Chapter XXXI: Invasion Of Italy, Occupation Of Territories By

Barbarians.—Part VII.

The situation of Spain, separated, on all sides, from the enemies
of Rome, by the sea, by the mountains, and by intermediate
provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and
sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of
domestic happiness, that, in a period of four hundred years,
Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman
empire. The footsteps of the Barbarians, who, in the reign of
Gallienus, had penetrated beyond the Pyrenees, were soon
obliterated by the return of peace; and in the fourth century of
the Christian era, the cities of Emerita, or Merida, of Corduba,
Seville, Bracara, and Tarragona, were numbered with the most
illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal,
the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms, was improved and
manufactured by the skill of an industrious people; and the
peculiar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an
extensive and profitable trade. 155 The arts and sciences
flourished under the protection of the emperors; and if the
character of the Spaniards was enfeebled by peace and servitude,
the hostile approach of the Germans, who had spread terror and
desolation from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, seemed to rekindle
some sparks of military ardor. As long as the defence of the
mountains was intrusted to the hardy and faithful militia of the
country, they successfully repelled the frequent attempts of the
Barbarians. But no sooner had the national troops been compelled
to resign their post to the Honorian bands, in the service of
Constantine, than the gates of Spain were treacherously betrayed
to the public enemy, about ten months before the sack of Rome by
the Goths. 156 The consciousness of guilt, and the thirst of
rapine, prompted the mercenary guards of the Pyrenees to desert
their station; to invite the arms of the Suevi, the Vandals, and
the Alani; and to swell the torrent which was poured with
irresistible violence from the frontiers of Gaul to the sea of
Africa. The misfortunes of Spain may be described in the language
of its most eloquent historian, who has concisely expressed the
passionate, and perhaps exaggerated, declamations of contemporary
writers. 157 “The irruption of these nations was followed by the
most dreadful calamities; as the Barbarians exercised their
indiscriminate cruelty on the fortunes of the Romans and the
Spaniards, and ravaged with equal fury the cities and the open
country. The progress of famine reduced the miserable inhabitants
to feed on the flesh of their fellow-creatures; and even the wild
beasts, who multiplied, without control, in the desert, were
exasperated, by the taste of blood, and the impatience of hunger,
boldly to attack and devour their human prey. Pestilence soon
appeared, the inseparable companion of famine; a large proportion
of the people was swept away; and the groans of the dying excited
only the envy of their surviving friends. At length the
Barbarians, satiated with carnage and rapine, and afflicted by
the contagious evils which they themselves had introduced, fixed
their permanent seats in the depopulated country. The ancient
Gallicia, whose limits included the kingdom of Old Castille, was
divided between the Suevi and the Vandals; the Alani were
scattered over the provinces of Carthagena and Lusitania, from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean; and the fruitful
territory of Boetica was allotted to the Silingi, another branch
of the Vandalic nation. After regulating this partition, the
conquerors contracted with their new subjects some reciprocal
engagements of protection and obedience: the lands were again
cultivated; and the towns and villages were again occupied by a
captive people. The greatest part of the Spaniards was even
disposed to prefer this new condition of poverty and barbarism,
to the severe oppressions of the Roman government; yet there were
many who still asserted their native freedom; and who refused,
more especially in the mountains of Gallicia, to submit to the
Barbarian yoke.” 158

155 (return) [ Without recurring to the more ancient writers, I
shall quote three respectable testimonies which belong to the
fourth and seventh centuries; the Expositio totius Mundi, (p. 16,
in the third volume of Hudson’s Minor Geographers,) Ausonius, (de
Claris Urbibus, p. 242, edit. Toll.,) and Isidore of Seville,
(Praefat. ad. Chron. ap. Grotium, Hist. Goth. 707.) Many
particulars relative to the fertility and trade of Spain may be
found in Nonnius, Hispania Illustrata; and in Huet, Hist. du
Commerce des Anciens, c. 40. p. 228-234.]

