Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/184

178 centuries, the whole main body of the Gothic nations, with the exception of the Scandinavian Goths and the Burgundians, marched to the Southeast and formed the left wing of the long line of attack. The High Germans (Herminonians) on the Upper Danube fought in the center, and the Iskaevonians on the Rhine, now called Franks, advanced on the right wing. The conquest of Brittany fell to the lot of the Ingaevonians. At the end of the fifth century, the exhausted, bloodless, and helpless Roman empire lay open to the Germans.

In former chapters we stood at the cradle of antique Greek and Roman civilization. Now we are standing at its grave. The equalizing plane of Roman world power had been gliding for centuries over all the Mediterranean countries. Where the Greek language did not offer any resistance, all national idioms had been crushed by a corrupted Latin. There were no longer any distinctions of nationality, no more Gauls, Iberians, Ligurians, Noricans; they had all become Romans. Roman administration and Roman law had everywhere dissolved the old gentile bodies and thus crushed the last remnant of local and national independence. The new type of Romans offered no compensation for this loss, for it did not express any nationality, but only the lack of a nationality. The elements for the formation of new nations were present everywhere. The Latin dialects of the different provinces differentiated more and more. But the natural boundaries that had once made Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa independent territories, were still present and made themselves felt. Yet there was no strength anywhere for combining