants of the Empire, on the contrary,
continued to have their lawsuits decided according to the Roman law.
This survived all through the Middle Ages in southern Europe, where the
Germans were few. Elsewhere the Germans' more primitive ideas of law
prevailed until the thirteenth or fourteenth century. A good example of
these is the picturesque mediæval ordeal by which the guilt or innocence
of a suspected person was determined.
[Sidenote: Mediæval trials.]
The German laws did not provide for the trial, either in the Roman or
the modern sense of the word, of a suspected person. There was no
attempt to gather and weigh evidence and base the decision upon it. Such
a mode of procedure was far too elaborate for the simple-minded Germans.
Instead of a regular trial, one of the parties to the case was
designated to prove that his assertions were true by one of the
following methods: (1) He might solemnly swear that he was telling the
truth and get as many other persons of his own class as the court
required, to swear that they believed that he was telling the truth.
This was called _compurgation_. It was believed that the divine
vengeance would be visited upon those who swore falsely. (2) On the
other hand, the parties to the case, or persons representing them, might
meet in combat, on the supposition that Heaven would grant victory to
the right. This was the so-called _wager of battle_. (3) Lastly, one or
other of the parties might be required to submit to the _ordeal_ in one
of its various forms: He might plunge his arm into hot water, or carry a
bit of hot iron for some distance, and if at the end of three days he
showed no ill effects, the case was decided in his favor. He might be
ordered to walk over hot plowshares, and if he was not burned, it was
assumed that God had intervened by a miracle to establish the
right.[23] This method of trial is but one example of the rude
civilization which displaced the refined and elaborate organization of
the Romans.
[Sidenote: The task of the Middle Ages.]
16. The account which has been given of the conditions in the Roman
Empire, and of the manner in which the barbarians occupied its western
part, makes clear the great problem of the Middle Ages. The Germans, no
doubt, varied a good deal in their habits and spirit. The Goths differed
from the Lombards, and the Franks from the Vandals; but they all agreed
in knowing nothing of the art, literature, and science which had been
developed by the Greeks and adopted by the Romans. The invaders were
ignorant, simple, vigorous people, with no taste for anything except
fighting and bodily comfort. Such was the disorder that their coming
produced, that the declining civilization of the Empire was pretty
nearly submerged. The libraries, buildings, and works of art were
destroyed and there was no one to see that they were restored. So the
western world fell back into a condition similar to that in which it had
been before the Romans conquered and civilized it.[24]
The loss was, however, temporary. The barbarians did not utterly destroy
what they found, but utilized the ruins of the Roman Empire in their
gradual construction of a new society. They received suggestions from
the Roman methods of agriculture. When they reached a point where they
needed them, they used the models offered by Roman roads and buildings.
In short, the great heritage of skill and invention which had been
slowly accumulated in Egypt, Phœnicia, and Greece, and which formed a
part of the culture which the Romans diffused, did not wholly perish.
[Sidenote: Loss caused by the coming of the barbarians regained during
Middle Ages.]
It required about a thousand years to educate the new race; but at last
Europe, including districts never embraced in the Roman Empire, caught
up once more with antiquity. When, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, first Italy, and then the rest of Europe, awoke again to the
beauty and truth of the classical literature and began to emulate the
ancient art, the process of educating the barbarians may be said to have
been completed. Yet the Middle Ages had been by no means a sterile
period. They had added their part to the heritage of the West. From the
union of two great elements, the ancient civilization, which was
completely revived at the opening of the sixteenth century, and the
vigor and the political and social ideals of the Germans, a new thing
was formed, namely, our modern civilization.
General Reading.--By far the most exhaustive work in English upon
the German invasions is HODGKIN, _Italy and her Invaders_,--very
bulky and costly (8 vols., $36.50). The author has, however, given
some of the results of his work in his excellent _Dynasty of
Theodosius_ (Clarendon Press, $1.50), and his _Theodoric the Goth_
(G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.50). SERGEANT, _The Franks_ (G.P. Putnam's
Sons, $1.50), gives more than is to be found on the subject in
either Emerton or Oman.