156 (return) [ The date is accurately fixed in the Fasti, and the
Chronicle of Idatius. Orosius (l. vii. c. 40, p. 578) imputes the
loss of Spain to the treachery of the Honorians; while Sozomen
(l. ix. c. 12) accuses only their negligence.]

157 (return) [ Idatius wishes to apply the prophecies of Daniel
to these national calamities; and is therefore obliged to
accommodate the circumstances of the event to the terms of the
prediction.]

158 (return) [ Mariana de Rebus Hispanicis, l. v. c. 1, tom. i.
p. 148. Comit. 1733. He had read, in Orosius, (l. vii. c. 41, p.
579,) that the Barbarians had turned their swords into
ploughshares; and that many of the Provincials had preferred
inter Barbaros pauperem libertatem, quam inter Romanos
tributariam solicitudinem, sustinere.]

The important present of the heads of Jovinus and Sebastian had
approved the friendship of Adolphus, and restored Gaul to the
obedience of his brother Honorius. Peace was incompatible with
the situation and temper of the king of the Goths. He readily
accepted the proposal of turning his victorious arms against the
Barbarians of Spain; the troops of Constantius intercepted his
communication with the seaports of Gaul, and gently pressed his
march towards the Pyrenees: 159 he passed the mountains, and
surprised, in the name of the emperor, the city of Barcelona. The
fondness of Adolphus for his Roman bride, was not abated by time
or possession: and the birth of a son, surnamed, from his
illustrious grandsire, Theodosius, appeared to fix him forever in
the interest of the republic. The loss of that infant, whose
remains were deposited in a silver coffin in one of the churches
near Barcelona, afflicted his parents; but the grief of the
Gothic king was suspended by the labors of the field; and the
course of his victories was soon interrupted by domestic treason.

He had imprudently received into his service one of the followers
of Sarus; a Barbarian of a daring spirit, but of a diminutive
stature; whose secret desire of revenging the death of his
beloved patron was continually irritated by the sarcasms of his
insolent master. Adolphus was assassinated in the palace of
Barcelona; the laws of the succession were violated by a
tumultuous faction; 160 and a stranger to the royal race,
Singeric, the brother of Sarus himself, was seated on the Gothic
throne. The first act of his reign was the inhuman murder of the
six children of Adolphus, the issue of a former marriage, whom he
tore, without pity, from the feeble arms of a venerable bishop.
161 The unfortunate Placidia, instead of the respectful
compassion, which she might have excited in the most savage
breasts, was treated with cruel and wanton insult. The daughter
of the emperor Theodosius, confounded among a crowd of vulgar
captives, was compelled to march on foot above twelve miles,
before the horse of a Barbarian, the assassin of a husband whom
Placidia loved and lamented. 162

159 (return) [ This mixture of force and persuasion may be fairly
inferred from comparing Orosius and Jornandes, the Roman and the
Gothic historian.]

160 (return) [ According to the system of Jornandes, (c. 33, p.
659,) the true hereditary right to the Gothic sceptre was vested
in the Amali; but those princes, who were the vassals of the
Huns, commanded the tribes of the Ostrogoths in some distant
parts of Germany or Scythia.]

161 (return) [ The murder is related by Olympiodorus: but the
number of the children is taken from an epitaph of suspected
authority.]

162 (return) [ The death of Adolphus was celebrated at
Constantinople with illuminations and Circensian games. (See
Chron. Alexandrin.) It may seem doubtful whether the Greeks were
actuated, on this occasion, be their hatred of the Barbarians, or
of the Latins.]

