CAUSES OF THE FALL OF ROME.

45.

dependence of the Romans. We more frequently find German names among the pretenders to the empire, who started up in individual provinces, or among the highest functionaries appointed by the emperors. Even before the time of Constantine, numerous German colonies on many different points were admitted into the Roman empire; the need of some great change was felt more and more; and the German party (for that is the appellation really applicable to the state of things) grew palpably stronger; till at last whole provinces, whole classes of the empire, the highest state-functionaries, and often the emperors themselves, called upon, challenged, the Germans now to consummate what had been so long prepared.

The fall of Rome was not occasioned by her many bad emperors; it was of itself inevitable. The Roman empire had from its very origin neither a constitution, nor any firm foundation in the minds of men. I say no constitution; although in old republican Rome the powers of the state were divided among patricians, people, and knights, consuls, senate, and tribunes, in such a manner, that if re-established by a powerful arin, and vivified anew, a real and fitting constitution might have been organized for the city, and undoubtedly also for the limited confines of a single country, such as Italy. But how was it possible to adapt the obsolete forms of a city, that had grown to be mistress of the world, to a vast empire, consisting of many different nations and countries? The privileges of a Roman citizen were indeed soon extended to individuals among the subject nations; but if here the son of a German prince was raised to the dignity of a Roman knight, there a Syrian or Egyptian admitted to the privileges of Roman citizenship; surely this could establish no true unity among such heterogeneous parts. It was but a feeble copy of the outward form, when many of the chief provincial cities were. organized on the model of Rome, and were adorned with a capitol, theatre, and naumachia. Indeed, the ancient senate in the metropolis itself was nothing more than a powerless shadow of 'extinct though great recollections. Fruitless also was the extension of the right of Roman citizenship to all Italy, and ultimately to the whole empire; for neither was a genuine order of citizens, nor a common nobility thereby produced, which as a visible and active portion of the national

powers, might have been a pillar and bond to the throne, and a living instrument in the hands of the emperor. All remained abandoned to the uncontrolled will of one, identified with the will of the people; or even in worse cases, subject to the caprices of an army, by whom the despot was in turn governed, and which at last remained the sole real power in the state. Thus Rome, equally anarchical when a monarchy as when a republic, could not attain to a constitution.

The want of a firm foundation for the state was chiefly evinced in the moral corruption and in the religion of the nation, or rather in the absence of the latter. Even in the later times of the republic, with the spread of luxury and the sudden change of manners, there was manifested, as usually happens in such cases, a general spirit of unbelief, of religious indifference, and of contempt for ancient customs. To this evil the introduction of the Greek philosophy had much contributed. It was chiefly the system of Epicurus, however, avowing indeed a refined sensuality and polished selfishness, but at bottom undermining all belief in God and in morality,—that at first met with general approbation and countless adherents. The emperor Augustus, it is true, felt the evil and its source; all his state-policy and energy were directed to the restoring of the ancient laws and customs, and to the maintenance of the popular creed. This last effort, however, was too late; the cause of the impossibility of its success lay in the very nature of this creed. Any creed, based upon the recognition of one God, however weakened it may be by the corruption of morals and education, disunion and even universal indifference, may yet be restored, as soon as a powerful hand is found, whose mission it is; for a fixed point is contained in it to which one can always return,-a substantial and secure foundation remains after everything transitory is removed. The idolatry of the Greeks and Romans was in itself unconnected, without unity or fixed basis, too manifestly fabulous, and too much the work of mere imagination to render its revival possible, when once the feeling of this weakness had become general. Augustus sought to cffect the closest and strictest union of divine worship with the state; but when a Nero was clothed with the highest priestly dignity, when a Divus Tiberius, or a Divus Caligula received divine honours after death; surely it was not pos

THE STOIC AND CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHIES.

47

sible to restore to the gods their ancient dignity, or to men their ancient virtue and lost faith. Could any man have restored the old Roman energy and severe greatness, it had been Trajan; but as he failed, we must conclude that the attempt was altogether too late. His deep-thinking successor, Hadrian, seems to have attributed the evil chiefly to the want of spiritual unity, to the difference in the modes of thinking and intellectual culture of the various nations composing the Roman empire. From this period the Grecian mind began to resume its natural supremacy in literature and science. Hadrian's leading idea may have been to fuse together the learning and taste of all the most civilized nations of the empire, not even excluding the Egyptian, and thereby to reanimate and invigorate anew the decaying spirit of the Roman world. But this too could only be a passing attempt. The Antonines had recourse to other means of safety; the Stoic philosophy was now to uphold the popular faith, incurable as was its decay, or to replace it; it was favoured in every manner; its propagation and inculcation became an affair of state. And doubtless it gave many great men to the state and to mankind'; but, not to reckon other defects, a science so difficult to be understood, could never be suitable to all men, could never become a popular creed.

