394 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP, the national troops; judiciously observing, that the • aid which the repubUc derived from the barbarians, should be felt but not seen y. Their aid was now be- come necessary. The feeble elegance of Italy and the internal provinces could no longer support the weight of arms. The hardy frontier of the Rhine and Danube still produced minds and bodies equal to the labours of the camp ; but a perpetual series of wars had gradually diminished their numbers. The infrequency of mar- riage, and the ruin of agriculture, affected the princi- ples of population, and not only destroyed the strength of the present, but intercepted the hope of future ge- nerations. The wisdom of Probus embraced a great and beneficial plan of replenishing the exhausted fron- tiers, by new colonies of captive or fugitive barbarians, on whom he bestowed lands, cattle, instruments of husbandry, and every encouragement that might en- gage them to educate a race of soldiers for the service of the republic. Into Britain, and most probably into Cambridgeshire^, he transported a considerable body of Vandals. The impossibility of an escape reconciled them to their situation ; and in the subsequent troubles of that island, they approved themselves the most faith- ful servants of the state *. Great numbers of Franks and Gepidae were settled on the banks of the Danube and the Rhine. An hundred thousand Bastarnae, ex- pelled from their own country, cheerfully accepted an establishment in Thrace, and soon imbibed the man- ners and sentiments of Roman subjects ^ But the ex- pectations of Probus were too often disappointed. The impatience and idleness of the barbarians could ill brook the slow labours of agriculture. Their uncon- y He distributed about fifty or sixty barbarians to a numei-us, as it was then called, a corps with whose established number we are not exactly ac- quainted.
- Camden's Britannia, Introduction, p. 136j but he speaks from a very
doubtful conjecture. a Zosimus, 1. i. p. 62. According to Vopiscus, another body of Vandals was less faithful. ^ Hist. August, p. 240. They were probably expelled by the Goths. Zosim. 1. i. p. 66.
