BOOK I



CHAPTER I

Irruption of Northern people upon the Roman
territories--Visigoths--Barbarians called in by Stilicho--Vandals
in Africa--Franks and Burgundians give their names to France and
Burgundy--The Huns--Angles give the name to England--Attila, king of the
Huns, in Italy--Genseric takes Rome--The Lombards.

The people who inhabit the northern parts beyond the Rhine and the
Danube, living in a healthy and prolific region, frequently increase to
such vast multitudes that part of them are compelled to abandon their
native soil, and seek a habitation in other countries. The method
adopted, when one of these provinces had to be relieved of its
superabundant population, was to divide into three parts, each
containing an equal number of nobles and of people, of rich and of poor.
The third upon whom the lot fell, then went in search of new abodes,
leaving the remaining two-thirds in possession of their native country.

These migrating masses destroyed the Roman empire by the facilities for
settlement which the country offered when the emperors abandoned
Rome, the ancient seat of their dominion, and fixed their residence at
Constantinople; for by this step they exposed the western empire to
the rapine of both their ministers and their enemies, the remoteness of