regarded as worse than the lowest of the heathen. This generosity was
little more than common prudence. Numerically the conquerors were much
inferior to the provincials; economically they had everything to lose by
needless ill-treatment of those whom they exploited. But the best of
them had studied the organisation of the Empire at close quarters,
sometimes as captains in the imperial service, sometimes as neighbours
of flourishing provinces in the years preceding the grand catastrophe;
and knowledge rarely failed to produce in them some respect or even
enthusiasm for the _Respublica Romana_. "When I was young," said
King Athaulf the Visigoth, "I desired to obliterate the Roman name and
to bring under the sway of the Goths all that once belonged to the
Romans. But I learned better by experience. The Goths were licentious
barbarians who would obey no laws; and to deprive the commonwealth of
laws would have been a crime. So for my part I chose the glory of
restoring the Roman name to its old estate." To such men the ideal of
the future was a federation of states owing a nominal allegiance to the
official head of the Empire, but cherishing an effective loyalty to all
that was best in Roman law and culture.

The second group comprises the kingdoms which were founded in outlying
provinces or comparatively late in time. The invaders of England, the
Franks in Northern Gaul, the Alemanni and the Bavarians on the Upper
Rhine and the Danube, the Lombards in Italy, the Vandals in Africa,
never came completely under the spell of the past. The Vandals might
have done so, but for their fanatical devotion to Arianism; for the
province of Africa, in which they settled, was one of those which Roman
statesmanship had most completely civilised. The Franks might have
imitated the Visigoths and the Burgundians, if fortune had laid the
cradle of their power in the valley of the Loire or the Rhone instead of
the forests and marshes of the Netherlands. The Lombards and the Saxons