Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/371

 OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 351 The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from state of the 11. 1 /»ir>i* 1 n- 1 Barbarians in the establishment oi these rJarbarians, whose alhanee was dan-oaui. a.d. gerous and oppressive, and w^ho were capriciously impelled, by ' interest or passion, to violate the public peace. A heavy and partial ransom was imposed on the surviving provincials, who had escaped the calamities of war ; the fairest and most fertile lands were assigned to the rapacious strangers, for the use of their families, their slaves, and their cattle ; and the trembling natives relinquished with a sigh the inheritance of their fathers. Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot of a vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the Romans themselves, not only in the insolence of foreign conquest, but in the madness of civil discord. The Triumvirs proscribed eighteen of the most flourishing colonies of Italy ; and distributed their lands and houses to the veterans who revenged the death of Caesar and oppressed the liberty of their country. Two poets, of unequal fame, have deplored, in similar circumstances, the loss of their patrimony ; but the legionaries of Augustus appeared to have surpassed, in violence and injustice, the Barbarians who invaded Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not without the utmost difliculty that Virgil escaped from the sword of the centurion who had usurped his farm in the neighbourhood of Mantua; 1"^ but Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of money fi-om his Gothic purchaser, which he accepted with pleasure and surprise ; and, though it was much inferior to the real value of his estate, this act of rapine was disguised by some colours of moderation and equity.^"'' The odious name of conquerors, was softened into the mild and friendly appellation of the guests, of the Romans ; and the Barbarians of Gaul, more especially the Goths, repeatedly declared that they were bound to the people by the ties of hospitality and to the emperor by the duty of Min. i. p. 656]) the name of Pharaniond is never mentioned before the seventh [8th] century. The author of the Gesta Francorum (in torn. ii. p. 543) suggests, probably enough, that the choice of Pharamond, or at least of a king, was recom- mended to the Franks by his father Marcomir, who was an e.xile in Tuscany. i^-T O Lycida, vivi pervenimus : advena nostri (Quod nunquam veriti sumus) ut possessor agelli Diceret : Hsec mea sunt ; veteres migrate coloni. Nunc victi tristes, &c. See the whole of the ninth Eclogue, with the useful Commentary of Servius. Fifteen miles of the Mantuan territory were assigned to the veterans, with a reservation, in favour of the inhabitants, of three miles round the city. Even in this favour they were cheated by Alfenus Varus, a famous lawyer, and one of the commissioners, who measured eight hundred paces of water and morass. 1"'' See the remarkable passage of the Eucharisticon of Paulinus, 575, apud Mascou, 1. viii. c. 42. [See Appendi.x i.]