It is difficult to conceive of a more melancholy spectacle than Italy presented. The barbarians were masters of the whole Peninsula. Odoacer, a stern Gothic warrior, after several years of the wildest anarchy, with wars and assassinations too numerous to mention, in the year 476 compelled the Roman senate by a formal decree to abolish the imperial succession, and to recognize him as the military chieftain of Italy. Thus, after the decay of ages, the Roman empire fell, to rise no more. Sagaciously this ferocious barbarian respected time-honored institutions. He conferred upon his captains titles of dukes and counts, thus perpetuating and extending the feudal system. The Roman nobles, surrendering themselves to all sensual indulgence, had sunk into the lowest debasement. A contemporary historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, gives the following graphic account of the aristocracy of Rome at that time:―― “The ostentation of presenting the rent-roll of their estates provokes the resentment of every man who remembers that their poor ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers. The modern nobles measure their rank by the splendor of their carriages and the magnificence of their dress. Followed by a train of fifty slaves, they sweep the streets with impetuous speed. When they condescend to visit the public baths, they assume a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to themselves conveniences designed for the Roman people. Sometimes they visit their plantations in the country, and, by the toil of servile hands, engage in the amusements of the chase. When they travel, they are followed by a multitude of cooks and inferior servants, accompanied by a promiscuous crowd of slaves and dependent plebeians. They express exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and contemptuous indifference for all the rest of the human species. Should they call for some water, and a slave be tardy in bringing it, the slave would be punished with three hundred lashes. “A sure method of introduction to the society of the great is skill in gambling. The confederates are united by an indissoluble bond of friendship, or rather of conspiracy. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages their attention who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study. The distress which chastises extravagant luxury often reduces them to the most humiliating expedients. When they wish to borrow, they are as suppliant as a slave. When called upon to pay, they assume airs of indolence, as if they were the grandsons of Hercules.” Italy had indeed fallen: the barbaric leader of a semi-civilized band was her enthroned monarch. During a reign of fourteen years, vast crowds of emigrants from the bleak realms north of the Rhine and the Danube flocked into sunny Italy.