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Rh were not allowed to leave without the Emperor's permission, this nobility settled down later on its broad estates in the provinces. From the fourth century onwards this provincial nobility was de facto an 'Estate of the realm,' and in course of time it claimed a certain independence of Imperial control."

The "Roman Army" in the East, meanwhile, was transformed in less than two centuries from an army of modern type to one of the feudal order. The Roman legion disappeared in the reorganization of the age of Severus, about A.D. 200. While in the West the army degenerated into hordes, in the East there arose, in the fourth century a genuine, if belated, knighthood — a fact that Mommsen long ago pointed out, without, however, seeing the significance of it. The young noble received a thorough education in single combat, horse- manship, use of bow and lance. About A.D. 260 the Emperor Gallienus — the friend of Plotinus and the builder of the Porta Nigra of Trier, one of the most striking and most unfortunate figures of the period of the soldier-emperors — formed, from Germans and Moors, a new type of mounted force, the personal military suite. A significant light is thrown upon the changes by the fact that the old city-gods give way, in the religion of the army, to the German gods of personal heroism, under the labels of Mars and Hercules. Diocletian's palatini are not a substitute for the prætorians abolished by Septimius Severus, but a small, well-disciplined knight-army, while the comitatenses, the general levy, are organized in "numeri" or companies. The tactics are those of every Early period, with its pride of personal courage. The attack takes the Germanic form of the so-called "boar's head" — the deep mass technically called the Gevierthaufe. Under Justinian we find, fully developed, a system corresponding precisely to the Landsknecht system of Charles V, in which condottieri of the Frundsberg type raise professional forces on a territorial basis. The expedition