and generally proves injurious to their bodily activity. When literary pursuits, therefore, become the exclusive object of national ambition, and the abstract speculations of science engage the sole attention of the higher ranks, effeminacy is more likely to prevail, than when literature is used as an instrument for advancing practical acquirements, and embellishing active occupations. The rude Goths themselves would have admired the poetry of Homer and of Pindar, though they despised the metaphysical learning of the schools of Athens.

The celebrity of Athens, and the presence of the historian Dexippus, have given to this incursion of the barbarians a prominent place in history; but many expeditions are casually mentioned, which must have inflicted greater losses on the Greeks, and spread more widely the devastation of the country. These inroads must have produced important changes on the condition of the Greek population, and given a new impulse to society. The passions of men were called into action, and the protection of their property often depended on their own exertions. Public spirit was again awakened, and many cities of Greece successfully defended their walls against the immense armies of barbarians, who broke into the empire in the reign of Claudius. Thessalonica and Cassandra were attacked by land and sea. Thessaly and Greece were invaded; but the walls of the towns were generally found in a state of repair, and the inhabitants ready to defend them. The great victory obtained by the emperor Claudius II. at Naissus, broke the power of the Goths; and a Roman feet in the Archipelago destroyed the

remains of their naval forces. The extermination of these invaders of Greece, was completed by the great plague which ravaged the East for fifteen years.

During the repeated invasions of the barbarians, an immense number of slaves were either destroyed by war, or carried away by the Goths beyond the Danube. Great facilities were likewise afforded to dissatisfied slaves to escape and join the invaders. The numbers of the slave population in Greece must, therefore, have undergone a reduction, which could not prove otherwise than beneficial to those who remained, and which must also have produced a very considerable change on the condition of the poorer freemen. The danger in which men lived, necessitated an alteration in their mode of life; every one was compelled to think of defending his person, as well as his property; new activity was infused into society; the losses caused by the ravages of the Goths, and the mortality produced by the plague, were soon replaced by a general improvement in the circumstances of the inhabitants of Greece.

It must here be observed, that the first great inroads of the northern nations, which succeeded in penetrating into the heart of the Roman empire, were directed against the eastern provinces, and that Greece suffered severely by the earliest of the invasions; yet the eastern portion of the empire alone succeeded in driving back the barbarians, and preserving its population free from any admixture of the Gothic race. This successful resistance was chiefly owing to the national feelings and political organization of the Greek people. The institutions

which the Greeks retained, prevented them from remaining utterly hopeless in the moment of danger; the magistrates possessed a legitimate authority to take measures for any extraordinary crisis, and citizens of wealth and talent could render their services useful, without any violent departure from the usual forms of the local administration.* The evil of anarchy was not, in Greece, added to the misfortune of invasion. Fortunately for the Greeks, the insignificancy of their military forces prevented the national feelings, which these measures aroused, from giving umbrage either to the Roman emperors, or to their military officers in the provinces.

From the various accounts of the Gothic wars of this period which exist, it is evident, that the expeditions of the barbarians were, as yet, only undertaken for the purpose of plundering the provinces. The invaders entertained no idea of being able to establish themselves permanently within the bounds of the empire. The celerity of their movements generally made their numbers appear greater than they really were; while the inferiority of their arms and discipline rendered them an unequal match for a much smaller body of the heavy-armed Romans. When the invaders met with a steady and well combined resistance, they were defeated without much difficulty; but whenever a moment of neglect presented itself, their attacks were repeated with undiminished courage. The victorious reigns of Claudius the Second, Aurelian, and Probus, prove the immense superiority of the Roman armies

* Cod. Justinianeus, viii. 9. 1; xi. 29. 4, and 41. 1; x. 41. 10.

when properly commanded; but the custom, which was constantly gaining ground, of recruiting the legions from among the barbarians, reveals the deplorable state of depopulation and weakness to which three centuries of despotism and bad administration had reduced the empire.* On the one hand, the government feared the spirit of its subjects, if intrusted with arms; and on the other, it was unwilling to reduce the number of the citizens paying taxes, by draughting too large a proportion of the industrious classes into the army. The danger of revolt, and the defence of the empire, seemed to the Roman emperors, to demand the maintenance of a larger army than the population of their own. dominions could supply.

SECTION XV.

CHANGES WHICH PRECEDED THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CONSTANTINOPLE AS THE CAPITAL OF

THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

FOREIGN invasions, the disorderly state of the army, the weight of the taxes, and the irregular constitution of the imperial government, produced, at this time, a general feeling, that the army and the state required a new organization, in order to adapt both to the exigencies of altered circumstances, and save the empire from impending ruin. Probus, Diocletian, and Constantine, appeared as reformers of the Roman empire. The history of these reforms belongs to the records of the Roman constitution,

*AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, XIX. 2; xxxi. 4. 10. SPANHEIM, Orbis Romanus, P. 508.

as they were conceived with very little reference to the institutions of the provinces; and only some portion of the modifications made in the form of the imperial administration, will fall within the scope of this work. But though the administrative reforms produced little change in the condition of the Greek population, the Greeks themselves actively contributed to effect a mighty revolution, in the whole frame of social life, by the organization which they gave to the church, from the moment. they began to embrace the Christian religion. It must not be overlooked, that the Greeks had organized a Christian church, before Christianity became the established religion of the empire.

The reign of Constantine marks the period in which old Roman political feelings lost their power, and the superstitious veneration for Rome herself declines. The liberty afforded for new ideas, and a new social organization, was not overlooked by the Greeks. The transference of the seat of government to Byzantium, destroyed the Roman spirit in the public administration. The Romans, indeed, from the establishment of the imperial government, had ceased to form a homogeneous nation, or to be connected, by feelings of attachment and interest, to one common country; and as soon as the rights of Roman citizenship had been conferred on the provincials, Rome became a mere ideal country to the majority of Romans. The Roman citizens, however, in many provinces, formed a caste of civilized society, dwelling among a number of ruder natives, and not melted into the mass of the population. In the Grecian provinces, no such