The German Invasions 317 general Marius. Julius Caesar narrates in polished Latin how fifty years later he drove back other bands. Five hundred years elapsed, however, before German chieftains succeeded in found- ing kingdoms within the boundaries of the Empire. With their establishment the Roman government in western Europe may be said to have come to an end and the Middle Ages to have begun. Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that this means Most medie- that the Roman civilization suddenly disappeared at this time, ^e foundTn ° Long before the German conquest, art and literature had begun ^^j,^ g^^pj^'/g to decline toward the level that they reached in the Middle Ages. Many of the ideas and conditions which prevailed after the com- ing of the barbarians were common enough before. Even the ignorance and strange ideas which we associate particularly with the Middle Ages are to be found in the later Roman Empire. l^V-i^ The term " Middle Ages " will be used in this volume to ^^-^ mean, roughly speaking, the period of over a thousand years // that elapsed between the fifth century, when the disorder of the barbarian invasions was becoming general, and the opening of the sixteenth century, when Europe was well on its way to recover all that had been lost since the break-up of the Roman Empire. Previous to the year 375 the attempts of the Germans to The Huns penetrate into the Roman Empire appear to have been due to Qoths into their love of adventure, their hope of plundering their civilized *^ Empire neighbors, or the need of new lands for their increasing num- bers. 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 Roman territory. But suddenly a new force appeared in the rear of the Germans which thrust some of them across the northern boundary of the 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 limits of the Empire. Here they soon fell out with the Roman officials, and a great battle was fought at Adrianople in 378 in which the Goths