But Placidia soon obtained the pleasure of revenge, and the view
of her ignominious sufferings might rouse an indignant people
against the tyrant, who was assassinated on the seventh day of
his usurpation. After the death of Singeric, the free choice of
the nation bestowed the Gothic sceptre on Wallia; whose warlike
and ambitious temper appeared, in the beginning of his reign,
extremely hostile to the republic. He marched in arms from
Barcelona to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which the ancients
revered and dreaded as the boundary of the world. But when he
reached the southern promontory of Spain, 163 and, from the rock
now covered by the fortress of Gibraltar, contemplated the
neighboring and fertile coast of Africa, Wallia resumed the
designs of conquest, which had been interrupted by the death of
Alaric. The winds and waves again disappointed the enterprise of
the Goths; and the minds of a superstitious people were deeply
affected by the repeated disasters of storms and shipwrecks. In
this disposition the successor of Adolphus no longer refused to
listen to a Roman ambassador, whose proposals were enforced by
the real, or supposed, approach of a numerous army, under the
conduct of the brave Constantius. A solemn treaty was stipulated
and observed; Placidia was honorably restored to her brother; six
hundred thousand measures of wheat were delivered to the hungry
Goths; 164 and Wallia engaged to draw his sword in the service of
the empire. A bloody war was instantly excited among the
Barbarians of Spain; and the contending princes are said to have
addressed their letters, their ambassadors, and their hostages,
to the throne of the Western emperor, exhorting him to remain a
tranquil spectator of their contest; the events of which must be
favorable to the Romans, by the mutual slaughter of their common
enemies. 165 The Spanish war was obstinately supported, during
three campaigns, with desperate valor, and various success; and
the martial achievements of Wallia diffused through the empire
the superior renown of the Gothic hero. He exterminated the
Silingi, who had irretrievably ruined the elegant plenty of the
province of Boetica. He slew, in battle, the king of the Alani;
and the remains of those Scythian wanderers, who escaped from the
field, instead of choosing a new leader, humbly sought a refuge
under the standard of the Vandals, with whom they were ever
afterwards confounded. The Vandals themselves, and the Suevi,
yielded to the efforts of the invincible Goths. The promiscuous
multitude of Barbarians, whose retreat had been intercepted, were
driven into the mountains of Gallicia; where they still
continued, in a narrow compass and on a barren soil, to exercise
their domestic and implacable hostilities. In the pride of
victory, Wallia was faithful to his engagements: he restored his
Spanish conquests to the obedience of Honorius; and the tyranny
of the Imperial officers soon reduced an oppressed people to
regret the time of their Barbarian servitude. While the event of
the war was still doubtful, the first advantages obtained by the
arms of Wallia had encouraged the court of Ravenna to decree the
honors of a triumph to their feeble sovereign. He entered Rome
like the ancient conquerors of nations; and if the monuments of
servile corruption had not long since met with the fate which
they deserved, we should probably find that a crowd of poets and
orators, of magistrates and bishops, applauded the fortune, the
wisdom, and the invincible courage, of the emperor Honorius. 166

163 (return) [

Quod Tartessiacis avus hujus Vallia terris Vandalicas turmas, et
juncti Martis Alanos Stravit, et occiduam texere cadavera Calpen.

Sidon. Apollinar. in Panegyr. Anthem. 363 p. 300, edit. Sirmond.]

164 (return) [ This supply was very acceptable: the Goths were
insulted by the Vandals of Spain with the epithet of Truli,
because in their extreme distress, they had given a piece of gold
for a trula, or about half a pound of flour. Olympiod. apud Phot.
p. 189.]

165 (return) [ Orosius inserts a copy of these pretended letters.
Tu cum omnibus pacem habe, omniumque obsides accipe; nos nobis
confligimus nobis perimus, tibi vincimus; immortalis vero
quaestus erit Reipublicae tuae, si utrique pereamus. The idea is
just; but I cannot persuade myself that it was entertained or
expressed by the Barbarians.]

166 (return) [ Roman triumphans ingreditur, is the formal
expression of Prosper’s Chronicle. The facts which relate to the
death of Adolphus, and the exploits of Wallia, are related from
Olympiodorus, (ap. Phot. p. 188,) Orosius, (l. vii. c. 43 p.
584-587,) Jornandes, (de Rebus p. 31, 32,) and the chronicles of
Idatius and Isidore.]

