576. The Approach of a Caste System. Thus society was crystallizing into castes. Not only had the peasantry become serfs, attached from generation to generation to the same plot of ground: the principle of serfdom was being applied to all classes. The artisan was bound to his hereditary gild, and the curial and the noble each to his hereditary order. Freedom of movement seemed lost. In its industries and its social relations as well as in government, the Empire was becoming despotic and Oriental.

577. Crushing Taxation. The Empire was "a great taxgathering and barbarian-fighting machine." It collected taxes in order to fight barbarians. But the time came when the provincials began to dread the tax-collector more than the Goth. This was partly because of the decrease in ability to pay, and partly because the complex organization cost more and more. Says Goldwin Smith: "The earth swarmed with the consuming hierarchy of extortion, so that it was said that they who received taxes were more than they who paid them." What made the burden more crushing was that the taxes were no longer spent (in any large measure) in aiding industry. They went to support the machinery of government and the luxury of the court. Moreover, the wealthiest classes succeeded in shifting the burden largely upon those least able to pay.

Thus, heavy as the taxation was, it produced too little. It yielded less and less. The revenues of the government

shrank up.

The empire suffered from a lack of wealth as well

as from a lack of men.

578. Peaceful Infusion of Barbarians before the Conquest.The only measure that helped fill up the gaps in population was the introduction of barbarians from without. This took place peacefully on a large scale; but so far as preserving the Empire was concerned, it was a source of weakness rather than of strength.

Not only was the Roman army mostly made up of Germans; whole provinces were settled mainly by them before their

kinsmen from without, in the fifth century, began in earnest to break over the Rhine. Conquered tribes had been settled, hundreds of thousands at a time, in frontier provinces, and friendly tribes had been admitted, to make their homes in depopulated districts. Thus as slaves, soldiers, coloni, subjects, the German world had been filtering into the Roman world, until a large part of the empire was peacefully Germanized. Even the imperial officers were largely Germans.

This infusion of new blood helped to renew the decaying population and to check the decline of material prosperity. The Germans within the empire, of course, took on Roman civilization and customs, in large measure; but at the same time, they kept a friendly feeling for their kinsmen and they retained some of their old customs and ideas. The barrier between the Empire and its assailants melted away imperceptibly. All this lessened the agony of the barbarian conquest, but it helped to make it possible.

FOR FURTHER READING on the internal decay and the causes of the "Fall.". Munro and Sellery's Medieval Civilization, ch. ii. ("Landed Aristocracy and Beginnings of Serfdom "), and ch. iii. (" Taxation in the Fourth Century "); Oman's Dark Ages, chs. i, ii; Seeley's Imperialism, Lecture III; Adams' Civilization during the Middle Ages, 76–88 (especially good). Advanced students may consult Bury's Later Roman Empire, I, 25-36; Dill's Roman Society (the best one work), bks. ii, iii; Taylor's Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, chs. ii-v; Hodgkin's Italy and Her Invaders, II, 532-613, if accessible, and his article on "The Fall of the Roman Empire" in the Contemporary Review, January, 1898; (Mr. Hodgkin in this article does not even refer to moral causes.) Hodgkin's Dynasty of Theodosius, ch. ii, contains some valuable pages on Roman Society.

III. LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

579. Authors and Works: Theological Character of the Literature. The great names in literature in the fourth century were almost all names of churchmen, and the writings were nearly all theological. In other lines, as in the third century, the period was one of intellectual decay. There were no more

poets, and no new discoveries in science. Even the old science and literature were neglected. The following table makes this apparent. (The most important names are italicized.)

a. The chief pagan writers were :—

Ammianus, an Asiatic Greek soldier, the author of a spirited continuation of Tacitus' history;

Eutropius, a soldier and the author of a summary of Roman history; Julian (the emperor), whose chief works were his Memoirs and a "Refutation" of Christianity.

b. Many Christian writers produced a flood of theological and argumentative works. Among them were:

Ambrose (Saint), a Gallic lawyer, and afterward bishop of Milan (the bishop who disciplined the Emperor Theodosius); the author of many letters, sermons, and hymns;

Anthony (Saint), an Egyptian hermit;

Arius and Athanasius (§ 535);

Augustine (Saint), bishop of Hippo in Africa, author of many letters, commentaries, sermons, theological works; probably the most widely known are his Confessions and The City of God;

