But, as in the Greek case, so in the Roman, the very decline of territorial dominion marked the beginning of a newly extended moral influence. By the days of Marcus the two great elements of the world that was making already stood face to face. The tables were now turned; the German was the invader; the Roman stood on his defence. Again and again was the German driven back from the soil of Gaul and even from the soil of Italy. Presently days came when he could no longer be driven back, days when it was oftentimes wiser to welcome him on Roman soil, as the subject, the ally, the soldier of the Empire, taught to guard the borders of the Empire against brethren who came on the same errand as himself. Warlike Emperors won triumphs at the head of Teutonic armies; unwarlike Emperors sent forth commanders of Teutonic blood to win triumphs for them. At the bidding of such commanders Emperors were made and unmade; men of Teutonic birth became consuls, patricians, guardians of Imperial sons-in-law; one prize alone was forbidden; the diadem itself was not as yet to rest on a Teutonic brow. And if the sovereignty of Rome remained in Roman hands, so it was in one quarter alone, the quarter in which she had seemed to make the greatest advance, that the territorial extent of the dominion of Rome was formally cut short. The Asiatic conquests of Trajan had passed away almost with Trajan’s self; his European conquest, his vast Dacian province, last to be won and first to pass away, was given up by a soldier of Rome hardly less illustrious than himself. Aurelian made the Danube once more the Roman frontier; beyond it the Goth might dwell till his day came to march at will through the three great peninsulas and at last to find himself a throne in the most western. But for a hundred and fifty years after the surrender of Dacia, fully up to the end of the fourth century, we can hardly say that the borders of the Empire ever formally went back. The Empire contained crowds of Teutonic settlers; we can hardly say that it as yet contained any Teutonic settlements. Whoever dwelled within the Roman frontier was either, in name at least, a subject or soldier of Cæsar, or else he was an enemy marching to and fro in a foreign land. The Franks already dwelled in their distant corner of Gaul; but they dwelled there as soldiers of the Empire, charged with the duty, which, if they sometimes betrayed, they sometimes loyally discharged, of keeping the frontier of Rome against new comers. The Goth himself, marching hither and thither through Greek, Italian, and Gaulish lands, holding Rome herself to ransom, keeping at last his jubilee of plunder within her walls, was not always the formal foe of her princes; at one moment he accepted honours and commands from the lawful Augustus; at another he made himself the friend and soldier of the Empire by setting up an Emperor of his own. Alaric himself, in all his marches, all his sieges,