Such a triumph might have been justly claimed by the ally of
Rome, if Wallia, before he repassed the Pyrenees, had extirpated
the seeds of the Spanish war. His victorious Goths, forty-three
years after they had passed the Danube, were established,
according to the faith of treaties, in the possession of the
second Aquitain; a maritime province between the Garonne and the
Loire, under the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction of
Bourdeaux. That metropolis, advantageously situated for the trade
of the ocean, was built in a regular and elegant form; and its
numerous inhabitants were distinguished among the Gauls by their
wealth, their learning, and the politeness of their manners. The
adjacent province, which has been fondly compared to the garden
of Eden, is blessed with a fruitful soil, and a temperate
climate; the face of the country displayed the arts and the
rewards of industry; and the Goths, after their martial toils,
luxuriously exhausted the rich vineyards of Aquitain. 167 The
Gothic limits were enlarged by the additional gift of some
neighboring dioceses; and the successors of Alaric fixed their
royal residence at Thoulouse, which included five populous
quarters, or cities, within the spacious circuit of its walls.
About the same time, in the last years of the reign of Honorius,
the Goths, the Burgundians, and the Franks, obtained a permanent
seat and dominion in the provinces of Gaul. The liberal grant of
the usurper Jovinus to his Burgundian allies, was confirmed by
the lawful emperor; the lands of the First, or Upper, Germany,
were ceded to those formidable Barbarians; and they gradually
occupied, either by conquest or treaty, the two provinces which
still retain, with the titles of Duchy and County, the national
appellation of Burgundy. 168 The Franks, the valiant and faithful
allies of the Roman republic, were soon tempted to imitate the
invaders, whom they had so bravely resisted. Treves, the capital
of Gaul, was pillaged by their lawless bands; and the humble
colony, which they so long maintained in the district of
Toxandia, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along the banks of
the Meuse and Scheld, till their independent power filled the
whole extent of the Second, or Lower Germany. These facts may be
sufficiently justified by historic evidence; but the foundation
of the French monarchy by Pharamond, the conquests, the laws, and
even the existence, of that hero, have been justly arraigned by
the impartial severity of modern criticism. 169

167 (return) [ Ausonius (de Claris Urbibus, p. 257-262)
celebrates Bourdeaux with the partial affection of a native. See
in Salvian (de Gubern. Dei, p. 228. Paris, 1608) a florid
description of the provinces of Aquitain and Novempopulania.]

168 (return) [ Orosius (l. vii. c. 32, p. 550) commends the
mildness and modesty of these Burgundians, who treated their
subjects of Gaul as their Christian brethren. Mascou has
illustrated the origin of their kingdom in the four first
annotations at the end of his laborious History of the Ancient
Germans, vol. ii. p. 555-572, of the English translation.]

169 (return) [ See Mascou, l. viii. c. 43, 44, 45. Except in a
short and suspicious line of the Chronicle of Prosper, (in tom.
i. p. 638,) the name of Pharamond is never mentioned before the
seventh century. The author of the Gesta Francorum (in tom. ii.
p. 543) suggests, probably enough, that the choice of Pharamond,
or at least of a king, was recommended to the Franks by his
father Marcomir, who was an exile in Tuscany. Note: The first
mention of Pharamond is in the Gesta Francorum, assigned to about
the year 720. St. Martin, iv. 469. The modern French writers in
general subscribe to the opinion of Thierry: Faramond fils de
Markomir, quo que son nom soit bien germanique, et son regne
possible, ne figure pas dans les histoires les plus dignes de
foi. A. Thierry, Lettres l’Histoire de France, p. 90.—M.]

