400 Mr TYTLER'S Introduction to an Enquiry 



of this ancient people was even at this period fast approach- 

 ing to extinction. Immense multitudes of Romans, who had 

 formerly enjoyed dignity and fortune, were reduced to the 

 state of captives in the barbarian armies, or slaves who culti- 

 vated their lands. Multitudes were driven, and multitudes vo- 

 luntarily retired, into exile, consenting to drag on a dependent 

 existence in the remotest provinces of the empire. Want and 

 famine, which, in the exhausted state of the provinces, were not 

 unfrequent visitants, carried off the victims which had been spa- 

 red by the ravages of war, many of those who remained, inter- 

 married with the barbarian families, and all these co-operating 

 circumstances began at this time to have a strong effect in pro- 

 ducing that physical and moral degradation of this once illustri- 

 ous people, which, in the course of the succeeding century, and 

 shortly after the settlement of the Lombard princes, concluded 

 in the total disappearance of the Roman race. For although still 

 the names of Roman families remained, nothing but the name 

 was left. All else was " second childishness and mere oblivion." 

 THEODOSIUS the Great * succeeded to the empire in the lat- 

 ter part of the fourth century ; and, during his reign, al- 

 though the highest qualities of a soldier were successfully and 

 brilliantly exerted, yet the accumulated difficulties which on eve- 

 ry side threatened the Western Empire, left little leisure for the 

 princely patronage of literature, or the peaceful acquisitions of 

 knowledge. The death of THEODOSIUS sealed the fate of the Ro- 

 man Empire, which, after lingering through the feeble reigns of 

 his unremembered successors, closed its mighty history of twelve 

 centuries, in the sack of Rome by ODOACER king of the Hem- 



lif. 



The Herulian dominion in Italy, which lasted only for seven- 

 teen years, was concluded, and the empire of the Ostrogoths 



* A. D. 379. + A. D. 476. 



f e 



