effigies of the reigning Emperor, dated their proclamations by the names
of the consuls for the year, and in many other ways flaunted their
nominal subjection as the legal basis of their actual sovereignty. This
fiction did not prevent them from governing their new dominions in true
Teutonic fashion, through royal bailiffs, who administered the state
demesnes, and military officers (dukes, counts, etc.) who ruled with
autocratic sway over administrative districts. Nor did the most lenient
of them hesitate to provide for their armies by wholesale confiscations;
the ordinary rule was to take from the great proprietor one-third or
two-thirds of his estate for the benefit of the Teutonic immigrant.
Further, we have ample evidence that the provincials found existence
considerably more precarious under the new order. The rich were exposed
to the malice of the false informer and the venal judge; the cultivators
of the soil were often oppressed and often reduced from partial freedom
to absolute slavery. Yet in some respects the invaders of this type were
tolerant and adaptable. They left to the provincials the civil law of
Rome, and even codified it to guard against unauthorised innovations;
the _Lex Romana Burgundionum_ and the Visigothic _Breviarium Alarici_
are still extant as memorials of this policy. They realised the
necessity of compelling barbarians and provincials alike to respect
the elementary rights of person and property; Theodoric the Ostrogoth
and Gundobad the Burgundian were the authors of new criminal codes, in
the one case mainly, in the other partially, derived from Roman
jurisprudence. Such rulers were not content with professing an impartial
regard for both classes of their subjects; they frequently raised the
better-class provincials to posts of responsibility and confidence. By a
singular fatality the chief races of this group had embraced the Arian
heresy, which was repudiated and detested by their subjects. Yet their
great statesmen uniformly extended toleration to the rival creed, and
even patronised the orthodox bishops, by whom they were secretly