Some at least of the Teutonic tribes had grown partly civilized.  The Germans along the Rhine, and the Goths along the Danube, had been from the time of Augustus in more or less close contact with Rome.  Germanicus had once subdued almost the whole of Germany; later emperors had held temporarily the broad province of Dacia, beyond the Danube.  The barbarians were eagerly enlisted in the Roman army.  During the closing centuries of decadence they became its main support; they rose to high commands; there were even barbarian emperors at last.  The intermingling of the two worlds thus became extensive, and the Teutons learned much of Rome.  The Goths whom Theodosius permitted to settle within its dominions were already partly Christian.

THE PERIOD OF INVASION

It was these same Goths who became the immediate cause of Rome’s downfall.  Theodosius had kept them in restraint; his feeble sons scarce even attempted it.  The intruders found a famous leader in Alaric, and, after plundering most of the Grecian peninsula, they ravaged Italy, ending in 410 with the sack of Rome itself.[1]

This seems to us, perhaps, a greater event than it did to its own generation.  The “Emperor of the West,” the degenerate son of Theodosius, was not within the city when it fell; and the story is told that, on hearing the news, he expressed relief, because he had at first understood that the evil tidings referred to the death of a favorite hen named Rome.  The tale emphasizes the disgrace of the famous capital; it had sunk to be but one city among many.  Alaric’s Goths had been nominally an army belonging to the Emperor of the East; their invasion was regarded as only one more civil war.

Besides, the Roman world might yet have proved itself big enough to assimilate and engulf the entire mass of this already half-civilized people.  Its name was still a spell on them.  Ataulf, the successor of Alaric, was proud to accept a Roman title and become a defender of the Empire.  He marched his followers into Gaul under a commission to chastise the “barbarians” who were desolating it.

These later comers were the instruments of that more overwhelming destruction for which the Goths had but prepared the way.  To resist Alaric, the Roman legions had been withdrawn from all the western frontiers, and thus more distant and far more savage tribes of the Teutons beheld the glittering empire unprotected, its pathways most alluringly left open.  They began streaming across the undefended Rhine and Danube.  Their bands were often small and feeble, such as earlier emperors would have turned back with ease; but now all this fascinating world of wealth, so dimly known and doubtless fiercely coveted, lay helpless, open to their plundering.  The Vandals ravaged Gaul and Spain, and, being defeated by the Goths, passed on into Africa.  The Saxons and Angles penetrated England[2] and fought there for centuries against the desperate Britons, whom the Roman legions had perforce abandoned to their fate.  The Franks and Burgundians plundered Gaul.