III. FORMATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE…

III. FORMATION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The second of the three great peninsulas of southern Europe, that which lies between the other two, is that of Italy. ♦Different meanings of the name Italy.♦ The name of Italy has been used in several meanings at different times, but it has always meant either the whole or a part of the land which we now call Italy. The name gradually spread itself from the extreme south to the north.[4] At the time when our survey begins, the name did not go beyond the long narrow peninsula itself; and indeed it hardly took in the whole of that. ♦Its meaning under the Roman commonwealth.♦ During the time of the Roman commonwealth Italy did not reach beyond the little rivers Macra on one side, near Luna, and Rubico on the other side, near Ariminum. The land to the north, as far as the Alps, was not counted for Italy till after the time of Cæsar. But the Alps are the natural boundary which fence off the peninsular land from the great mass of central Europe; so that, looking at the matter as a piece of geography, we may count the whole land within the Alps as Italy. It will be at once seen that the Italian peninsula, though so long and narrow, is by no means cut up into promontories and smaller peninsulas as the Greek peninsula is. Nor is it surrounded by so many islands. It is only quite in the south, where the long narrow peninsula splits off into two smaller ones, that the coast has at all the character of the Greek coast, and there only in a much slighter degree. ♦The Italian islands.♦ Close by this end of Italy lies the great island of Sicily, whose history has always been closely connected with that of Italy. Further off lie the two other great islands of Corsica and Sardinia, which in old times were not reckoned to belong to Italy at all. Besides these there are several smaller islands, Elba and others, along the Italian coast; but they lie a good way from each other, and do not form any marked feature in the geography. There is nothing at all like even the group of islands off western Greece, much less like the endless multitude, great and small, in the Ægæan. Through the whole length of the peninsula, like a backbone, runs the long chain of the Apennines. These branch off from the Alps in north-western Italy near the sea, and run through the whole length of the country to the very toe of the boot, as the Italian peninsula has been called from its shape. From all this it follows that, though Italy was the land which was destined in the end to have the rule over all the rest, yet the people of Italy were not likely to begin to make themselves a name so early as the Greeks did. Least of all were they likely to take in the same way to a sea-faring life, and to plant colonies in far off lands.

§ 1. The Inhabitants of Italy and Sicily.

♦Non-Aryans in Italy.♦

We seem to have somewhat clearer signs in Italy than we have in Greece of the men who dwelled in the land before the Aryans who appear as its historical inhabitants came into it. ♦Ligurians.♦ On the coast of Liguria, the land on each side of the city of Genoa, a land which was not reckoned Italian in early times, we find people who seem not to have been Aryan. And these Ligurians seem to have been part of a race which was spread through Italy and Sicily before the Aryan settlements, and to have been akin to the non-Aryan inhabitants of Spain and southern Gaul, of whom the Basques on each side of the Pyrenees remain as a remnant. ♦Etruscans.♦ And in historical times a large part of Italy was held, and in earlier times a still larger part seems to have been held, by the Etruscans. These are a people about whose origin and language there have been many theories, but nothing can as yet be said to be certainly known. These Etruscans, in historical times, formed a confederacy of twelve cities in the land west of the Apennines, between the Macra and the Tiber; and it is believed that in earlier times they had settlements both more to the north, on the Po, and more to the south, in Campania. If they were a non-Aryan race, the part of the non-Aryans in the geography and history of Italy becomes greater than it has been in any part of Western Europe except Spain.

♦The Italians.♦

But whatever we make of the Etruscans, the rest of Italy in the older sense was held by various branches of an Aryan race nearly allied to the Greeks, whom we may call the Italians. Of this race there were two great branches. One of them, under various names, seems to have held all the southern part of the western coast of Italy, and to have spread into Sicily. Some of the tribes of this branch seem to have been almost as nearly akin to the Greeks as the Epeirots and other kindred nations on the east side of the Hadriatic. ♦Latins.♦ Of this branch of the Italian race, the most famous people were the Latins; and it was the greatest Latin city, the border city of the Latins against the Etruscans, the city of Rome on the Tiber, which became, step by step, the mistress of Latium, of Italy, and of the Mediterranean world. ♦Opicans.♦ The other branch, which held a much larger part of the peninsula, taking in the Sabines, Æquians, Volscians, Samnites, Lucanians, and other people who play a great part in the Roman history, may perhaps be classed together as Opicans or Oscans, in distinction from the Latins, and the other tribes allied to them. These tribes seem to have pressed from the eastern, the Hadriatic, coast of Italy, down upon the nations to the south-west of them, and to have largely extended their borders at their expense.

But part of ancient Italy, and a still larger part of Italy in the modern sense, was inhabited by nations other than the Italians. ♦Iapygians.♦ In the heel of the boot were the Iapygians, a people of uncertain origin, but who seem in any case to have had a great gift of receiving the Greek language and manners. ♦Gauls.♦ And in the northern part, in the lands which were not then counted as part of Italy, were the Gauls, a Celtic people, akin to the Gauls beyond the Alps, and whose country was therefore called Cisalpine Gaul or Gaul on this side of the Alps. They were found on both sides of the Po, and on the Hadriatic coast they seem to have stretched in early times almost as far south as Ancona. ♦Veneti.♦ In the north-east corner of Italy were yet another people, the Veneti, perhaps of Illyrian origin, whose name long after was taken by the city of Venice. But during the whole time with which we have to do, there was no city so called, and the name of Venetia is always the name of a country.

♦Greek colonies in Italy.♦

All these nations we may look on as the original inhabitants of Italy; that is, all were there before anything like contemporary history begins.[5] But besides these original nations, there were in one part of Italy many Greek colonies, and also in the island of Sicily. Some cities of Italy claimed to be Greek colonies, without any clear proof that they were so. But there seems no reason to doubt that Kymê or Cumæ on the western coast of Italy, and Ankôn or Ancona on the Hadriatic, were solitary Greek colonies far away from any other Greek settlements. Cumæ, though so far off, is said to have been the earliest Greek colony in Italy. But where the Greeks mainly settled was in the two lesser peninsulas, the heel and the toe of the boot, into which the great peninsula of Italy divides at its southern end. Here, as was before said, there is a nearer approach to the kind of coast to which the Greeks were used at home. Here then arose a number of Greek cities, stretching from the extreme south almost up to Cumæ. As in the case of the Greek cities in Asia, the time of greatness of the Italian Greeks came earlier than that of the Greeks in Greece itself. In the sixth century B.C. some of these Greek colonies in Italy, as Taras or Tarentum, Krotôn or Crotona, Sybaris, and others, were among the greatest cities of the Greek name. But, as the Italian nations grew stronger, the Greek cities lost their power, and many of them, Cumæ among them, fell into the hands of Italian conquerors, and lost their Greek character more or less thoroughly. Others remained Greek till they became subject to Rome, and the Greek speech and manners did not quite die out of southern Italy till ages after the Christian æra.

♦Inhabitants of Sicily.♦

The geography and history of the great island of Sicily, which lies so near to the toe of the boot, cannot be kept apart from those of Italy. The mainland and the island were, to a great extent, inhabited by the same nations. The Sikanians in the western part of the island may not unlikely have been akin to the Ligurians and Basques; but the Sikels, who gave their name to the island, and who are the people with whom the Greeks had most to do, were clearly of the Italian stock, and were nearly allied to the Latins. ♦Phœnician and Greek colonies.♦ The Phœnicians of Carthage planted some colonies in the western and northern parts of the island, the chief of which was the city which the Greeks called Panormos, the modern capital Palermo. But the western and southern sides of the triangle were full of Greek cities, which are said to have been founded from the eighth century B.C. to the sixth. Several of these, especially Syracuse and Akragas or Agrigentum, were among the chief of Greek cities; and from them the Greek speech and manners gradually spread themselves over the natives, till in the end Sicily was reckoned as wholly a Greek land. But for some centuries Sicilian history is chiefly made up of struggles for the mastery between Carthage and the Greek cities. This was in truth a struggle between the Aryan and the Semitic race, and we shall see that, many ages after, the same battle was again fought on the same ground.

§ 2. Growth of the Roman power in Italy.

♦Gradual conquest of Italy.♦

The history of ancient Italy, as far as we know it, is the history of the gradual conquest of the whole land by one of its own cities; and the changes in its political geography are mainly the changes which followed the gradual bringing of the whole peninsula under the Roman dominion. But the form which the conquests of Rome took hindered those conquests from having so great an effect on the map as they otherwise might have had. The cities and districts of Italy, as they were one by one conquered by Rome, were commonly left as separate states, in the relation of dependent alliance, from which most of them were step by step promoted to the rights of Roman citizenship. ♦Different positions of the Italian cities.♦ An Italian city might be a dependent ally of Rome; it might be a Roman colony with the full franchise or a colony holding the inferior Latin franchise; or it might have been actually made part of a Roman tribe. All these were very important political differences; but they do not make much difference in the look of things on the map. The most important of the changes which can be called strictly geographical belong to the early days of Rome, when there were important national movements among the various races of Italy. ♦Origin of Rome.♦ Rome arose at the point of union of the three races, Latin, Oscan, and Etruscan, and it arose from an union between the Latin and Oscan races. ♦Rome a Latin city.♦ Two Latin and one Sabine settlements seem to have joined together to form the city of Rome; but the Sabine element must have been thoroughly Latinized, and Rome must be counted as a Latin city, the greatest, though very likely the youngest, among the cities of Latium.

♦Her early Latin dominion.♦

Rome, planted on a march, rose, in the way in which marchlands often do rise, to supremacy among her fellows. Our first authentic record of the early commonwealth sets Rome before us as bearing rule over the whole of Latium. This dominion she seems to have lost soon after the driving out of the kings, and some of her territory right of the Tiber seems to have become Etruscan. Presently Rome appears, no longer as mistress of Latium, but as forming one member of a triple league concluded on equal terms with the Latins as a body, and with the Hernicans. ♦Wars with her neighbours.♦ This league was engaged in constant wars with its neighbours of the Oscan race, the Æquians and Volscians, by whom many of the Latin cities were taken. ♦More distant wars. | B.C. 396.♦ But the first great advance of Rome’s actual dominion was made on the right bank of the Tiber, by the taking of the Etruscan city of Veii. ♦B.C. 343.♦ Fifty years later Rome began to engage in more distant wars; and we may say generally that the conquest of Italy was going on bit by bit for eighty years more. ♦B.C. 296.♦ By the end of that time, all Italy, in the older sense, was brought in one shape or another under the Roman dominion. The neighbouring districts, both Latin and of other races, had been admitted to citizenship. Roman and Latin colonies were planted in various parts of the country; elsewhere the old cities, Etruscan, Samnite, Greek, or any other, still remained as dependent allies of Rome. ♦Incorporation of the Italian states. | B.C. 89.♦ Presently Rome went on to win dominion out of Italy; but the Italian states still remained in their old relation to Rome, till the Italian allies received the Roman franchise after the Social or Marsian war. The Samnites alone held out, and they may be said to have been altogether exterminated in the wars of Sulla. The rest of Italy was Roman.

§ 3. The Western Provinces.

The great change in Roman policy, and in European geography as affected by it, took place when Rome began to win territory out of Italy. The relation of these foreign possessions to the ruling city was quite different from that of the Italian states. The foreign conquests of Rome were made into provinces. ♦Nature of the Roman Provinces.♦ A province was a district which was subject to Rome, and put under the rule of a Roman governor, which was not done with the dependent allies in Italy. But it must be borne in mind that, though we speak of a province as having a certain geographical extent, yet there might be cities within its limits whose formal relation to Rome was that of dependent, or even of equal, alliance. There might also be Roman and Latin colonies, either colonies really planted or cities which had been raised to the Roman or Latin franchise. All these were important distinctions as regarded the internal government of the different states; still practically all alike formed part of the Roman dominion. In a geographical survey it will therefore be enough to mark the extent of the different provinces, without attending to their political, or more truly municipal, distinctions, except in a few cases where they are of special importance.

♦Eastern and Western Provinces.♦

The provinces then are the foreign dominions of Rome, and they fall naturally into two, or rather three, divisions. There are the provinces of the West, in which the Romans had chiefly to contend with nations much less civilized than themselves, and in which therefore the provincials gradually adopted the language and manners of their conquerors. But in the provinces to the east of the Hadriatic, the Greek language and Greek manners had become the language and manners of civilized life, and their supremacy was not supplanted by those of Rome. And in the more distant parts, as in Syria and Egypt, the Greek civilization was a mere varnish; the mass of the people still kept to their old manners and languages as they were before the Macedonian conquests. In these countries therefore the Latin tongue and Roman civilization made but little progress. The Roman conquests went on on both sides of the Hadriatic at the same time, but it was to the west that they began. The first Roman province however forms a sort of intermediate class by itself, standing between the eastern and the western.

♦Sicily.♦

This first Roman province was formed in the great island of Sicily, which, by its geographical position, belongs to the western part of Europe, while the fact that Greek became the prevailing language in it rather connects it with the eastern part. ♦First Roman possessions in the island. B.C. 241.♦ The Roman dominion in Sicily began when the Carthaginian possessions in the island were given up to Rome, as the result of the first Punic war. But, as Hierôn of Syracuse had helped Rome against Carthage, his kingdom remained in alliance with Rome, and was not dealt with as a conquered land. ♦Conquest of Syracuse. B.C. 212.♦ It was only when Syracuse turned against Rome in the second Punic war that it was, on its conquest, formally made a Roman possession. ♦B.C. 132.♦ Eighty years later the condition of Sicily under the Roman government was finally settled, and it may be taken as a type of the endless variety of relations in which the different districts and cities throughout the Roman dominions stood to the ruling commonwealth. ♦State of Sicily.♦ The greater part of the island became simply subject; the land was held to be forfeited to the Roman People, and the former inhabitants held it simply as tenants on payment of a tithe. But some cities were called free, and kept their land; others remained in name independent allies of the Roman People. Other cities were afterwards raised to the Latin franchise; in others Latin or Roman colonies were planted, and one Sicilian city, that of Messana, received the full citizenship of Rome. It must be borne in mind that these different relations, these exceptionally favoured cities and districts, are found, not only in Sicily, but throughout all the provinces. ♦Greek civilization of Sicily.♦ Sicily, by the time of the conquest, was looked on as a thoroughly Greek land. The Greek language and manners had now spread themselves everywhere among the Sikels and the other inhabitants of the island. And Sicily remained a thoroughly Greek land, till, ages afterwards, it again became, as it had been in the days of the Greek and Phœnician colonies, a battle-field of Aryan and Semitic races in the days of the Mahometan conquests.

♦Sardinia and Corsica.♦

The two great islands of Sardinia and Corsica seem almost as natural appendages to Italy as Sicily itself; but their history is very different. They have played no important part in the history of the world. The original stock of their inhabitants seems to have been akin to the non-Aryan element in Spain and Sicily. The attempts at Greek colonization in them were but feeble, and they passed under the dominion, first of Carthage and then of Rome, without any important change in their condition. ♦B.C. 238.♦ These two islands became a Roman province, which was always reckoned one of the most worthless of provinces, in the interval between the first and second Punic wars.

♦Cisalpine Gaul.♦

Thus far the Roman dominions did not reach beyond what we should look upon as the natural extent of the dominion of an Italian power. Indeed, as long as Italy did not reach to the Alps, we should say that it had not reached the natural extent of an Italian dominion. But the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul cannot be separated from the general conquest of Western Europe. The Roman conquest of Gaul and Spain, by gradually spreading the Latin language and Roman civilization over those countries, created two of the chief nations and languages of modern Europe. But the process was simply the continuation of a process which began within the borders of what we now call Italy. Gaul within the Alps was as strictly a foreign conquest as Spain or as Gaul beyond the Alps. Only the geographical position of Cisalpine Gaul allowed it to be easily and speedily incorporated with Italy in a way which the lands beyond the Alps could not be. The beginnings of conquest in this direction took place after the end of the Samnite wars. ♦Foundation of Sena Gallica. B.C. 282.♦ Then the colony of Sena Gallica, now Sinigaglia, was founded on Gaulish soil, and it was presently followed by the foundation of Ariminum or Rimini. ♦Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. B.C. 201-191.♦ The Roman arms were carried beyond the Po in the time between the first and the second Punic war; after the second Punic war, Cisalpine Gaul was thoroughly conquered, and was secured by the foundation of many Roman and Latin colonies. ♦B.C. 43.♦ The Roman and Latin franchises were gradually extended to most parts of the country, and at last Cisalpine Gaul was formally incorporated with Italy.

♦Conquest of Liguria and Venetia.♦

Closely connected with the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul was the conquest of the other non-Italian lands within the boundaries of modern Italy. These were Liguria to the south-east of Cisalpine Gaul and Venetia to the north-west. Both these lands held out longer than Cisalpine Gaul; but by the time of Augustus they were all, together with the peninsula of Istria, counted as part of Italy. ♦Foundation of Aquileia, B.C. 183.♦ The dominion of Rome in this region was secured at an early stage of the conquest by the foundation of the great colony of Aquileia. We thus see that, not only Venice, but Milan, Pavia, Verona, Ravenna, and Genoa, cities which played so great a part in the after history of Italy, arose in lands which were not originally Italian. But we also see that Italy, with the boundaries given to it by Augustus, took in a somewhat larger territory to the north-east than the kingdom of Italy does now.

♦Spain.♦

The lands within the Alps may be fairly said to have been conquered by Rome in self-defence, and we cannot help looking on the three great islands as natural parts of an Italian dominion. The conquests of the Romans in lands altogether beyond their own borders may be said to have begun in Western Europe with the conquest of Spain, which began before that of Transalpine Gaul. ♦Connexion of Spain and Gaul.♦ Spain and Gaul, using the names in the geographical sense, have much which binds them together. ♦Iberians in Spain.♦ On the borders of the two countries traces are still left of the old non-Aryan inhabitants who still speak the Basque language. These represent the old Iberian inhabitants of Spain and Gaul, who, when our history begins, stretched as far into Gaul as the Garonne. ♦Celts.♦ But the Celts, the first wave of the Aryan migration in Europe, had pressed into both Gaul and Spain; in Gaul they had, when trustworthy history begins, already occupied by far the greater part of the country. ♦Greek and♦ The Mediterranean coasts of Gaul and Spain were also connected together by the sprinkling of Greek colonies along those shores, of which Massalia was the head. And, beside the primitive non-Aryan element, there was an intrusive non-Aryan element also. ♦Phœnician settlements.♦ In southern Spain several Phœnician settlements had been made, the chief of which was Gades or Cadiz, beyond the straits, the one great Phœnician city on the Ocean. And between the first and second Punic wars Carthage obtained a large Spanish dominion, of which New Carthage or Carthagena was the capital.

It was the presence of these last settlements which first brought Spain under the Roman dominion. ♦First Roman province in Spain.♦ Saguntum was an ally of Rome, and its taking by Hannibal was the beginning of the second Punic war. ♦B.C. 218-206.♦ The campaigns of the Scipios during that war led to the gradual conquest of the whole country. ♦B.C. 49.♦ The Carthaginian possessions first became a Roman province, while Gades became a favoured ally of Rome, and at last was admitted to the full Roman franchise. ♦B.C. 133.♦ Meanwhile, the gradual conquest of the rest of the country went on, till, after the taking of Numantia, all Spain, except the remote tribes in the north-west, had become a Roman possession. ♦Final conquest. B.C. 19.♦ These tribes, the Cantabrians and their neighbours, were not fully subdued till the time of Augustus. ♦Romanization of Spain.♦ But long before that time the Latin language and Roman manners had been fast spreading through the country, and in Augustus’ time southern Spain was altogether Romanized. It was only in a small district close to the Pyrenees that the ancient language held out, as it has done ever since.

♦Transalpine Gaul.♦

The conquest of Spain, owing to the connexion of the country with Carthage, thus began while a large part even of Cisalpine Gaul was still unsubdued. And the Roman arms were not carried into Gaul beyond the Alps till the conquest of Spain was pretty well assured. ♦B.C. 122.♦ The foundation of the first Roman colony at Aquæ Sextiæ, the modern Aix, was only eleven years later than the fall of Numantia. The Romans stepped in as allies of the Greek city of Massalia, and, as usual, from helping their allies they took to conquering on their own account. ♦The Transalpine Province. B.C. 125-105.♦ A Roman province, including the colonies of Narbonne and Toulouse, was thus formed in the south-eastern part of Transalpine Gaul. The advance of Rome in this direction seems to have been checked by the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones, but through that long delay Roman influences were able to establish themselves more firmly. This part of Gaul was early and thoroughly Romanized, and part of it still keeps, in its name of Provence, the memory of its having been the first Roman province beyond the Alps. The rest of Gaul was left untouched till the great campaigns of Cæsar.

♦Conquests of Cæsar. B.C. 58-51.♦

It is from Cæsar, ethnologer as well as conqueror, that we get our chief knowledge of the country as it was in his day. ♦Boundaries of Transalpine Gaul.♦ Transalpine Gaul, as a geographical division, has well-marked boundaries in the Mediterranean, the Alps, the Rhine, the Ocean, and the Pyrenees. But this geographical division has never answered to any divisions of blood and language. ♦Its three divisions, and their inhabitants, Iberian, Celtic, and German.♦ Gaul in Cæsar’s day, that is Gaul beyond the Roman province, formed three divisions—Aquitaine to the south-west, Celtic Gaul in the middle, and Belgic Gaul to the north-east. Aquitaine, stretching to the Garonne—the name was under Augustus extended to the Loire—was Iberian, akin to the people on the other side of the Pyrenees: a trace of its old speech remains in the small Basque district north of the Pyrenees. Celtic Gaul, from the Loire to the Seine and Marne, was the most truly Celtic land, and it was in this part of Gaul that the modern French nation took its rise. In the third division, Belgic Gaul, the tribes to the east, nearer to the Rhine, were some of them purely German, and others had been to a great extent brought under German influences or mixed with German elements. There was, in fact, no unity in Gaul beyond that which the Romans brought with them. ♦Romanization of Gaul.♦ In seven years Cæsar subdued the whole land, and the work of assimilation began. The Roman language gradually displaced all the native languages, except where Basque and Breton survive in two corners; but in a large part of Belgic Gaul the events of later times brought the German tongue back again. ♦Permanence of the ancient geography.♦ There is no Roman province in which, among all changes, the ancient geography has had so much effect upon that of all later times. In southern Gaul most of the cities still keep their old names with very little change. But in northern Gaul the cities have mostly taken the names of the tribes of which they were the heads. Thus Tolosa is still Toulouse; but Lutetia Parisiorum has become Paris.

