Not Quite Easy To Read, For The Latin Is By No Means
Augustan, But After Labour Well Spent, A Delightful Revelation Of
The Man And The Age.
Great is the variety of subjects dealt with or
touched upon; from the diplomatic relations between Ravenna and
Constantinople, or the alliances of the Amal line with barbaric
royalties in Gaul and Africa, to the pensioning of an aged
charioteer and the domestic troubles of a small landowner.
We form a
good general idea of the condition of Italy at that time, and, on
many points political and social, gather a fund of most curious
detail. The world shown to us is in some respects highly civilized,
its civilization still that of Rome, whose laws, whose manners, have
in great part survived the Teutonic conquest; from another point of
view it is a mere world of ruin, possessed by triumphant barbarism,
and sinking to intellectual darkness. We note the decay of central
power, and the growth of political anarchy; we observe the process
by which Roman nobles, the Senatorial Order when a Senate lingers
only in name, are becoming the turbulent lords of the Middle Ages,
each a power in his own territory, levying private war, scornful of
public interests. The city of Rome has little part in this turbid
history, yet her name is never mentioned without reverence, and in
theory she is still the centre of the world. Glimpses are granted us
of her fallen majesty; we learn that Theodoric exerted himself to
preserve her noble buildings, to restore her monuments; at the same
time we hear of marble stolen from palaces in decay, and of temples
which, as private property, are converted to ignoble use.
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