e troops. As they freely mingled with the subjects of the empire,
they gradually learned to despise their manners, and to imitate their
arts. They abjured the implicit reverence which the pride of Rome had
exacted from their ignorance, while they acquired the knowledge
and possession of those advantages by which alone she supported her
declining greatness. The Barbarian soldiers, who displayed any military
talents, were advanced, without exception, to the most important
commands; and the names of the tribunes, of the counts and dukes, and of
the generals themselves, betray a foreign origin, which they no longer
condescended to disguise. They were often intrusted with the conduct of
a war against their countrymen; and though most of them preferred the
ties of allegiance to those of blood, they did not always avoid
the guilt, or at least the suspicion, of holding a treasonable
correspondence with the enemy, of inviting his invasion, or of sparing
his retreat. The camps and the palace of the son of Constantine were
governed by the powerful faction of the Franks, who preserved the
strictest connection with each other, and with their country, and who
resented every personal affront as a national indignity. [140] When
the tyrant Caligula was suspected of an intention to invest a very
extraordinary candidate with the consular robes, the sacrilegious
profanation would have scarcely excited less astonishment, if, instead
of a horse, the noblest chieftain of Germany or Britain had been the
object of his choice. The revolution of three centuries had produced
so remarkable a change in the prejudices of the people, that, with the
public approbation, Constantine showed his successors the example of
bestowing the honors of the consulship on the Barbarians, who, by their
merit and services, had deserved to be ranked among the first of the
Romans. [141] But as these hardy veterans, who had been educated in
the ignorance or contempt of the laws, were incapable of exercising
any civil offices, the powers of the human mind were contracted by the
irreconcilable separation of talents as well as of professions. The
accomplished citizens of the Greek and Roman republics, whose characters
could adapt themselves to the bar, the senate, the camp, or the schools,
had learned to write, to speak, and to act with the same spirit, and
with equal abilities.

[Footnote 140: Malarichus--adhibitis Francis quorum ea tempestate in
palatio multitudo florebat