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260 of the seven-hilled city bare been restored or prolonged. But it was all-important to mankind what nations should divide among them Rome's rich inheritance of empire. Whether the Germanic and Gothic warriors should form states and kingdoms out of the fragments of her dominions and become the free members of the common wealth of Christian Europe; or whether pagan savages, from the wilds of Central Asia, should crush the relics of classic civilization and the early institutions of the christianized Germans in one hopeless chaos of barbaric conquest. The Christian Visigoths of king Theodoric fought and triumphed at Châlons, side by side with the legions of Aetius. Their joint victory over the Hunnish host not only rescued for a time from destruction the old age of Rome, but preserved for centuries of power and glory the Germanic element in the civilization of modern Europe.

In order to estimate the full importance to mankind of the battle of Châlons, we must keep steadily in mind who and what the Germans were, and the important distinctions between them and the numerous other races that assailed the Roman Empire: and it is to be understood that the Gothic and Scandinavian nations are included in the German race. Now, "in two remarkable traits the Germans differed from the Sarmatic, as well as