In the meantime Rome was failing fast. The conflict for the throne on the death of each new emperor, showed that the Empire was crumbling from within. Long before the days of Constantine armies were electing their generals to the imperial dignity all over the empire. The throne was propped up a little longer by gaudy trappings, but this meant heavier taxation and further slavery. Finally the overgrown and undermined body split in twain, each half maintaining a separate existence. Byzantium, afterwards called Constantinople, was the capital of the Roman Empire of the East, while the city of Rome remained the centre of the Western half. The division was finally completed in the year 395. Although both were Christian, the duel empires were menaced by too many enemies from without to have the leisure to renew the anti-Jewish laws--for a time. Huns, Goths and Vandals. The influx of "barbarians," as all people outside of Rome were called, now came thick and fast. While some were absorbed in a friendly way, impressed with Rome's grandeur, and even served in its army, younger and healthier peoples looked contemptuously upon the decaying Empire and sought to absorb it rather than be absorbed. Even before the division, Julian had to keep off the incursions of the Franks and Alemanni (Germans). Theodosius, called the Great, bravely resisted the inflowing races, but he fought against destiny and therefore fought in vain. Driven by the Huns, a Scythian people from Tartary, under the leadership of Attila, the Goths crossed the Danube into the Roman territory as refugees; but cruelly treated, became enemies and began devastating the Western division of the empire. Alaric in 410 had sacked the imperial city itself. The Goths, to whom after much fighting, Rome granted important concessions, also--like Rome--fell into two divisions--the Ostragoths (Eastern), who settled on the Black Sea, and the Visigoths (Western), who occupied Dacia from the Dnieper to the Danube. These details make dry reading; but the break-up of the Roman Empire after occupying the centre of the world's stage for four hundred years, marks the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. This change of his environment was in a measure to change the Jew. Let us complete this general survey. Already hordes of Suevi, Burgundians, Alemanni and Vandals had invaded Gaul and set up a Vandal Empire in Spain, where they contended with the Visigoths for control. Genseric, called the scourge of God, invaded Africa in 429 and devastated the coast from Gibraltar to Carthage. It was he, by the way, who seized the Temple vessels that Titus had taken from Jerusalem. They had passed, like their first owners, through many vicissitudes. Next, the Huns began laying waste the Western Empire, though finally defeated by the Gothic king, Theodoric. At last Odoacer, in 476, at the head of barbarian mercenaries, dethroned the last emperor, and the Roman Empire of the West came to an end in that year.