♦Roman Africa.♦

The lands which we have thus gone through, Cisalpine Gaul with Liguria and Venetia, Spain, and Transalpine Gaul, form a marked division in historical geography. They are those parts of Western Europe which Rome conquered during the time of her Commonwealth, and they are those parts which have mainly kept their Roman speech to this day. But these did not make up the whole of the lands where Rome planted her Latin speech, at least for a while. The conquest of Britain belongs to the days of the Empire; but Rome, during the Commonwealth, made another conquest, which, though not in Europe, may be counted as belonging to the Western or Latin-speaking half of her dominion. This is the conquest of that part of Africa which Rome won as the result of her wars with Carthage. ♦Province of Africa, B.C. 146;♦ The only African possession won by Rome during the days of the Commonwealth was Africa in the strictest sense, the immediate dominion of Carthage. This became a province when the Punic wars were ended by the destruction of Carthage. ♦of New Africa, B.C. 49.♦ The neighbouring state of Numidia, after passing, like Carthage itself, through the intermediate state of a dependency, was made a province by Cæsar, being called New Africa, the former African province becoming the Old. ♦Restoration and greatness of Carthage.♦ Cæsar also restored the city of Carthage as a Roman colony, and it became the chief of the Latin-speaking cities of the Empire, second only to Rome herself. But in Africa, just as in Britain, the land never became thoroughly Romanized like Gaul and Spain. The Roman tongue and laws therefore died out in both lands at the first touch of an invader, the English in one case and the Saracens in the other. The strip of fertile land between the sea on one side and the mountains and the Great Desert on the other received, first Phœnician and then Roman civilization. But neither of them could really take root there in the way that the Roman civilization took root in Gaul and Spain.

§ 4. The Eastern Provinces.

♦Contrast between the Eastern and Western provinces.♦

The Hadriatic Sea may be roughly taken as the boundary between the Eastern and Western parts of the Roman dominion. In the West, the Romans carried with them not only their arms, but their tongue, their laws, and their manners. They were not only conquerors but civilizers. The native Iberians and Celts adopted Roman fashions, and the isolated Greek and Phœnician cities, like Massalia and Gades, gradually became Roman also. East of the Hadriatic the state of things was quite different. Here the language and civilization of Greece had, through the conquests of the Macedonian kings, become everywhere predominant. ♦Greek civilization in the East.♦ Greek was everywhere the polite and literary language, and a certain varnish of Greek manners had been everywhere spread. In some parts indeed it was the merest varnish; still it was everywhere strong enough to withstand the influence of Latin. Sicily and Southern Italy are the only lands which have altogether thrown away the Greek tongue, and have taken to Latin or any of the languages formed out of Latin. No part of the eastern half of the Roman dominion ever became Roman in the same way as Gaul and Spain.

The whole of the lands east of the Hadriatic may thus, as opposed to the Latin-speaking lands of the west, be called Greek-speaking lands. ♦Distinctions among the Eastern provinces.♦ But there are some wide distinctions to be drawn among them. First, there was old Greece itself and the Greek colonies, and lands like Epeiros, which had become thoroughly Greek. Secondly, there were the kingdoms, like Macedonia in Europe and Pergamos in Asia, which had adopted the Greek speech and manners, but which did not, like Epeiros, become Greek in any political sense. Thirdly, there were a number of native states, Bithynia and others, whose kings also tried to imitate Greek ways, but naturally could not do so as thoroughly as the kings of Macedonia and Pergamos. ♦Lands beyond Tauros.♦ Fourthly, beyond Mount Tauros lay the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, which were ruled by Macedonian kings, which contained great Greek or Macedonian cities like Antioch and Alexandria, but where there were native languages, and an old native civilization, which neither Greek nor Roman influences could ever root out. We shall see as we go on that Tauros makes a great historical boundary. The lands on this side of it really came, though very gradually, under the dominion of the Greek speech and the Roman law. Beyond Mount Tauros both the Greek and the Roman element lay merely on the surface, and therefore those lands, like Africa, easily fell away when they were attacked by the Saracens.[6] We must now go through such of the lands east of the Hadriatic as were formed into Roman provinces during the time of the Roman Commonwealth.

♦The Illyrian Provinces.♦

But again, between the Latin and the Greek parts of the Roman dominion there was a border land, namely, the lands held by the great Illyrian race. The southern parts of Illyria came within the reach of Greek influences, and it was through the affairs of Illyria that Rome was first led to meddle in the affairs of Greece. ♦The kingdom of Skodra.♦ The use of the name Illyria is at all times very vague; as a more definite meaning as the name of a kingdom whose capital was Skodra, and which, in the second half of the third century, was a dangerous neighbour to the Greek cities and islands on that coast. ♦B.C. 168.♦ This kingdom was involved in the third Macedonian war, and came to an end at the same time. As usual, it is not easy to distinguish how much, if any, of the country actually became a Roman province, and how much was left for a while in the intermediate state of dependent alliance. But, for all practical purposes, the Illyrian kingdom of Skodra formed from this time a part of the Roman dominion. With the fall of Skodra, the parts of Illyria which lay further to the north, beyond the bounds of the Greek world, first came into notice. ♦Dalmatian Wars.♦ The Greek colonies in Dalmatia had played their part in the first Illyrian war; but the land itself, which was to become an outlying fringe of Italy lying east of the Hadriatic, is now first heard of as a distinct country formed by a separation from the kingdom of Skodra. ♦B.C. 156. | B.C. 34.♦ The first Dalmatian war soon followed; but it was not till after several wars that Dalmatia became a province, and even after that time there were several revolts. ♦Roman colonies in Dalmatia.♦ Before long, Dalmatia was settled with several Roman colonies, as Jadera or Zara, and, above all, Salona, which became one of the chief cities of the Roman dominion. The neighbouring lands of Liburnia, Istria, and the land of the Iapodes, were gradually reduced during the same period. ♦Istria incorporated with Italy.♦ Istria, like the neighbouring land of Venetia, was actually incorporated with Italy, and Pola, under the name of Pietas Julia, became a Roman colony.

♦The outlying Greek lands.♦

We have already traced the process by which old Greece and the neighbouring lands of Macedonia and Epeiros gradually sank, first practically, and then formally, into parts of the Roman dominion. It would be hard to say at what particular moment many of the Greek cities and islands sank from the relation of obedient allies into that of acknowledged subjects. ♦Their late formal annexation.♦ We have seen that some of them, as Rhodes and Byzantion, were not formally annexed till the reign of Vespasian. The Greek cities on the Euxine do not seem to have been formally annexed at all till a late period of the Eastern Empire. Other outlying Greek lands and cities became so mixed up with the history of some of the Asiatic kingdoms that they will come in for a mention along with them. ♦Conquest of Crete, B.C. 67,♦ Crete kept its independence to become a nest of pirates, and to be specially conquered. It then formed one province with the then recent conquest of Kyrênê, the one great Greek settlement in Africa, which had become an appanage of the Macedonian kings of Egypt. The same had been the fate of Cyprus, an island which had always been partly Greek, and which had been further Hellenized under its Macedonian kings. ♦of Cyprus, B.C. 58.♦ Cyprus too became a province. Thus, before Rome lost her own freedom, she had become the formal or practical mistress of all the earlier abodes of freedom. Men could not yet foresee that a time would come when Greek and Roman should be words having the same meaning, and when the place and name of Rome herself should be transferred to one of the Greek cities which Vespasian formally reduced from alliance to bondage.

♦The Asiatic Provinces.♦

In Roman history one war and one conquest always led to another, and, as the affairs of Illyria had led to Roman interference in Greece, so the affairs of Greece led to Roman interference in Asia. ♦B.C. 191-188.♦ The first war which Rome waged with Antiochos of Syria led to no immediate increase of the Roman territory, but all the Seleukid possessions on this side Tauros were divided among the allies of Rome. ♦Province of Asia. B.C. 133-129.♦ This, as usual, was the first step towards the conquest of Asia, and it is quite according to the usual course of things that the first Roman province beyond the Ægæan, the province of Asia, was formed of the dominions of Rome’s first and most useful allies, the kings of Pergamos. The mission of Alexander and his successors, as the representatives of Western civilization against the East, now passed into the hands of Rome. Step by step, the other lands west of Tauros came under the formal or practical dominion of Rome. ♦Bithynia. B.C. 74.♦ Bithynia was the first to be annexed, and this acquisition was one of the causes which led to the second war between Rome and the famous Mithridates of Pontos. ♦Overthrow of Mithridates. B.C. 64.♦ His final overthrow brought a number of other lands under Roman dominion or influence. The Greek cities of Sinôpê and Hêrakleia obtained a nominal freedom, and vassal kings went on reigning in part of Pontos itself, and in the distant Greek kingdom of Bosporos. Rome was now mistress of Asia Minor. ♦Lykia.♦ The land was divided among her provinces and her vassal kings, save that the wise federal commonwealth of Lykia still kept the highest amount of independence which was consistent with the practical supremacy of Rome.

The Mithridatic war, which made Rome mistress of Asia in the narrower sense, at once involved her in the affairs of the further East. Tigranes of Armenia had been the chief ally of Mithridates; but, though his power was utterly humbled, no Armenian province was added to the Roman dominion for a long time to come. ♦Province of Syria. B.C. 64.♦ But the remnant of the Seleukid monarchy became the Roman province of Syria. As usual, several cities and principalities were allowed to remain in various relations of alliance and dependence on the ruling commonwealth. ♦Palestine.♦ Among these we find Judæa and the rest of Palestine, sometimes under a Roman procurator, sometimes united under a single vassal king, sometimes parted out among various kings and tetrarchs, as suited the momentary caprice or policy of Rome. ♦Comparison with British India.♦ In all these various relations between the native states and the ruling city we have a lively foreshadowing of the relations between England and the subject and dependent princes of India. ♦Rome the champion of the West.♦ The conquests of Rome in these regions made her more distinctly than ever the sole representative of the West against the East, and these conquests presently brought her into collision with the one power in the known world which could at all meet her on equal terms. She had stepped into the place of Alexander and Seleukos so far as that all those parts of Alexander’s Asiatic conquests which had received even a varnish of Hellenic culture had become parts of her dominion. ♦Her rivalry with Parthia.♦ The further East beyond the Euphrates was again under the command of a great barbarian power, that of Parthia, which had stepped into the place of Persia, as Rome had stepped into the place of Greece and Macedonia. Rome had now again a rival, in a sense from which she had not had a rival since the overthrow of Carthage and Macedonia.

One only of the Macedonian kingdoms now remained to be gathered in. ♦Conquest of Egypt. B.C. 31.♦ The annexation of Egypt, an annexation made famous by the names of Kleopatra, Antonius, the elder and the younger Cæsar, completed the work. Rome was now fully mistress of her own civilized world. Her dominion took in all the lands round the great inland sea. If, here and there, her formal dominion was broken by a city or principality whose nominal relation was that of alliance, the distinction concerned only the local affairs of that city or principality. ♦Pax Romana.♦ Within the whole historic world of the three ancient continents, the Roman Peace had begun. Rome had still to wage wars, and even to annex provinces; but those wars and annexations were now done rather to round off and to strengthen the territory which had been already gained, than in the strictest sense to extend it.

§ 5. Conquests under the Empire.

At the same moment when the Roman commonwealth was practically changed into a monarchy, the Roman dominion was thus brought, not indeed to its greatest extent, but to an extent of which its further extension was only a natural completion. ♦Conquests under Augustus and Tiberius.♦ There seems a certain inconsistency when we find Augustus laying down a rule against the enlargement of the Empire, while the Empire was, during his reign and that of his successor, extended in every direction. But the conquests of this time were mainly conquests for the purpose of strengthening the frontier; the occasional changes of this and that city or district from the dependent to the provincial relation, or sometimes from the provincial to the dependent, are now hardly worth mentioning. ♦Incorporation of the dependent kingdoms.♦ Between Augustus and Nero, or, at all events, between Augustus and Vespasian, all the dependent states in Asia and Africa, such as Mauritania, Kappadokia, Lykia, and others, were finally incorporated with the Empire to which they had long been practically subject. These annexations can hardly be called conquests. And it was merely finishing a work which had been begun two hundred years before, when the small corner of Spain which still kept its independence was brought under the Roman power. ♦Strengthening of the frontier.♦ The real conquests of this time consisted in the strengthening of the European frontier. No frontier nearer than the Rhine and the Danube could be looked on as safe. This lesson was easily learned; but it had also to be accompanied by another lesson which taught that the Rhine and the Danube, and no more distant points, were to be the real frontiers of Rome.

This brings us both to the lands which were then our own and to the lands which became our own in after times. During the reign of Augustus two conquests which most nearly concern our own history were planned, and one of them was attempted. The annexation of the land which was to become England was talked of; the annexation of the land which then was England, along with the rest of the German lands, was seriously attempted. But the conquest of Britain was put off from the days of Augustus to the days of Claudius. ♦Attempted conquest of Germany. B.C. 11-A.D. 9.♦ The attempt at the conquest of Germany, which was deemed to have been already carried out, was shivered when Arminius overthrew the legions of Varus. ♦A.D. 19.♦ The expeditions of Drusus and Germanicus into Northern Germany must have brought the Roman armies into contact with our own forefathers, for the first time, and, for several ages, for the last time. But from this time the relations between Rome and southern Germany begin, and constantly increase in importance. The two great rivers were fixed as a real frontier. ♦Conquests on the Danube.♦ The lands between the Alps and the Danube, Rætia, Vindelicia, Noricum, Pannonia, with Mœsia on the lower Danube, were all added to the Empire during the reign of Augustus. These were strictly defensive annexations, annexations made in order to remove the dangerous frontier further from Italy. Beyond the Rhine and the Danube the Roman possessions were mere outposts held for the defence of the land between the two great streams.

♦Attempt on Arabia. B.C. 24.♦

Meanwhile, while the attempt of the conquest of Germany came to so little, an attempt at conquest at the other end of the world, in the Arabian peninsula, came to even less. ♦Thrace.♦ It marks the policy of Rome and the gradual nature of her advance that, while these more distant conquests were made or attempted, Thrace still retained her dependent princes, the only land of any extent within the European dominions of Rome which did so. But Thrace, surrounded by Roman provinces, was in no way dangerous; it might remain a dependency while more distant lands were incorporated. It was not till uniformity was more sought after, till, under Vespasian, the nominal freedom of so many cities and principalities came to an end, that Thrace became a province. ♦Annexation of Byzantion.♦ It was then that, among her latest formal acquisitions in Europe, Rome annexed the city which was, in the course of ages, to take her own place and name.

♦Conquest of Britain.♦

Thus, in the days between Augustus and Trajan, the conquests which Rome actually made were mainly of a defensive and strengthening character. To this rule there is one and only one exception of any importance. This is the annexation to the Roman world of the land which was looked on as another world, the conquest of the greater part of the Isle of Britain. But Britain, though it did not come under the same law as the defensive annexations of Rætia and Pannonia, was naturally suggested by the annexation of Gaul and by the visits of the first Cæsar to the island. ♦Claudius. B.C. 43.♦ No actual conquest however took place till the reign of Claudius. ♦Agricola. B.C. 84.♦ Forty years later the Roman conquests in Britain were pushed by Agricola as far as the isthmus between the friths of Forth and Clyde, the boundary marked by the later rampart of Antoninus. But the lasting boundary of the Roman dominion in Britain cannot be looked on as reaching beyond the line of the southern wall of Hadrian, Severus, and Stilicho, between the Solway and the mouth of the Tyne. The northern part of Britain thus remained unconquered, and the conquest of Ireland was not even attempted. For us the conquest of the land which afterwards became our own has an interest above all the other conquests of Rome. But it is a purely geographical interest. The British victories of Cæsar and Agricola were won, not over our own forefathers, but over those Celtic Britons whom our forefathers more thoroughly swept away. The history of our own nation is still for some ages to be looked for by the banks of the Elbe and the Weser, not by those of the Severn and the Thames.

♦The Eastern conquests of Trajan.♦

Britain was the last to be won of the Western provinces of Rome, and the first to be lost. Still it was, for more than three hundred years, thoroughly incorporated with the Empire, and its loss did not happen till that general break-up of the Empire of which its loss was the first stage. But between the conquest of Britain and its loss there was a short time in which Rome again extended her dominion in the old fashion, both in Europe and Asia. ♦Conquests of Trajan. A.D. 98-117.♦ This was during the reign of Trajan, when the Roman borders were again widely extended in both Europe and Asia. Under him the Danube ceased to be a boundary stream in one continent and the Euphrates in the other. ♦His Asiatic and European conquests.♦ But a marked distinction must be drawn between his Asiatic and his European warfare. Trajan’s Asiatic conquests were strictly momentary; they were at once given up by his successor; and they will be better dealt with when we speak in another chapter of the long strife between Rome and her Eastern rival, first Parthian and then Persian. ♦Conquest of Arabia Petræa. A.D. 106.♦ The only lasting Asiatic conquest of Trajan’s reign was not made by Trajan himself, namely the small Roman province in Northern Arabia.

The European conquests of Trajan stand on another ground. If not strictly defensive, like those of Augustus, they might easily seem to be so. ♦Dacia.♦ The Dacians, to the north of the lower Danube, were really threatening to the Roman power in those regions, and they had dealt Rome more than one severe blow in the days of Domitian. ♦A.D. 106.♦ Trajan now formed the lands between the Thiess and the Danube, the Dniester and the Carpathian Mountains, into the Roman province of Dacia. ♦A.D. 270.♦ The last province to be won was the first to be given up; for Aurelian withdrew from it, and transferred its name to the Mœsian land immediately south of the Danube. But if Dacia was in this way one of the most short lived of Roman conquests, it was in another way one of the most lasting. ♦Later history of Dacia.♦ Cut off, as it has been for so many ages, from all Roman influences, forming, as it has done, one of the great highways of barbarian migration, a large part of Dacia, namely the modern Rouman principality, still keeps its Roman language no less than Spain and Gaul. In one way the land is to this day more Roman than Spain or Gaul, as its people still call themselves by the Roman name. Dacia, in fact, though geographically belonging to the Eastern half of the Empire, stood in the same position as the Western provinces. Greek influences had not reached so far north, nor was there in Dacia any old-standing native civilization, such as there was in Syria and Egypt. There was therefore nothing that was at all able to hold up against Roman influences. The land was speedily and thoroughly Romanized, and it remains Roman in speech and name sixteen hundred years after the withdrawal of the Roman power.

* * * * *

♦Summary.♦

The Roman Empire was thus gradually formed by bringing, first Italy and then the whole of the Mediterranean lands, under the dominion of the one Roman city. In every part of that dominion the process of conquest was gradual. The lands which became Roman provinces passed through various stages of alliance and dependence before they were fully incorporated. But, in the end, all the civilized world of those times became Roman. Speaking roughly, three great rivers, the Rhine, Danube, and Euphrates, formed the European and Asiatic boundaries of the Empire. In Africa the Roman dominion consisted only of the strip of fertile land between the Mediterranean and the mountains and deserts. Britain and Dacia, the only two great provinces lying beyond this range, were the last conquered and the first given up. In Western Europe and in Africa Rome carried her language and her civilization with her, and in those lands the Roman speech still remains, except where it has been swept away by Teutonic and Saracen conquests. In the lands from the Hadriatic to Mount Tauros, which had been brought more or less under Greek influences, the Greek speech and civilization stood its ground, and in those lands Greek still survives wherever it has not been swept away by Slavonic and Turkish conquests. In the further east, in Syria and Egypt, where there was an old native civilization, neither Greek nor Roman influences took real root. The differences between these three parts of the Roman Empire, the really Roman, the Greek, and the Oriental, will be clearly seen as we go on.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] We shall come as we go on to two uses of the name in which Italy, oddly enough, meant only the northern part of the land commonly so called. But in both these cases the name had a purely political and technical meaning, and it never came into common use in this sense.

[5] Some may think that the Cisalpine Gauls ought to be excepted, as the common Roman story represents them as having crossed the Alps from Transalpine Gaul at a time which almost comes within the range of contemporary history. But this is a point about which there is no real certainty; and it seems quite as likely that the Gaulish settlements on the Italian side of the Alps were as old as those on the other side.

[6] In a more minute study of the history it will be found that Latin Africa held out against the Saracens very much longer than Syria and Egypt. But for our purpose the two may be classed together in opposition to those lands in Europe and Asia which always remained Roman or Greek.

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IV. THE DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE

§ 1. The Later Geography of the Empire.

The Roman dominion, as we have seen, grew up by the successive annexation of endless kingdoms, districts, and cities, each of which, after its annexation, still retained, whether as an allied province or a subject state, much of the separate being which it had while it was independent. The allies and subjects of Rome remained in a variety of different relations to the ruling city, and the old names and the old geographical boundaries were largely preserved. ♦Wiping out of old divisions under the Empire.♦ But, as the old ideas of the commonwealth gradually died out, and as the power of the Emperors gradually grew into an avowed monarchy, the political change naturally led to a geographical change. The Roman dominion ceased to be a collection of allied and subject states under a single ruling city; it changed into a single Empire, all whose parts, all whose inhabitants, were equally subject to its Imperial head. The old distinctions of Latins, Italians, and provincials died out when all free inhabitants of the Empire became alike Romans. Italy had no longer any privilege; it was simply part of the Empire, like any other part. The geographical divisions which had been, first independent, then dependent states, sank into purely administrative divisions, which might be mapped out afresh at any time when it was found convenient to do so. Italy itself, in the extended sense which the word Italy had then come to bear, was mapped out afresh into regions as early as the time of Augustus. ♦New division of Italy under Augustus.♦ These divisions, eleven in number, mark an epoch in the process by which the detached elements out of which the Roman Empire had grown were fused together into one whole. As long as Italy was a collection of separate commonwealths, standing in various relations to the ruling city, there could not be any systematic division of the country for administrative purposes. Now that the whole of Italy stood on one level of citizenship or of subjection, the land might be mapped out in whatever way was most convenient. ♦The eleven Regions.♦ But the eleven regions of Augustus did not work any violent change. Old names and old boundaries largely remained. The famous names of Etruria, Latium, Samnium, Umbria, Picenum, and Lucania still lived on, though not always with their ancient boundaries. And, though all the land as far as the Alps was now Italy, two of the divisions of Italy kept their ancient names of Gaul on this side the Po and Gaul beyond the Po. Liguria and Venetia, now Italian lands, make up the remainder of Northern Italy.

