example, they strove to excel in the use, not only of the lance and
sword, the instruments of their victories, but of the missile weapons,
which they were too much inclined to neglect; and the lively image of
war was displayed in the daily exercise and annual reviews of the Gothic
cavalry. A firm though gentle discipline imposed the habits of modesty,
obedience, and temperance; and the Goths were instructed to spare
the people, to reverence the laws, to understand the duties of civil
society, and to disclaim the barbarous license of judicial combat and
private revenge. [32]

[Footnote 2511: Compare Gibbon, ch. xxxvi. vol. iii. p. 459, &c.--Manso
observes that this division was conducted not in a violent and
irregular, but in a legal and orderly, manner. The Barbarian, who could
not show a title of grant from the officers of Theodoric appointed for
the purpose, or a prescriptive right of thirty years, in case he had
obtained the property before the Ostrogothic conquest, was ejected from
the estate. He conceives that estates too small to bear division paid
a third of their produce.--Geschichte des Os Gothischen Reiches, p.
82.--M.]

[Footnote 26: Procopius, Gothic, l. i. c. i. Variarum, ii. Maffei
(Verona Illustrata, P. i. p. 228) exaggerates the injustice of the
Goths, whom he hated as an Italian noble. The plebeian Muratori crouches
under their oppression.]

[Footnote 27: Procopius, Goth. l. iii. c. 421. Ennodius describes (p.
1612, 1613) the military arts and increasing numbers of the Goths.]

[Footnote 28: When Theodoric gave his sister to the king of the Vandals
she sailed for Africa with a guard of 1000 noble Goths, each of whom
was attended by five armed followers, (Procop. Vandal. l. i. c. 8.) The
Gothic nobility must have been as numerous as brave.]

[Footnote 2811: Manso (p. 100) quotes two passages from Cassiodorus to
show that the Goths were not exempt from the fiscal claims.--Cassiodor,
i. 19, iv. 14--M.]

[Footnote 29: See the acknowledgment of Gothic liberty, (Var. v. 30.)]

[Footnote 30: Procopius, Goth. l. i. c. 2. The Roman boys learnt the
language (Var. viii. 21) of the Goths. Their general ignorance is not
destroyed by the exceptions of Amalasuntha, a female, who might study
without shame, or of Theodatus, whose learning provoked the indignation
and contempt of his countrymen.]

[Footnote 31: A saying of Theodoric was founded on experience: "Romanus
miser imitatur Gothum; ut utilis (dives) G