natus and Agricola; it expires as the race
and temper of these expire; the nominal extent of it, or brilliancy at
any moment, is no more than the reflection, farther or nearer upon the
clouds, of the flames of an altar whose fuel was of noble souls. There
is no true date for its division; there is none for its destruction.
Whether Dacian Probus or Noric Odoacer be on the throne of it, the force
of its living principle alone is to be watched--remaining, in arts, in
laws, and in habits of thought, dominant still in Europe down to the
twelfth century;--in language and example, dominant over all educated
men to this hour.

22. But in the nominal division of it by Valentinian, let us note
Gibbon's definition (I assume it to be his, not the Emperor's) of
European Roman Empire into Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul. I have already
said you must hold everything south of the Danube for Greek. The two
chief districts immediately south of the stream are upper and lower
Moesia, consisting of the slope of the Thracian mountains northward
to the river, with the plains between it and them. This district you
must notice for its importance in forming the Moeso-Gothic alphabet,
in which "the Greek is by far the principal element",[28] giving
sixteen letters out of the twenty-four. The Gothic invasion under the
reign of Valens is the first that establishes a Teutonic nation within
the frontier of the empire; but they only thereby bring themselves
more directly under its spiritual power. Their bishop, Ulphilas,
adopts this Moesian alphabet, two-thirds Greek, for his translation
of the Bible, and it is universally disseminated and perpetuated by
that translation, until the extinction or absorption of the Gothic
race.

[Footnote 28: Milman, 'Hist., of Christianity,' vol. iii. p. 36.]

23. South of the Thracian mountains you have Thrace herself, and the
countries confusedly called Dalmatia and Illyria, forming the coast of
the Adriatic, and reaching inwards and eastwards to the mountain
watershed. I have never been able to form a clear notion myself of the
real character of the people of these districts, in any given period;
but they are all to be massed together as northern Greek, having more
or less of Greek blood and dialect according to their nearness to
Greece proper; though neither sharing in her philosophy, nor
submitting to her discipline. But it is of course far more accurate,
in broad terms, to speak of these Illyrian, Moesian, and Mace