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 I Western Europe before the Barbarian Invasions 33 honorable; they reprove them for their errors like their own children. They are not allowed, like the Scythians, to inflict death on their slaves. They have numerous ways of con- ferring freedom ; they can manumit not only during life, but also by their wills, and the testamentary wishes of a Roman in regard to his property are law." My interlocutor shed tears, and confessed that the laws and constitution of the Romans were fair, but deplored that the officials, not possessing the spirit of former generations, were ruining the state. BIBLIOGRAPHY The books here mentioned are selected with a view to explaining A. Refer- those conditions in the later Roman Empire some conception of which ences. is essential to an understanding of the Middle Ages. Almost all the accounts of Roman society deal with the period of the later Republic and the early Empire. 1 Conditions upon the Eve of the Barbarian Invasions : For these the best work in English is, DILL, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire. See especially Book II, "Society of the West"; Book III, "The Failure of the Administration and the Ruin of the Middle Class as revealed in the Theodosian Code." See also BRYCE, The Holy Roman Empire, Chapter II, " The Roman Empire before the Invasions of the Barbarians." Relations between Paganism and Christianity: DILL, Book I, "The Tenacity of Paganism," and GIBBON, Chapter XXVIII (BURY'S edition, Vol. Ill, pp. 188-215), "The Final Destruction of Paganism." Literature and the Text-Books which the Middle Ages inherited from the Later Empire: DILL, Book V, "Characteristics of Roman Education and Culture in the Fifth Century." See also references to Taylor, in section B, below. Economic Conditions: CUNNINGHAM, Western Civilization, Vol. I, Book III, Chapter III, " The Roman Empire." BURY, A History of the Later Roman Empire, A .D. 395-800, Book I, B. Addi- Chapters ITI-IV, "The Elements of Disintegration within the Roman tional read- Empire " and " The Administration of the Empire." 1 The most notable of these is Friedl'dnder, Darstellungen aus der Sitten- geschichte Roms in der Zeit von Augristus bis zum Ausgang der Antonine, 2 vols., ;th ed., Leipzig, 1901.