Of the Empire itself, its unions, its divisions, the general position which it kept in the world, I shall speak in another lecture. My present subject is the influence of Rome on the new nations which in the course of the fifth century found themselves homes within her borders. And that practically means her influence on the Teutonic nations of the Western European mainland. It is true that the greatest Teutonic migration of all, the long marches of the Goths, Eastern and Western, began in the East. While Vandals, Burgundians, Franks, came in by way of Rhine, the Goths came in by way of Danube. Their course in the Danubian lands forms one of the most striking pieces of the history of the fourth century and one of the most confused pieces of the history of the fifth. But that history of the Goths which really affected the world, the history both of the West-Goths of Alaric and of the East-Goths of Theodoric, was wrought in the West. The Western Goths, as their name implies, came before the Eastern and found homes further to the West. And after the withdrawal of Theodoric and the East-Goths from the Eastern provinces, those provinces which still remained under the immediate rule of the Emperors at the New Rome, all part of the first Teutonic invaders in the history of the Eastern peninsula may be said to come to an end. In that peninsula they had been hardly more than invaders; they had formed no important abiding settlement. For them the Eastern lands were mainly a road to Italy and Spain and Gaul. The part which the Teutons played in the West was to be played in the East, so far as it was to be played at all, by quite another branch of the Aryan stock.