post-Roman soul must have been more depraved than that of the
Egyptian mongrel, who deified nothing lower than dogs, cats,
crocodiles, bugs and vegetables.'

It must not be overlooked, however, that the Roman race was
never a pure race. It was a union of strong elements of
frontier democratic peoples, Sabines, Umbrians, Sicilians,
Etruscans, Greeks, being blended in republican Rome. Whatever
the origins, the worst outlived the best, mingling at last with
the odds and ends of Imperial slavery, the "Sewage of Races"
("cloaca gentium") left at the Fall.

Gibbon says:

'This diminutive stature of mankind was daily sinking below the
old standard and the Roman world was indeed peopled by a race
of pygmies when the fierce giants of the north broke in and
mended the puny breed. They restored the manly spirit of
freedom and after the revolutions of ten centuries, freedom
became the parent of taste and science.'

But again, the redeemed Italian was of no purer blood than the
post-Roman-Ostrogoth ancestry from which he sprang. The "puny
Roman" of the days of Theodoric owed his inheritance to the
cross of Roman weaklings with Roman slaves. He was not weak
because he was "mongrel" but because he sprang from bad stock
on both sides. The Ostrogoth and the Lombard who tyrannized
over him brought in a great strain of sterner stuff, followed
by crosses with captive and slave such as always accompany
conquest. To understand the fall of Rome one must consider the