This defect was supplied by Christianity. In its sublime philosophy and system of morals, many men, familiar with the whole intellectual culture of the Greeks and Romans, found a contentment, which neither Plato nor the Stoa had afforded them; but this contentment was no exclusive privilege of a few philosophers, inaccessible to the great bulk of mankind. Christianity was philosophy, but yet was at the same time accessible to all, and had equal effect upon all classes, as it did not act upon one, but upon all the faculties of the soul. Hence, in despite of the most strenuous opposition, Christianity displaced more and more the old fantastic polytheism, which gradually retreated and disappeared before it. The Roman State, however, Christianity was unable to save, even when it had become predominant and universal. It may surprise us, that the doctrines which undeniably gave so many individuals strength for the greatest sacrifices, or for the still more arduous fulfilment of the most rigid laws, should

have effected nothing for the state. The reason is, that even under the Christian emperors, religion, except as to some parts and provisions of private law, had no influence whatever on the political institutions and on the constitution, or rather non-constitution of the state. Everything in this respect remained as it was. It would have required, moreover, great energy, and a profound mind, to create a new constitution adapted to the purer ideas of God and to man— a constitution for which the most necessary conditions were wanting. Even the expedient that most readily suggested itself,-namely, by the mediation and influence of the clergy to act upon the people, and to bring public opinion into harmony with the views of the sovereign, was, at least in the Western empire, totally neglected. That in the Greek empire a certain degree at least of union existed between the state and the clergy was, together with its superior geographical position in respect of the German nations, one of the principal causes, that its existence, then a feeble one, was so infinitely longer protracted.

The Goths were the first who acquired settlements in the Roman empire, on the north-east, precisely at the point where Trajan's conquests and great colonies seemed destined to protect the frontier. The immigration of the Germanic nations into the Western empire occurred chiefly in two directions, and from two different points. The first immigration was that of the Goths, and the kindred tribes, who, from the east, overran the southern countries of the empire, Italy, southern Gaul, Spain, and the African coasts. second was from the north-west of Germany, whence the Franks and Saxons invaded and conquered northern Gaul and the southern parts of Britain. We shall first touch briefly upon the Gothic conquests and kingdoms, then upon the Frankish.

The

That the Goths, a great primitive Germanic people, came from Sweden, in which some provinces still bear their name, belongs by no means to the number of undoubted historic truths. It is certain that they penetrated from the northeastern seats of the Germans, from the coasts of the Baltic .Sea, into the southern seats, in which we afterwards find them. The motive of their migration may have been like that of all the earlier ones,-the necessities of a growing population.

THE GOTHS AND THEIR EMPIRE.

49 That these victorious settlers did not take a direction more to the west, nor due south towards Gaul or Italy, but to the south-east, is accounted for by the strong defences of the Roman frontier on the Rhine and the Danube. Here lay the flower of the Roman army; and the unbroken chain of forts they held formed ramparts quite impregnable, when the empire was still powerful, and tenable with an effort, even in the times of its decay. In the south-eastern districts, on the contrary, the Goths encountered, in the first instance, only petty tribes, with some of whom they may have been of old connected, and over whom they could easily gain an ascendancy. As early as two hundred years after Christ, they were widely spread over those south-eastern countries; and in the fourth century, under Ermanaric, the great Gothic kingdom stretched from the Black Sea, from the mouth of the Danube, including all Dacia, Sarmatia, and the Crimea, eastward, as far as the north side of the Caucasus, and towards the extreme north as far as the coasts of the Baltic.

Even if the Goths did not derive their origin, nor emigrate directly from Sweden, yet their connection with this extreme north, even as far as Sweden itself, is by several circumstances placed beyond doubt. Their sway and influence extended also deep into the interior of Germany; the south-eastern parts especially became now Gothic, even if they were not partially so before. In the Austria of the present day, along the Danube from Vienna to Passau, was the Rugiland, so called from the Rugians, a Gothic people. From this quarter Odoacer issued forth, at the exhortation of a celebrated Christian bishop, to put an end even in name to the Roman dominion, which in reality had long ceased to exist, and to substitute in its place a Gothic-German empire. These Gothic inhabitants of Austria have indisputably exercised considerable influence on the Austrian race; and it is not to be doubted that this race is, for the most part, of Gothic descent.

The history of the partition into two, of the great Gothic kingdom on the Black Sea; of the defeat of Ermanaric, then upwards of a hundred years of age, by the invading Huns; of the subsequent alliance of this people with the Ostrogoths; of the conquest of Rome by Alaric, somewhat more than four hundred years after Christ; of the foundation,

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