He was crowned Emperor in 360, and he died in 363, and his death put a stop to it all. Even before his death a check had come. There had been a slight earthquake, or explosion, on the site of the ruins, which had greatly startled and terrified the excitable workmen. This incident gave rise to all sorts of tales of supernatural interference with their purpose; and very soon the work, so enthusiastically begun, was despairingly abandoned. A new and Christian Emperor was crowned in Rome, and the old bad state of things was re-established. Altogether, this brief lapse into paganism in the middle of the fourth century is like a flash of lightning from out dense thunder-clouds. It just enables us to see the surrounding ‘thick darkness.’ Illustration: _Edw^d. Weller_ THE ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC _London Longmans & Co._ CHAPTER XVI. THE BREAK-UP OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: SOME OF ITS CONSEQUENCES. =1. Political Changes.=――Theodosius, who died in 395, was the last of the Roman Emperors who held undivided sway over those vast dominions. After his death the ancient empire of Rome was split up into two great states, and styled the Empire of the East and the Empire of the West. The Northern barbarians found their opportunity in this division, and, in 410, and again in 455, great hordes of Goths and Vandals swooped down on beautiful, debased Rome, and plundered it. Within a century of the death of Theodosius the Roman Empire of the West had ceased to exist. The Emperors of the Eastern division――the Byzantine Emperors, as they were by-and-by called――fixed their court at Constantinople, and kept up their title and much of their power for over one thousand years――till the year 1453, in fact, when Constantinople was sacked by the Saracens. The general shifting of boundaries which ensued on the break-up of a great power like Rome brought about various changes in government, which are easier to recognise than changes in sentiment and circumstance. We will look at the political changes first, and the map will be a help to the understanding of them. The conquests of the barbarians resulted in new names and new masters to the old historic sites. Goths and Vandals, Lombards and Franks, rose on the ruins of the great Roman state. From the latter half of the fourth century to the end of the fifth there was general storm and upheaval throughout those dominions, in almost every province of which Jews were to be found. Not to speak for a moment of the Eastern division of the empire, there were Jews in Italy, in Greece, in the Archipelago, in such parts of Germany as were civilised, in Gaul, and in Spain. By the beginning of the sixth century, things had settled down a little, and we can see some order, and find some well-known names and landmarks. Justinian was at that