♦Divisions under Constantine.♦

Italy had thus been mapped out afresh; what was done with Italy in the time of Augustus was done with the whole Empire in the time of Constantine. What Italy was in the earlier time the whole Empire was in the later; the old distinctions had been wiped out, and the whole of the Roman world stood ready to be parted out into fresh divisions. Under Diocletian, the Empire was divided into four parts, forming the realms of the four Imperial colleagues of his system, the two Augusti and their subordinate Cæsars. ♦Division of the Empire under Diocletian. A.D. 292.♦ Diocletian’s system of government involved a practical degradation of Rome from the headship of the Empire. Augusti and Cæsars now dwelled at points where their presence was more needed to ward off Persian and German attacks from the frontiers; Rome was forsaken for Nikomêdeia and Milan, for Antioch, York, and Trier. ♦Reunion under Constantine. A.D. 323. | Division between the sons of Theodosius. A.D. 395.♦ The division between the four Imperial colleagues lasted under another form after the Empire was re-united under Constantine, and it formed the groundwork of the more lasting division of the Empire into East and West, between the sons of Theodosius. The whole Empire was now mapped out according to a scheme in which ancient geographical names were largely preserved, but in which they were for the most part used in new or, at least, extended meanings. ♦The Four Prætorian Prefectures.♦ The Empire was divided into four great divisions called Prætorian Prefectures. These were divided into Dioceses—a name used in this nomenclature without regard to the ecclesiastical sense which was borrowed from it—and the dioceses again into Provinces. The four great prefectures of the East, Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, answer nearly to the fourfold division under Diocletian; while we may say that, in the final division, Illyricum and the East formed the Eastern Empire, and Italy and Gaul formed the Western. But it is only roughly that either the prefectures or their smaller divisions answer to any of the great national or geographical landmarks of earlier times.

♦Prefecture of the East.♦

The Prefecture of the East is that one among the four which least answers to anything in earlier geography, natural or historical. Its boundaries do not answer to those of any earlier dominion, nor yet to any great division of race or language. It stretched into all the three continents of the old world, and took in all those parts of the Empire which were never fully brought under either Greek or Roman influences. But it also took in large tracts which we have learned to look on as part of the Hellenic world—not only lands which had been, to a great extent, Hellenized in later times, but even some of the earliest Greek colonies. The four dioceses into which the Prefecture was divided formed far more natural divisions than the Prefecture itself.

♦Dioceses of the East,♦

Three of these were Asiatic. The first, specially called the East, took in all the possessions of Rome beyond Mount Tauros, together with Isauria, Kilikia, and the island of Cyprus. Its eastern boundaries naturally fluctuated according as Rome or Persia prevailed on the Euphrates and the Tigris, fluctuations of which we shall have again to speak more specially. ♦Egypt,♦ The diocese of Egypt, besides Egypt in the elder sense, took in, under the name of Libya, the old Greek land of the Kyrenaic Pentapolis. ♦Asia.♦ The diocese of Asia, a reminder of the elder province of that name and of the kingdom of Pergamos out of which it grew, took in the Asiatic coasts of the Ægæan, together with Pamphylia, Lykia, and the Ægæan Islands. The diocese of Pontos, preserving the name of the kingdom of Mithridates, took in the lands on the Euxine, with the fluctuating Armenian possessions of Rome.

♦Diocese of Thrace.♦

Besides these Asiatic lands, the Eastern Prefecture contained one European diocese, that of Thrace, which took in the lands stretching from the Propontis to the Lower Danube. The names of two of its provinces are remarkable. Rome now boasts of a province of Scythia. But, among the varied uses of that name, it has now shrunk up to mean the land immediately south of the mouths of the Danube. ♦Province of Europa.♦ The other name is Europa, a name which, as a Roman province, means the district immediately round the New Rome. Constantine had now fixed his capital on the site of the old Byzantion, the site from which the city on the Bosporos might seem to bear rule over two worlds. With whatever motive, the name of Europe was specially given to that corner of the Western continent where it comes nearest to the Eastern. Nor was the name ill-chosen for the district round the city which was so long to be the bulwark of Europe against invading Asia. ♦Great cities of the Eastern Prefecture.♦ And, besides the New Rome, this Prefecture, as containing those parts of the Empire which had belonged to the great Macedonian kingdoms, contained an unusual proportion of the great cities of the world. Besides a crowd of less famous places, it took in the two great Eastern seats of Grecian culture, the most renowned Alexandria and the most renowned Antioch, themselves only the chief among many others cities bearing the same names. All these, it should be remarked, were comparatively recent creations, bearing the names of individual men. That cities thus artificially called into being should have kept the position which still belonged to the great Macedonian capitals is one of the most speaking signs of the effect which the dominion of Alexander and his successors had on the history of the world.

♦Prefecture of Illyricum.♦

The nomenclature of the second Prefecture marks how utterly Greece, as a country and nation, had died out of all reckoning. The Prefecture of the Eastern Illyricum answered roughly to European Greece and its immediate neighbours. It took in the lands stretching from the Danube to the southern point of Peloponnêsos. Greece, as part of the Roman Empire, was included under the name of the barbarian land through which Rome was first brought into contact with Greek affairs. She was further included under the name of the half-barbarian neighbour who had become Greek through the process of conquering Greece. In the system of Prefectures, Greece formed part of Macedonia, and Macedonia formed part of Illyricum. So low had Greece, as a land, fallen at the very moment when her tongue was making the greatest of all its conquests, when a Greek city was raised to the rank of another Rome. ♦Dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia.♦ The Illyrian Prefecture contained the two dioceses of Macedonia and Dacia. This last name, it will be remembered, had, since the days of Aurelian, withdrawn to the south of the Danube. The Macedonian diocese contained six provinces, among which, besides the familiar and venerable names of Macedonia and Epeiros, we find the names, still more venerable and familiar, of Thessaly and Crete. And one yet greater name lives on with them. Hellas and Græcia have alike vanished from the map; but the most abiding name in Grecian history, the theme of Homer and the theme of Polybios, has not perished. ♦Province of Achaia.♦ Among all changes, Achaia is there still.

♦Prefecture of Italy.♦

In the new system Italy and Rome herself were in no way privileged over the rest of the Empire. The Italian Prefecture took in Italy itself and the lands which might be looked on as necessary for the defence and maintenance of Italy. It took in the defensive conquests of the early Empire on the Upper Danube, and it took in the granary of Italy, Africa. Its three dioceses were Italy, Illyricum, and Africa. Here Illyricum strangely gave its name both to a distinct Prefecture and to one diocese of the Prefecture of Italy. ♦Dioceses of Italy,♦ The Italian diocese contained seventeen provinces. The Gaulish name has now wholly vanished from the lands south of the Alps. The lands between the older and the newer boundaries of Italy are now divided into Liguria and Venetia—the former name being used in a widely extended sense—and the new names of Æmilia and Flaminia, provinces named after the great Roman roads, as the roads themselves were named after Roman magistrates. But the new Italy has spread beyond the Alps, and reaches to the Danube. Two Rætian provinces form part of it. Three other provinces are formed by the three great islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. ♦Illyricum,♦ The diocese of the Western Illyricum took in Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Noricum. ♦Africa.♦ The third diocese, that of Africa, took in the old Africa, Numidia, and western Mauritania. ♦Greatness of Carthage.♦ The union of these lands with Italy may seem less strange when we remember that the colony of the first Cæsar, the restored Carthage, was the greatest of Latin-speaking cities after Rome herself.

♦Prefecture of Gaul.♦

The fourth Prefecture took in the Roman dominions in Western Europe, the great Latin-speaking provinces beyond the Alps. ♦Diocese of Spain; its African territory.♦ Among the seven provinces of Spain are reckoned, not only the Balearic islands, a natural appendage to the Spanish peninsula, but a small part of the African continent, the province of Tingitana, stretching from the now Italian Africa to the Ocean. This was according to the general law by which, in almost all periods of history, either the masters of Spain have borne rule in Africa or the masters of Africa have borne rule in Spain. ♦Diocese of Gaul;♦ The diocese of Gaul, with its seventeen provinces, keeps, at least in name, the boundaries of the old Transalpine land. It still numbers the two Germanies west of the Rhine among its provinces. ♦of Britain.♦ The five provinces of the diocese of Britain took in, at the moment when the Empire was beginning to fall asunder, a greater territory than Rome had held in the island in the days of her greatest power. ♦Province of Valentia. A.D. 367.♦ The exploits of the elder Theodosius, who drove back the Pict by land and the Saxon by sea, for a moment added to the Empire a province beyond the wall of Antoninus, which, in honour of the reigning Emperors Valentinian and Valens, received the name of Valentia.

§ 2. The Division of the Empire.

♦Change in the position of Rome.♦

The mapping out of the Empire into Prefectures, and its division between two or more Imperial colleagues, led naturally to its more lasting division into what were practically two Empires. The old state of things had altogether passed away. Rome was no longer the city ruling over subject states. From the Ocean to the Euphrates all was alike, if not Rome, at least Romania; all its inhabitants were equally Romans. But to be a Roman now meant, no longer to be a citizen of a commonwealth, but to be the subject of an Emperor. The unity of the Empire was not broken by the division of its administration between several Imperial colleagues; but Rome ceased to be the only Imperial dwelling-place, and, from the latter years of the third century, it ceased to be an Imperial dwelling-place at all. As long as Rome held her old place, no lasting division, nothing more than an administrative partition among colleagues, could be thought of. There could be no division to mark on the map. But, when the new system had fully taken root at the end of the fourth century, we come to a division which was comparatively lasting, one which fills an important place in history, and which is capable of being marked on the map. ♦Division of the Empire between the sons of Theodosius. | A.D. 395.♦ On the death of Theodosius the Great, the Empire was divided between his two sons, Arcadius taking the Eastern provinces, answering nearly to the Prefectures of the East and of Illyricum, while Honorius took the Western provinces, the Prefectures of Italy and Gaul. Through the greater part of the fifth century, the successors of Arcadius and of Honorius formed two distinct lines of Emperors, of whom the Eastern reigned at Constantinople, the Western most commonly at Ravenna. But as the dominions of each prince were alike Roman, the Eastern and Western Emperors were still looked on in theory as Imperial colleagues charged with the administration of a common Roman dominion. ♦Practically two Empires.♦ Practically however the dominions of the two Emperors may be looked on as two distinct Empires, the Eastern having its seat at the New Rome or Constantinople, while the Western had its seat more commonly at Ravenna than at the Old Rome.

This division of the Empire is the great political feature of the fifth century; but the fate of the two Empires was widely different. ♦Enemies of Rome.♦ From the very beginning of the Empire, Rome had had to struggle with two chief enemies, in the East and in the West, in Europe and in Asia, the nature of whose warfare was widely different. ♦Rivalry with Parthia and Persia.♦ In the East she had, first the Parthian and then the regenerate Persian, as strictly a rival power on equal terms. This rivalry went on from the moment when Rome stepped into the place of the Seleukids till the time when Rome was cut short, and Persia overthrown, by the Saracenic invasions. But, except during the momentary conquests of Trajan and during the equally momentary alternate conquests of Rome and Persia in the seventh century, the whole strife was a mere border warfare which did not threaten the serious dismemberment of either power. This and that fortress was taken and retaken; this and that province was ceded and ceded back again; but except under Trajan and again under Chosroes and Heraclius, the existence and dominion of neither power was ever seriously threatened. ♦Rivalry with Persia passes on to the Eastern Empire.♦ The Eastern Empire naturally inherited this part of the calling of the undivided Empire, the long strife with Persia.

At the other end of the Empire, the enemy was of quite another kind. ♦Teutonic incursions in the Western Empire.♦ The danger there was through the incursions of the various Teutonic nations. There was no one Teutonic power which could be a rival to Rome in the same sense in which Persia was in the East; but a crowd of independent Teutonic tribes were pressing into the Empire from all quarters, and were striving to make settlements within its borders. The task of resisting these incursions fell of course to the Western Empire. ♦No Teutonic settlements in the Eastern Empire.♦ The Eastern Empire indeed was often traversed by wandering Teutonic nations; but no permanent settlements were made within its borders, no dismemberment of its provinces capable of being marked on the map was made till a much later time. But the Western Empire was altogether dismembered and broken in pieces by the settlement of the Teutonic nations within it. The geographical aspects of the two Empires during the fifth century are thus strikingly unlike one another; but each continues one side of the history of the undivided Empire. It will therefore be well to trace those two characteristic aspects of the two Empires separately. We will first speak of the Teutonic incursions, through which in the end the Western Empire was split up and the states of modern Europe were founded. We will then trace the geographical aspect of the long rivalry between Rome and Persia in the East.

§ 3. The Teutonic Settlements within the Empire.

Our subject is historical geography, and neither ethnology nor political history, except so far as either national migrations or political changes produce a directly geographical effect. ♦The Wandering of the Nations.♦ The great movement called the Wandering of the Nations, and its results in the settlement of various Teutonic nations within the bounds of the Roman Empire, concern us now only so far as they wrought a visible change on the map. The exact relations of the different tribes to one another, the exact course of the migrations which led to the final settlement of each, belong rather to another branch of inquiry. But there are certain marked stages in the relations of the Empire to the nations beyond its borders, certain marked stages in the growth and mutual relations of those nations, which must be borne in mind in order to explain their settlements within the Empire. ♦Changes in the nomenclature of the Teutonic nations.♦ It will be at once seen that the geography and nomenclature of the German nations in the third century is for the most part quite different from their geography and nomenclature as we find it in Cæsar and Tacitus. New names have come to the front, names all of which play a part in history, many of which remain to this day; and, with one or two exceptions, the older names sink into the background. It is therefore hardly needful to go through the ethnology and geography of Tacitus, or to deal with any of the controverted points which are suggested thereby. We have to look at the German nations purely in their relations to Rome.

♦Warfare on the Rhine and the Danube.♦

We have seen that the history of Rome in her western provinces was, from an early stage of the Empire, a struggle with the Teutonic nations on the Rhine and the Danube. We have seen that all attempts at serious conquest beyond those boundaries came to nothing. ♦Roman possessions beyond those rivers.♦ The Roman possessions beyond the two great rivers were mere outposts for the better security of the land within the rivers. The district beyond them, fenced in by a wall and known as the Agri Decumates, was hardly more than such an outlying post on a great scale. The struggle along the border was, almost from the beginning, a defensive struggle on the part of Rome. We hear of Roman conquests from the second century to the fifth; but they are strictly defensive conquests, the mere recovery of lost possessions, or at most the establishment of fresh outposts. ♦Formation of confederacies among the Germans.♦ From the moment of the first appearance of Rome on the two rivers, the Teutonic nations were really threatening to Rome, and the warfare of Rome was really defensive; and from the very beginning too a process seems to have been at work among the German nations themselves which greatly strengthened their power as enemies of Rome. New nations or confederacies, bearing, for the most part, names unknown to earlier times, begin to be far more dangerous than the smaller and more scattered tribes of the earlier times had been. These movements among the German nations themselves, hastened by pressure of other nations to the east of them, caused the Teutonic attacks on the Empire to become more and more formidable, and at last to grow into Teutonic settlements within the Empire. But, in the course of this process, several stages may be noticed. ♦Marcomanni and Quadi.♦ Thus the Marcomanni and the Quadi play a part in this history from the very beginning. The Marcomanni appear in Cæsar, and, from their name of Markmen, we may be sure that they were a confederacy of the same kind as the later confederacies of the Franks and Alemanni. In the first and second centuries the Marcomanni are dangerous neighbours, threatening the Empire and often penetrating beyond its borders, and their name appears in history as late as the fifth century. But they play no part in the Teutonic settlements within the Empire. They do not affect the later map; they had no share in bringing about the changes out of which modern Europe arose. Their importance ceases just at the time when a second stage begins, when, in the course of the third century, we begin to hear of those nations or confederacies whose movements really did affect later history and geography.

♦Beginning of modern European history.♦

In the third and fourth centuries the history of modern Europe begins. ♦The new confederacies.♦ We now begin to hear names which have been heard ever since, Franks, Alemans, Saxons, all of them great confederacies of German tribes. ♦Defensive warfare of Rome.♦ Defence against German inroads now becomes the chief business of the rulers of Rome. The invaders were constantly driven back; but new invaders were as constantly found to renew their incursions. Men of Teutonic race pressed into the Empire in every conceivable character. ♦Germans within the Empire.♦ Besides open enemies, who came with the hope either of plunder or settlement, crowds of Germans served in the Roman armies and obtained lands held by military tenure as the reward of their services. Their chiefs were promoted to every rank and honour, military and civil, short of the Imperial dignity itself. These were changes of the utmost importance in other points of view; still they do not directly affect the map of the Empire. Lands and cities were won and lost over and over again; but such changes were merely momentary; the acknowledged boundaries of the Roman dominion were not yet altered; it is not till the next stage that geography begins to be directly concerned.

♦Beginning of national kingdoms.♦

This last stage begins with the early years of the fifth century, and thus nearly coincides with the division of the Empire into East and West. Gothic and other Teutonic kings could now march at pleasure at the head of their armies through every corner of the Empire, sometimes bearing the titles of Roman officers, sometimes dictating the choice of Roman Emperors, sometimes sacking the Old Rome or threatening the New. It was when these armies under their kings settled down and formed national kingdoms within the limits of the Empire, that the change comes to have an effect on the map. In the course of the fifth century the Western provinces of Rome were rent away from her. In most cases the loss was cloaked by some Imperial commission, some empty title bestowed on the victorious invader; but the Empire was none the less practically dismembered. Out of these dismemberments the modern states of Europe gradually grew. It will now be our business to give some account of those nations, Teutonic and otherwise, who had an immediate share in this work, passing lightly by all questions, and indeed all nations, which cannot be said to have had such an immediate share in it.

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♦Teutonic Settlements in the West.♦

The nations which in the fourth and fifth centuries made settlements in the Western provinces of Rome fall under two chief heads; those who made their settlements by land, and those who made them by sea. This last class is pretty well coextensive with the settlement of our own forefathers in Britain, which must be spoken of separately. ♦Settlements within the Empire.♦ Among the others, the nations who play an important part in the fourth and fifth centuries are the Goths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Suevi, and the Franks. And their settlements again fall into two classes, those which passed away within a century or two, and those which have had a lasting effect on European history. ♦Franks, Burgundians, Suevi,♦ Thus it is plain at the first glance that the Franks and the Burgundians have left their names on the modern map. The Suevi have left their name also: but it is now found only in their older German land; it has vanished for ages from their western settlement. ♦Goths,♦ The name of the Goths has passed away from the kingdoms which they founded, but their presence has affected the history of both the Spanish and the Italian peninsulas. ♦Vandals.♦ The Vandals alone, as a nation and kingdom, have left no traces whatever, though it may be that they have left their name to a part of one of the lands of their sojourn. ♦Their kingdoms.♦ All these nations founded kingdoms within the Western Empire, kingdoms which at first admitted a nominal superiority in the Empire, but which were practically independent from the beginning. ♦Various circumstances of their history.♦ But the history of the several kingdoms is very different. Some of them soon passed away altogether, while others became the beginnings of the great nations of modern Europe. Gaul and Spain fell off very gradually from the Empire. But, in the course of the fifth century, all the nations of which we have been speaking formed more or less lasting settlements within those provinces. Pre-eminent among them are the great settlements of the Goths and the Franks. Out of the settlement of the Franks arose the modern kingdoms of Germany and France, and out of the settlement of the Goths arose the various kingdoms of Spain. Those of the Burgundians, Vandals, and Suevi were either smaller or less lasting. All of them however must be mentioned in their order.

♦Migrations of the West-Goths.♦

First and greatest come the Goths. It is not needful for our purpose to examine all that history or legend has to tell us as to the origin of the Goths, or all the theories which ingenious men have formed on the subject. ♦Defeat of the Goths by Claudius. A.D. 269.♦ It is enough for our purpose that the Goths began to show themselves as dangerous enemies of the Empire in the second half of the third century; but their continuous history does not begin till the second half of the fourth. ♦Gothic kingdom on the Danube.♦ We then find them forming a great kingdom in the lands north of the Danube. ♦Goths driven onwards by the Huns.♦ Presently a large body of them were driven to seek shelter within the bounds of the Eastern Empire from the pressure of the invading Huns. These last were a Turanian people who had been driven from their own older settlements by movements in the further East which do not concern us, but who become an important element in the history of the fifth century. They affected the Empire, partly by actual invasions, partly by driving other nations before them but they made no lasting settlements within it. Nor did the Goths themselves make any lasting settlement in the Eastern Empire. ♦They cross the Danube. A.D. 377.♦ While one part of the Gothic nation became subject to the Huns, another part crossed the Danube; but they crossed it by Imperial licence, and if they took to arms, it was only to punish the treachery of the Roman officers. Presently we find Gothic chiefs marching at pleasure through the dominions of the Eastern Cæsar; but they simply march and ravage; it is not till they have got within the boundary of the West that they found any lasting kingdoms. In fact, the Goths, and the Teutonic tribes generally, had no real mission in the East; to them the East was a mere highway to the West. ♦Career of Alaric. A.D. 394-410.♦ The movements of Alaric in Greece, Illyricum, and Italy, his sieges and his capture of Rome, are of the highest historical importance, but they do not touch geography. The Goths first win for themselves a local habitation and a place on the map when they left Italy to establish themselves in the further West.

