have passed the limes, and the Romans at last have failed to stem their
advance, owing to the simple operation of causes which had long been
at work on either side. Among the Germans population had grown by leaps and bounds, while subsistence had increased in less than an arithmetical ratio; and the necessity of finding a quieta pairia, an unthreatened
territory of sufficient size and productivity, with an ancient tradition of
more intensive culture than they had themselves attained, had become
for them a matter of life and death. Among the Romans population
had decayed for century after century, and the land had gone steadily
out of cultivation, until nature herself seemed to have created the
vacuum into which, in time, she inevitably attracted the Germans. The
rush begins with the passage of the Danube by the Goths in 376, and
is continued in the passage of the Rhine by the Vandals, Alans, and
Sueves in 406. A hundred years after the passage of the Danube the
final result of the movement begins to appear in the West. The
praefecture of Gaul now sees in each of its three former dioceses Teutonic
kingdoms established—Saxons and Jutes in the Britains; Visigoths
(under their great king Euric) in the Seven Provinces of Gaul proper;
Sueves (along with Visigoths) in the Spains. In the praefecture of Italy
two of the three dioceses are under powerful barbarian rulers: Odovacar
has just made himself king of Italy, and Gaiseric has long been king of
Africa; while the diocese of Illyricum is still in the melting-pot.
If we regard the movement of events from 410 to 476 internally, and from a Roman point of view, we shall find in the domestic politics of the period much that is the natural correlative of the Volkerwanderung without. Already, in the very beginning of this period, and indeed long before, the barbarian has settled in every part of the Empire, and among every class of society. Masses of barbarians have been attached to the soil as cultivators (inquUini), to fill the gaps in the population and reclaim the derelict soil: masses, again, have entered the army, until it has become almost predominantly German. Barbarian cultivators and soldiers thus formed the basis of the pyramid; but barbarians might also climb to the apex. Under Theodosius I, who had made it his policy to cultivate the friendship of the barbarians, the Frank Arbogast already appears as magister militiae 9 and attempts, like Ricimer afterwards, to use his office for the purpose of erecting a puppet as emperor. He fell before Theodosius in the battle of the Frigidus (394) ; but the Vandal Stilicho (to whom he is said to have commended the care of his children and the defence of the Empire) was the heir of his position, and Stilicho had for successor AStius—the “last of the Romans,” but also the friend of the Huns—as Aetius was succeeded in turn by Ricimer the Sueve. It is these barbaric or semi-barbaric figures, vested with the office of commander-in-chief of the troops of the West, which form the landmarks in the history of the fifth century; and we should be most true to reality if we distinguished the divisions of this