The ruin of the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from the
establishment of these Barbarians, whose alliance was dangerous
and oppressive, and who were capriciously impelled, by interest
or passion, to violate the public peace. A heavy and partial
ransom was imposed on the surviving provincials, who had escaped
the calamities of war; the fairest and most fertile lands were
assigned to the rapacious strangers, for the use of their
families, their slaves, and their cattle; and the trembling
natives relinquished with a sigh the inheritance of their
fathers. Yet these domestic misfortunes, which are seldom the lot
of a vanquished people, had been felt and inflicted by the Romans
themselves, not only in the insolence of foreign conquest, but in
the madness of civil discord. The Triumvirs proscribed eighteen
of the most flourishing colonies of Italy; and distributed their
lands and houses to the veterans who revenged the death of
Caesar, and oppressed the liberty of their country. Two poets of
unequal fame have deplored, in similar circumstances, the loss of
their patrimony; but the legionaries of Augustus appear to have
surpassed, in violence and injustice, the Barbarians who invaded
Gaul under the reign of Honorius. It was not without the utmost
difficulty that Virgil escaped from the sword of the Centurion,
who had usurped his farm in the neighborhood of Mantua; 170 but
Paulinus of Bourdeaux received a sum of money from his Gothic
purchaser, which he accepted with pleasure and surprise; and
though it was much inferior to the real value of his estate, this
act of rapine was disguised by some colors of moderation and
equity. 171 The odious name of conquerors was softened into the
mild and friendly appellation of the guests of the Romans; and
the Barbarians of Gaul, more especially the Goths, repeatedly
declared, that they were bound to the people by the ties of
hospitality, and to the emperor by the duty of allegiance and
military service. The title of Honorius and his successors, their
laws, and their civil magistrates, were still respected in the
provinces of Gaul, of which they had resigned the possession to
the Barbarian allies; and the kings, who exercised a supreme and
independent authority over their native subjects, ambitiously
solicited the more honorable rank of master-generals of the
Imperial armies. 172 Such was the involuntary reverence which the
Roman name still impressed on the minds of those warriors, who
had borne away in triumph the spoils of the Capitol.

170 (return) [ O Lycida, vivi pervenimus: advena nostri (Quod
nunquam veriti sumus) ut possessor agelli Diseret: Haec mea sunt;
veteres migrate coloni. Nunc victi tristes, &c.——See the whole of
the ninth eclogue, with the useful Commentary of Servius. Fifteen
miles of the Mantuan territory were assigned to the veterans,
with a reservation, in favor of the inhabitants, of three miles
round the city. Even in this favor they were cheated by Alfenus
Varus, a famous lawyer, and one of the commissioners, who
measured eight hundred paces of water and morass.]

171 (return) [ See the remarkable passage of the Eucharisticon of
Paulinus, 575, apud Mascou, l. viii. c. 42.]

172 (return) [ This important truth is established by the
accuracy of Tillemont, (Hist. des Emp. tom. v. p. 641,) and by
the ingenuity of the Abbe Dubos, (Hist. de l’Etablissement de la
Monarchie Francoise dans les Gaules, tom. i. p. 259.)]

Whilst Italy was ravaged by the Goths, and a succession of feeble
tyrants oppressed the provinces beyond the Alps, the British
island separated itself from the body of the Roman empire. The
regular forces, which guarded that remote province, had been
gradually withdrawn; and Britain was abandoned without defence to
the Saxon pirates, and the savages of Ireland and Caledonia. The
Britons, reduced to this extremity, no longer relied on the tardy
and doubtful aid of a declining monarchy. They assembled in arms,
repelled the invaders, and rejoiced in the important discovery of
their own strength. 173 Afflicted by similar calamities, and
actuated by the same spirit, the Armorican provinces (a name
which comprehended the maritime countries of Gaul between the
Seine and the Loire 174 resolved to imitate the example of the
neighboring island. They expelled the Roman magistrates, who
acted under the authority of the usurper Constantine; and a free
government was established among a people who had so long been
subject to the arbitrary will of a master. The independence of
Britain and Armorica was soon confirmed by Honorius himself, the
lawful emperor of the West; and the letters, by which he
committed to the new states the care of their own safety, might
be interpreted as an absolute and perpetual abdication of the
exercise and rights of sovereignty. This interpretation was, in
some measure, justified by the event.

