In structure, too, the government and society were no longer Roman in anything but name. The administration of the empire had become a Persian absolutism, and its society was verging towards oriental caste. If the art, philosophy, and science of the ancients could be preserved only by such conditions, it was well that they should pass away. The empire in ceasing to be Roman had taken up the worst as well as the best of the past, and as it grew respectable under Stoic or Christian teaching, it grew indifferent to the high impulses of patriotism, cold and formal outwardly, wearying inwardly of its burden. The northern frontiers of this empire did not prove to be an unbroken barrier to the Germans, however, and for two centuries before the sack of Rome, they had been crossing, individually or in tribes, into the peaceful stretches of the civilised world. Their tribal wars at home made all the more alluring the attractions of the empire. For a long time the Roman armies kept these barbarians from anything resembling conquest, but even the vanquished who survived defeat found a home in Roman villas or among the federated troops. The fifth century merely brought to light what had been long preparing, and it took but few invaders to accomplish the final overthrow. The success of these last invasions has imposed an exaggeration of their extent upon historians. They were not true wanderings of nations, but rather incursions of adventurers. The barbarians we call by the name of Goths were a mixture of many nations, while the army of Clovis was hardly more than a single Roman legion. Yet the important fact is that the invasions of the fifth century were successful, and with them the new age begins.