professional administrators. If asked whether these shortcomings were
symptomatic of evils more generally diffused through other ranks and
classes of society, we must go deeper in the analysis of facts. No _a
priori_ answer would be satisfactory.

The beginning and the end of the disaster were successful raids on
Italy. Alaric and his Visigoths (401-410 A.D.) shattered the prestige
and destroyed the efficiency of the government which ruled in the name
of the feeble Honorius. The Ostrogoths under Theodoric destroyed the
last simulacrum of an imperial power rooted in Italy (489-493 A.D.).
After Theodoric had vanquished Odoacer, it was clear that the western
provinces would not again acknowledge an Emperor acclaimed at Ravenna;
although the chance remained that they might be reconquered and
reorganised from Constantinople. This chance disappeared when the
Lombards crossed the Alps (568 A.D.) and descended on the Po valley.
From first to last Italy was the key to the West. And these successive
shocks to imperial power in Italy were all due to one cause. All three
of the invading hordes came from the Danube. The Roman bank of the great
river was inadequately garrisoned, and a mistaken policy had colonised
the Danubian provinces with Teutonic peoples, none the less dangerous
for being the nominal allies (_foederati_) of the Empire. The
Visigothic raids, which were in fact decisive, succeeded because the
military defences of the Western Empire were already strained to
breaking-point; and because the Roman armies were not only outnumbered,
but also paralysed by the jealousies of rival statesmen, and divided by
the mutinies of generals aspiring to the purple. The initial disasters
were irreparable, because the whole machine of Roman officialdom came to
a standstill when the guiding hand of Ravenna failed. Hitherto dependent
on Italy, the other provinces were now like limbs amputated from the
trunk. Here and there a local leader raised the standard of resistance