♦Beginning of the West-Gothic kingdom under Athaulf. A.D. 412.♦

Under Alaric’s successor, Athaulf, the first foundations were laid of that great West-Gothic kingdom which we are apt to look on as specially Spanish, but which in truth had its first beginning in Gaul, and which kept some Gaulish territory as long as it lasted. But the Goths passed into those lands, not in the character of avowed conquerors, not as founders of an avowed Gothic state, but as soldiers of the Empire, sent to win back its lost provinces. ♦Condition of Gaul and Spain.♦ Those provinces were now occupied or torn in pieces by a crowd of invaders, Suevi, Vandals, and Alans. ♦The Alans.♦ These last are a puzzling race, our accounts of whom are somewhat contradictory, but who may perhaps be most safely set down as a non-Aryan, or, at any rate, a non-Teutonic people, who had been largely brought under Gothic influences. But early in the fifth century they possessed a dominion in central Spain which stretched from sea to sea. ♦The Suevi in Spain.♦ Their dominion passed for a few years into the hands of the Suevi, who had already formed a settlement in north-western Spain, and who still kept a dominion in that corner long after the greater part of the peninsula had become Gothic. ♦The Vandals in Africa. A.D. 425.♦ The Vandals occupied Bætica; but they presently passed into Africa, and there founded the one Teutonic kingdom in that continent, with Carthage to its capital, a kingdom which took in also the great islands of the western Mediterranean, including Sicily itself. ♦Independence of the Basques.♦ Through all these changes the unconquerable people of the Basque and Cantabrian mountains seem never to have fully submitted to any conquerors; but the rest of Spain and south-western Gaul was, before half of the fifth century had passed, formed into the great West-Gothic kingdom. ♦Gothic kingdom of Toulouse.♦ That kingdom stretched from the pillars of Hêraklês to the Loire and the Rhone, and its capital was placed, not on Spanish but on Gaulish ground, at the Gaulish Tolosa or Toulouse. The Gothic dominion in Gaul was doomed not to be lasting; the Gothic dominion in Spain lasted down to the Saracen conquest, and all the later Christian kingdoms of Spain may be looked on as fragments or revivals of it. Spain however never changed her name for that of her conquerors. ♦Gothia.♦ The only parts of the Gothic kingdom which ever bore the Gothic name were those small parts both of Spain and Gaul which kept the name of Gothia through later causes. ♦Andalusia.♦ The Vandals, on the other hand, though they passed altogether out of Spain, have left their name to this day in its southern part under the form of Andalusia, a name which, under the Saracen conquerors, spread itself over the whole peninsula.

♦The Franks.♦

The other great Teutonic nations or confederacies of which we have to speak have had a far more lasting effect on the nomenclature of Europe. We have now to trace the steps by which the Franks gradually became the ruling people both of Germany and of Gaul. They have stamped their name on both countries. ♦Uses of the word Francia.♦ The dominions of the Franks got the name of Francia, a name whose meaning has constantly varied according to the extent of the Frankish dominion at different times. In modern use it still cleaves to two parts of their dominions, to that part of Germany which is still called Franken or Franconia, and to that part of Gaul which is still called France. ♦The Alemanni.♦ And their history is closely mixed up with that of another nation or confederacy, that of the Alemanni, who again have, in the French tongue, given their name to the whole of Germany. ♦A.D. 275.♦ Franks and Alemanni alike begin to be heard of in the third century, and the Alemanni even attempted an actual invasion of Italy; but the geographical importance of both confederacies does not begin till the fifth. All through the fourth century it is the chief business of the Emperors who ruled in Gaul to defend the frontier of the Rhine against their incursions, against the Alemanni along the upper part of its course, and against the Franks along its lower part. ♦Thuringians. | The Low-Dutch tribes.♦ To the east of the Franks and Alemanni lay the Thuringians; to the north, along the coasts of the German Ocean, the Low-Dutch tribes, Saxons and Frisians. In the course of the fifth century their movements also began to affect the geography of the Empire.

During the whole of that century the Franks were pressing into Gaul. The Imperial city of Trier was more than once taken, and the seat of the provincial government was removed to Arles. ♦Reign of Chlodwig. A.D. 481-511.♦ The union of the two chief divisions of the Frankish confederacy, and the overthrow of the Alemanni, made the Franks, under their first Christian king, Chlodwig or Clovis, the ruling people of northern Gaul and central Germany. Their territory thus took in both lands which had been part of the Empire, and lands which had never been such. ♦Character and divisions of the Frankish kingdom.♦ This is a special characteristic of the Frankish settlement, and one which influences the whole of their later history. There was, from the very beginning, long before any such distinction was consciously drawn, a Teutonic and a Latin Francia. There were Frankish lands to the East which never had been Roman. There were lands in northern Gaul which remained practically Roman under the Frankish dominion. ♦Roman Germany Teutonized afresh.♦ And between them lay, on the left bank of the Rhine, the Teutonic lands which had formed part of the Roman province of Gaul, but which now became Teutonic again. Moguntiacum, Augusta Treverorum, and Colonia Agrippina, cities founded on Teutonic soil, now again became German, ready to be in due time, by the names of Mainz, Trier, and Köln, the metropolitan and electoral cities of Germany. ♦Eastern and Western Francia.♦ These lands, with the original German lands, formed the Eastern or Teutonic Francia, where the Franks, or their German allies and subjects, formed the real population of the country. In the Western Francia, between the Loire and the Channel, though the Franks largely settled and influenced the country in many ways, the mass of the population remained Roman. ♦Armorica or Britanny.♦ Over the western peninsula of Armorica the dominion of the Franks was always precarious and, at most, external. Here the ante-Roman population still kept its Celtic language, and it was further strengthened by colonies from Britain, from which the land took its later name of the Lesser Britain or Britanny. ♦Extent of the Frankish dominion. A.D. 500.♦ Thus, at the end of the fifth century, the Frankish dominion was firmly established over the whole of central Germany and Northern Gaul. Their dominion was fated to be the most lasting of the Teutonic kingdoms formed on the Roman mainland. The reason is obvious; while the Goths in Spain and the Vandals in Africa were isolated Teutonic settlers in a Roman land, the Franks in Gaul were strengthened by the unbroken Teutonic mainland at their back.

♦The Burgundians.♦

The greater part of Gaul was thus, at the end of the fifth century, divided between the Franks in the north and the West-Goths in the south. But, early in the fifth century, a third Teutonic power grew up in south-eastern Gaul. ♦Their kingdom.♦ The Burgundians, a people who, in the course of the Wandering of the Nations, seem to have made their way from the shores of the Baltic, established themselves in the lands between the Rhone and the Alps, where they formed a kingdom which bore their name. Their dominion in Gaul may be said to have been more lasting than that of the Goths, less lasting than that of the Franks. ♦Meaning of the word Burgundy.♦ Burgundy is still a recognized name; but no name in geography has so often shifted its place and meaning, and it has for some centuries settled itself on a very small part of the ancient kingdom of the Burgundians. ♦Provence Burgundian. A.D. 500-510. | 510-536.♦ At the end of the fifth century the Rhone was a Burgundian river; Autun, Besançon, Lyons, and Vienne were Burgundian cities; but the sea coast, the original Roman Province, the land which has so steadily kept that name, though it fell for a moment under the Burgundian power, followed at this time, as became the first Roman land beyond the Alps, the fortunes of Italy rather than those of Gaul.

♦Invasion of the Huns.♦

Among these various conquests and shiftings of dominion, all of which affected the map at the time, some of which have affected history and geography ever since, it may be well to mention, if only by way of contrast, an inroad which fills a great place in the history of the fifth century, but which had no direct effect on geography. ♦Battle of Châlons. A.D. 451.♦ This was the invasion of Italy and Gaul by the Huns under Attila, and their defeat at Châlons by the combined forces of Romans, West-Goths, and Franks. This battle is one of the events which is remarkable, not for working change, but for hindering it. Had Attila succeeded, the greatest of all changes would have taken place throughout all Western Europe. As it was, the map of Gaul was not affected by his inroad. ♦Destruction of Aquileia, and origin of Venice.♦ On the map of Italy it did have an indirect effect; he destroyed the city of Aquileia, and its inhabitants, fleeing to the Venetian islands, laid the foundation of one of the later powers of Europe in the form of the commonwealth of Venice.

While Spain and Gaul were thus rent away from the Empire, Italy and Rome itself were practically rent away also, though the form which the event took was different. ♦Reunion of the Empire. | Rule of Odoacer. A.D. 476-493.♦ A vote of the Senate reunited the Western Empire to the Eastern; the Eastern Emperor Zeno became sole Emperor, and the government of the diocese of Italy—that is, it will be remembered, of a large territory besides the Italian peninsula—was entrusted by his commission to Odoacer, a general of barbarian mercenaries, with the rank of Patrician. No doubt Odoacer was practically independent of the Empire; but the union of the Empire was preserved in form, and no separate kingdom of Italy was set up. ♦The East-Goths in Italy.♦ Presently Odoacer was overthrown by Theodoric king of the East-Goths, who, though king of his own people, reigned in Italy by an Imperial commission as Patrician. ♦Rule of Theodoric. A.D. 493-526.♦ Practically, he founded an East-Gothic kingdom, taking in Italy and the other lands which formed the dioceses of Italy and Western Illyricum. ♦Extent of his dominion.♦ His dominion also took in the coast of what we may now call Provence, and his influence was extended in various ways over most of the kingdoms of the West. The seat of the Gothic dominion, like that of the later Western Empire, was at Ravenna. Practically Theodoric and his successors were independent kings, and, as chiefs of their own people, they bore the kingly title. ♦Theory of the Empire.♦ Hence, as Rome formed part of their dominions, it is true to say that under them Rome ceased to be part of the Roman Empire. Still in theory the Imperial supremacy went on, and in this way it became much easier for Italy to be won back to the Empire at a somewhat later time.

§ 4. Settlement of the English in Britain.

Meanwhile, in another part of Europe, a Teutonic settlement of quite another character from those on the mainland was going on. ♦The Romans withdrawn from Britain. A.D. 411.♦ Spain and Gaul fell away from the Empire by slow degrees; but the Roman dominion in Britain came to an end by a definite act at a definite moment. The Roman armies were withdrawn from the province, and its inhabitants were left to themselves. Presently, a new settlement took place in the island which was thus left undefended. ♦Difference between the conquest of Britain and other Teutonic conquests.♦ It is specially important to mark the difference between the Teutonic settlements in Britain and the Teutonic conquests on the mainland. The Teutonic conquests in Gaul and Spain were made by Teutonic neighbours who had already learned to know and respect the Roman civilization, who were either Christians already or became Christians soon after they entered the Empire. They pressed in gradually by land; they left the Roman inhabitants to live after the Roman law, and they themselves gradually adopted the speech and much of the manners of Rome. The only exception to this rule on the continent is to be found in the lands immediately on the Rhine and the Danube, where the Teutonic settlement was complete, and where the Roman tongue and civilization were pretty well wiped out. This same process happened yet more completely in the Teutonic conquest of Britain. ♦Character of the English settlement; | long struggle with the Britons.♦ The great island possession of Rome had been virtually abandoned by Rome before the Teutonic settlements in it began. The invaders had therefore to struggle rather with native Britons than with Romans. Moreover, they were invaders who came by sea, and who came from lands where little or nothing was known of the Roman law or religion. They therefore made a settlement of quite another kind from the settlement of the Goths or even from that of the Franks. They met with a degree of strictly national resistance such as no other Teutonic conquerors met with; therefore in the end they swept away all traces of the earlier state of things in a way which took place nowhere else. ♦The English remain Teutonic.♦ As far as such a process is possible, they slew or drove out the older inhabitants; they kept their heathen religion and Teutonic language, and were thus able to grow up as a new Teutonic nation in their new home without any important intermixture with the earlier inhabitants, Roman or British.

♦The Low-Dutch settlements in Britain.♦

The conquerors who wrought this change were our own forefathers, the Low-Dutch inhabitants of the border lands of Germany and Denmark, quite away from the Roman frontier; and among them three tribes, the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, had the chief share in the conquest of Britain. ♦Saxons.♦ The Saxons had, as has already been said, attempted a settlement in the fourth century. They were therefore the tribe who were first known to the Roman and Celtic inhabitants of the island; the Celts of Britain and Ireland have therefore called all the Teutonic settlers Saxons to this day. ♦Origin of the name English.♦ But, as the Angles or English occupied in the end much the greater part of the land, it was they who, when the Teutonic tribes in Britain began to form one nation, gave their name to that nation and its land. That nation was the English, and their land was England. While Britain therefore remains the proper geographical name of the whole island, England is the name of that part of Britain which was step by step conquered by the English. Before the end of the fifth century several Teutonic kingdoms had begun in Britain. ♦Jutes in Kent. A.D. 449.♦ The Jutes began the conquest by their settlement in Kent, and presently the Saxons began to settle on the South coast and on a small part of the East coast, in Sussex, Wessex, and Essex. ♦Saxon and Anglian settlements.♦ And along a great part of the eastern coast various Anglian settlements were made, which gradually grew into the kingdoms of East-Anglia, Deira, and Bernicia, which two last formed by their union the great kingdom of Northumberland. But, at the end of the sixth century, the English had not got very far from the southern and eastern coasts. ♦The Welsh and Scots.♦ The Britons, whom the English called Welsh or strangers, held out in the West, and the Picts and Scots in the North. The Scots were properly the people of Ireland; but a colony of them had settled on the western coast of northern Britain, and, in the end, they gave the name of Scotland to the whole North of the island.

§ 5. The Eastern Empire.

♦Contrast between the Eastern and Western Empires.♦

We have already seen the differences between the position of the Eastern and Western Empires during this period. While in the West the provinces were gradually lopped away by the Teutonic settlements, the provinces of the East, though often traversed by Teutonic armies, or rather nations, did not become the seats of lasting Teutonic settlements. ♦The Tetraxite Goths.♦ We can hardly count as an exception the settlement of the Tetraxite Goths in the Tauric Chersonêsos, a land which was rather in alliance with the Empire than actually part of it. ♦Rivalry with Persia.♦ The distinctive history of the Eastern Empire consists, as has been already said, in the long struggle between East and West, in which Rome had succeeded to the mission of Alexander and the Seleukids as the representative of Western civilization. To this mission was afterwards added the championship of Christianity, first against the Fire-worshipper and then against the Moslem. In Eastern history no event is more important and more remarkable than the uprising of the regenerate Persian nation against its Parthian masters. ♦Revival of the Persian kingdom. A.D. 226.♦ But, as far as either the history or the geography of Rome is concerned, the Persian simply steps into the place of the Parthian as the representative of the East against the West. From our point of view, the long wars on the Eastern frontier of Rome, and the frequent shiftings of that frontier, form one unbroken story, whether the enemy that was striven against is the successor of Arsakes or the successor of Artaxerxes. ♦Position of Armenia.♦ And besides the natural rivalry of two great powers in such a position, the border kingdom of Armenia, a name which has changed its meaning and its frontiers almost as often as Burgundy or Austria, supplied constant ground for dispute between Rome and her eastern rival, whether Parthian or Persian.

In the geographical aspect of this long struggle three special periods need to be pointed out. ♦Conquests of Trajan. A.D. 114-117.♦ The first is that of the momentary conquests of Trajan. Under him Armenia, hitherto a vassal kingdom of Rome, was incorporated as a Roman province. Albania and Iberia took its place as the frontier vassal states. Beyond the Euphrates, even beyond the Tigris, the Roman dominion took in Mesopotamia, Atropatênê, and Babylonia. The Parthian capital of Ktesiphôn and the outlying Greek free city of Seleukeia were included within the boundaries of an Empire which for a moment touched the Caspian and the Persian Gulf. Rome, as the champion of the West, seemed to have triumphed for ever over her Eastern rival, when the Parthian kingdom was thus shorn of the border lands of the two worlds, and when its king was forced to become a Roman vassal for the dominions that were left to him. But this vast extension of the Roman power was strictly only for a moment. ♦Conquests of Trajan surrendered by Hadrian. A.D. 117.♦ What Trajan had conquered Hadrian at once gave back; the Empire was again bounded by the Euphrates, and Armenia was again left to form matter of dispute between its Eastern and its Western claimant. ♦Conquests of Marcus. A.D. 162-166.♦ The second stage begins when, under Marcus, the Roman frontier again began to advance. ♦Of Severus. A.D. 197-202.♦ Between the Euphrates and the Tigris Osrhoênê became a Roman dependency: under the house of Severus it became a Roman province; and the fortress of Nisibis, so famous in later wars, was planted as the Eastern outpost of Rome against the Parthian. Ten years later the Parthian power was no more; but, as seen with Western eyes, the revived monarchy of Persia had simply stepped into its place. The wars of Alexander Severus, the captivity of Valerian, the wasting march of Sapor through the Roman provinces, left no trace on the map. ♦Conquests under Diocletian. A.D. 297.♦ But under the mighty rule of Diocletian the glories of Trajan were renewed. Mesopotamia again became Roman; five provinces beyond the Tigris were added to the Empire; Armenia, again the vassal of Rome, was enlarged at the expense of Persia, and Iberia was once more a Roman dependency. In the third stage the Roman frontier again went back. The wars of the second Sapor did little but deprive Rome of two Mesopotamian fortresses. ♦Surrender of provinces by Jovian. A.D. 363.♦ But after the fall of Julian the lands beyond the Tigris were given back to Persia; even Nisibis was yielded, and the Persian frontier again reached the Euphrates. ♦Division of Armenia. 387. | The Hundred Years’ Peace. 421.♦ Armenia was now tossed to and fro, conquered and reconquered, till the kingdom was divided between the vassals of the two Empires, a division which was again confirmed by the hundred years’ peace between Rome and Persia. This was the state of the Eastern frontier of Rome at the time when the West-Goths were laying the foundation of their dominion in Spain and Aquitaine, when Goth and Roman joined together to overthrow the mingled host of Attila at Châlons, and when the first English keels were on their way to the shores of Britain.

This then is the picture of the civilized world at the end of the fifth century. The whole of the Western dominions of Rome, including Italy and Rome herself, have practically, if not everywhere formally, fallen away from the Roman Empire. The whole West is under the rule of Teutonic kings. The Frank has become supreme in northern Gaul, without losing his ancient hold on western and central Germany. The West-Goth reigns in Spain and Aquitaine; the Burgundian reigns in the lands between the Rhone and the Alps. Italy and the lands to the north of the Alps and the Hadriatic have become, in substance though not in name, an East-Gothic kingdom. But the countries of the European mainland, though cut off from Roman political dominion, are far from being cut off from Roman influences. The Teutonic settlers, if conquerors, are also disciples. Their rulers are everywhere Christian; in Northern Gaul they are even Orthodox. Africa, under the Arian Vandal, is far more utterly cut off from the traditions of Rome than the lands ruled either by the Catholic Frank or by the Arian Goth. To the north of the Franks lie the independent tribes of Germany, still untouched by any Roman influence. They are beginning to find themselves new homes in Britain, and, as the natural consequence of a purely barbarian and heathen conquest, to sever from the Empire all that they conquered yet more thoroughly than Africa itself was severed. Such is the state of the West. In the East the Roman power lives on in the New Rome, with a dominion constantly threatened and insulted by various enemies, but with a frontier which has varied but little since the time of Aurelian. No lasting Teutonic settlement has been made within its borders. In its endless wars with Persia, its frontier sometimes advances and sometimes retreats. In our next chapter we shall see how much of life still clung to the majesty of the Roman name, and how large a part of the ancient dominion of Rome could still be won back again.

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V. THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE

§ 1. The Reunion of the Empire.

♦Continuity of Roman rule.♦

The main point to be always borne in mind in the history, and therefore in the historical geography, of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, is the continued existence of the Roman Empire. It was still the Roman Empire, although the seat of its dominion was no longer at the Old Rome, although for a while the Old Rome was actually separated from the Roman dominion. Gaul, Spain, Africa, Italy itself, had been lopped away. Britain had fallen away by another process. But the Roman rule went on undisturbed in the Eastern part of the Empire, and even in the West the memory of that rule had by no means wholly died out. ♦Position of the Teutonic kings.♦ Teutonic kings ruled in all the countries of the West; but nowhere on the continent had they become national sovereigns. They were still simply the chiefs of their own people reigning in the midst of a Roman population. The Romans meanwhile everywhere looked to the Cæsar of the New Rome as their lawful sovereign, from whose rule they had been unwillingly torn away. Both in Spain and in Italy the Gothic kings had settled in the country as Imperial lieutenants with an Imperial commission. The formal aspect of the event of 476 had been the reunion of the Western Empire with the Eastern. ♦Recovery of territory by the Empire.♦ It was perfectly natural therefore that the sole Roman Emperor reigning in the New Rome should strive, whenever he had a chance, to win back territories which he had never formally surrendered, and that the Roman inhabitants of those territories should welcome him as a deliverer from barbarian masters. The geographical limits within which, at the beginning of the sixth century, the Roman power was practically confined, the phænomena of race and language within those limits, might have suggested another course. But considerations of that kind are seldom felt at the time; they are the reflexions of thoughtful men long after. ♦Extent of the Roman dominion at the accession of Justinian, 527.♦ The Roman dominion, at the accession of Justinian, was shut up within the Greek and Oriental provinces of the Empire; its enemies were already beginning to speak of its subjects as Greeks. Its truest policy would have been to have anticipated several centuries of history, to have taken up the position of a Greek state, defending its borders against the Persian, withstanding or inviting the settlement of the Slave, but leaving the now Teutonic West to develope itself undisturbed. But in such cases the known past is always more powerful than the unknown future, and it seemed the first duty of the Roman Emperor to restore the Roman Empire to its ancient extent.

♦Conquests of Justinian.♦

It was during the reign of Justinian that this work was carried out through a large part of the Western Empire. Lost provinces were won back in two continents. The growth of independent Teutonic powers was for ever stopped in Africa, and it received no small check in Europe. The Emperor was enabled, through the weakness and internal dissensions of the Vandal and Gothic kingdoms, to win back Africa and Italy to the Empire. The work was done by the swords of Belisarius and Narses—the Slave and the Persian being now used to win back the Old Rome to the dominion of the New. ♦Vandal war. 533-535.♦ The short Vandal war restored Africa in the Roman sense, and a large part of Mauritania, to the Empire. ♦Gothic war. 537-554.♦ The long Gothic war won back Illyricum, Italy, and the Old Rome. Italy and Africa were still ruled from Ravenna and from Carthage; but they were now ruled not by Teutonic kings, but by Byzantine exarchs. ♦Conquest of southern Spain. 550.♦ Meanwhile, while the war with the East-Goths was going on in Italy, a large part of southern Spain was won back from the West-Goths. Two Teutonic kingdoms were thus wiped out; a third was weakened, and the acquisition of so great a line of sea-coast, together with the great islands, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands, gave the Empire an undisputed supremacy by sea. In one corner only did the Imperial frontier even nominally go back, or any Teutonic power advance at its expense. ♦Provence ceded to the Franks, 548.♦ The sea-board of Provence, which had long been practically lost to the Empire, was now formally ceded to the Franks. In this one corner the Roman Terminus withdrew.

