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as his liberality was suppressed; the decline of the arts reduced the industrious mechanic to idleness and want; and the senators, who might support with patience the ruin of their country, bewailed their private loss of wealth and luxury. ^* One third of those ample estates, to which the ruin of Italy is originally imputed, ^142 was extorted for the use of the conquerors. Injuries were aggravated by insults; the sense of actual sufferings was imbittered by the fear of more dreadful evils; and as new lands were allotted to the new swarms of Barbarians, each senator was apprehensive lest the arbitrary surveyors should approach his favorite villa, or his most profitable farm. The least unfortunate were those who submitted without a murmur to the power which it was impossible to resist. Since they desired to live, they owed some gratitude to the tyrant who had spared their lives; and since he was the absolute master of their fortunes, the portion which he left must be accepted as his pure and voluntary gift. ^143 The distress of Italy ^! was mitigated by the prudence and humanity of Odoacer, who had bound himself, as the price of his elevation, to satisfy the demands of a licentious and turbulent multitude. The kings of the Barbarians were frequently resisted, deposed, or murdered, by their native subjects, and the various bands of Italian mercenaries, who associated under the standard of an elective general, claimed a larger privilege of freedom and rapine. A monarchy destitute of national union, and hereditary right, hastened to its dissolution. After a reign of fourteen years, Odoacer was oppressed by the superior genius of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths; a hero alike excellent in the arts of war and of government, who restored an age of peace and prosperity, and whose name still excites and deserves the attention of mankind.

[Footnote 138: Tacit. Annal. iii. 53. The Recherches sur l'Administration des Terres chez les Romains (p. 351 - 361) clearly state the progress of internal decay.]

[Footnote 139: A famine, which afflicted Italy at the time of the irruption of Odoacer, king of the Heruli, is eloquently described, in prose and verse, by a French poet, (Les Mois, tom. ii. p. 174, 205, edit. in 12 mo.) I am ignorant from whence he derives his information; but I am well assured that he relates some facts incompatible with the truth of history]

[Footnote 140: See the xxxixth epistle of St. Ambrose, as it is quoted by Muratori, sopra le Antichita Italiane, tom. i. Dissert. xxi. p. 354.]

[Footnote 141: Aemilia, Tuscia, ceteraeque provinciae in quibus hominum propenullus exsistit. Gelasius, Epist. ad Andromachum, ap. Baronium, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 496, No. 36.]

[Footnote *: Denina supposes that the Barbarians were compelled by necessity to turn their attention to agriculture. Italy, either imperfectly cultivated, or not at all, by the indolent or ruined proprietors, not only could not furnish the imposts, on which the pay of the soldiery depended, but not even a certain supply of the necessaries of life. The neighboring countries were now occupied by warlike nations; the supplies of corn from Africa were cut off; foreign commerce nearly destroyed; they could not look for supplies beyond the limits of Italy, throughout which the agriculture had been long in a state of progressive but rapid depression. (Denina, Rev. d'Italia t. v. c. i.) - M.]

[Footnote 142: Verumque confitentibus, latifundia perdidere Italiam. Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 7.]

[Footnote 143: Such are the topics of consolation, or rather of patience, which Cicero (ad Familiares, lib. ix. Epist. 17) suggests to his friend Papirius Paetus, under the military despotism of Caesar. The argument, however, of "vivere pulcherrimum duxi," is more forcibly addressed to a Roman philosopher, who possessed the free alternative of life or death]

[Footnote !: Compare, on the desolation and change of property in Italy, Manno des Ost-Gothischen Reiches, Part ii. p. 73, et seq. - M.]

Chapter XXXVII : Conversion Of The Barbarians To Christianity.