Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/48

 26 THE DECLINE AND FALL The posterity of the first conquerors struck a deeper root into the soil, which, by every motive of interest and honour, they were bound to defend. A Lombard was born the soklier of his king and his duke ; and the civil assemblies of the nation dis- played the banners, and assumed the appellation, of a regular army. Of this army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered provinces ; and the distribution, which was not effectetl till after the death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of injustice and rapine. Many of the most wealthy Italians were slain and banished ; the remainder were divided among the strangers, and a tributary obligation was imposed (under the name of hospitality) of paying to the Lombards a third part of the fruits of the earth. Within less than seventy years, this artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid tenure. -"^ Either the Roman landlord was expelled by his strong and insolent guest ; or the annual payment, a third of the produce, was exchanged by a more equitable transaction for an adequate proportion of landed property. Under these foreign masters, the business of agriculture, in the cultivation of corn, vines, and olives, was exercised with degenerate skill and industry by the labour of the slaves and natives. But the occupations of a pastoral life were more pleasing to the idleness of the barbarians. In the rich meadows of Venetia, they restored and improved the breed of horses for which that province had once been illus- trious ; •-' and the Italians beheld with astonishment a foreign race of oxen or buffaloes. ^-^ The depopulation of Lombardy and the increase of forests afforded an am|)le range for the pleasures ■" Paul, 1. ii. c. 31, 32, 1. iii. c. 16. The laws of Rotharis, promulgated A.D. 643, do not contain the smallest vestige of this payment of thirds; but they pre- serve many curious circumstances of the state of Italy and the manners of the Lombards. •"'-The studs of Dionysius of Syracuse, and his frequent victories in the Olympic games, had diffused among the Greeks the fame of the Venetian horses ; but the breed was extinct in the time of Strabo (I. v. p. 325 [i, § 4]). Gisulf obtained from his uncle generosarum equarum greges. Paul, 1. ii. c. 9. The Lombards after- wards introduced caballi silvatici — wild horses. Paul, 1. iv. c. 11. ■''•'Tunc {a.d. 596) primum bubali in Italiam delati Italise populis miracula fuere (Paul Warnefrid, 1. iv. c. 11). The buffaloes, whose native climate appears to be Africa and India, are unknown to Europe except in Italy, where they are numerous and useful. The ancients were ignorant of these animals, unless ,ristotle (Hist. Animal. 1. ii. c. i. p. 58, Paris, 1783) has described them as the wild oxen of Arachosia. See Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, torn. xi. and Supplement, torn. vi. ; Hist. G^n^rale des Voyages, torn. i. p. 7, 481, ii. 105, iii. 291, iv. 234, 461, v. 193, vi. 491, viii. 400, X. 666; Pennant's Quadrupedes, p. 24 ; Dictionnaire d'Hist. Naturelle, par Valmont de Bomare, toni. ii. p. 74. Yet I must not conceal the suspicion that Paul, by a vulgar error, may have applied the n^rne of hiihalits to the aurochs, or wild bull, of ancient Germany,