ROME AND THE BARBARIANS.*

PROFESSOR BURY has written a book of great interest and importance on the Roman Empire in the fifth and sixth

centuries—the troubled age which saw barbarous German tribes overrun Western Europe, while in the East the Empire held firm, beating off successive invaders from all sides and achieving new glories in the long reign of Justinian. In his youth the Regius Professor showed his interest in this period, when modern Europe took its rise, by producing an admirable sketch, now out of print, of the Empire from the fifth to the eighth century. His new book is planned on a much larger scale and embodies the results of the Byzantine studies which

have occupied French, Russian, German and a few English scholars during the past thirty years. Professor Bury's wide knowledge and his familiarity with the work of the Russian archaeologists, who are now mostly dead or in exile, enable him to add much new detail to Gibbon's classic outline. His whole attitude towards the Later Empire is, of course, in fundamental opposition to the theory of The Decline and Fall.

The period of which Professor Bury writes may seem remote, but we are not at all sure that it does not present an instructive parallel to the new era which has begun in these days. We see the established order of European civilization attacked or threatened at a hundred points, and we are casting about for some means of defence against perils which are partly external and partly internal. The position in the fifth century was essentially the same. Rome had given peace, order and law to the Mediterranean world, to North-Western Europe and to Western Asia. Many successive generations lived and died in the enjoyment of that tranquillity for which we were invited to hope after the last General Election. Gradually in the fourth century the fair prospect was over- clouded. Barbarian peoples from the North and from the East, impelled by obscure forces originating in Central Asia, assailed the Roman borders and were helped from within by the half-tamed barbarians who had been admitted as settlers in the frontier provinces. The fifth century saw the collapse of the Roman system in the West under the strain, while in the East the great fabric was shaken to its foundations. Such is the aspect of the case which readers of Gibbon remem- ber, hypnotized by his insistence on the decline of the once omnipotent Rome. Professor Bury's readers will, we think, be impressed less by the tragic misfortunes of Italy, Gaul and Spain than by the enormous recuperative power which was displayed by the Roman Christian civilization, with its new centre at Constantinople. When Leo the Isaurian became Emperor in 457, a contemporary pessimist might have been forgiven for thinking that the whole Empire, both East and West, would crumble into utter ruin within his own lifetime. Yet a century later, thanks to a series of able generals and statesmen under Justinian, the Empire had beaten off all its enemies in the East and had recovered Italy, Spain and North Africa from the barbarians The once dreaded Vandals were utterly exterminated, the Goths were tamed and absorbed, the Franks were checked, the Persians were flung back from Armenia and Syria. The Empire had reasserted its authority and could look forward with hope and confidence. Nor was the hope misplaced. For six centuries after Justinian the Roman Empire in the East was a mighty State. Had it not been shattered by the treacherous attack from Western Christendom in the Fourth Crusade of 1204 it might, for all we know, have held the Turks at bay for long after 1453, and perhaps until Europe had learned that the

• History of the later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius 'I. to the Death

• Justinian (395-565). BY J. B. Bury. 2 cola. London : Macmillan. [42a. net.]

Turks were the common enemy of all civilized peoples. To regard this long Byzantine history merely as a decline and fall is obviously misleading. The Empire, until long after our Norman Conquest, was the greatest of the Christian Powers. If all these centuries represented its funeral procession, it was at least a lively corpse.

We are glad to see that Professor Bury, whose knowledge of the fifth century is unsurpassed, has no patience with the facile generalizations that have been put forward to explain

the collapse a the Empire in the West. He scouts alike Gibbon's "principle of decay," Christianity, depopulation

and over-taxation of the rich or of the poor as causes of the disaster. All these causes operated in the East, as he says, and yet the Empire there remained intact. It is particularly

to be noted that Professor Bury repudiates the suggestion that Christianity made men less loyal to the Empire and less

willing to fight in its defence ; he cites a letter of St. Augustine to confirm his view, and points out that Christianity, despite the sectarian quarrels, united rather than divided all Roman subjects. He goes on to say :—

"The truth is that the success of the barbarians in penetrating and founding States in the Western provinces cannot be explained by any general considerations. It is accounted for by the actual events and would be clearer if the story were known more fully. The gradual collapse of the Roman power in this section of the Empire was the consequence of a series of contingent events. No general causes can be assigned that made it inevitable."

Such testimony from a thoroughly competent scholar should go far to counteract the evil teaching of what may be called the post-impressionist school of historians, who base far- reaching theories on a modicum of fact. Professor Bury does

not, like those whom he condemns, undervalue the human factor in history ; he does not minimize the effect that a wise

and brave man may have upon the course of events or the mischief that a fool or a knave may do. He points to the folly of Valens in rushing upon the Visigoths without waiting for the reinforcements that his colleague was bringing up. He comments on the far-reaching consequences of the mis- taken leniency of Stilieho, himself a German, to Alaric who, when beaten in his first invasion of Italy, was allowed to retire and gather fresh strength. The consequences of such errors were great, but the errors themselves were surely in no sense inevitable. Professor Bury points out that the numbers of the barbarians have been grossly exaggerated. The Western Empire was not overwhelmed by countless hordes but by relatively small bodies of desperate warriors. We might, ndeed, guess as much from the rapidity with which the barbarian forces were absorbed into the populations. The Vandals, for example, when they embarked for Africa in 420, were estimated to number 80,000. It is not surprising that, when they were defeated and scattered by Belisarius, they soon ceased to exist as a separate nation and survived only as a name of dread.

We have no space to comment on the many other points of interest in this admirable book. We may draw attention to the excellent studies of Justinian, statesman, lawgiver and theologian ; of his famous wife, Theodora—" of whom perhaps the utmost that we can safely say is that she was, in the words used by Swinbume of Mary Stuart, 'something better than innocent' "—and of their bitter-tongued biographer, Pro- copius. We may notice, too, the thrilling account of the campaigns of Belisarius and of the reconquest of Italy by Names, who, it must be confessed, appears a far greater general and a far wiser politician than his better-known col- league. It is odd, by the way, that the legend of Belisarius, old and blind, begging in the streets—" Spare an obol for Belisarius "—should still find believers, though, as Gibbon pointed out, it is sheer fiction proceeding from the imagination of a twelfth-century monk. We may mention, again, the valuable chapter on diplomacy and commerce under Justinian, embodying much new material with regard to the Slays, the Crimea, Abyssinia, the Indian and Chinese trade and other topics. Incidentally, Professor Bury touches on the evacua- tion of Britain by the Roman legions in 410, and suggests that it was not by any means the end of the occupation. He

tells us, too, that the battle "of Chalons "—more accurately, of Troyes—in 451 was not really a decisive battle. The fate of the Huns was sealed, after Attila's death, near the river Nedao, in Pannonia, where in 454 a coalition of German tribes overthrew the Ilunnish army, and scattered the Huns Lo the four winds. never again to play a part in history.