pected luxuriance, and cast its dark
shadow over Europe for many centuries. He who knew what Christianity had
been in the apostolic days, might look with boundless surprise on what
was now ingrafted upon it, and was passing under its name.

[Sidenote: Effects of the loss of Africa on events in Italy.]

In the last chapter we have seen how, through the Vandal invasion,
Africa was lost to the empire--a dire calamity, for, of all the
provinces, it had been the least expensive and the most productive; it
yielded men, money, and, what was perhaps of more importance, corn for
the use of Italy. A sudden stoppage of the customary supply rendered
impossible the usual distributions in Rome, Ravenna, Milan. A famine
fell upon Italy, bringing in its train an inevitable diminution of the
population. To add to the misfortunes, Attila, the King of the Huns, or,
as he called himself, "the Scourge of God," invaded the empire. The
battle of Chalons, the convulsive death-throe of the Roman empire,
arrested his career, A.D. 451.

[Sidenote: Fall and pillage of Rome.]

Four years after this event, through intrigues in the imperial family,
Genseric, the Vandal king, was invited from Africa to Rome. The
atrocities which of old had been practised against Carthage under the
auspices of the senate were now avenged. For fourteen days the Vandals
sacked the city, perpetrating unheard-of cruelties. Their ships, brought
into the Tiber, enabled them to accomplish their purpose of pillage far
more effectually than would have been possible by any land expedition.
The treasures of Rome, with multitudes of noble captives, were
transported to Carthage. In twenty-one years after this time, A.D. 476,
the Western Empire became extinct.

[Sidenote: Effects of the wars of Justinian.]

Thus the treachery of the African Arians not only brought the Vandals
into the most important of all the provinces, so far as Italy was
concerned; it also furnished an instrument for the ruin of Rome. But
hardly had the Emperor Justinian reconquered Africa when he attempted
the subjugation of the Goths now holding possession of Italy. His
general, Belisarius, captured Rome, Dec. 10, A.D. 556. In the military
operations ensuing with Vitiges, Italy was devastated, the population
sank beneath the sword, pestilence, famine. In all directions the
glorious remains of antiquity were destroyed; statues, as those of the
Mole of Hadrian, were thrown upon the besiegers of Rome. These