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THE VANDAL KINGS, 427-530.

While we turn from the Vandal kingdom in Africa to the dominions of Odoacer in Italy, we are struck at once by the contrast between the methods of government employed in the two countries. |Internal Government of Odoacer in Italy.| While Gaiseric and Hunneric ruled as mere barbarians, and cast away all the ancient Roman machinery of administration, king Odoacer kept up the whole system as he found it. He appointed prætorian præfects, and magistri militum, and counts of the sacred largesses, just as the Emperors before him had done. The senate still sat at Rome and passed otiose decrees, the consuls still gave their names to the year. But his great scheme of expropriation, by which one-third of the land of each of the richer proprietors of Italy was confiscated for the benefit of his mercenary troops, must have caused much trouble and heart-burning. It is curious that we find so little complaint made about it in the historians of the time. Probably Odoacer’s wisdom in letting the smaller proprietors alone has preserved his name from the abuse which still clings to the reputations of many of the Teutonic conquerors of the empire.