♦Geographical changes under Justinian.♦

In a geographical aspect the map of Europe has seldom been so completely changed within a single generation as it was during the reign of Justinian. At his accession his dominion was bounded to the west by the Hadriatic, and he was far from possessing the whole of the Hadriatic coast. Under his reign the power of the Roman arms and the Roman law were again extended to the Ocean. The Roman dominion was indeed no longer spread round the whole shore of the Mediterranean; the Imperial territories were no longer continuous as of old: but, if the Empire was not still, as it had once been, the only power in the Mediterranean lands, it had again become beyond all comparison the greatest power. ♦Effects of Justinian’s conquests.♦ Moreover, by the recovery of so large an extent of Latin-speaking territory, the tendency of the Empire to change into a Greek or Oriental state was checked for several centuries. We are here concerned only with the geographical, not with the political or moral aspect of the conquests of Justinian. Some of those conquests, like those of Trajan, were hardly more than momentary. But the changes which they made for the time were some of the most remarkable on record, and the effect of those changes remained, both in history and geography, long after their immediate results were again undone.

§ 2. Settlement of the Lombards in Italy.

The conquests of Justinian hindered the growth of a national Teutonic kingdom in Italy, such as grew up in Gaul and Spain, and they practically made the cradle of the Empire, Rome herself, an outlying dependency of her great colony by the Bosporos. But the reunion of all Italy with the Empire lasted only for a moment. The conquest was only just over when a new set of Teutonic conquerors appeared in Italy. ♦Pannonian kingdom of the Lombards.♦ These were the Lombards, who, in the great wandering, had made their way into the ancient Pannonia about the time that the East Goths passed into Italy. They were thus settled within the ancient boundaries of the Western Empire. But the Roman power had now quite passed away from those regions, and the Lombard kingdom in Pannonia was practically altogether beyond the Imperial borders; it had not even that Roman tinge which affected the Frankish and Gothic kingdoms. ♦Gepidæ.♦ To the east of the Lombards, in the ancient Dacia, another Teutonic kingdom had arisen; that of the Gepidæ, a people seemingly closely akin to the Goths. ♦Avars.♦ The process of wandering had brought the Turanian Avars into those parts, and their presence seriously affected all later history and geography. ♦Teutonic powers on the Lower Danube.♦ With the Gepidæ in Dacia and the Lombards in Pannonia, there was a chance of two Teutonic states growing up on the borders of East and West. These might possibly have played the same part in the East which the Franks and Goths played in the West, and they might thus have altogether changed the later course of history. But the Lombards allied themselves with the Avars. ♦The Gepidæ overthrown by the Lombards and Avars. 566. | The Lombards pass into Italy. 567.♦ In partnership with their barbarian allies, they overthrew the kingdom of the Gepidæ, and they themselves passed into Italy. Thus the growth of Teutonic powers in those regions was stopped. A new and far more dangerous enemy was brought into the neighbourhood of the Empire, and the way was opened for the Slavonic races to play in some degree the same part in the East which the Teutons played in the West. But while the East lost this chance of renovation, for such it would have been, the Lombard settlement in Italy was the beginning of a new Teutonic power in that country. ♦Character of the Lombard kingdom.♦ But it was not a power which could possibly grow up into a national Teutonic kingdom of all Italy, as the dominion of the East-Goths might well have done. ♦Incomplete conquest of Italy.♦ The Lombard conquest of Italy was at no time a complete conquest; part of the land was won by the Lombards; part was kept by the Emperors; and the Imperial and Lombard possessions intersected one another in a way which hindered the growth of any kind of national unity under either power. ♦Lombard duchies.♦ The new settlers founded the great Lombard kingdom in the North of Italy, which has kept the Lombard name to this day, and the smaller Lombard states of Spoleto and Beneventum. But a large part of Italy still remained to the Empire. ♦Imperial possessions in Italy.♦ Ravenna, the dwelling-place of the Exarchs, Rome itself, Naples, and the island city of Venice were all centres of districts which still acknowledged the Imperial rule. The Emperors also kept the extreme southern points of both the peninsulas of Southern Italy, and, for the present, the three great islands. The Lombard Kings were constantly threatening Rome and Ravenna. ♦Ravenna taken by the Lombards. c. 753.♦ Rome never fell into their hands, but in the middle of the eighth century Ravenna was taken, and with it the district specially known as the Exarchate was annexed to the Lombard dominion. But this greatest extent of the Lombard power caused its overthrow: for it led to a chain of events which, as we shall presently see, ended in transferring not only the Lombard kingdom, but the Imperial crown of the West to the hands of the Franks.

§ 3. Rise of the Saracens.

But, before we give any account of the revolutions which took place among the already existing powers of Western Europe, it will be well to describe the geographical changes which were caused by the appearance of absolutely new actors on two sides of the Empire. ♦Roman province in Spain recovered by the Goths. 534-572.♦ One point however may be noticed here, as standing apart from the general course of events, namely, that the Roman province in Spain was won gradually back by the West-Goths. ♦616-624.♦ The inland cities, as Cordova, were hardly kept forty years, and the whole of the Imperial possessions in Spain were lost during the reign of Heraclius. Thus the great dominion which Justinian had won back in the West, important as were its historical results, was itself of very short duration; a large part of Italy was lost almost as soon as it was won, and the recovered dominion in Spain did not abide more than ninety years.

But meanwhile, in the course of the seventh century, nations which had hitherto been unknown or unimportant began to play a great part in history and greatly to change the face of the map. These new powers fall under two heads; those who appeared on the northern and those who appeared on the eastern frontier of the Empire. The nations who appeared on the North were, like the early Teutonic invaders of the Empire, ready to act, if partly as conquerors, partly also as disciples; those who appeared on the East were the champions of an utterly different system in religion and everything else. In short, the old rivalry of the East and West now takes a distinctly aggressive form on the part of the East. ♦Wars between Rome and Persia.♦ As long as the Sassanid dynasty lasted, Rome and Persia still continued their old rivalry on nearly equal terms. The long wars between the two Empires made little difference in their boundaries. ♦Wars of Chosroes and Heraclius, 603-628.♦ In the last stage of their warfare Chosroes took Jerusalem and Antioch, and encamped at Chalkêdôn. Heraclius pressed his eastern victories beyond the boundaries of the Empire under Trajan. But even these great campaigns made no lasting difference in the map, except so far as, by weakening Rome and Persia alike, they paved the way for the greatest change of all. ♦Extension of the Roman power on the Euxine.♦ More important to geography was a change which took place at somewhat earlier time when, during the reign of Justinian, the Roman power was extended on the Eastern side of the Euxine in Colchis or Lazica. ♦The Arabian vassals of Rome and Persia.♦ The southern borders of each Empire were to some extent protected by the dominion of dependent Arabian kings, the Ghassanides being vassals of Rome, and the Lachmites to the east of them being vassals of Persia. But a change came presently which altogether overthrew the Persian kingdom, which deprived the Roman Empire of its Eastern, Egyptian, and African provinces, and which gave both the Empire and the Teutonic kingdoms of the West an enemy of a kind altogether different from any against whom they hitherto had to strive.

♦Rise of the Saracens.♦

The cause which wrought such abiding changes was the rise of the Saracens under Mahomet and his first followers. A new nation, that of the Arabs, now became dominant in a large part of the lands which had been part of the Roman Empire, as well as in lands far beyond its boundaries. ♦Arabia united under Mahomet, 622-632.♦ The scattered tribes of Arabia were first gathered together into a single power by Mahomet himself, and under his successors they undertook to spread the Mahometan religion wherever their swords could carry it. And, with the Mahometan religion, they carried also the Arabic language, and what we may call Eastern civilization as opposed to Western. A strife, in short, now begins between Aryan and Semitic man. Rome and Persia, with all their differences, were both of them Aryan powers. ♦Conquests of the Saracens.♦ The most amazing thing is the extraordinary speed with which the Saracens pressed their conquests at the expense of both Rome and Persia, forming a marked contrast to the slow advance both of Roman conquest and of Teutonic settlement. In the course of less than eighty years, the Mahometan conquerors formed a dominion greater than that of Rome, and, for a short time, the will of the Caliph of the Prophet was obeyed from the Ocean to lands beyond the Indus. ♦Loss of the Eastern provinces of Rome. 632-639.♦ In a few campaigns the Empire lost all its possessions beyond Mount Tauros; that is, it lost one of the three great divisions of the Empire, that namely in which neither Greek nor Roman civilization had ever thoroughly taken root.

While the Roman Empire was thus dismembered, the rival power of Persia was not merely dismembered, but utterly overwhelmed. ♦Saracen conquest of Persia. 632-651.♦ The Persian nationality was again, as in the days of the Parthians, held down under a foreign power, to revive yet again ages later. But the Saracen power was very far from merely taking the place of its Parthian and Persian predecessors. The mission of the followers of Mahomet was a mission of universal conquest, and that mission they so far carried out as altogether to overthrow the exclusive dominion of Rome in her own Mediterranean. Under Justinian, if the Imperial possession of the Mediterranean coast was not absolutely continuous, the small exceptions in Africa, Spain, and Gaul in no way interfered with the maritime supremacy of the Empire, and Gaul and Spain, even where they were not Roman, were at least Christian. ♦Saracen conquest of Africa. 647-711.♦ But now a gradual advance of sixty-four years annexed the Roman dominions in Africa to the Mahometan dominion. ♦Of Spain. 711-714.♦ Thence the Saracens passed into Spain, and found the West-Gothic kingdom an easier prey than the Roman provinces. Within three years after the final conquest of Africa, the whole peninsula was conquered, save where the Christian still held out in the inaccessible mountain fastnesses. ♦Saracen provinces in Gaul, 713-755.♦ The Saracen power was even carried beyond the Pyrenees into the province of Septimania, the remnant of the Gaulish dominion of the West-Gothic kings. Narbonne, Arles, Nîmes, all became for a while Saracen cities.

♦Effects of Saracen conquest.♦

In this way, of the three continents round the Mediterranean, Rome lost all her possessions in Africa, while both in Europe and Asia she had now a neighbour and an enemy of quite another kind from any which she had had before. The Teutonic conquerors, if conquerors, had been also disciples; they became part of the Latin world. The Persian, though his rivalry was religious as well as political, was still merely a rival, fighting along a single line of frontier. But every province that was conquered by the Saracens was utterly lopped away; it became the possession of men altogether alien and hostile in race, language, manners, and religion. A large part of the Roman world passed from Aryan and Christian to Semitic and Mahometan dominion. ♦Different fates of the Eastern, Latin, and Greek provinces.♦ But the essential differences among the three main parts of the Empire now showed themselves very clearly. The Eastern provinces, where either Roman or Greek life was always an exotic, fell away at the first touch. ♦647-709.♦ Africa, as being so greatly Romanized, held out for sixty years. The provinces of Asia Minor, now thoroughly Greek, were often ravaged, but never conquered. Spain and Septimania were far more easily conquered than Africa—a sign perhaps that the West-Gothic rule was still felt as foreign by the Roman inhabitants.

♦Greatest extent of Saracen provinces.♦

With the conquest of Spain the undivided Saracenic Empire, the dominion of the single Caliph, reached its greatest extent in the three continents. Detached conquests in Europe were made long after, but on the whole the Saracen power went back. ♦750.♦ Forty years later they lost Sind, their furthest possession to the East. ♦Separation of Spain. 755.♦ Five years later Spain became the seat of a rival dynasty, which after a while grew into a rival Caliphate. In the same year the Saracen dominion for the first time went back in Europe. ♦Battle of Tours. 732. | Frankish conquest of Septimania. 755.♦ The battle of Tours answers to the repulse of Attila at Châlons; it did not make changes, but hindered them; but before long the one province which the Saracens held beyond the Pyrenees, that of Septimania or Gothia, was won from them by the Franks.

§ 4. Settlements of the Slavonic Nations.

The movements of the sixth century began to bring into notice a branch of the Aryan family of nations which was to play an important part in the affairs both of the East and of the West. ♦Movements of the Slaves.♦ These nations were the Slaves. It is needless for our purpose to attempt to trace their earlier history; but the movements of the Avars in the sixth century seem to have had much the same effect upon the Slaves which the movements of the Huns in the fourth century had upon the Teutons. The inroads of the Avars had, as we have seen, checked the growth of Teutonic powers on the Lower Danube, and had led to the Lombard settlement in Italy. But the Avars only formed the vanguard of a number of Turanian nations, some at least of them Turkish, which were now pressing westward. ♦Kingdom of the Avars. | Magyars, &c.♦ The Avars formed a great kingdom in the lands north of the Danube; to the east of these, along the northern coasts of the Euxine, bordering on the outlying possessions and allies of the Empire in those regions, lay Magyars, Patzinaks, and the greater dominion of the Chazars. All these play a part in Byzantine history; and the Avars were in the seventh century the most dangerous invaders and ravagers of the Roman territory. But south of the Danube they appeared mainly as ravagers; geography knows them only in their settled kingdom to the north of that river. Even that kingdom lasted no very great time; the real importance of all these migrations consists in the effect which they had on the great Aryan race which now begins to take its part in history. ♦North-western and South-western Slaves.♦ The Slaves seem to have been driven by the Turanian incursions in two directions; to the North-west and to the South-west. The North-western division gave rise to more than one European state, and their relations with Germany form an important part of the history of the Western Empire. These North-western Slaves do not become of importance till a little later. But the South-western division plays a great part in the history of the sixth and seventh centuries. ♦Analogy between Teutons and Slaves.♦ Their position with regard to the Eastern Empire is a kind of shadow of the position held by the Teutonic nations with regard to the Western Empire. The Slaves play in the East, though less thoroughly and less brilliantly, the same part, half conquerors, half disciples, which the Teutons played in the West. During the sixth century they appear only as ravagers; in the seventh they appear as settlers. ♦Slavonic settlements under Heraclius. c. 620.♦ There seems no doubt that Heraclius encouraged Slavonic settlements south of the Danube, doubtless with a view to defence against the more dangerous Avars. Much like the Teutonic settlers in the West, the Slaves came in at first as colonists under Imperial authority, and presently became practically independent. A number of Slavonic states thus arose in the lands north and east of the Hadriatic, as Servia, Chrobatia or Croatia, Carinthia, of which the first two are historically connected with the Eastern, and the third with the Western Empire. Istria and Dalmatia now became Slavonic, with the exception of the maritime cities, which, among many vicissitudes, clave to the Empire. And even among them considerable revolutions took place. ♦Destruction of Salona, 639.♦ Thus Salona was destroyed, and out of Diocletian’s palace in its neighbourhood arose the new city of Spalato. ♦Origin of Spalato and Ragusa.♦ The Dalmatian Epidauros was also destroyed, and Ragusa took its place. In many of these inroads Slaves and Avars were mixed up together; but the lasting settlements were all Slavonic. And the state of things which thus began has been lasting; the north-eastern coast of the Hadriatic is still a Slavonic land with an Italian fringe.

♦Displacement of the Illyrians.♦

In these migrations the Slaves displaced whatever remnants were left of the old Illyrian race in the lands near the Danube. They have themselves to some extent taken the Illyrian name, a change which has sometimes led to confusion. But at the time the movement went much further south than this. ♦Extent of Slavonic settlement.♦ The Slaves pressed on into a large part of Macedonia and Greece, and, during the seventh and eighth centuries, the whole of those countries, except the fortified cities and a fringe along the coast, were practically cut off from the Empire. The name of Slavinia reached from the Danube to Peloponnêsos, leaving to the Empire only islands and detached points of coast from Venice round to Thessalonica. Their settlements in these regions gave a new meaning to an ancient name, and the word Macedonian now began to mean Slavonic. ♦Albanians.♦ And it must have been at this time that the Illyrians, the Skipetar or Albanians, pressed southward and formed those colonies in Greece, some of which still keep the Albanian language, while the Slavonic language has vanished from those lands for ages. ♦Nature of Slavonic settlement in Greece.♦ The Slavonic occupation of Greece is a fact which must neither be forgotten nor exaggerated. It certainly did not amount to an extirpation of the Greek nation; but it certainly did amount to an occupation of a large part of the country, which was Hellenized afresh from those cities and districts which remained Greek or Roman. While these changes were going on in the Hadriatic and Ægæan lands, another immigration later in the seventh century took place in the lands south of the lower Danube, and drove back the Imperial frontier to Haimos. ♦Settlement of the Bulgarians, c. 679.♦ This was the incursion of the Bulgarians, another Turanian people, but one whose history has been different from that of most of the Turanian immigrants. By mixture with Slavonic subjects and neighbours they became practically Slavonic, and they still remain a people speaking a Slavonic language. ♦The Eastern Empire cut short in its own peninsula.♦ Thus the Empire, though it still kept its possessions in Italy with the great Mediterranean islands, though its hold on Western Africa lasted on into the eighth century, though it still kept outlying possessions on the northern and eastern coasts of the Euxine, was cut short in that great peninsula which seems made to be the immediate possession of the New Rome.

♦Moral influence of Constantinople.♦

But, exactly as happened in the West, the loss of political dominion carried with it the growth of moral dominion. The nations which pressed into these provinces gradually accepted Christianity in its Eastern form, and they have always looked up to the New Rome with a feeling the same in kind, but less strong in degree, as that with which the West has looked up to the Old Rome. ♦Extent of the Eastern Empire.♦ But, at the beginning of the eighth century, though the Imperial power still held posts here and there from the pillars of Hêraklês to the Kimmerian Bosporos, Saracens on the one side and Slaves on the other had cut short the continuous Roman dominion to a comparatively narrow space. The unbroken possessions of Cæsar were now confined to Thrace and that solid peninsula of Asia Minor which the Saracens constantly ravaged, but never conquered. Mountains had taken place of rivers as the great boundaries of the Empire: instead of the Danube and the Euphrates, the Roman Terminus had fallen back to Haimos and Tauros.

§ 5. The Transfer of the Western Empire to the Franks.

♦Growth of the Franks.♦

Meanwhile we must go back to the West, and trace the growth of the great power which was there growing up, a power which, while the elder Empire was thus cut short in the East, was in the end to supplant it in the West by the creation of a rival Empire. For a while the Franks and the Empire had only occasional dealings with each other. Next to Britain, which had altogether ceased to be part of the Roman world, the part of the Western Empire which was least affected by the re-awakening of the Roman power in the East was the former province of Transalpine Gaul. The power of the Franks was fast spreading, both in their old home in Germany and in their new home in Gaul. ♦Frankish conquest of the Alemanni, 496;♦ The victory of Chlodwig over the Alemanni made the Franks the leading people of Germany. The two German powers which had so long been the chief enemies of the Roman power along the Rhine were now united. Throughout the sixth century the German dominion of the Franks was growing. ♦of the Thuringians, c. 530; | of Bavaria.♦ The Frankish supremacy was extended over Thuringia, and later in the century over Bavaria. The Bavaria of this age, it must be remembered, has a much wider extent than the name has in modern geography, reaching to the northern borders of Italy. The Bavarians seem to have been themselves but recent settlers in the land between the Alps and the Danube; but their immigration and their reduction under Frankish supremacy made the lands immediately south of the Danube thoroughly Teutonic, as the earlier Frankish conquests had done by the lands immediately west of the Rhine. Long before this time, the Franks had greatly extended their dominions in Gaul also. ♦Conquest of Aquitaine [507-511] and Burgundy. 532-534.♦ In the later years of Chlodwig the greater part of Aquitaine was won from the West-Goths. Further conquests at their expense were afterwards made, and about the same time Burgundy came under Frankish supremacy.

The Franks now held, either in possession or dependence, the whole oceanic coast of Gaul; but they were still shut out from the Mediterranean. The West-Goths still kept the land from the Pyrenees to the Rhone, the land of Septimania or Gothia, to which the last name clave as being now the only Gothic part of Gaul. The land which was specially Provincia, the first Roman possession in Transalpine Gaul, the coast from the Rhone to the Alps, formed part of the East-Gothic dominions of Theodoric. An invasion of Italy during the long wars between the Goths and Romans failed to establish a Frankish dominion on the Italian side of the Alps. But as the Franks, by their conquest of Burgundy, were now neighbours of Italy, it led to a further enlargement of their Gaulish dominions, and to their first acquisition of a Mediterranean sea-board. ♦Cession of Provence. 536.♦ It was now that Massalia, Arelate, and the rest of the Province were, by an Imperial grant, one of the last exercises of Imperial power in those regions, added to the kingdom of the Franks. ♦Extent of the Frankish dominions.♦ By the time that the Roman reconquest of Italy was completed, the Frankish dominion, united for a moment under a single head, took in the whole of Gaul, except the small remaining West-Gothic territory, together with central Germany and a supremacy over the Southern German lands. To the north lay the still independent tribes of the Low-Dutch stock, Frisian and Saxon.

♦Position of the Franks.♦

As the Frankish dominion plays so great a part in European history and geography, a part in truth second only to that played by the Roman dominion, it will be needful to consider the historical position of the Franks. Their dominion was that of a German people who had made themselves dominant alike in Germany and in Gaul. But it was only in a small part of the Frankish territory that the Frankish people had actually settled. ♦The cession of Gaulish possessions.♦ It was only in northern Gaul and central Germany, in the countries to which they have permanently given their name, that the Franks can be looked on as really occupying the land. In their German territory they of course remained German; in northern Gaul their position answered to that of the other Teutonic nations which had formed settlements within the Empire. They were a dominant Teutonic race in a Roman land. Gradually they adopted the speech of the conquered, while the conquered in the end adopted the name of the conquerors. ♦Slow fusion of Franks and Romans.♦ But the fusion of German and Roman was slower in the Frankish part of Gaul than elsewhere, doubtless because elsewhere the Teutonic settlements were cut off from their older Teutonic homes, while the Franks in Gaul had their older Teutonic home as a background. ♦German and Gaulish dependencies of the Franks.♦ Beyond the bounds of these more strictly Frankish lands, German and Gaulish, the dominion of the Franks was at most a political supremacy, and in no sense a national settlement. In Germany Bavaria was ruled by its vassal princes; in Gaul south of the Loire the Frank was at most an external ruler. Aquitaine had to be practically conquered over and over again, and new dynasties of native princes were constantly rising up. ♦Ethnology of Southern Gaul.♦ The Teutonic element in these lands, an element much slighter than the Teutonic element in Northern Gaul, is not Frankish, but Gothic and Burgundian. The native Romance speech of those lands is wholly different from the Romance speech of Northern Gaul. In short, there was really nothing in common between the two great parts of Gaul, the lands south and the lands north of the Loire, except their union, first under Roman and then under Frankish dominion. And in Armorica the old Celtic population, strengthened by the settlers from Britain, formed another and a yet more distinct element.