After the usurpers of Gaul had successively fallen, the maritime
provinces were restored to the empire. Yet their obedience was
imperfect and precarious: the vain, inconstant, rebellious
disposition of the people, was incompatible either with freedom
or servitude; 175 and Armorica, though it could not long maintain
the form of a republic, 176 was agitated by frequent and
destructive revolts. Britain was irrecoverably lost. 177 But as
the emperors wisely acquiesced in the independence of a remote
province, the separation was not imbittered by the reproach of
tyranny or rebellion; and the claims of allegiance and protection
were succeeded by the mutual and voluntary offices of national
friendship. 178

173 (return) [ Zosimus (l. vi. 376, 383) relates in a few words
the revolt of Britain and Armorica. Our antiquarians, even the
great Cambder himself, have been betrayed into many gross errors,
by their imperfect knowledge of the history of the continent.]

174 (return) [ The limits of Armorica are defined by two national
geographers, Messieurs De Valois and D’Anville, in their Notitias
of Ancient Gaul. The word had been used in a more extensive, and
was afterwards contracted to a much narrower, signification.]

175 (return) [ Gens inter geminos notissima clauditur amnes,

Armoricana prius veteri cognomine dicta. Torva, ferox, ventosa,
procax, incauta, rebellis; Inconstans, disparque sibi novitatis
amore; Prodiga verborum, sed non et prodiga facti.

Erricus, Monach. in Vit. St. Germani. l. v. apud Vales. Notit.
Galliarum, p. 43. Valesius alleges several testimonies to confirm
this character; to which I shall add the evidence of the
presbyter Constantine, (A.D. 488,) who, in the life of St.
Germain, calls the Armorican rebels mobilem et indisciplinatum
populum. See the Historians of France, tom. i. p. 643.]

176 (return) [ I thought it necessary to enter my protest against
this part of the system of the Abbe Dubos, which Montesquieu has
so vigorously opposed. See Esprit des Loix, l. xxx. c. 24. Note:
See Mémoires de Gallet sur l’Origine des Bretons, quoted by Daru
Histoire de Bretagne, i. p. 57. According to the opinion of these
authors, the government of Armorica was monarchical from the
period of its independence on the Roman empire.—M.]

177 (return) [ The words of Procopius (de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c.
2, p. 181, Louvre edition) in a very important passage, which has
been too much neglected Even Bede (Hist. Gent. Anglican. l. i. c.
12, p. 50, edit. Smith) acknowledges that the Romans finally left
Britain in the reign of Honorius. Yet our modern historians and
antiquaries extend the term of their dominion; and there are some
who allow only the interval of a few months between their
departure and the arrival of the Saxons.]

178 (return) [ Bede has not forgotten the occasional aid of the
legions against the Scots and Picts; and more authentic proof
will hereafter be produced, that the independent Britons raised
12,000 men for the service of the emperor Anthemius, in Gaul.]

This revolution dissolved the artificial fabric of civil and
military government; and the independent country, during a period
of forty years, till the descent of the Saxons, was ruled by the
authority of the clergy, the nobles, and the municipal towns. 179
I. Zosimus, who alone has preserved the memory of this singular
transaction, very accurately observes, that the letters of
Honorius were addressed to the cities of Britain. 180 Under the
protection of the Romans, ninety-two considerable towns had
arisen in the several parts of that great province; and, among
these, thirty-three cities were distinguished above the rest by
their superior privileges and importance. 181 Each of these
cities, as in all the other provinces of the empire, formed a
legal corporation, for the purpose of regulating their domestic
policy; and the powers of municipal government were distributed
among annual magistrates, a select senate, and the assembly of
the people, according to the original model of the Roman
constitution. 182 The management of a common revenue, the
exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the habits of
public counsel and command, were inherent to these petty
republics; and when they asserted their independence, the youth
of the city, and of the adjacent districts, would naturally range
themselves under the standard of the magistrate. But the desire
of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of
political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of
discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed, that the restoration
of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The
preeminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently
violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles,
who complained that they were become the subjects of their own
servants, 183 would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary
monarch.