Basil (Saint);

Chrysostom (Saint), a famous orator;

Eusebius, a bishop and the author of an ecclesiastical history;

Jerome (Saint), a Syrian hermit, who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate) and wrote controversial works;

Martin (Saint), soldier, monk, and bishop of Tours, who established the first monastery in Gaul (famous for its beautiful manuscripts); Ulfilas, a Gothic hostage, who became bishop and missionary among his people, converting them to Arianism; he arranged a Gothic alphabet and translated the Bible into Gothic (the oldest literary work in a Teutonic language; a copy in silver letters upon scarlet parchment is preserved in the library of Upsala University).

580. Unfavorable Attitude of the Christians toward Pagan Learning. One cause of the rapid intellectual decline of the fourth century is that many Christians were hostile to pagan science and literature, while for a long time the Christian world produced little to take their place. The pagan poetry, beautiful as it was, was filled with stories of the old gods, and

these stories were often immoral. These facts explain in part why the Christians feared contamination from pagan literature. The contempt for pagan science has less excuse, and its result was particularly unfortunate.

For instance, the spherical form of the earth was well known to the Greeks (§ 240); but the early Christians demolished the idea by theological arguments. "It is impossible," said St. Augustine, “there should be inhabitants on the other side of the earth, since no such race is recorded in Scripture among the descendants of Adam." Many argued in like tone that Scripture gave no warrant for believing the earth round, and that therefore it could not be so. "Besides," some of them added, "if it were round, how could all men see Christ at his coming?"

Even St. Jerome, an ardent scholar during most of his life, came at one time under the influence of this hostile feeling so far as to rejoice at the growing neglect of Plato and to warn Christians against pagan writers. In 398, a council of the church officially cautioned bishops against reading any books except religious ones; and the prevalent feeling was forcefully expressed a little earlier (350 A.D.) in a writing known as the "Apostolical Constitutions":

"Refrain from all the writings of the heathens;

For if thou

wilt explore history, thou hast the Books of the Kings; or seekest thou for words of wisdom and eloquence, thou hast the Prophets, Job, and the Book of Proverbs, wherein thou shalt find a more perfect knowledge of all eloquence and wisdom, for they are the voice of the Lord, the only wise God. Or dost thou long for tuneful strains, thou hast the Psalms; or to explore the origin of things, thou hast the Book of Genesis; or for customs and observances, thou hast the excellent law of the Lord God. Wherefore abstain scrupulously from all strange and devilish books."

The Christians did not usually attend the public schools until the time of Constantine, and soon after that time they began to break up the old philosophical schools. The com

1 The attitude was somewhat like that of the Puritans of the seventeenth century toward the plays of Shakspere and his fellow-dramatists. But in the third and fourth centuries the result was more disastrous, because then all literature and science were pagan.

plete extinction of these schools did not come until the barbarian invasions of the next century added to their difficulties; but many of the greatest of them had already been destroyed or replaced by schools of a much lower character for theological purposes only. The church was soon to become the mother and the sole protector of a new learning; but it has to bear part of the blame for the loss of the old.1

581. Other and Deeper Causes of the Decay of Learning. But this attitude of the Christians was not the main cause for the decay of learning. A deeper and more far-reaching cause lay in the general decline of the Roman world which we have discussed (§§ 569-577). That world, for the time at least, was exhausted. It had been growing weaker year by year, in government, in industry, in population, as well as in literature and science. Now it was to be torn down and rebuilt by a more vigorous people.

REVIEW EXERCISE FOR PART V.

1. Add the dates 284, 325, 378, to the list.

2. Extend list of terms and names for fact drill.

3. Memorize a characterization of the centuries of the Empire; i.e.First and second centuries: good government, - happy, peaceful, prosperous.

Third century: general decline, — material, political, and intel

lectual.

Fourth century: revival of imperial power; victory of Christianity.

Fifth and sixth centuries (in advance): barbarian invasions and conquests.

4. Review the growth of the Christian church through the whole

period.

5. Review briefly the movement in literature and science.

1 See Laurie, Rise of Universities, 19-27; or Compayré, History of Pedagogy, 62-64. Drane's Christian Schools and Scholars, 1-47, gives an interesting treatment of early Christian culture somewhat different from that presented in this volume.