nd population_,
though its strength had received a severe blow from the Persian
conquest."[21]

Sicily was another exception from the general decrepitude and ruin of
the Roman empire in the latter reigns of the Caesars. "In the island of
Sicily, the great bulk of the population was Greek, and few portions of
the Greek race _had succeeded so well in preserving their wealth and
property uninjured_."[22]

But in the other parts of the empire, to the north of the Mediterranean,
the agricultural population was, in the time of Heraclius, _absolutely
destroyed_. "The imperial armies," says Finlay, "which, in the time of
Maurice, had waged an active war in Illyria and Thrace, and frequently
invaded the territories of the Avars, had melted away during the
disorders of the reign of Phocas. The loss was irreparable; for in
Europe _no agricultural population remained to supply the means of
forming a body of local militia, or even a body of irregular
troops_."[23]

It may readily be supposed, that so entire a destruction of the rural
population in Europe, as thus took place under the Emperors in the Roman
empire, must have been attended with the most fatal effects to their
means of defence and national power. The inhabitants of towns,
accustomed to sedentary occupations, and habituated to the luxury of
baths, the excitement of theatres, the gratuitous distributions of food,
could not endure the fatigue, privations, and hardships of the military
life. Substitutes were almost universally sought for, and they, amidst
the desolation of the country, could be found only in the semi-barbarous
tribes on the frontier. Thus the defence of the empire came to be
intrusted almost entirely to the arms of the barbarians, and it was hard
to say whether they were most formidable to their friends or foes.
Nothing could supply the place of the rural population on the shores of
the Mediterranean. The legions gave a master to the Roman world, and the
legions were recruited from Gaul, Germany, Britain, and Pannonia. Thus
the dominion of the Capitol was really at an end long before it was
formally subverted; and Rome had received a master from the barbarians
long before the days of Alaric.

This continued splendour and population of the towns, amidst the ruin of
the country, in the declining periods of the Roman empire, has attracted
the particular notice of one of the greatest historians of modern times.
"In the midst," says Sismondi, "of the genera