When Clovis, at the age of fifteen, succeeded his father, Childeric, as king of the Salian tribe, his people were mainly pagans; the Salian domain was very limited, the treasury empty, and there was no store of either grain or wine. But these difficulties were overcome by him; he subjugated the neighboring tribes, and made Christianity the state religion. The new faith was accorded great privileges and means of influence, in many cases favorable to humanity and showing respect to the rights of individuals. So great an advance in civilization is an early milestone on the path of progress. About A.D. 241 or 242 the Sixth Roman legion, commanded by Aurelian, at that time military tribune, and thirty years later emperor, had just finished a campaign on the Rhine, undertaken for the purpose of driving the Germans from Gaul, and was preparing for eastern service, to make war on the Persians. The soldiers sang: "We have slain a thousand Franks and a thousand Sarmatians; we want a thousand, thousand, Thousand Persians." That was, apparently, a popular burthen at the time, for on the days of military festivals, at Rome and in Gaul, the children sang, as they danced: "We have cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand Thousand; One man hath cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand, Thousand thousand; May he live a thousand thousand years, he who Hath slain a thousand thousand! Nobody hath so much of wine as he Hath of blood poured out." Aurelian, the hero of these ditties, was indeed much given to the pouring out of blood, for at the approach of a fresh war he wrote to the senate: "I marvel, conscript fathers, that ye have so much misgiving about opening the Sibylline books, as if ye were deliberating in an assembly of Christians, and not in the temple of all the gods. Let inquiry be made of the sacred books, and let celebration take place of the ceremonies that ought to be fulfilled. Far from refusing, I offer, with zeal, to satisfy all expenditure required with _captives of every nationality_, victims of royal rank. It is no shame to conquer with the aid of the gods; it is thus that our ancestors began and ended many a war." Human sacrifices, then, were not yet foreign to pagan festivals, and probably the blood of more than one Frankish captive on that occasion flowed in the temple of all the gods.