Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/128

 92 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE ness of the people. To check depopulation Majorian forbids women to become nuns before forty and commands childless widows to remarry within five years or forfeit half their property. The burden of taxation is revealed when the em- peror cancels arrears of tribute that are eleven years over- due but feels obliged to increase the land tax for the future The only class in society who remained at all prosperous were the wealthy aristocrats, the great landowners, who had enough influence with the government to secure themselves from oppression or even to oppress others with impunity, whose large estates only a large band of invaders could ven- ture to attack, and whose retinue of servile tenants and dependents was now being constantly reinforced by poor citizens, who in these hard, disturbed, and cruel times found it impossible to maintain their independence either in town or country. In this landed aristocracy the barbarian invad- ers formed an increasing element, since they everywhere demanded and took lands for themselves. Yet we meet with luxury and extravagance amid this economic and social decline, and costly games and festivals were still fur- nished the populace in the large cities. Something of ancient art, literature, and learning still continued, or perhaps it would be better to say, still con- C nt'n d tinued to decline. The landed aristocracy of the decay in art senatorial and official class prided themselves upon their culture and were addicted to writing one another letters, poems, and panegyrics. Athens contin- ued to have a university even after Alaric had taken it. No new attitudes, spirit, and ideas refreshed the works of this age, however, except in the Christian writings, of which we shall learn later, and in the Christian art of secluded Ravenna. Nor did the writers succeed in retaining the spirit of the classical period. Instead they indulged in mere rhetoric, combining words in unusual and striking ways, but also in a rather unnatural and bombasticjashion, and making all sorts of quaint and recondite allusion to the rich background of literature, mythology, and history that lay so far behind them. In the West, Gaul was the region