II. The jurisdiction of each city over the adjacent country, was
supported by the patrimonial influence of the principal senators;
and the smaller towns, the villages, and the proprietors of land,
consulted their own safety by adhering to the shelter of these
rising republics. The sphere of their attraction was proportioned
to the respective degrees of their wealth and populousness; but
the hereditary lords of ample possessions, who were not oppressed
by the neighborhood of any powerful city, aspired to the rank of
independent princes, and boldly exercised the rights of peace and
war. The gardens and villas, which exhibited some faint imitation
of Italian elegance, would soon be converted into strong castles,
the refuge, in time of danger, of the adjacent country: 184 the
produce of the land was applied to purchase arms and horses; to
maintain a military force of slaves, of peasants, and of
licentious followers; and the chieftain might assume, within his
own domain, the powers of a civil magistrate. Several of these
British chiefs might be the genuine posterity of ancient kings;
and many more would be tempted to adopt this honorable genealogy,
and to vindicate their hereditary claims, which had been
suspended by the usurpation of the Caesars. 185 Their situation
and their hopes would dispose them to affect the dress, the
language, and the customs of their ancestors. If the princes of
Britain relapsed into barbarism, while the cities studiously
preserved the laws and manners of Rome, the whole island must
have been gradually divided by the distinction of two national
parties; again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war and
faction, by the various provocations of interest and resentment.
The public strength, instead of being united against a foreign
enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the
personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head
of his equals, might enable him to subdue the freedom of some
neighboring cities; and to claim a rank among the tyrants, 186
who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman
government. III. The British church might be composed of thirty
or forty bishops, 187 with an adequate proportion of the inferior
clergy; and the want of riches (for they seem to have been poor
188) would compel them to deserve the public esteem, by a decent
and exemplary behavior.

The interest, as well as the temper of the clergy, was favorable
to the peace and union of their distracted country: those
salutary lessons might be frequently inculcated in their popular
discourses; and the episcopal synods were the only councils that
could pretend to the weight and authority of a national assembly.

In such councils, where the princes and magistrates sat
promiscuously with the bishops, the important affairs of the
state, as well as of the church, might be freely debated;
differences reconciled, alliances formed, contributions imposed,
wise resolutions often concerted, and sometimes executed; and
there is reason to believe, that, in moments of extreme danger, a
Pendragon, or Dictator, was elected by the general consent of the
Britons. These pastoral cares, so worthy of the episcopal
character, were interrupted, however, by zeal and superstition;
and the British clergy incessantly labored to eradicate the
Pelagian heresy, which they abhorred, as the peculiar disgrace of
their native country. 189

179 (return) [ I owe it to myself, and to historic truth, to
declare, that some circumstances in this paragraph are founded
only on conjecture and analogy. The stubbornness of our language
has sometimes forced me to deviate from the conditional into the
indicative mood.]

180 (return) [ Zosimus, l. vi. p. 383.]

181 (return) [ Two cities of Britain were municipia, nine
colonies, ten Latii jure donatoe, twelve stipendiarioe of eminent
note. This detail is taken from Richard of Cirencester, de Situ
Britanniae, p. 36; and though it may not seem probable that he
wrote from the Mss. of a Roman general, he shows a genuine
knowledge of antiquity, very extraordinary for a monk of the
fourteenth century.

Note: The names may be found in Whitaker’s Hist. of Manchester
vol. ii. 330, 379. Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxons, i. 216.—M.]

182 (return) [ See Maffei Verona Illustrata, part i. l. v. p.
83-106.]

183 (return) [ Leges restituit, libertatemque reducit, Et servos
famulis non sinit esse suis. Itinerar. Rutil. l. i. 215.]

184 (return) [ An inscription (apud Sirmond, Not. ad Sidon.
Apollinar. p. 59) describes a castle, cum muris et portis,
tutioni omnium, erected by Dardanus on his own estate, near
Sisteron, in the second Narbonnese, and named by him Theopolis.]

185 (return) [ The establishment of their power would have been
easy indeed, if we could adopt the impracticable scheme of a
lively and learned antiquarian; who supposes that the British
monarchs of the several tribes continued to reign, though with
subordinate jurisdiction, from the time of Claudius to that of
Honorius. See Whitaker’s History of Manchester, vol. i. p.
247-257.]

