But, exactly as happened in the West, the loss of political dominion carried with it the growth of moral dominion. The nations which pressed into these provinces gradually accepted Christianity in its Eastern form, and they have always looked up to the New Rome with a feeling the same in kind, but less strong in degree, as that with which the West has looked up to the Old Rome. ♦Extent of the Eastern Empire.♦ But, at the beginning of the eighth century, though the Imperial power still held posts here and there from the pillars of Hêraklês to the Kimmerian Bosporos, Saracens on the one side and Slaves on the other had cut short the continuous Roman dominion to a comparatively narrow space. The unbroken possessions of Cæsar were now confined to Thrace and that solid peninsula of Asia Minor which the Saracens constantly ravaged, but never conquered. Mountains had taken place of rivers as the great boundaries of the Empire: instead of the Danube and the Euphrates, the Roman Terminus had fallen back to Haimos and Tauros. § 5. _The Transfer of the Western Empire to the Franks._ ♦Growth of the Franks.♦ Meanwhile we must go back to the West, and trace the growth of the great power which was there growing up, a power which, while the elder Empire was thus cut short in the East, was in the end to supplant it in the West by the creation of a rival Empire. For a while the _Franks_ and the Empire had only occasional dealings with each other. Next to Britain, which had altogether ceased to be part of the Roman world, the part of the Western Empire which was least affected by the re-awakening of the Roman power in the East was the former province of Transalpine Gaul. The power of the Franks was fast spreading, both in their old home in Germany and in their new home in Gaul. ♦Frankish conquest of the Alemanni, 496;♦ The victory of Chlodwig over the _Alemanni_ made the Franks the leading people of Germany. The two German powers which had so long been the chief enemies of the Roman power along the Rhine were now united. Throughout the sixth century the German dominion of the Franks was growing. ♦of the Thuringians, c. 530; | of Bavaria.♦ The Frankish supremacy was extended over _Thuringia_, and later in the century over _Bavaria_. The Bavaria of this age, it must be remembered, has a much wider extent than the name has in modern geography, reaching to the northern borders of Italy. The Bavarians seem to have been themselves but recent settlers in the land between the Alps and the Danube; but their immigration and their reduction under Frankish supremacy made the lands immediately south of the Danube thoroughly Teutonic, as the earlier Frankish conquests had done by the lands immediately west of the Rhine. Long before this time, the Franks had greatly extended their dominions in Gaul also. ♦Conquest of Aquitaine [507-511] and Burgundy. 532-534.♦ In the later years of Chlodwig the greater part of _Aquitaine_ was won from the West-Goths.