C. 11.--Neither Gerontius nor his soldiers ever got back to their old homes in Britain. What became of them we do not know. But Zosimus[362] tells us that Honorius now sent a formal rescript to the British cities abrogating the Lex Julia, which forbade civilians to carry arms, and bidding them look to their own safety. For now the end had really come, and the Eternal City itself had been sacked by barbarian hands. Never before and never since does history record a sacked city so mildly treated by the conquerors. Heretics as the Visi-goths were, they never forgot that the vanquished Catholics were their fellow-Christians, and, barbarians as they were, they left an example of mercy in victory which puts to the blush much more recent Christian and civilized warfare. C. 12.--But, for all that, the moral effect of Alaric's capture of Rome was portentous, and shook the very foundations of civilization throughout the world. To Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, the tidings came like the shock of an earthquake. Augustine, as he penned his 'De Civitate Dei,' felt the old world ended indeed, and the Kingdom of Heaven indeed at hand. And in Britain the whole elaborate system of Imperial civil and military government seems to have crumbled to the ground almost at once. It is noticeable that the rescript of Honorius is addressed simply to "the cities" of Britain, the local municipal officers of each several place. No higher authority remained. The Vicar of Britain, with his staff, the Count and Duke of the Britains with their soldiery, the Count of the Saxon Shore with his coastguard,--all were gone. It is possible that, as the deserted provincials learnt to combine for defence, the Dictators they chose from time to time to lead the national forces may have derived some of their authority from the remembrance of these old dignities. "The dragon of the great Pendragonship,"[363] the tufa of Caswallon (633), and the purple of Cunedda[364] may well have been derived (as Professor Rhys suggests) from this source. But practically the history of Roman Britain ends with a crash at the Fall of Rome. SECTION D. Beginning of English Conquest--Vortigern--Jutes in Thanet--Battle of Stamford--Massacre of Britons--Valentinian III.--Latest Roman coin found in Britain--Progress of Conquest--The Cymry--Survival of Romano-British titles--Arturian Romances--Procopius--Belisarius--Roman claims revived by Charlemagne--The British Empire.