186 (return) [ Procopius, de Bell. Vandal. l. i. c. 3, p. 181.
Britannia fertilis provincia tyrannorum, was the expression of
Jerom, in the year 415 (tom. ii. p. 255, ad Ctesiphont.) By the
pilgrims, who resorted every year to the Holy Land, the monk of
Bethlem received the earliest and most accurate intelligence.]

187 (return) [ See Bingham’s Eccles. Antiquities, vol. i. l. ix.
c. 6, p. 394.]

188 (return) [ It is reported of three British bishops who
assisted at the council of Rimini, A.D. 359, tam pauperes fuisse
ut nihil haberent. Sulpicius Severus, Hist. Sacra, l. ii. p. 420.
Some of their brethren however, were in better circumstances.]

189 (return) [ Consult Usher, de Antiq. Eccles. Britannicar. c.
8-12.]

It is somewhat remarkable, or rather it is extremely natural,
that the revolt of Britain and Armorica should have introduced an
appearance of liberty into the obedient provinces of Gaul. In a
solemn edict, 190 filled with the strongest assurances of that
paternal affection which princes so often express, and so seldom
feel, the emperor Honorius promulgated his intention of convening
an annual assembly of the seven provinces: a name peculiarly
appropriated to Aquitain and the ancient Narbonnese, which had
long since exchanged their Celtic rudeness for the useful and
elegant arts of Italy. 191 Arles, the seat of government and
commerce, was appointed for the place of the assembly; which
regularly continued twenty-eight days, from the fifteenth of
August to the thirteenth of September, of every year. It
consisted of the Prætorian præfect of the Gauls; of seven
provincial governors, one consular, and six presidents; of the
magistrates, and perhaps the bishops, of about sixty cities; and
of a competent, though indefinite, number of the most honorable
and opulent possessors of land, who might justly be considered as
the representatives of their country. They were empowered to
interpret and communicate the laws of their sovereign; to expose
the grievances and wishes of their constituents; to moderate the
excessive or unequal weight of taxes; and to deliberate on every
subject of local or national importance, that could tend to the
restoration of the peace and prosperity of the seven provinces.
If such an institution, which gave the people an interest in
their own government, had been universally established by Trajan
or the Antonines, the seeds of public wisdom and virtue might
have been cherished and propagated in the empire of Rome. The
privileges of the subject would have secured the throne of the
monarch; the abuses of an arbitrary administration might have
been prevented, in some degree, or corrected, by the
interposition of these representative assemblies; and the country
would have been defended against a foreign enemy by the arms of
natives and freemen. Under the mild and generous influence of
liberty, the Roman empire might have remained invincible and
immortal; or if its excessive magnitude, and the instability of
human affairs, had opposed such perpetual continuance, its vital
and constituent members might have separately preserved their
vigor and independence. But in the decline of the empire, when
every principle of health and life had been exhausted, the tardy
application of this partial remedy was incapable of producing any
important or salutary effects. The emperor Honorius expresses his
surprise, that he must compel the reluctant provinces to accept a
privilege which they should ardently have solicited. A fine of
three, or even five, pounds of gold, was imposed on the absent
representatives; who seem to have declined this imaginary gift of
a free constitution, as the last and most cruel insult of their
oppressors.

190 (return) [ See the correct text of this edict, as published
by Sirmond, (Not. ad Sidon. Apollin. p. 148.) Hincmar of Rheims,
who assigns a place to the bishops, had probably seen (in the
ninth century) a more perfect copy. Dubos, Hist. Critique de la
Monarchie Francoise, tom. i. p. 241-255]

191 (return) [ It is evident from the Notitia, that the seven
provinces were the Viennensis, the maritime Alps, the first and
second Narbonnese Novempopulania, and the first and second
Aquitain. In the room of the first Aquitain, the Abbe Dubos, on
the authority of Hincmar, desires to introduce the first
Lugdunensis, or Lyonnese.]