cious of its own capabilities, but possessing such
capabilities that the observant Romans saw at once with dread and awe
that they were face to face with such a people as they had never met
before; that in their hands, sooner or later, might be the fate of Rome.
Mad Caracalla, aping the Teuton dress and hair, listening in dread to the
songs of the Allman Alrunas, telling the Teutons that they ought to come
over the Rhine and destroy the empire, and then, murdering the
interpreters, lest they should repeat his words, was but babbling out in
an insane shape the thought which was brooding in the most far-seeing
Roman minds. He felt that they could have done the deed; and he felt
rightly, madman as he was. They could have done it then, if physical
power and courage were all that was needed, in the days of the Allman
war. They could have done it a few years before, when the Markmen fought
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus; on the day when the Caesar, at the advice of
his augurs, sent two lions to swim across the Danube as a test of
victory; and the simple Markmen took them for big dogs, and killed them
with their clubs. From that day, indeed, the Teutons began to conquer
slowly, but surely. Though Antoninus beat the Markmen on the Danube, and
recovered 100,000 Roman prisoners, yet it was only by the help of the
Vandals; from that day the empire was doomed, and the Teutons only kept
at bay by bribing one tribe to fight another, or by enlisting their more
adventurous spirits into the Roman legions, to fight against men of their
own blood;--a short-sighted and suicidal policy; for by that very method
they were teaching the Teuton all he needed, the discipline and the
military science of the Roman.

But the Teutons might have done it a hundred years before that, when Rome
was in a death agony, and Vitellius and Vespasian were struggling for the
purple, and Civilis and the fair Velleda, like Barak and Deborah of old,
raised the Teuton tribes. They might have done it before that again,
when Hermann slew Varus and his legions in the Teutoburger Wald; or
before that again, when the Kempers and Teutons burst over the Alps, to
madden themselves with the fatal wines of the rich south. And why did
the Teutons _not_ do it? Because they were boys fighting against cunning
men. Boiorich, the young Kemper, riding down to Marius' camp, to bid him
fix the place and time of battle--for the Teuton thought it mean to use
surprises and stratagems,