♦Divisions of the Frankish dominions.♦

Thus there were within the Frankish dominions wide national diversities, containing the germs of future divisions. It needed a strong hand even to keep the Teutonic and the Latin Francia together, much less to keep together all the dependent lands, German and Gaulish. During the ages while the Empire was being cut short by Lombards, Goths, Slaves, and Saracens, the Frankish dominion was never in the like sort cut short by foreign settlements; but its whole history under the Merowingian dynasty is a history of divisions and reunions. The tendencies to division which were inherent in the condition of the country were strengthened by endless partitions among the members of the reigning house. ♦Austria and Neustria.♦ Speaking roughly, it may be said that the more strictly Frankish territory showed a tendency to divide itself into two parts, the Eastern or Teutonic land, Austria or Austrasia, and Neustria, the Western or Romance land. These were severally the germs which grew into the kingdoms of Germany and France. ♦Use of the name Francia.♦ As for the mere name of Francia, like other names of the kind, it shifted its geographical use according to the wanderings of the people from whom it was derived. After many such changes of meaning, it gradually settled down as the name for those parts of Germany and Gaul where it still abides. There are the Teutonic or Austrian Francia, part of which still keeps the name of Franken or Franconia, and the Romance or Neustrian Francia, which by various annexations has grown into modern France.

♦The Karlings. Dukes, 687-752; Kings, 752-987.♦

At last, after endless divisions, reconquests, and reunions of the different parts of the Frankish territory, the whole Frankish dominion was again, in the second half of the eighth century, joined together under the Austrasian, the purely German, house of the Karlings. The Dukes and Kings of that house consolidated and extended the Frankish dominion in every direction. Under Pippin and Charles the Great, the power of the ruling race was more firmly established over the dependent states, such as Bavaria and Aquitaine. ♦Pippin conquers Septimania. 752. | Conquests of Charles the Great. 768-814.♦ Under Pippin the conquest of the Saracen province of Septimania extended the Frankish power over the whole of Gaul; and under Charles the Great, the Frankish dominion was extended by a series of conquests in every direction. Of these, his Italian conquests were rather the winning of a new crown for the Frankish king than the extension of the Frankish kingdom. But the conquest of Saxony at the one end and of the Spanish March at the other, as well as the overthrow of the Pannonian kingdom of the Avars, were in the strictest sense extensions of the Frankish dominions. ♦German character of the Frankish power.♦ The Frankish power which now plays so great a part in the world was a power essentially German. The Franks and their kings, the kings who reigned from the Elbe to the Ebro, were German in blood, speech, and feeling; but they bore rule over other lands, German, Latin, and Celtic, in many various degrees of incorporation and subjection.

♦The three great powers of the eighth century; Romans, Franks, Saracens.♦

Thus the effect of the Saracen conquests was to leave in Europe one purely European power, namely the kingdom of the Franks, one power both European and Asiatic, namely the Roman Empire with its seat at Constantinople, and one power at once Asiatic, African, and European, namely the Saracen Caliphate. Through the eighth century these three are the great powers of the world, to which the other nations of Europe and Asia form, as far as we are concerned, a mere background. ♦Character of the Caliphate.♦ But the Caliphate, as a Semitic and Mahometan power, could be European only in a geographical sense. ♦The Saracen dominion in Spain.♦ Even after the establishment of the independent Saracen dominion in Spain, the new power still remained an exotic. A great country of Western Europe was no longer ruled from Damascus or Bagdad; but the emirate, afterwards Caliphate, of Cordova, and the kingdoms into which it afterwards broke up, still remained only geographically European. They were portions of Asia—in after times rather of Africa—thrusting themselves into Europe, like the Spanish dominion of Carthage in earlier times. The two great Christian powers, the two great really European powers, are the Roman and the Frankish. We now come to the process which for a while caused the Roman and Frankish names to have the same meaning within a large part of Europe, and by which the two seats of Roman dominion were again parted asunder, never to be reunited.

♦Relations of the Franks and the Empire.♦

The way by which the Roman and Frankish powers came to affect one another was through the affairs of Italy. ♦The Imperial possessions in Italy.♦ The steps by which the Imperial power was, during the eighth century, weakened step by step in the territories which still remained to the Empire in central Italy are, either from an ecclesiastical or from a strictly historical point of view, of surpassing interest. But, as long as the authority of the Emperor was not openly thrown off, no change was made on the map. ♦Lombard conquest of the Exarchate. | Overthrow of the Lombards by Charles. 774.♦ The events of those times which did make a change on the map were, first the conquest of the Exarchate by the Lombards, and secondly, the overthrow of the Lombard kingdom itself by the Frank king Charles the Great. The Frankish power was thus at last established on the Italian side of the Alps, but it must be remarked that the new conquest was not incorporated with the Frankish dominion. ♦Lombardy a separate kingdom.♦ Charles held his Italian dominion as a separate dominion, and called himself King of the Franks and Lombards. He also bore the title of Patrician of the Romans; but, though the assumption of that title was of great political significance, it did not affect geography. ♦Title of Patrician.♦ The title of Patrician of itself implied a commission from the Emperor, and, though it was bestowed by the Bishop and people of Rome without the Imperial consent, the very choice of the title showed that the Imperial authority was not formally thrown off. Charles, as Patrician, was virtually sovereign of Rome, and his acquisition of the patriciate practically extended his dominion from the Ocean to the frontiers of Beneventum. ♦Nominal authority of the Empire.♦ But, down to his Imperial coronation in the last week of the eighth century, the Emperor who reigned in the New Rome was still the nominal sovereign of the old. The event of the year 800, with all its weighty significance, did not practically either extend the territories of Charles or increase his powers.

♦Effect of the Imperial coronation of Charles. 800.♦

Still the Imperial coronation of Charles is one of the great landmarks both of history and of historical geography. The whole political system of Europe was changed when the Old Rome cast off its formal allegiance to the New, and chose the King of the Franks and Lombards to be Emperor of the Romans. Though the powers of Charles were not increased nor his dominions extended, he held everything by a new title. ♦Final division of the Empire.♦ The Roman Empire was divided, never to be joined together again. But its Western half now took in, not only the greatest of its lost provinces, but vast regions which had never formed part of the Empire in the days of Trajan himself. Again, the distinctive character of the older Roman Empire had been the absence of nationality. The whole civilized world had become Rome, and all its free inhabitants had become Romans. ♦Growing nationality of the two Empires, German and Greek.♦ But from this time each of the two divisions of the Empire begins to assume something like a national character. East and West alike remained Roman in name and in political traditions. The Old Rome was the nominal centre of one; the New Rome was both the nominal and the real centre of the other. But there was a sense in which both alike ceased from this time to be Roman. The Western Empire has passed to a German king, and later changes tended to make his Empire more and more German. The Eastern Empire meanwhile, by the successive loss of the Eastern provinces, of Latin Africa, and of Latin Italy, became nearly conterminous with those parts of Europe and Asia where the Greek speech and Greek civilization prevailed. From one point of view, both Empires are still Roman; from another point of view, one is fast becoming German, the other is fast becoming Greek. ♦Rivalry of the two Empires.♦ And the two powers into which the old Roman Empire is thus split are in the strictest sense two Empires. They are no longer mere divisions of an Empire which has been found to be too great for the rule of one man. The Emperors of the East and West are no longer Imperial colleagues dividing the administration of a single Empire between them. They are now rival potentates, each claiming to be exclusively the one true Roman Emperor, the one true representative of the common predecessors of both in the days when the Empire was still undivided.

♦The two Caliphates.♦

It is further to be noted that the same kind of change which now happened to the Christian Empire, had happened earlier in the century to the Mahometan Empire. The establishment of a rival dynasty at Cordova, even though the assumption of the actual title of Caliph did not follow at once, was exactly analogous to the establishment of a rival Empire in the Old Rome. The Mediterranean world has now four great powers, the two rival Christian Empires, and the two rival Mahometan Caliphates. Among these, it naturally follows that each is hostile to its neighbour of the opposite religion, and friendly to its neighbour’s rival. The Western Emperor is the enemy of the Western Caliph, the friend of the Eastern. ♦Rivalry of the Empires and Caliphates.♦ The Eastern Emperor is the enemy of the Eastern Caliph, the friend of the Western. Thus the four great powers stood at the beginning of the ninth century. And it was out of the dismemberments of the two great Christian and the great Mahometan powers that the later states, Christian and Mahometan, of the Mediterranean world took their rise.

♦Extent of the Carolingian Empire.♦

It is a point of geographical as well as of historical importance that Charles the Great, after he was crowned Emperor, caused all those who had been hitherto bound by allegiance to him as King of the Franks to swear allegiance to him afresh as Roman Emperor. This marks that all his dominions, Frankish, Lombard, and strictly Roman, are to be looked on as forming part of the Western Empire. Thus the Western Empire now took in all those German lands which the old Roman Emperors never could conquer. Germany became part of the Roman Empire, not by Rome conquering Germany, but by Rome choosing the German king as her Emperor. ♦Contrast of its boundaries with those of the elder Empire.♦ The boundaries of the Empire thus became different from what they had ever been before. Of the old provinces of the Western Empire, Britain, Africa, and all Spain save one corner, remained foreign to the new Roman Empire of the Franks. But, on the other hand, the Empire now took in all the lands in Germany and beyond Germany over which the Frankish power now reached, but which had never formed part of the elder Empire. ♦Conquest of Saxony. 772-804.♦ The long wars of Charles with the Saxons led to their final conquest, to the incorporation of Saxony with the Frankish kingdom, and, after the Imperial coronation of the Frankish king, to its incorporation with the Western Empire.

The conquests of Charles had thus, among their other results, welded Germany into a single whole. For though the Franks had long been the greatest power in Germany, yet Germany could not be said to form a single whole as long as the Saxons, the greatest people of Northern Germany, remained independent. The conquest of Saxony brought the Frankish power for the first time in contact with the Danes and the other people of Scandinavia. ♦Boundary of the Eider.♦ The dominions of Charles took in what was then called Saxony beyond the Elbe, that is the modern Holstein, and the Eider was fixed as the northern boundary of the Empire. More than one Danish king did homage to Charles and to some of the Emperors after him; but Denmark was never incorporated with the Empire or even made permanently dependent. ♦Slavonic allies and neighbours.♦ To the east, the immediate dominions of Charles stretched but a little way beyond the Elbe; but here the Western Empire came in contact, as the Eastern had done at an earlier time and by a different process, with the widely spread nations of the Slavonic race. The same movements which had driven one branch of that race to the south-west had driven another branch to the north-west, and the wars of Charles in those regions gave his Empire a fringe of Slavonic allies and dependents along both sides of the Elbe, forming a barrier between the immediate dominions of the Empire and the independent Slaves to the east. ♦Overthrow of the Avar kingdom. 796.♦ To the south Charles overthrew the kingdom of the Avars; he thus extended his dominions on the side of south-eastern Germany, and here he came in contact with the southern branch of the Slaves, a portion of whom, in Carinthia and the neighbouring lands, became subjects of his Empire. ♦The Spanish March. 778.♦ In Spain he acquired the north-eastern corner as far as the Ebro, forming the Spanish March, afterwards the county of Barcelona.

♦Divisions of the Empire.♦

Thus the new Western Empire took in all Gaul, all that was then Germany, the greater part of Italy, and a small part of Spain.[7] It thus took in both Teutonic and Romance lands, and contained in it the germs of the chief nations of modern Europe. It was a step towards their formation when Charles, following the example both of earlier Roman Emperors and of earlier Frankish kings, planned several divisions of his dominions among his sons. Owing to the deaths of all his sons but one, none of these divisions took effect. And it should be noticed that as yet none of these schemes of division agreed with any great natural or national boundary. They did not as yet foreshadow the division which afterwards took place, and out of which the chief states of Western Europe grew. In two cases only was anything like a national kingdom thought of. ♦Kingdom of Aquitaine.♦ Charles’s son Lewis reigned under him as king in Aquitaine, a kingdom which took in all Southern Gaul and the Spanish March, answering pretty nearly to the lands of the Provençal tongue or tongue of Oc. ♦Death of Charles. 814.♦ And when Charles died, and was succeeded in the Empire by Lewis, Charles’s grandson Bernard still went on reigning under his uncle as King of Italy. ♦Kingdom of Italy.♦ The Kingdom of Italy must be understood as taking in the Italian mainland, except the lands in the south which were held by the dependent princes of Beneventum and by the rival Emperors of the East. ♦Use of the name Francia.♦ During this period Francia commonly means the strictly Frankish kingdoms, Gaulish and German. The words Gallia and Germania are used in a strictly geographical sense.

§ 6. Northern Europe.

♦Scandinavians and English.♦

Meanwhile other nations were beginning to show themselves in those parts of Europe which lay beyond the Empire. In north-western Europe two branches of the Teutonic race were fast growing into importance; the one in lands which had never formed part of the Empire, the other in a land which had been part of it, but which had been so utterly severed from it as to be all one as if it had never belonged to it. These were the Scandinavian nations in the two great peninsulas of Northern Europe, and the English in the Isle of Britain. The history of these two races is closely connected, and it has an important bearing on the history of Europe in general.

♦Stages of the English conquest of Britain.♦

In Britain itself the progress of the English arms had been gradual. Sometimes conquests from the Britons were made with great speed: sometimes the English advance was checked by successes on the British side, by mere inaction, or by wars between the different English kingdoms. The fluctuations of victory, and consequently of boundaries, between the English kingdoms were quite as marked as the warfare between the English and the Britons. ♦The English kingdoms.♦ Among the many Teutonic settlements in Britain, small and great, seven kingdoms stand out as of special importance, and three of these, Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland, again stand out as candidates for a general supremacy over the whole English name. ♦Britain at the end of the eighth century.♦ At the end of the eighth century a large part of Britain remained, as it still remains, in the hands of the elder Celtic inhabitants; but the parts which they still kept were now cut off from each other. ♦Celtic states.♦ Cornwall or West-Wales, North-Wales (answering nearly to the modern principality), and Strathclyde or Cumberland (a much larger district than the modern county so called) were all the seats of separate, though fluctuating, British states. Beyond the Forth lay the independent kingdoms of the Picts and Scots, which, in the course of the ninth century, became one.

♦West-Saxon supremacy under Ecgberht. 802-837.♦

It was the West-Saxon kingdom to which the supremacy over all the kingdoms of Britain, Teutonic and Celtic, came in the end. Ecgberht, its king, had been a friend and guest of Charles the Great, and he had most likely been stirred up by his example to do in his own island what Charles had done on the mainland. In the course of his reign, West-Wales was completely conquered; the other English kingdoms, together with North-Wales, were brought into a greater or less degree of dependence. But both in North-Wales and also in Mercia, Northumberland, and East-Anglia, the local kings went on reigning under the supremacy of the King of the West-Saxons, who now began sometimes to call himself King of the English. In the north both Scotland and Strathclyde remained quite independent.

♦The Scandinavian nations.♦

That part also of the Teutonic race which lay altogether beyond the bounds of the Empire now begins to be of importance. ♦The Danes.♦ The Danes are heard of as early as the days of Justinian; but neither they nor the other Scandinavian nations play any great part in history before the time of Charles the Great. A great number of small states gradually settled down into three great kingdoms, which remain still, though their boundaries have greatly changed. The boundary between Denmark and the Empire was, as we have seen, fixed at the Eider. ♦Extent of Denmark and Norway.♦ Besides the peninsula of Jutland and the islands which still belong to it, Denmark took in Scania and other lands in the south of the great peninsula that now forms Sweden and Norway. Norway, on the other hand, ran much further inland, and came down much further south than it does now. These points are of importance, because they show the causes of the later history of the three Scandinavian states. ♦Sweden.♦ Both Denmark and Norway had a great front to the Ocean, while Swithiod and Gauthiod, the districts which formed the beginning of the kingdom of Sweden, had no opening that way, but were altogether turned towards the Baltic. It thus came about that for some centuries both Denmark and Norway played a much greater part in the general affairs of Europe than Sweden did. ♦Danish and Norwegian settlements.♦ Denmark was an immediate neighbour of the Empire, and from both Denmark and Norway men went out to conquer and settle in various parts of Britain, Ireland and Gaul, besides colonizing the more distant and uninhabited lands of Iceland and Greenland. ♦Pressure of Swedes to the East.♦ Meanwhile, the Swedes pressed eastward on the Finnish and Slavonic people beyond the Baltic. In this last way they had a great effect on the history of the Eastern Empire; but in Western history Sweden counts for very little till a much later time.

* * * * *

♦Summary.♦

During the period which has been dealt with in this chapter, taking in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, we thus see, first of all the reunion of the greater part of the Roman Empire under Justinian—then the lopping away of the Eastern and African provinces by the conquests of the Saracens—then the gradual separation of all Italy except the south, ending in the re-establishment of a separate Western Empire under Charles the Great. We thus get two great Christian powers, the Eastern and Western Empires, balanced by two great Mahometan powers, the Eastern and Western Caliphates. All the older Teutonic kingdoms have either vanished or have grown into something wholly different. The Vandal kingdom of Africa and the East-Gothic kingdom have wholly vanished. The West-Gothic kingdom, cut short by Franks on one side and Saracens on the other, survives only in the form of the small Christian principalities which still held their ground in Northern Spain. The Frankish kingdom, by swallowing up the Gothic and Burgundian dominions in Gaul, the independent nations of Germany, the Lombard kingdom, and the more part of the possessions of the Empire in Italy, has grown into a new Western Empire. The two Empires, both still politically Roman, are fast becoming, one German and the other Greek. Meanwhile, nations beyond the bounds of the Empire are growing into importance. The process has begun by which the many small Teutonic settlements in Britain grew in the end into the one kingdom of England. The three Scandinavian nations, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians or Northmen, now begin to grow into importance. In a religious point of view, if Syria, Egypt, Africa, and the more part of Spain were lost to Christendom, the loss was in some degree made up by the conversion to Christianity of the Angles and Saxons in Britain, of the Old-Saxons in Germany, and of the other German tribes which at the beginning of the sixth century had still been heathen. At no time in the world’s history did the map undergo greater changes. This period is the time of real transition from the older state of things represented by the undivided Roman Empire to the newer state of things in which Europe is made up of a great number of independent states. The modern kingdoms outside the Empire, in Britain and Scandinavia, were already forming. The great continental nations of Western Europe had as yet hardly begun to form. They were to grow out of the break-up of the Carolingian Empire, the Roman Empire of the Franks.[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The geographical extent of the Frankish dominion before and after the conquest of Charles is most fully marked by Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 15.

[8] While I was revising this chapter, I became acquainted with C. J. Jireček’s Geschichte der Bulgaren (Prag, 1876), the third chapter of which is devoted to an examination of the early settlements of the Slaves in the Eastern peninsula. He makes it probable that they were there earlier than is generally thought. They seem, exactly like the Teutons, to have first entered the Empire as captives and colonists, a process which may have begun as early as the second and third centuries. He shows also that the march of Theodoric into Italy had the effect of laying a large region open to their settlements. But he leaves my general propositions untouched. It is not till the sixth century that those Slavonic movements began which are of real importance to historical geography.

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VI. THE BEGINNING OF THE MODERN EUROPEAN STATES

§ 1. The Division of the Frankish Empire.

♦Dissolution of the Frankish dominion.♦

The great dominion of the Franks, the German kingdom which had so strangely grown into a new Western Roman Empire, did not last long. In the course of the ninth century it altogether fell to pieces. ♦The chief states of modern Europe spring out of it.♦ But the process by which it fell to pieces must be carefully traced, because it was out of its dismemberment that the chief states of Western Europe arose. Speaking roughly, the Carolingian Empire took in Germany, so far as Germany had yet spread to the East, all Gaul, a great part of Italy, and a small part of Spain. ♦National kingdoms not yet formed.♦ Of these, it was only Italy, and sometimes Aquitaine, which showed any approach to the character of a separate or national kingdom. ♦Extent of Francia.♦ Northern Gaul and central Germany were still alike Francia; and, though the Romance speech prevailed in one, and the Teutonic speech in the other, no national distinction was drawn between them during the time of Charles the Great. Among the proposed divisions of his Empire, none proposed to separate Neustria and Austria, the Western and the Eastern Francia. ♦Separate being of Italy and Aquitaine.♦ But Italy did form a separate kingdom under the superiority of the Emperor; and so for a while there was an under-kingdom of Aquitaine, answering roughly to Gaul south of the Loire. This is the land of the Provençal tongue, the tongue of Oc, a tongue which, it must be remembered, reached to the Ebro. ♦Division under Lewis the Pious. | First glimpses of Modern France.♦ It is in the various divisions, contemplated and actual, among the sons of Lewis the Pious, the successor of Charles the Great, that we see the first approaches to a national division between Germany and Gaul, and the first glimmerings of a state answering in any way to France in the modern sense.

