Not only did the Visigoths strive to imitate their Roman subjects in the style and finish of their edifices, but in every public employment, in every department of art and labor, was the potent influence of the subjugated people visible. The organization of the various corps and divisions of the army was modelled after that of the legion. The most popular amusements were, with the exception of gladiatorial combats, identical with those which had excited to frenzied enthusiasm the vast audiences of Rome and Constantinople in the circus and the amphitheatre. The dress of the citizen, the armor of the soldier, were Roman; the ornaments of the ladies, the insignia of royalty, the decorations of the churches, were Byzantine. The language in common use was a barbarous and bastard Latin. The fusion of hostile races, the amalgamation of the conqueror and the conquered, that political problem which has taxed the skill of the wisest statesmen, was almost brought to a successful solution by the broad statesmanship of the Visigothic sovereigns. The adoption and enforcement of a uniform and well-conceived body of laws did much to accomplish this end. But the acceptance of orthodox Christianity as the recognized form of national faith, and the legalizing of intermarriage between the different peoples of the Peninsula, by their tendency to remove the formidable barriers raised by caste, which had hitherto isolated the various classes of society, did far more to promote the union of the discordant elements of society. The Basques--constant types of the primitive Iberian--alone, among the multifarious tribes which acknowledged the supremacy of the court of Toledo, have preserved their nationality, and have obstinately refused to surrender those distinctive racial peculiarities that have made them for centuries the subject of the entertaining speculations of the ethnologist.