[Footnote 459: Gibbon, ch. 11, Bohn ed. i, 365.] [Footnote 460: It is true that none of the generals mentioned was an Italian. Stilicho was indeed a Vandal; Aetius was a Scythian; Belisarius was a Thracian; and Narses probably a Persian. But they handled armies made up of all races; and their common qualification was a military science to be learned only from Roman tradition. Cp. Finlay, _History of Greece from its Conquest by the Romans_, ed. 1877, i, 211.] [Footnote 461: Paulus Orosius, vii, 43. The record has every appearance of trustworthiness, the historian premising that at Bethlehem he heard the blessed Jerome tell how he had known a wise old inhabitant of Narbonne, who was highly placed under Theodosius, and had known Athaulf intimately; and who often told Jerome how that great and wise king thus delivered himself.] [Footnote 462: Sismondi, citing the _Diplomata_, tom. iv, p. 616.] [Footnote 463: Because of his contempt for the religious controversies to which the literature of his time mainly ran.] [Footnote 464: See Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, B. ii, Kap. 2, as to his constant concern for culture and established usage.] [Footnote 465: Cassiodorus, 1. i, c. 34; iii, 44; iv, 5, 7. Cp. Finlay, ed. cited, i, 236, _note_. At the same time it is to be remembered that the population was in some districts greatly reduced. See below, p. 194. And there were, of course, Italian scarcities from time to time. Cassiodorus, v, 35; x, 27; xi, 5.] [Footnote 466: Cp. Gibbon, ch. 39 (Bohn ed. iv, 270-71), as to the general care of the administration and the prosperity of agriculture.] [Footnote 467: "Gross war Ruhm und Glanz seines [Theodoric's] Reiches; die inneren Schäden und Gefahren desselben blieben damals noch verhüllt, kaum etwa dem Kaiser und den Merovingen erkennbar" (F. Dahn, _Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Völker_, in Oncken's _Allg. Gesch._ 1881, i, 246).] [Footnote 468: Machiavelli points out (_Istorie Fiorentine_, 1. i) that this was the result of their having, at the death of their tyrant Clef, suspended the election of kings and set up the system of thirty dukes or marquises--an arrangement unfavourable to further conquest.] [Footnote 469: See Guizot, _Essais sur l'histoire de France_, 7e édit. pp. 185, 189, 195. But cp. pp. 198-201 as to the rise of hereditary feudality. Cp. also the _Histoire de la civilisation en France_, 13e édit. iii, 103; iv, 77-79.] [Footnote 470: Cp. Sismondi, _Républiques italiennes_, ed. cited, i, 85.] [Footnote 471: Guizot, _Histoire de la civilisation en France_, ii, 134, 162; Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, 8th ed. pp. 71-74.] [Footnote 472: See Guizot's table, pp. 130-32.]