I08 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. tion. They rebelled again under Theodosins the Great and were, after a long struggle, sub- dued anew. After Theodosius' death they com- menced their invasion under Alaric. At length they were checked by the imperial armies, and the East was delivered from this plague and danger to civilization. " If they had taken root," says Bikela, "and founded states in the East, as they did in Italy, Gaul, and Spain; if the Byzantine world had been engulfed beneath the flood of their immigration, the history of the human race would have been a different one from that which it has been. If the East had been barbarized by the Goths as was the West, and the Eastern Empire had been destroyed, from what material would the European Renais- sance have sprung?" About a century and a half after Alaric, Belisarius and Narses, the generals of Justinian, crushed the Gothic power in Italy, and destroyed the Vandals in Africa. These military victories aided the regeneration of social life and order in these countries. After the Byzantines had rendered such great service to Italy by fighting the Goths and had helped to preserve culture in the West, it is one of the most regrettable parts of Byzantine history
