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 hardihood almost unparalleled, and made a triumphant passage to the Batavian or Frisian coasts.

Though repeatedly defeated, their successes, together with the steady advance of other barbarian hordes from the north, were sufficient to destroy the prestige which had for centuries made Rome invincible. A general spirit of revolt was now awakened in all the provinces. Even Egypt, so long the most docile of the slaves of Rome, was aroused into active rebellion by Firmus, a wealthy merchant of Alexandria, who, after plundering that city at the head of a furious mob, maintained, though for only sixty days, the imperial purple, published edicts, and raised an army, supported, as he boasted vaingloriously, from the profits of his paper trade.

The dangerous secret of the wealth and weakness of the empire once clearly discerned, new swarms of barbarians, encouraged by the successes of those who had gone before them, sprang into existence, overran the northern districts, flooded Gaul and Spain, and carried desolation and terror almost to the very walls of Rome. Of these the most formidable were the Franks, or Freemen, who now occupied the Rhenish frontier, and the Allemanni, a name now generally held to imply a confederacy of many tribes of German origin. As in the case of the Goths, their first successes were of short duration, and, after three bloody battles, Aurelian was able to drive them out of Italy, securing, at the same time, by the overthrow of Zenobia and the destruction of Firmus, a short breathing time for the distracted empire. But the