Читать книгу The Dark Ages, 476-918 онлайн

121 страница из 149

So perished the Gothic kingdom, which had been erected by the genius of Theodoric, by the same fate which had smitten the pirate-realm of the Vandals seventeen years before. Both fell because the ruling race was too small to hold down the vast territory that it had overrun, unless it could combine frankly and freely with the conquered Roman population. |Causes of Gothic disasters.| But the fatal bar of Arianism lay in each case between masters and servants, and when the orthodox armies of Constantinople appeared, nothing could restrain the Africans and Italians from opening their gates to the invader. The Ostrogoths had been wise and tolerant, the Vandals cruel and persecuting, but the end was the same in each kingdom. It was only in the measure of the resistance that the difference between Goth and Vandal appeared. Sunk in coarse luxury, and enervated by the African sun, the Vandals fell in one year before a single army. The Ostrogoths, the noblest of the Teutons, made a splendid fight for seventeen years, beat off the great Belisarius himself, and only succumbed because the incessant fighting had drained off the whole manhood of the tribe. If Baduila could have mustered at Taginae the 100,000 men that Witiges had once led against Rome, he would never have been beaten. It is one of the saddest scenes in history when we see the well-ordered realm of Theodoric vanish away, and Italy is left an unpeopled desert, to be disputed between the savage Lombard, the faithless Frank, and the exarchs of distant Byzantium.