♦Division of 817.♦

The earliest among those endless divisions that we need mention is the division of 817, by which two new subordinate kingdoms were founded within the Empire. Lewis and his immediate colleague Lothar kept in their own hands Francia, German and Gaulish, and the more part of Burgundy. South-western Gaul, Aquitaine in the wide sense, with some small parts of Septimania and Burgundy, formed the portion of one under-king; South-eastern Germany, Bavaria and the march-lands beyond it, formed the portion of another. Italy still remained the portion of a third. Here we have nothing in the least answering to modern France. The tendency is rather to leave the immediate Frankish kingdom, both in Gaul and Germany, as an undivided whole, and to part off its dependent lands, German, Gaulish, and Italian. ♦Union of Neustria and Aquitaine the first step to the creation of France. 838.♦ But, in a much later division, Lewis granted Neustria to his son Charles, and in the next year, on the death of Pippin of Aquitaine, he added his kingdom to that of Charles. A state was thus formed which answers roughly to the later kingdom of France, as it stood before the long series of French encroachments on the German and Burgundian lands. ♦Character of the Western Kingdom.♦ The kingdom thus formed had no definite name, and it answered to no national division. It was indeed mainly a kingdom of the Romance speech, but it did not answer to any one of the great divisions of that speech. It was a kingdom formed by accident, because Lewis wished to increase the portion of his youngest son. Still there can be no doubt that we have here the first beginning of the kingdom of France, though it was not till after several other stages that the kingdom thus formed took that name. ♦Division of Verdun. 843.♦ The final division of Verdun went a step further in the direction of the modern map. It left Charles in possession of a kingdom which still more nearly answered to France, as France stood before its Burgundian and German annexations. It also founded a kingdom which roughly answered to the later Germany before its great extension to the East at the expense of the Slavonic nations. And, as the Western kingdom was formed by the addition of Aquitaine to the Western Francia, so the Eastern kingdom was formed by the addition of the Eastern Francia to Bavaria. Lewis of Bavaria became king of a kingdom which we are tempted to call the kingdom of Germany. Still it would as yet be premature to speak of France at all, or even to speak of Germany, except in the geographical sense. ♦Kingdoms of the Eastern and Western Franks.♦ The two kingdoms are severally the kingdoms of the Eastern and of the Western Franks. But between these two states the policy of the ninth century instinctively put a barrier. The Emperor Lothar, besides Italy, kept a long narrow strip of territory between the dominions of his Eastern and Western brothers. After him, Italy remained to his son the Emperor Lewis, while the border lands of Germany and Gaul passed to the younger Lothar. ♦Kingdom of Lotharingia, Lothringen, Lorraine.♦ This land, having thus been the dominion of two Lothars, took the name of Lotharingia, Lothringen, or Lorraine, a name which part of it has kept to this day. This land, sometimes attached to the Eastern kingdom, sometimes to the Western, sometimes divided between the two, sometimes separated from both, always kept its character of a border-land. ♦The Western Kingdom called Karolingia.♦ The kingdom to the west of it, in like manner took the name of Karolingia, which, according to the same analogy, should be Charlaine. It is only by a caprice of language that the name of Lotharingia has survived, while that of Karolingia has died out.

♦Burgundy, or the Middle Kingdom.♦

Meanwhile, in South-eastern Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, another kingdom arose, namely the kingdom of Burgundy. ♦Union under Charles the Fat. 884.♦ Under Charles the Third, commonly known as the Fat, all the Frankish dominions, except Burgundy, were again united for a moment. ♦Division on his deposition. 887.♦ On his deposition they split asunder again. We now have four distinct kingdoms, those of the Eastern and Western Franks, the forerunners of Germany and France, the kingdom of Italy, and Burgundy, sometimes forming one kingdom and sometimes two. Lotharingia remained a border-land between the Eastern and Western kingdoms, attached sometimes to one, sometimes to another. Out of these elements arose the great kingdoms and nations of Western Europe. The four can hardly be better described than they are by the Old-English Chronicler: ‘Arnulf then dwelled in the land to the East of Rhine; and Rudolf took to the middle kingdom; and Oda to the West deal; and Berengar and Guy to the Lombards’ land, and to the lands on that side of the mountain.’ But the geography of all the four kingdoms which now arose must be described at somewhat greater length.

It must be borne in mind that all these divisions of the great Frankish dominion were, in theory, like the ancient divisions of the Empire, a mere parcelling out of a common possession among several royal colleagues. ♦No formal titles or names of the Frankish kingdoms.♦ The Kings had no special titles, and their dominions had no special names recognized in formal use. Every king who ruled over any part of the ancient Francia was a King of the Franks, just as much as all among the many rulers of the Roman Empire in the days of Diocletian and Constantine were equally Roman Augusti or Cæsars. As the kings and their kingdoms had no formal titles specially set apart for them, the writers of the time had to describe them as they might.[9] ♦Various names of the Eastern Kingdom or Germany.♦ The Eastern part of the Frankish dominions, the lot of Lewis the German and his successors, is thus called the Eastern Kingdom, the Teutonic Kingdom. Its king is the King of the East-Franks, sometimes simply the King of the Eastern men, sometimes the King of Germany. This last name, convenient in use, was inaccurate as a formal title, for the Regnum Teutonicum lay geographically partly in Germany, partly in Gaul.[10] To the men of the Western kingdom the Eastern king sometimes appeared as the King beyond the Rhine. The title of King of Germany is often found in the ninth century as a description, but it was not a formal title. The Eastern king, like other kings, for the most part simply calls himself Rex, till the time came when his rank as King of Germany or of the East-Franks became simply a step towards the higher title of Emperor of the Romans. ♦Connexion between the Eastern Kingdom and the Empire.♦ But it must be remembered, that the special connexion between the Roman Empire and the German kingdom did not begin at once on the division of 887. ♦Imperial coronation of Arnulf. 896. | Homage of Odo to Arnulf. 888.♦ Arnulf indeed, the first German King after the division, made his way to Rome and was crowned Emperor; and it marks the position of the Eastern kingdom as the chief among the kingdoms of the Franks, that the West-Frankish King Odo did homage to Arnulf before his lord’s Imperial coronation, when he was still simple German king. ♦Final union of Germany with the Empire under Otto the Great. 963.♦ The rule that whoever was chosen King of Germany had a right, without further election, to the kingdom of Italy and to the Roman Empire, began only with the coronation of Otto the Great. Up to that time, the German king is simply one of the kings of the Franks, though it is plain that he held the highest place among them.

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♦Extent of the German kingdom.♦

This Eastern or German kingdom, as it came out of the division of 887, had, from north to south, nearly the same extent as the Germany of later times. It stretched from the Alps to the Eider. Its southern boundaries were somewhat fluctuating. Verona and Aquileia are sometimes counted as a German march, and the boundary between Germany and Burgundy, crossing the modern Switzerland, often changed. To the North-east the kingdom hardly stretched beyond the Elbe, except in the small Saxon land between the Elbe and the Eider. The great extension of the German power over the Slavonic lands beyond the Elbe had hardly yet begun. ♦The Austrian and Carinthian marks.♦ To the South-east lay the two border-lands or marks; the Eastern Mark, which grew into the later duchy of Oesterreich or the modern Austria, and to the south of it the mark of Kärnthen or Carinthia. ♦The great duchies.♦ But the main part of the kingdom consisted of the great duchies of Saxony, Eastern Francia, Alemannia, and Bavaria. ♦Saxony.♦ Of these the two names of Saxony and Bavaria must be carefully marked as having widely different meanings from those which they bear on the modern map. Ancient Saxony lies, speaking roughly, between the Eider, the Elbe, and the Rhine, though it never actually touches the last-named river. ♦Eastern or Teutonic Francia.♦ To the south of Saxony lies the Eastern Francia, the centre and kernel of the German kingdom. The Main and the Neckar both join the Rhine within its borders. To the south of Francia lie Alemannia and Bavaria. ♦Alemannia and Bavaria.♦ This last, it must be remembered, borders on Italy, with Bötzen for its frontier town. Alemannia is the land in which both the Rhine and the Danube take their source; it stretches on both sides of the Bodensee or Lake of Constanz, with the Rætian Alps as its southern boundary. For several ages to come, there is no distinction, national or even provincial, between the lands north and south of the Bodensee.

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♦Lotharingia.♦

These lands make up the undoubted Eastern or German territory. To the west of this lies the border land of Lotharingia, which has a history of its own. For the first century after the division of 887, the possession of Lotharingia fluctuated several times between the Eastern and the Western kingdom. ♦987.♦ After the change of dynasty in the Western kingdom, Lotharingia became definitely and undoubtedly German in allegiance, though it always kept up something of a distinct being, and its language was partly German and partly Romance. Lotharingia took in the two duchies of the Ripuarian Lotharingia and Lotharingia on the Mosel. The former contains a large part of the modern Belgium and the neighbouring lands on the Rhine, including the royal city of Aachen. Lotharingia on the Mosel answers roughly to the later duchy of that name, though its extent to the East is considerably larger.

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♦The Western Kingdom.♦

The part of the Frankish dominions to which the Frankish name has stuck most lastingly has been the Western kingdom or Karolingia, which gradually got the special name of France. This came about through the events of the ninth and tenth centuries. ♦Its extent.♦ The Western kingdom, as it was formed under Charles the Bald and as it remained after the division of 887, nominally took in a great part of modern France, namely all west of the Rhone and Saône. It took in nothing to the east of those rivers, and Lotharingia, as we have seen, was a border land which at last settled down as part of the Eastern kingdom. Thus the extent of the old Karolingia to the east was very much smaller than the extent of modern France. But, on the other hand, the Western kingdom took in lands at three points which are not part of modern France. These are the march or county of Flanders in the north, the greater part of which forms part of the modern kingdom of Belgium; the Spanish March, or county of Barcelona, which is now part of Spain; and the Norman Islands which are now held by the sovereign of England. And it is hardly needful to say that, even within these boundaries, the whole land was not in the hands of the King of the West-Franks. He had only a supremacy, which was apt to become nearly nominal, over the vassal princes who held the great divisions of the kingdom. ♦The great fiefs.♦ South of the Loire the chief of these vassal states were the duchy of Aquitaine, a name which now means the land between the Loire and the Garonne—the duchy of Gascony between the Garonne and the Pyrenees—the county of Toulouse to the east of it—the marches of Septimania and Barcelona. North of the Loire were Britanny, where native Celtic princes still reigned under a very doubtful supremacy on the part of the Frankish kings—the march of Flanders in the north—and the duchy of Burgundy, the duchy which had Dijon for its capital, and which must be carefully distinguished from other duchies and kingdoms of the same name. ♦The Duchy of France.♦ And, greatest of all, there was the duchy of France, that is Western or Latin France, Francia Occidentalis or Latina. Its capital was Paris, and its princes were called Duces Francorum, a title in which the word Francus is just beginning to change from its older meaning of Frank to its later meaning of French. ♦Normandy cut off from France. 912.♦ From this great duchy of France several great fiefs, as Anjou and Champagne, were gradually cut off, and the part of France between the Seine and the Epte was granted to the Scandinavian chief Rolf, which, under him and his successors, grew into the great duchy of Normandy. Its capital was Rouen, and this settlement of the Normans had the effect of cutting off France and its capital Paris from the sea.

The modern French kingdom gradually came into being during the century after the deposition of Charles the Fat. ♦Fluctuations between the Duchy of the French at Paris and the Karlings at Laon. 888-987.♦ During this time the crown of the Western kingdom passed to and fro more than once between the Dukes of the French at Paris and the princes of the house of Charles the Great, whose only immediate dominion was the city and district of Laon near the Lotharingian border. Thus, for a hundred years, the royal city of the Western kingdom was sometimes Laon and sometimes Paris, and the King of the West-Franks was sometimes the same person as the Duke of the French and sometimes not. ♦Union of the French Duchy with the West-Frankish kingdom. 987.♦ But after the election of Hugh Capet, the kingdom and the duchy were never again separated. The Kings of Karolingia or the Western kingdom, and the Dukes of the Western Francia, were now the same persons. ♦New meaning of the word France.♦ France then—the Western or Latin Francia, as distinguished from the German Francia or Franken—properly meant only the King’s immediate dominions. Though Normandy, Aquitaine, and the Duchy of Burgundy, all owed homage to the French king, no one would have spoken of them as parts of France. ♦Advance of the French kingdom.♦ But, as the French kings, step by step, got possession of the dominions of their vassals and other neighbours, the name of France gradually spread, till it took in, as it now does, by far the greater part of Gaul. On the other hand, Flanders, Barcelona, and the Norman islands, though once under the homage of the French kings, have fallen altogether away, and have therefore never been reckoned as parts of France. Thus the name of France supplanted the name of Karolingia as the name of the Western kingdom. ♦Title of Rex Francorum.♦ And, as it so happened that the Western kings kept on the title of Rex Francorum after it had been dropped in the Eastern kingdom, that title gradually came to mean, not King of the Franks, but King of the French, King of the new Romance-speaking nation which grew up under them. ♦Origin of the French nation.♦ Thus it was that the modern kingdom and nation of France arose through the crown of the Western kingdom passing to the Dukes of the Western Francia. ♦Paris the kernel of France.♦ Paris is not only the capital of the kingdom; it is the kernel round which the kingdom and nation grew.

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♦The Middle Kingdom or Burgundy.♦

Of all geographical names, that which has changed its meaning the greatest number of times is the name of Burgundy. ♦Various meanings of the name Burgundy.♦ It is specially needful to explain its different meanings at this stage, when there are always two, and sometimes more, distinct states bearing the Burgundian name. ♦The French Duchy.♦ Of the older Burgundian kingdom, the north-western part, forming the land best known as the Duchy of Burgundy, was, in the divisions of the ninth century, a fief of Karolingia or the Western kingdom. This is the Burgundy which has Dijon for its capital, and which was held by more than one dynasty of dukes as vassals of the Western kings, first at Laon and then at Paris. This Burgundy, which, as the name of France came to bear its modern sense, may be distinguished as the French Duchy, must be carefully distinguished from the Royal Burgundy, the Middle Kingdom of our own chronicler. ♦The Kingdom of Burgundy or Arles.♦ This is a state which arose out of the divisions of the ninth century, and which, sometimes as a single kingdom, sometimes as two, took in all the rest of the old Burgundian kingdom which did not form part of the French duchy. It may be roughly defined as the land between the Rhone and Saône and the Alps, though its somewhat fluctuating boundaries sometimes stretched west of the Rhone, and its eastern frontier towards Germany changed more than once. It thus took in the original Roman province in Gaul, which may be now spoken of as Provence, with its great cities, foremost among them Arelate or Arles, which was the capital of the kingdom, and from which the land was sometimes called the Kingdom of Arles. ♦Cities of the Burgundian kingdom.♦ It also took in Lyons, the primatial city of Gaul, Geneva, Besançon, and other important Roman towns. In short, from its position, it contained a greater number of the former seats of Roman power than any of the new kingdoms except Italy itself. ♦Cis-jurane.♦ When Burgundy formed two kingdoms, the Northern or Trans-jurane Burgundy took in, speaking roughly, the lands north of Lyons, and Cis-jurane Burgundy those between Lyons and the sea. These last are now wholly French. The ancient Transjurane Burgundy is in modern geography divided between France and Switzerland.

♦Burgundy separated from the Frankish kingdoms.♦

The history of this Burgundian kingdom differs in one respect from that of any other of the states which arose out of the break-up of the Frankish Empire. It parted off wholly from the Carolingian dominion before the division of 887. It formed no part of the reunited Empire of Charles the Fat. It may therefore be looked on as having parted off altogether from the immediately Frankish rule, though it often appears as more or less dependent on the kings of the Eastern Francia. But its time of separate being was short. ♦Union of the kingdom with Germany. | Later history of Burgundy: mostly annexed by France.♦ After about a century and a half from its foundation, the Burgundian kingdom was united under the same kings as Germany, and its later history consists of the way in which the greater part of the old Middle Kingdom has been swallowed up bit by bit by the modern kingdom of France. The only part which has escaped is that which now forms the western cantons of Switzerland. ♦Partly represented by Switzerland.♦ In truth the Swiss Confederation may be looked on as having, in some slight degree, inherited the position of the Burgundian kingdom as a middle state. Otherwise, while the Eastern and Western kingdoms of the Franks have grown into two of the greatest powers and nations in modern Europe, the Burgundian kingdom has been altogether wiped out. Not only its independence, but its very name, has passed from it. The name Burgundy has for a long time past been commonly used to express the French duchy only.

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♦The Kingdom of Italy.♦

Italy, unlike Burgundy, formed part of the reunited dominion of Charles the Fat; but it altogether passed away from Frankish rule at the division of 887. It must be remembered that, though Lombardy was conquered by Charles the Great, yet it was not merged in the Frankish dominions, but was held as a separate kingdom by the King of the Franks and Lombards. ♦Carolingian Kings of Italy.♦ Till the reunion under Charles the Fat, Italy, as a separate kingdom, was ruled by kings of the Carolingian house, some of whom were crowned at Rome as Emperors. After the final division, it had separate kings of its own, being not uncommonly disputed between two rival kings. ♦Italian Emperors.♦ Some of these kings even obtained Imperial rank. ♦Extent of the Italian kingdom.♦ The Italian kingdom, it must be remembered, was far from taking in the whole Italian peninsula. Its southern boundary was much the same as the old boundaries of Latium and Picenum, reaching somewhat further to the south on the Hadriatic coast. ♦Separate principalities of Benevento and Salerno.♦ To the south were the separate principalities of Benevento and Salerno, and the lands which still clave to the Eastern Emperors. The kingdom thus took in Lombardy, Liguria, Friuli in the widest sense, taking in Trent and Istria, though these latter lands are sometimes counted as a German march, while the Venetian islands still kept up their connexion with the Eastern Empire. It took in also Tuscany, Romagna or the former Exarchate of Ravenna, Spoleto, and Rome itself. ♦The Kingdom of Italy represents the Lombard Kingdom.♦ The Italian kingdom thus represented the old Lombard kingdom, together with the provinces which were formally transferred from the Eastern to the Western Empire by the election of Charles the Great. But it may be looked on as essentially a continuation of the Lombard kingdom. ♦Milan its capital.♦ The rank of capital of the Italian kingdom, as distinguished from the Roman Empire, passed away from the old Lombard capital of Pavia to the ecclesiastical metropolis of Milan, and Milan became the crowning-place of the Kings of Italy.

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♦Abeyance of the Empire.♦

For nearly eighty years after the division of 887, the Roman Empire of the West may be looked on as having fallen into a kind of abeyance. One German and several Italian kings were crowned Emperors; but they never obtained any general acknowledgement throughout the West. There could not be said to be any Western Empire with definite geographical boundaries. ♦Restoration of the Western Empire by Otto.♦ A change in this respect took place in the second half of the tenth century under the German king Otto the Great. ♦952.♦ While he was still only German king, Berengar King of Italy became his man, as Odo of Paris had become the man of Arnulf. ♦962, 963.♦ Afterwards Otto himself obtained the Italian kingdom, and was crowned Emperor at Rome. The rule was now fully established that the German king who was crowned at Aachen had a right to be crowned King of Italy at Milan and Emperor at Rome. A geographical Western Empire was thus again founded, consisting of the two kingdoms of Germany and Italy, to which Burgundy was afterwards added. ♦The three Imperial kingdoms.♦ These three kingdoms now formed the Empire, which thus consisted of the whole dominions of Charles the Great—allowing for a different eastern frontier—except the part which formed the Western kingdom, Karolingia, afterwards France. This union of three of the four kingdoms gave a more distinct and antagonistic character to the fourth which remained separate. Karolingia looked like a part of the great Frankish dominion lopped off from the main body. ♦Relations between the Empire and France.♦ On the other hand, now that the German kings, the Kings of the East-Franks, were also Kings of Italy and Burgundy and Emperors of the Romans, they gradually dropped their Frankish style. But, as that style was kept by the Western kings, and still more as the name of their duchy of France gradually spread over so large a part of Gaul, the kingdom of France had a superficial look of representing the old Frankish kingdom. The newly-constituted Empire had thus a distinctly rival power on its western side. And we shall find that a great part of our story will consist of the way in which, on this side, the Imperial frontier went back, and the French frontier advanced. On the other side, the Eastern frontier of the Empire was capable of any amount of advance at the cost of its Slavonic neighbours.

§ 2. The Eastern Empire.

♦The Eastern Empire.♦

The effect of the various changes of the seventh and eighth centuries, the rise of the Saracens, the settlement of the Slaves, the transfer of the Western Empire to the Franks, seem really to have had the effect of strengthening the Eastern Empire which they so terribly cut short. It began for the first time to put on something of a national character. ♦It takes a Greek character.♦ As the Western Empire was fast becoming German, so the Eastern Empire was fast becoming Greek. ♦Rivalry of the Eastern and Western or Greek and Latin Churches.♦ And a religious distinction was soon added to the distinction of language. As the schism between the Churches came on, the Greek-speaking lands attached themselves to the Eastern, and not to the Western, form of Christianity. The Eastern Empire, keeping on all its Roman titles and traditions, had thus become nearly identical with what may be called the artificial Greek nation. It continues the work of hellenization which was begun by the old Greek colonies and which went on under the Macedonian kings. ♦Fluctuations in the extent of the Empire.♦ No power gives more work for the geographer; through the alternate periods of decay and revival which make up nearly the whole of Byzantine history, provinces were always being lost and always being won back again. And it supplies also a geographical study of another kind, in the new divisions into which the Empire was now mapped out, divisions which, for the most part, have very little reference to the divisions of earlier times.

♦The Themes as described by Constantine Porphyrogennêtos.♦

The Themes or provinces of the Eastern Empire, as they stood in the tenth century, have had the privilege of being elaborately described by an Imperial geographer in the person of Constantine Porphyrogennêtos.[11] He speaks of the division as comparatively recent, and of some themes as having been formed almost in his own time. The themes would certainly seem to have been mapped out after the Empire had been cut short both to the north and to the east. The nomenclature of the new divisions is singular and diversified. ♦Asiatic Themes.♦ Some ancient national names are kept, while the titles of others seem fantastic enough. Thus in Asia Paphlagonia and Kappadokia remain names of themes with some approach to their ancient boundaries; but the Armenian theme is thrust far to the west of any of the earlier uses of the name, so that the Halys flows through it. Between it and the still independent Armenia lay the theme of Chaldia, with Trapezous, the future seat of Emperors, for its capital. Along the Saracen frontier lie the themes of Kolôneia, Mesopotamia—a shadowy survival indeed of the Mesopotamia of Trajan, of which it was not even a part—Sebasteia, Lykandos, Kappadokia, and Seleukeia, called from the Isaurian or Kilikian city of that name. Along the south coast the city of Kibyra has given—in mockery, says Constantine—its name to the theme of the Kibyrraiotians, which reaches as far as Milêtos. The isle of Samos gives its name to a theme reaching from Milêtos to Adramyttion, while the theme of the Ægæan Sea, besides most of the islands, stretches on to the mainland of the ancient Aiolis. The rest of the Propontis is bordered by themes bearing the strange names of Opsikion and Optimatôn, names of Latin origin, in the former of which the word obsequium is to be traced. To the east of them the no less strangely named Thema Boukellariôn takes in the Euxine Hêrakleia. Inland and away from the frontier are the themes Thrakêsion and Anatolikon, while another Asiatic theme is formed by the island of Cyprus.

