Thus the empire was entirely abandoned to chance and caprice, and as its origin was military, it remained unto the end essentially a military despotism. The more powerful legions that were quartered in the most important provinces, especially in those of the frontiers, soon began to feel that they were far superior in numbers and strength to the effeminate Prætorians of the capital. Several emperors were elected and proclaimed by these legions; and in the number, such even as were not Romans, and were of barbarian extraction; for it happened that, in the provincial legions, many foreigners, especially Germans, were engaged in the Roman service in the provinces on the North-western frontier. Several of the emperors thus chosen by the legions, continued to reside where the centre of their power existed--in the station, or in some provincial capital conveniently situated. The Senate had long been but a mere shadow of its former greatness; even the capital began to lose much of its importance. At the same time the repeated incursions of the Northern nations ever rendered a general invasion more imminent, and the disaster, which men had foreseen from afar, appeared ever nearer its accomplishment. Already the first irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, when not merely an army for the sake of booty, or to plant a military colony, but a whole tribe with wives and children had migrated into the Roman territory, threw Rome into consternation during the civil wars, when she was at the very height of her military prowess. Cæsar had spared no exertion to reduce Gaul to complete subjection, and this country had ever since adopted more and more the language and customs of Rome. He experienced from no people such vigorous resistance, as from the Germanic tribes; and to protect against these nations the safety of the empire, by strongly fortifying the banks of the Rhine and Danube, constituted afterwards the first concern of the Roman Emperors. What a shock Augustus received from the defeat of Varus, by the German Arminius in his native woods! Even under the martial Trajan, who was almost the last conqueror in the line of Roman Emperors, men began to entertain serious apprehensions of the invasion of the Germanic tribes. The first great irruption was that of the Alemanni, who, under Marcus Aurelius burst into the Rhætian provinces, while similar movements occurred in Noricum and eastward towards Pannonia. However, Marcus Aurelius, by an energetic and successful resistance, repelled this first attempt, and thus was the means of deterring the barbarians for a long time from similar enterprises; and a hundred years elapsed before Aurelian drove them again from Italy, over the Alps as far as the Lech. Among the German nations, the Goths, who from the Scandinavian Isles had penetrated far into the interior of Germany, particularly towards the eastern, as afterwards towards the western, parts of that country, were pre-eminent in power. They could not be