I have already, I think, mentioned the names of all those Indo-European or Germanic tribes that occupy chief place in the story with the exception of the Vandals. These Vandals had their home somewhere between the Oder and the Vistula, in modern Prussia, and they travelled further than any of the rest, actually going down through Spain, across into Africa, turning eastward again and working their way along the north coast of Africa, establishing themselves at Carthage, equipping a great fleet there and crossing over and taking Rome itself by assault from the sea--a very wonderful story indeed. But the first people to move in this great irruption, or break in, of the barbarians into the Empire were those most southern, the Visigoths. They pressed {32} along, not southward this time but westward, into Gaul. We always have to bear in mind that these movements of the tribes westward were not like the marches of an army only, but rather like the migrations of a whole people. It was land, land to settle on and to live in without vexation from Huns and other enemies, that they came to seek; and they brought with them their wives and children and live stock, to settle them down on the newly won land. It seems to have been the custom of all these tribes to take to themselves one-third of the land that they conquered, leaving the conquered people two-thirds--a far more generous proceeding than we should have expected from them. But we have seen something of their institutions and courts of law. Although called "barbarians," they were far from being what we should term savages. They had, however, very little idea of learning or arts or science. The Greek thought had not penetrated among them, although many of them had by this time become Christian. They were not nearly so advanced in civilisation as the Romans, and their conquest of all Western Europe checked the progress of civilisation and threw all mankind backward into ways of life and of thought that probably the Romans and Greeks never expected man to return to. It was under pressure of their own kinsmen, the Ostrogoths, acting with their superior lords, the Huns, that the Visigoths at this time invaded Gaul and pushed into the north of Italy and down into Greece. They had become Christians. A large number of monks came with the armies and, in their religious zeal, destroyed many beautiful temples of the pagan gods in Greece and elsewhere.