♦The European Themes.♦

The nomenclature of the European themes is more intelligible. Most of them bear ancient names, and the districts which bear them are at least survivals of the lands which bore them of old. After a good deal of shifting, owing to the loss and recovery of so many districts, the Empire under Constantine Porphyrogennêtos numbered twelve European themes. Thrace had shrunk up into the land just round Constantinople and Hadrianople, the latter now a frontier city against the Bulgarian. Macedonia had been pushed to the east, leaving the more strictly Macedonian coast-districts which the Empire still kept to form the themes of Strymôn and Thessalonikê. ♦Use of the name Hellas.♦ Going further south, the name of Hellas has revived, and that with a singular accuracy of application. Hellas is now the eastern side of continental Greece, taking in the land of Achilleus. The abiding name of Achaia has vanished for a while, and the peninsula which had been won back from the Slave again bears its name of Peloponnêsos. But Lakedaimonia now appears on the list of its chief cities instead of Sparta. This and other instances in which one Greek name has been supplanted by another are witnesses of the Slavonic occupation of Hellas and its recovery by a Greek-speaking power. Off the west coast the realm of Odysseus seems to revive in the theme of Kephallênia, which takes in also the mythic isle of Alkinoos. Such parts of Epeiros and Western Greece as clave to the Empire form the theme of Nikopolis. ♦The Hadriatic lands.♦ To the north, on the Hadriatic shore, was the theme of Dyrrhachion, and beyond that again, the Dalmatian and Venetian cities still counted as outlying portions of the Empire. ♦Possessions of the Empire in Italy.♦ Beyond the Hadriatic, southern Italy forms the theme of Lombardy, interrupted by the principality of Salerno, while Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi were outlying posts like Venice and Ragusa. Sicily was still reckoned as a theme; but it was now wholly lost to the Saracen. ♦Chersôn.♦ And far away in the Tauric peninsula, the last of the Hellenic commonwealths, the furthest outpost of Hellenic civilization, had sunk in the ninth century into the Byzantine theme of Chersôn.

♦Seeming Asiatic character of the Empire.♦

The first impression conveyed by this geographical description is that the Eastern Empire had now become a power rather Asiatic than European. It is only in Asia that any solid mass of territory is kept. ♦Nature of its European possessions.♦ Elsewhere there are only islands and fringes of coast. ♦Maritime supremacy of the Empire.♦ But they were almost continuous fringes of coast, fringes which contained some of the greatest cities of Christendom, and which gave their masters an undisputed supremacy by sea. If the Mediterranean was not a Byzantine lake, it was only the presence of the Saracen, the occasional visits of the Northman, which hindered it from being so. Then again, the whole history of the Empire, if a history of losses, is also a history of recoveries, and before long the Roman arms again became terrible by land. The picture of Constantine Porphyrogennêtos shows us the Empire at a moment when neither process was actually going on; but the times before and after his reign were times, first of loss and then of recovery. ♦Loss and recovery of Crete. 823-960.♦ Early in the ninth century Crete was suddenly seized by Saracen adventurers from Spain; about the same time began the long and slow Saracen conquest of Sicily. ♦Loss of Sicily. 827-878. | Advance in Italy, Dalmatia, and Greece. c. 802.♦ But, almost at the moment when Sicily was lost, the Imperial province in Italy was largely increased, and the Imperial influence in Dalmatia was largely restored. About the same time Peloponnêsos was won back from the Slaves. ♦Recovery of provinces in the East. 964-976.♦ In the latter half of the tenth century Crete was won back; so were Kilikia and part of Syria, with the famous cities of Tarsos, Edessa, and Antioch on the Orontes. ♦Conquest of Bulgaria. 981-1018.♦ Presently Basil the Second overthrew the Bulgarian kingdom in Europe and the Armenian kingdom in Asia; the lands at the foot of Caucasus admitted the Imperial supremacy, and the Byzantine rule was carried round the greater part of the Euxine. ♦Loss of Cherson. 988.♦ Cherson indeed was lost; the old Megarian city passed into the hands of the Russian. At the other end of the Empire, the recovery of Sicily was actually begun, and, if the Saracen was not driven out, his power was weakened in the interest of the next set of invaders. ♦The Eastern Empire under Basil the Second.♦ Early in the eleventh century the Eastern Rome was again the head of a dominion which was undoubtedly the greatest among Christian powers, a dominion greater than it had been at any time since the Saracenic and Slavonic inroads began.

§ 3. Origin of the Spanish Kingdoms.

The historical geography of two of the three great Southern peninsulas is thus bound up with that of the Empires of which they were severally the centres. ♦Position of Spain.♦ The case is quite different with the third great peninsula, that of Spain. There the Roman dominion, even the province which had been recovered by Justinian, had quite passed away, and it was only a small part of the land which was ever reincorporated, even in the most shadowy way, with either Empire. ♦The Saracen conquest. 710-713.♦ Spain was now conquered by the Saracens, as it had before been conquered by the Romans, with this difference, that it had been among the longest and hardest of the Roman conquests, while no part of the Saracen dominion was won in a shorter time. But, if the Roman conquest was slow, it was in the end complete. The swifter Saracen conquest was never quite complete; it left a remnant by which the land was in the end to be won back. But the part of the land which withstood the Saracen was, as could hardly fail to be the case, the same part as that which held out for the longest time against the Roman. The mountainous regions of the North were never wholly conquered. ♦Asturia 732, | united with Cantabria, 751.♦ Cantabria and Asturia, which had never fully submitted to the Goths, now became the seat of resistance under princes who claimed to represent the Gothic kings, and part of whose dominions bore the name of Gothia. Twenty years after the conquest, Asturia was again a Christian principality, which was presently united with Cantabria. ♦Kingdom of Leon, 916.♦ This grew into the kingdom of Leon. ♦County of Castile, 904. | Kingdom, 1033.♦ The great fiefs of this kingdom on its eastern and western borders, the counties of Gallicia and Castile—the last originally a line of castles against the Saracen enemy—both showed from an early time strong tendencies to separation. ♦Kingdom of Navarre. 905.♦ Meanwhile the kingdom of Navarre grew up to the east, stretching, it must be remembered, on both sides of the Pyrenees, though by far the larger portion of it lay on their southern side. ♦County of Aragon c. 760.♦ To the east of Navarre the small counties of Aragon and Riparanensia were the beginning of the kingdom of Aragon. ♦The Spanish March. 778.♦ To the east again of this was the land which, after the final expulsion of the Saracens from Gaul, became part of the Carolingian Empire by the name of the Spanish March. The shiftings of territory, the unions and separations of these various kingdoms and principalities, belong to the special history of Spain. But early in the eleventh century the whole north-western part of Spain, and a considerable fringe of territory in the north-east, had been formed into Christian states. ♦Beginnings of Castile and Aragon.♦ Among these had been laid the foundations of two kingdoms, those of Castile and Aragon, which were to play a great part in the affairs of Europe.

It will be at once seen that those among the Spanish powers which were destined to play the greatest part in later history were not among the first to take the form of separate kingdoms. ♦Slow growth of the greater kingdoms.♦ At this stage even Castile has hardly taken the form of a distinct state. Aragon is only beginning; Portugal has not even begun. ♦History of Castile and Aragon.♦ Of these three, Castile was fated to play the same part that was played by Wessex in England and by France in Gaul, to become the leading power of the peninsula. Aragon, when her growth had brought her to the Mediterranean, was to fill for a long time a greater place in general European politics than any other Spanish power. The union of Castile and Aragon was to form that great Spanish monarchy which became the terror of Europe. ♦Portugal.♦ Meanwhile Portugal, lying on the Ocean, had first of all to extend her borders at the cost of the common enemy, and afterwards to become a beginner of European enterprise in distant lands, a path in which Castile and other powers did but follow in her steps.

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♦Break-up of the Spanish Caliphate.♦

Meanwhile the advance of the Christians was helped by the division of the Saracenic power. The Caliphates of the East and of the West fell to pieces, exactly as the Christian Empires did. The undivided Mahometan dominion in Spain was at the height of its power in the tenth century. Yet even then, amid many fluctuations, the Christian frontier was on the whole advancing in the north-west. In the north-east Christian progress was slower. ♦1028.♦ But, early in the eleventh century, the Caliphate of Cordova broke in pieces, and out of its fragments arose a crowd of small Mahometan kingdoms at Cordova, Seville, Lisbon, Zaragoza, Toledo, Valencia, and elsewhere. It was now only by renewed invasions from Africa that the Mahometan power in Spain was kept up. But, as the Christian states are now fully formed, such mention of these African dynasties as concerns geography will come more fittingly at a later stage.

§ 4. Origin of the Slavonic States.

♦Slavonic and Turanian invasions.♦

We left the borders of both the Eastern and the Western Empire beset by neighbours of Slavonic race, who, in the case of the Eastern Empire, were largely mingled with other neighbours of Turanian race. Of these last, Avars, Patzinaks, Khazars, have passed away; they have left no trace on the modern map of Europe. With two of the Turanian settlements the case is different. ♦Bulgarians.♦ The settlement of the Bulgarians, the foundation of a kingdom of Slavonized Turanians south of the Danube, has been already mentioned. They still keep their place and nation, though in bondage. Another Turanian settlement to the north of the Bulgarians has been of yet greater importance in European history. ♦Settlement of the Magyars or Hungarians, 895.♦ In the last years of the ninth century the Finnish Magyars or Hungarians, the Turks of the Byzantine writers, began to count as a power in Europe. From their seats between the mouths of the Dnieper and the Danube, they pressed eastward into the lands which had been Dacia and Pannonia. ♦Great Moravia.♦ The Bulgarian power was thus confined to the lands south of the Danube, and Great Moravia, a name which then took in the western part of modern Hungary, fell wholly under Magyar dominion.

This settlement is one which stands altogether by itself. ♦Peculiar character of the Magyar settlement.♦ The Magyars and the Ottoman Turks are the only Turanian settlers in Europe who have grown into permanent Turanian powers on European ground. The Bulgarians have been lost in the mass of their Slavonic neighbours and subjects, whose language they have adopted. Magyars and Ottomans still remain speaking a Turanian tongue on Aryan soil. But of these it is only the Magyars that have grown into a really European state. ♦The Kingdom of Hungary.♦ After appearing as momentary ravagers in Germany, Italy, and even Gaul, the Magyars settled down into a Christian kingdom, which, among many fluctuations of supremacy and dependence, has remained a distinct kingdom to this day. ♦Effect of its religious connexion with Rome.♦ The Christianity of Hungary however came from the Western Church and not from the Eastern. And this fact has had a good deal of bearing upon the history of those regions. But for this almost incidental connexion with the Old Rome, Hungary, though settled by a Turanian people, would most naturally have taken its place among the Slavonic states which fringed the dominion of the New Rome. As it has turned out, difference of religion has stepped in to heighten difference of blood, and Hungary has formed a kingdom quite apart, closely connected in its history with Servia and Bulgaria, but running a course which has been in many things unlike theirs.

♦The Magyars separate the Northern and Southern Slaves.♦

The geographical results of the Magyar settlement were to place a barrier between the Northern and the Southern Slaves. This it did both directly and indirectly. The Patzinaks pressed into what had been the former Magyar territory; they appear in the pages of the Imperial geographer as a nation with whom the Empire always strove to maintain peace, as they formed a barrier against both Hungarians and Russians. ♦The Russians.♦ This last name begins to be of importance in the ninth century. A part of the Eastern branch of the Slavonic race, they were cut off from the other members of that branch south of the Danube by these new Turanian settlements. The Magyars again parted the South-eastern Slaves from the North-western, while the Russians were still neighbours of the North-western Slaves. ♦Effects of the geographical position of the Slaves.♦ The geographical position of these three divisions of the Slavonic race has had an important effect on European history. ♦History of the South-eastern Slaves.♦ The South-eastern Slaves in Servia, Croatia, Dalmatia, and the neighbouring lands, formed a debateable ground between the two Empires, the Magyar kingdom, and the Venetian republic, as soon as Venice grew into a distinct and conquering state. These lands have, down to our own time, played an important, but commonly a secondary, part in history. And in later times their history has chiefly consisted in successive changes of masters. The states which they formed will have to be spoken of in connexion with the greater and more lasting powers to which they have commonly been adjuncts. ♦The North-western Slaves.♦ The North-western Slaves appear for the most part in different degrees of vassalage or incorporation with the Western Empire. ♦Bohemia, Poland.♦ But, besides several considerable duchies, there grew up among them the kingdoms of Bohemia and Poland, of which the latter established its complete independence of the Empire, and became for a while one of the chief powers of Europe. ♦Russia.♦ Russia meanwhile, forming a third division, appears, in the ninth and tenth centuries, first as a formidable enemy, then as a spiritual conquest, of the Empire and Church of Constantinople. Russia had then already assumed the character which it has again put on in later times, that of the one great European power at once Slavonic in race and Eastern in faith. Russia is now fully established as an European power. The variations of its territorial extent must be traced in a distinct chapter.

§ 5. Northern Europe.

♦The Scandinavian settlements.♦

The European importance of the Scandinavian nations at this time chiefly arises from their settlements in various parts of Europe, and specially in Britain and Ireland. The three great Scandinavian kingdoms were already formed. Sweden was doing its work towards the east; the Norwegians, specially known as Northmen, colonized the extreme north of Britain, the Scandinavian earldoms of Caithness and Sutherland, together with the islands to the north and west of Britain, Orkney, Shetland, Faroe, the so-called Hebrides, and Man. They also colonized the eastern coast of Ireland, where they were known as Ostmen. And it was from Norway also that the settlers came by which the coast of France in the strictest sense, the French duchy, was cut off from the dominion of Paris to form the Duchy of Normandy. ♦England and Denmark. 789-1017.♦ But the chief field for the energy of Denmark properly so called lay within the limits of that part of Britain which we may now begin to call England. It was during this period that the united English kingdom grew up, that the many English settlements in Britain coalesced into one English nation. And this work was in a singular way promoted by the very cause, namely, the Danish invasions, which seemed best suited to hinder it.

Up to this time the great island had been in truth, as it was often called, another world, influencing but little, and but little influenced by, any of the lands which formed part of either of the continental Empires. ♦Formation of the Kingdom of England.♦ The English history of these times, a history which is specially connected with geography, consists of two great facts. The first is the union of all the English states in Britain into one English kingdom under the West-Saxon kings. The other is the establishment of a vague supremacy on the part of those kings over the whole island. ♦West-Saxon supremacy under Ecgberht. 825-830.♦ The dominion established by Ecgberht was in no sense a kingdom of England. It consisted simply in a supremacy on the part of the West-Saxon king over all the princes of Britain, Teutonic and Celtic, save only the Picts, Scots, and Welsh of Strathclyde or Cumberland. The smaller kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, and Essex formed appanages for West-Saxon æthelings; but the superiority over East-Anglia, Mercia, Northumberland, and the Welsh princes was purely external. The change of this power into an united English kingdom holding a supremacy over the whole island was largely helped by the Danish incursions and settlements. ♦The Danish invasions. 789.♦ These incursions began in the last years of the eighth century; they became more frequent and more dangerous in the middle of the ninth; and in the latter part of that century they grew from mere incursions into actual settlements. This was the result of the great struggle in the days of the first Æthelred and his more famous brother Ælfred. ♦Division between Ælfred and Guthrum. 878.♦ By Ælfred’s treaty with the Danish Guthrum, the West-Saxon king kept his own West-Saxon kingdom and all the other lands south of the Thames, together with western Mercia. The rest of Mercia, with East-Anglia and Deira or southern Northumberland, passed under Danish rule. ♦Bernicia not Danish.♦ Bernicia, or northern Northumberland from the Tees to the Forth, still kept its Anglian princes, seemingly under Danish supremacy. Over the lands which thus became Danish the West-Saxon king kept a mere nominal and precarious supremacy. ♦Scandinavian settlements in Cumberland.♦ In Scotland and Strathclyde the succession of the Celtic princes was not disturbed; but in part at least of Strathclyde, in the more modern Cumberland, a large Scandinavian population, though probably Norwegian rather than Danish, must have settled.

♦Increase of the immediate kingdom of Wessex.♦

By these changes the power of the West-Saxon king as an over-lord was greatly cut short, while his immediate kingdom was enlarged. The dynasty which had come so near to the supremacy of the whole island seemed to be again shut up in its own kingdom and the lands immediately bordering on it. ♦Second West-Saxon advance. 910-954.♦ But, by overthrowing the other English kingdoms, the Danes had prepared the way for the second West-Saxon advance in the tenth century. Saxon king was now the only English king, and he further became the English and Christian champion against intruders who largely remained heathen. ♦Wessex grows into England.♦ The work of the first half of the tenth century was to enlarge the Kingdom of Wessex into the Kingdom of England. Eadward the Elder, King, not merely of the West-Saxons but of the English, extended his immediate frontier, the frontier of the one English kingdom, to the Humber. ♦First submission of Scotland and Strathclyde. 923.♦ Wales, Northumberland, English and Danish, and now, for the first time, Scotland and Strathclyde, all acknowledged the English supremacy. ♦926.♦ Under Æthelstan Northumberland was for the first time incorporated with the kingdom, and after several revolts and reconquests, it finally became an integral part of England, forming sometimes one, sometimes two, English earldoms. ♦Cumberland granted as a fief to Scotland. 945.♦ Meanwhile Cumberland was subdued by Eadmund, and was given as a fief to the Kings of Scots, who commonly granted it as an appanage to their sons. ♦Lothian granted to Scotland.♦ Meanwhile, partly, it would seem, by conquest, partly by cession, the Scottish kings became possessed of the northern part of Northumberland, under the name of the earldom of Lothian. Thus, in the second half of the tenth century, a single kingdom of England had been formed, of which the Welsh principalities, as well as Scotland, Strathclyde, and Lothian, were vassal states.

♦The English Empire.♦

Thus the English kingdom was formed, and with it the English Empire. ♦Use of the Imperial titles.♦ For the English kings in the tenth and eleventh centuries, acknowledging no superiority in the Cæsar either of East or West and holding within their own island a position analogous to that of the Emperors on the mainland, did not scruple to assume the Imperial title, and to speak of themselves as Emperors of the other world of Britain. The kingdom and Empire thus formed were transferred by the wars of Swegen and Cnut from a West-Saxon to a Danish king. ♦Northern Empire of Cnut. 1016-1035.♦ Under Cnut England was for a moment the chief seat, and Winchester the Imperial city, of a Northern Empire which might fairly claim a place alongside of the Old and the New Rome. England, Denmark, Norway, had a single king, whose supremacy extended further over the rest of Britain, over Sweden and a large part of the Baltic coast. That Empire split in pieces on his death. The Scandinavian kingdoms were again separated; England itself was divided for a moment. ♦The Norman Conquest. 1066-70.♦ The kingdom, again reunited, first passed back to the West-Saxon house, and then, by a second conquest, to the Norman. After this last revolution a division of the kingdom was never more heard of. ♦England finally united by William.♦ William the Conqueror put the finishing stroke to the work of Ecgberht, and made England for ever one. And, by uniting England under the same ruler as Normandy, and by thus leading her into the general current of continental affairs, he gave her an European position such as she had never held under her native kings.

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♦Summary.♦

By the end of the eleventh century then the chief nations of Europe had been formed. The Western Empire, after many shiftings, had taken a definite shape. ♦The Western Empire and the Imperial Kingdoms.♦ The Imperial dignity and the two royal crowns of Italy and Burgundy were now attached to the German kingdom. The Empire, in short, though keeping its Roman titles and associations, and with them its influence over the minds of men, had practically become a German power. Its history from this time mainly consists in the steps by which the German Emperors of Rome lost their hold on their Italian and Burgundian kingdoms, and of the steps by which the German dominion was extended over the Slaves to the East. ♦France.♦ To the West the Western Kingdom has altogether detached itself from the Empire; the union of its crown with the Duchy of France has created the French kingdom and nation, with its centre at Paris, and with a supremacy, as yet little more than nominal, over a large part of Gaul. ♦The Eastern Empire.♦ As the Western Empire has become German, the Eastern Empire has become Greek; in the early years of the eleventh century it again forms a powerful and compact state, ruling from Naples to Antioch. ♦The Slavonic states.♦ Of the states to the north of it, Bulgaria has been reincorporated with the Empire; Servia, Hungary, Russia, have taken their definite position among the Christian powers of Europe. So have Poland and Bohemia on the borders of the Western Empire. Prussia, Lithuania, and the Finnish lands to the immediate north of them remain heathen. ♦Spain.♦ In Spain, the Christians have won back a large part of the peninsula. Castile and Navarre are already kingdoms; Aragon, though not yet a kingdom, has begun her history. ♦The Scandinavian kingdoms.♦ In Northern Europe, the three Scandinavian nations are clearly distinguished and firmly established. ♦England and Normandy.♦ Within the isle of Britain the kingdoms of England and Scotland have been formed, and the union of England and Normandy under a single prince has opened the way to altogether new relations between the continent and the great island. In short, the only European powers which play a part in strictly mediæval history which are not yet formed are Portugal and the Sicilian kingdoms.

From this point then, when most of the European powers have come into being, and when the two Roman Empires are fast becoming a German and a Greek power alongside of other powers, it will be well to change the form of our present inquiry. Thus far we have treated the historical geography of Europe as a whole, gathering round two centres at the Old and the New Rome. It will henceforth be more convenient to take the history of the great divisions of Europe separately, and to trace out in distinct chapters the changes which the boundaries of each have gone through from the eleventh century to our own time. ♦Ecclesiastical geography.♦ But before we enter on these several national divisions, it will be well to take a view of the ecclesiastical divisions of Western Christendom, which are of great importance and which are constantly referred to in the times with which we are now concerned.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The best account of the various names by which the East-Frankish kings and their people are described is given by Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, v. 121 et seqq.

[10] So Wippo (2) describes the gathering of the men of the kingdom: ‘Cis et circa Rhenum castra locabant. Qui dum Galliam a Germanis dividat, ex parte Germaniæ Saxones cum sibi adjacentibus Sclavis, Franci orientales, Norici, Alamanni, convenere. De Gallia vero Franci qui super Rhenum habitant, Ribuarii, Liutharingi, coadunati sunt.’ The two sets of Franks are again distinguished from the Latin or French ‘Franci.’

[11] See special treatise on the Themes in the third volume of the Bonn edition. The Treatise which follows, ‘de Administrando Imperio,’ is also full of geographical matter.

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