troops. As they freely mingled with the subjects of the empire,
they gradually learned to despise their manners, and to imitate their
arts. They abjured the implicit reverence which the pride of Rome had
exacted from their ignorance, while they acquired the knowledge
and possession of those advantages by which alone she supported her
declining greatness. The Barbarian soldiers, who displayed any military
talents, were advanced, without exception, to the most important
commands; and the names of the tribunes, of the counts and dukes, and of
the generals themselves, betray a foreign origin, which they no longer
condescended to disguise. They were often intrusted with the conduct of
a war against their countrymen; and though most of them preferred the
ties of allegiance to those of blood, they did not always avoid
the guilt, or at least the suspicion, of holding a treasonable
correspondence with the enemy, of inviting his invasion, or of sparing
his retreat. The camps and the palace of the son of Constantine were
governed by the powerful faction of the Franks, who preserved the
strictest connection with each other, and with their country, and who
resented every personal affront as a national indignity. When the tyrant
Caligula was suspected of an intention to invest a very extraordinary
candidate with the consular robes, the sacrilegious profanation would
have scarcely excited less astonishment, if, instead of a horse, the
noblest chieftain of Germany or Britain had been the object of his
choice. The revolution of three centuries had produced so remarkable
a change in the prejudices of the people, that, with the public
approbation, Constantine showed his successors the example of bestowing
the honors of the consulship on the Barbarians, who, by their merit and
services, had deserved to be ranked among the first of the Romans.
But as these hardy veterans, who had been educated in the ignorance or
contempt of the laws, were incapable of exercising any civil offices,
the powers of the human mind were contracted by the irreconcilable
separation of talents as well as of professions. The accomplished
citizens of the Greek and Roman republics, whose characters could adapt
themselves to the bar, the senate, the camp, or the schools, had learned
to write, to speak, and to act with the same spirit, and with equal
abilities.

IV. Besides the magistrates and generals, who at a distance from the
court diffused their delegated authority