Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/134

 i22 THE ROMAN DOMINION west wholly outside the control of the successors of Caesar in the east. Christianity had conquered, but Christendom was divided between adherents of the orthodox faith and the followers of .. the Arian heresy, which denied the complete divinity of Christ. This division played a part of some importance in the wars of these centuries, when the barbarian races claimed that they were fighting under the Arian or under the Orthodox banner. During the whole of the fourth century the empire succeeded in holding back the flood of the barbaric invaders in the far east and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas. But as the political centre of the empire had moved to the east its power of self-defence on the west diminished. Teu- tonic tribes broke into Gaul and swept through it into Spain. Vandals, The most famous of these groups were the Vandal?, Goths, and w ho were near kinsmen of the Goths. The Goths who were now settled along the line of the Danube were themselves being attacked in the rear by an entirely differ- ent race, the Huns, who belonged to the same group as Tartars, Turks, and Mongols. About the end of the fourth century, Alaric the Goth resolved to carve a dominion for himself out of the Roman Empire. For some time he met his match in the great general of the Imperial armies Stilicho in Italy. Stilicho himself was a Vandal, and the Roman legions now were for the most part composed not of Romans at all but of barbarian mercenaries. But the two sons of Theodosius, Honorius and Arcadius, were now emperors of west and east respectively ; Honorius was persuaded to believe that Stilicho was a traitor. Alaric, The great soldier was executed, and Alaric fell upon 410 A.D. Rome almost unopposed. For the first time since the ancient Gallic invasion, the Eternal City was sacked by a foreign foe in 410 a.d. It is curious to observe, however, that there was still a glamour about the Roman Empire which exer- cised an extraordinary influence over the barbarians. Alaric demanded not to set up an empire of his own, but to rule with the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Roman armies. He himself died very shortly after the sack of Rome, and his sue-